England -- Antiquities; England -- Description and travel; Roads -- Great Britain
[36] The full trace of this crossing may be followed in the 1/2500
Ordnance map for Kent (XXX. 3) as follows:--From Wrotham to (_a_) The
_Kentish Drover_. The significance of this sign is the use of the Old
Road by drovers in order to avoid turnpike charges, (_b_) on north of
the _Trottescliffe megalithic monument_, under the old quarry there,
on past Bunkers to the cross-roads. Then (_c_) leave present path and
go a little east of south under _another old pit_, and so diagonally
across field marked 79 (on map XXX. 4), thus reaching Paddlesworth
Farm, when from the (_d_) _ruined chapel_ the track is marked by the
division between fields 72 and 73 till Mark Farm is reached, whence
the track is a plain road ultimately becoming the High Street of
Snodland. After crossing the river it is a road all the way, passing
at last between the two megalithic monuments of the hundred stones and
Kit's Coty House.
[37] Thus in the immediate neighbourhood alone were the Roman remains
of Snodland, of Burham, of Hoborough. The group of a dozen or more
round Maidstone, the bronze celts found at Wrotham. Oldbury Camp, the
group of Roman foundations and coins at Plaxtol, the British and Roman
coins found at Boxley. The megalithic monuments of Addington, of
Coldrum, Kit's Coty House, and the hundred stones. The group already
mentioned at Aylesford, the camp at Fosbery, the Roman pottery at
Thurnham--and this is a very incomplete list.
BOXLEY TO CANTERBURY
_Twenty-six miles_
From Boxley to Charing the Old Road presents little for comment, save
that over these thirteen miles it is more direct, more conspicuously
marked, and on the whole better preserved than in any other similar
stretch of its whole course. The section might indeed be taken as a
type of what the primitive wayfarers intended when the conditions
offered them for their journey were such as they would have chosen out
of all. It is not a permanent road as is the section between Alton and
Farnham, therefore nothing of its ancient character is obliterated. On
the other hand, it is not--save in two very short spaces--interfered
with by cultivation or by private enclosure. This stretch of the road
is a model to scale, preserved, as though by artifice, from modern
changes, and even from decay, but exhibiting those examples of disuse
which are characteristic of its history.
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