I will take the liberty of recapitulating here my argument, developed at greater length in my monograph on this Way. The original motive of the Stane Street was the connecting of the Chichester Harbours, and indirectly of Portsmouth Harbour, with London by a road which should overcome the difficulties of the Weald. The Weald is a mass of stiff clay, impassable to general traffic for six months of the year unless one uses artificial means. Left to itself it turns rapidly into a waste of oak and thorn scrub: save in the dry months, there is no going over it in its natural state for armies or bodies of wheeled vehicles. Its watercourses are numerous, muddy, difficult of approach, and soft at bottom. It produces nothing save in moments of high civilization, when it can be heavily capitalized by draining and penetrated by expensive artificial communications. The supply of good water is rare and capricious. The Weald was, therefore, the great obstacle between the south coast and the Thames. Because it was such an obstacle the Romans drove their first great road from the main harbour of Portsmouth to the capital round westward by Winchester, Silchester, and Staines; but they needed a supplementary road, for two reasons. First, they wanted a short cut to serve Portsmouth and the lesser inlets collectively called Chichester Harbours (Bosham appears to have been an official port throughout the Dark Ages); and, secondly, they wanted to be able to reach quickly for purposes of travel and commerce the very fertile sea plain of which Chichester is the capital. Therefore did they construct the most purely military and most direct of all the Roman roads in the island, the Stane Street. It ran from the east gate of Chichester in a direct line to the crossing of the Arun at Pulborough, with a camp at the end of this first day’s march to defend it; thence it made in another great straight limb for the shoulder of Leith Hill, with a camp at the second crossing of the upper Arun at Romans Wood; thence by a series of much shorter limbs to the third camp at Dorking; thence over the Mole at Burford Bridge and over the Epsom Downs past the racecourse to the fourth camp at Merton, and thence to London Bridge--a five-march stage. In the Dark Ages the Weald became impassable again, the causeway on the Arun marshes broke down and was swallowed up. The bridge at Alfoldean broke down, and Sussex was isolated from the north. Further, with the absence of any exit for direct and rapid communication between Chichester and London the meaning went out of the road between Dorking and Merton. Merton was close enough to London to give the road vitality again, and between this and London it was never lost. It runs to this day, and is the main line of tramways upon which people still travel from Streatham and Balham to the Borough. It is only deflected at the end by the intricacies of the Southwark streets.