East Hill into Dartford by the site of a Roman
cemetery.10 At the foot of the hill the paved surface was
uncovered in 1897, 2 ft. 6 in. below the modern road; it was said to
resemble the paved road found at Strood, and the paving stones were set in
gravel.11
Between Telegraph Hill and Shooter’s Hill, a distance of
10˝ miles, the road is in a straight line, lying along the modern road,
except at Dartford and Crayford, where it alters its course very slightly
to cross the Darent and the Cray, and it is followed for a long way by
parish boundaries. Discoveries of Roman relics have been made along its
line, chiefly near Dartford and Crayford, where settlements grew at the
river crossings, and Hasted says that in 1790 the road was plainly visible
on Bexley Heath and at Welling. Before the road has reached Shooter’s
Hill it has passed over the boundary of Kent; half a mile beyond Shooter’s
Hill it could be seen in 1719, high, and with ditches on either side of
it, and five years later, Stukeley remarked that portions of the road
still existed.
Near Kidbrooke, the modern main road bends southward, but the
line of the road, followed by parish boundaries, can be traced along a
secondary road to within half a mile of Blackheath ; on Blackheath the
road was seen by Harris in 1719. From Blackheath to Southwark the line of
the road can only be guessed at; in all probability it made a slight
detour to the southward to avoid a wide area of marshland near Greenwich,
and it is hard to see how a case can be made out for a route across
Greenwich Park towards the mouth of Deptford Creek.12
(2) ROCHESTER—MAIDSTONE—WEALD.—The next road for
consideration is one which ran from Rochester by Maidstone, Staplehurst,
and Hemsted across the Weald nearly to Bodiam in Sussex, a distance of
over 25 miles; its course from Rochester to Maidstone has long been
recognised, but it is only recently that Mr. O. G. S. Crawford has traced
it as far south as Sandhurst,13 and thanks are due to him
for most of the information contained in this account.
The line of the road from Eastgate, Rochester, by Star Hill,
Delce Road, and Dark Lane to Horsted is almost straight, and Roman remains
have been found close to the road near Horsted (Pl.
XXIX). At Bridgewood
it joins another road from Rochester, but three-quarters of a mile further
on it bends slightly south-east; from this point it is not visible on the
ground, but air photographs14 taken in 1928 show clearly
that it crosses three fields, falling in the same line as the trackway on
the west boundary of Podkin Wood, and becomes a line towards the old chalk
pits. If the alignment is now produced, it will be found to pass close to
the site of Roman finds on Bluebell Hill and to meet the modern Maidstone
road south of Warren Cottage, and thence its line is southward by Tyland
to Sandling (by the site of burials near Abbey Court, Boxley) and
Maidstone. Springfield Avenue (known sometimes as Radford Lane or Monkton’s
Lane or Medway Mill Lane, and for long only a small trackway) leaving the
Maidstone road just north of Springfield, probably led to a river crossing
at Radford, and thus connected the villas at Buckland and Allington with
10 See page
136.
11 Arch. Cant. xxiii, 8—9.
12 Professor Haverfield considered this
suggested detour in Roman Britain in 1914 (B. Acad. Supp. Papers),
p. 45. For a discussion on the line of the road in the neighbourhood of
London, see Hut. Moni. Comm. Inv. Roman London, p. 50 ff.
13 But see Journ. R. Studies, xii,
277, and the Ordnance Survey Map of Roman Britain, 2nd edition.
14 Numbers 2,741, Chatham 03,526, Chatham
03,545 in the Ordnance Survey Collection.
|