the Wealden road. An account of the discoveries in and
about Maidstone will be found earlier in this article (see p. 98), and it
will suffice here to say that the line of the road is south-east by way of
Week Street, Stone Street, and Loose Road, through the cemetery to
Mangravet, where it changed direction to south-south-east and passed along
the south-west side of a small kite-shaped earthwork (now destroyed) that
was obviously aligned on it. Then by way of Pested Bars it passed the site
of the walled cemetery at Lockham (p. 158), and close to the villa
near Brishing Court; from a point 200 yds. south-east of Lockham to a
point about 140 yds. north of Rat’s Castle, Langley, the road
disappears, but at the latter place it is represented by a hollow way
followed by a parish boundary as far as Four Wents. A small section of
modern road lies on the course between Four Wents and Amberfield, where a
trackway continues, not quite in the same straight line, to a point ½
mile south of Amberfield; here the road, bending to the south-west for a
short distance, is cut down into the ragstone at least 20 ft., but it soon
takes up its alignment on a modern road with a parish boundary and passes
by Hermitage Corner to Crabtree Green, Chart Sutton. A short trackway
follows the course from the ‘Lord Raglan’ Inn towards Cheney’s
Court, and Mr. Crawford has found traces of it again on the south side of
the Beult, where, ¼ mile north of Sweetlands Corner, Staplehurst, he saw
a causeway about 3 ft. high and 50 ft. wide. The alignment is preserved
for 2½ miles by a modern road by Knowles Hill through Staplehurst to Iden
Bridge, where it bends slightly east at a stream crossing; the road then
skirts Camden Park, but the alignment soon becomes lost and cannot be
traced for 3 miles. Then, north of Hemsted Park, Benenden., it appears
once more. The line as marked on the 6-in. O.S. map, sheet LXX S.E., is
fairly certain, and between Hemsted and Corner Cottages, Mr. Crawford
notes, there is a pond dammed by the Roman road, though a larger dam has
been built on it; and at Corner Cottages there are several big stones in
the side of a pond. The road then continues south as a hollow way within
trees (on the east of Seven Acre Shaw, Mr. Crawford has noticed large
blocks of stone that may be the remains of a paved surface), to Stream
Farm, Iden Green, where it crosses the stream by a paved ford, 12 ft. 9
in. wide, that is still visible (P1. XXX).15 Soon after
this it turns south-east, roughly on the line of the Rye road, crossing a
stream at Wande Mill; in a field by Chattenden the causeway may be seen
making for Sandhurst Cross. South of Sandhurst Cross the road is lost, but
its line produced points towards the crossing of Kent Ditch at Bodiam
Mill, and towards Court Lodge in Sussex. It is, indeed, tempting to carry
the road further south-westward by Battle to Pevensey, and thus to provide
an indirect road from the Saxon shore fort at Lympne to the sister fort at
Pevensey; the eastern sector of the road (which joins the Rochester road
at Hemsted), has been identified with some certainty, and though, as we
shall see, there is a small gap near Kingsnorth, the suggestion has
possibilities.
(3) LYMPNE—HEMSTED.—In Hemsted Park the road just
described is joined by another road which can be followed across the
country eastward for some miles to Lympne; its course, as indicated on the
6-in. O.S. map,16
15 Journ. R. Studies, xii,
277. The photograph, reproduced through the courtesy of Mr. Crawford, is
by Dr. G. A. Simmons.
16 Sheets—lxx, S.E.; lxxi, N.E. S.E. S.W.;
lxxii, N.E. N.W.; lxv, S.W.; lxxiii, N.E.; lxxiv, S.W., and see the
Ordnance Survey Map of Roman Britain, 2nd edition.
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