WINCHESTER THE OLD ROAD BY H. BELLOC ILLUSTRATED BY WILLIAM HYDE LONDON CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LIMITED 1911 TO PHILIP KERSHAW AND HAROLD BAKER MY COMPANIONS ON THIS JOURNEY ON THE ROAD AND THE FASCINATION OF ANTIQUITY THE THEORY OF THE OLD ROAD That such and such Causes determined the Track of the Old Road, and that it ran from Winchester to Canterbury The Causes of the Development of Winchester and Canterbury, and of their Position as Termini of the Old Road The Causes of the Preservation of the

ON THE ROAD AND THE FASCINATION OF ANTIQUITY There are primal things which move us. Fire has the character of a free companion that has travelled with us from the first exile; only to see a fire, whether he need it or no, comforts every man. Again, to hear two voices outside at night after a silence, even in crowded cities, transforms the mind. A Roof also, large and mothering, satisfies us here in the north much more than modern necessity can explain; so we built in beginning: the only way to c

That such and such Causes determined the Track of the Old Road, and that it ran from Winchester to Canterbury If one looks at a map of England in relief one sees that five great ridges of high land come, the first from just east of north, the second from the north-east, the third and fourth from the east, and the fifth from the south and west, to converge on Wilts and the Hampshire border. Roughly speaking, their area of convergence is Salisbury Plain, and it has been suggested that Avebury and

THE EXPLORATION OF THE ROAD Winchester to Alton Eighteen miles and a half Winchester differs from most other towns which the Romans reorganised in that its main streets, the street north and south and the street east and west, do not divide the city into four equal quarters. The point where the two ways cross is close to the western wall, and this peculiar arrangement was probably made by the first conquerors in order to avoid an exit upon the marshy land beside the Itchen; for that river flowed