Pilgrims' Way
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- "Pilgrim's Way" is also the US title of Memory Hold-the-Door by John Buchan
The Pilgrims' Way is the route supposed to have been taken by pilgrims from Winchester in Hampshire, England, to the shrine of Thomas Becket at Canterbury in Kent.
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[edit] History
The name is somewhat misleading, as the route follows closely a pre-existing ancient trackway dated by archaeological finds to 500–450 BC, but probably many centuries older, which ran from east to west on the southern slopes of the North Downs. The course was dictated by the natural geography: it took advantage of the contours, avoided the sticky clay of the land below but also the thinner, overlying “clay with flints” of the summits.[1] In places a coexisting ridgeway and terrace way can be identified, where the route followed would vary according to the season.[2] The trackway ran the entire length of the North Downs, leading to and from Folkestone: the pilgrims would have had to turn away from it, north along the River Great Stour valley near Chilham, to reach Canterbury.
Becket’s shrine at Canterbury became the most important in the country, indeed in all of Christendom, from his canonization in 1173 until the dissolution of the monasteries in 1538 and it drew pilgrims from far and wide. Winchester, apart from being an ecclesiastical centre in its own right (the shrine of St Swithin), was an important regional focus and an aggregation point for seaports on the south coast.[1] Travellers from Winchester to Canterbury would naturally use a direct route as represented by the Pilgrims' Way, but a separate (and better attested) route to Canterbury was by way of Watling Street from London, as followed by the storytellers in The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer.
Indeed, the concept of a single route with this designation seems to be no older than the Victorian Ordnance Survey map of Surrey, whose surveyor, Edward Renouard James, published a pamphlet in 1871 entitled Notes on the Pilgrims' Way in West Surrey. Here he asserts that the route was "little studied" and that "very many persons in the neighbourhood" had not been aware of it. However, his insertion of the route name on the Ordnance map gave as it were an official sanction to his conjecture; and writers such as Hilaire Belloc were eager to follow it up. In fact, the route as it is canonically given in modern maps is not only unsuitable for the mass movement of travellers, but seems to have left few traces of their activity.[3]
[edit] Route
On modern Ordnance Survey maps, part of the route is shown running east from Farnham, passing to the south of Guildford, north of the village of Gomshall, north of Dorking, Reigate, Merstham, Chaldon, Godstone, Limpsfield and Westerham, through Otford, Kemsing and Wrotham, north of Trottiscliffe, towards Cuxton (where it crossed the River Medway).
South of Rochester the Pilgrims' Way travels through the villages of Burham, Boxley, Detling and continuing in a south-east direction to the north of the villages of Harrietsham and Lenham.
The route continues south-east along the top of the Downs past Charing, to Wye and then turns north to follow the River Great Stour's valley through Chilham and on to Canterbury.
[edit] Walk
For much of its length the North Downs Way national trail parallels the old Pilgrim's Way between Winchester and Canterbury. Much of the traditional route of the Pilgrims' Way is now part of the modern road network and walkers wishing to follow it are advised to use the North Downs Way as an alternative.[4]
[edit] References
- ^ a b Wright, Christopher John (1971): A Guide to the Pilgrims’ Way. Constable and Co, London.
- ^ Encyclopædia Britannica (1998) Pilgrims' Way.
- ^ Eric Parker, Surrey 1947 (cap vii, The Pilgrims' Way)
- ^ The Ramblers' Association