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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.

Contents

History

Route

Walk

References

External links

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. In places a coexisting ridgeway and terrace way can be identified, where the route followed would have varied with the season.^[1] 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.Wright, Christopher John (1971): ''A Guide to the Pilgrims’ Way.'' Constable and Co, London. 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 asserted 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 on modern maps is not only unsuitable for the mass movement of travellers but has also left few traces of their activity.^[2]
The Pilgrims' Way is at the centre of the Powell and Pressburger film A Canterbury Tale, with the camera panning along a map of the route at the start of the film.

Route

On the Pilgrims' Way near Trottiscliffe, Kent

The ancient main streets of towns along the route — Farnham, Guildford, Dorking and Reigate — align west to east, strongly suggesting that this was the most important route that passed through them. 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.

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.^[3]

References

1. Encyclopædia Britannica (1998) ''Pilgrims' Way''.
2. Eric Parker, ''Surrey'' 1947 (cap vii, ''The Pilgrims' Way'')
3. The Ramblers' Association

External links

★ A short history (Countryside Agency)