ABSTRACT
A farmer walks across the grassland to tend his cattle. The daily steps become a track, and progressive journeys turn this into a footpath. The path becomes known as part of the matrix of routes across the area. Local trade, regional politics, power struggles, and religion cause the movement of people, cattle, wagons, traders, and even armies across the countryside. Paths, valley slopes, and river crossings link up into routes and roads. Fortifications, buildings for trade, resting houses, and places of worship are constructed along these routes. It is these places that we now see as historic sites. Many of our historic sites hold a specific relationship with this matrix of tracks, paths, and roads. People who now come to these historic sites probably use, perhaps unwittingly, part of this system of ancient routes. The site plans of these historical areas may now appear complicated but, nevertheless, certain characteristics do recur. Consider, for example, how hospice buildings, places of rest, and chantry chapels usually stand close by the side of pilgrim ways and longdistance routes; these are wayside buildings to serve the wayfarer. Similarly, lines of defence stand across routes, at right angles to them; gate-houses and city gates straddle across the routes. And look-out towers and artillery positions command high ground, located to overlook the route. Although the relationship
is obvious at certain sites, it can also be discovered as an undercurrent where changes and subsequent buildings have gradually obscured the original building or route. Dover Castle and the Pharos light stand on high ground, obviously, as a guard for the channel sea route. On a smaller scale, St John's Chapel, Ely (now an agricultural barn), stands as a hospice for travellers alongside the ancient route into the city. However, it needs a historical perspective to see Temple Manor at Strood, not only as an old house in the middle of an industrial estate, but also as one of several lodging houses for the Knights Templars alongside the route through Rochester and Dover on their way to and from the Holy Land.
