ABSTRACT
Between 1534 and 1543 John Leland travelled widely throughout England giving us the first detailed description of the English countryside (see Plate 4).1 His Itinerary, published posthumously, makes fascinating reading but was not intended to be a road book or to help the traveller. Apart from a comment on Stony Street, which ran from Lympne to Canterbury, ‘It is the straightest road that I have ever seen, and towards the Canterbury end the paving survives continuously for four to five miles’, there is little on the state of the roads. He does, however, note the bridges he crosses and shows us how widespread was the pattern of cross roads linking the main highways. Perhaps we can take the general lack of comment to indicate that they were adequate for a man on horseback or the carrier with his cart. It was later in 1569 that Grafton’s Chronicle, or History of England briefly described ‘the four highe waies of Briteyn’ as Fosse, Watling Street, Ermine Street and Kykeneldes Street.
