142 THE BRIGHTON ROAD 



to be facts, tradition carries back the tale into a very- 

 fog of legend and conjecture. It was " Gatone " 

 when the Domesday survey was made : the Saxon 

 " Geat-ton." the town in the " gate." passage, or road 

 through the North Downs, just as Reigate is the 

 Saxon " Rige-geat," the road over the ridge. The 

 " ton " or town in the place-name does not necessarily 

 mean what we moderns would understand by the word, 

 and here doubtless indicated an enclosed, hedged, or 

 walled-in tract of land redeemed and cultivated out 

 of the then encompassing wilderness of the Downs. 



Who first broke the land of Gatton to the plough ? 

 History and tradition are silent. No voice speaks out 

 of the grave of the centuries. But both Reigate and 

 Gatton are older than Anglo-Saxon times, for a Roman 

 way, itself following the course of an even earlier 

 savage trail, came up out of the stodgy clay of 

 Holmesdale, over the chalkv hills, to Streatham and 

 London. It was a branch of the road leading from 

 Portus Adurni — the present Old Shoreham, on the 

 river Adur — and doubtless, in the long centuries of 

 Romano-British civilisation, it was bordered here and 

 there bv settlements and villas. Prominent among 

 them was Gatton. There can scarcely be a doubt of 

 it, for, although Roman relics are not found here now, 

 Camden, writing in the time of Henry the Eighth, 

 tells of " Roman Coynes digged forth of the Ground." 

 It was ever a desirable site, for here unfailing springs 

 well out of the chalk and give an abounding fertility, 

 while another road — the ancient Pilgrims' Wav — 

 running west and east, crossed the other highway, and 

 thus gave ready communication on every side. 



Gatton has, within the historic period, never been 

 more than a manorial park, but an unexplained 

 something, like the echo of a vanished greatness, has 

 caused strangely unmerited honours to be granted it. 

 Who shall say what induced Henry the Sixth in 1451 

 to make this mere country park a Parliamentary 

 borough, returning two members ? There must have 

 been some adequate reason or excuse, even if only 



