CRAYFORD 47 



XII 



Leaving Bexley Heath, the road becomes suddenly 

 beautiful, where it loses the last of the mean shops 

 — the cats' -meat vendors, the tinkers, the marine 

 stores — that give so distinct and unwholesome a cachet 

 to its long-drawn-out street. The highway goes down 

 a hill overhung with tall trees, with chestnuts and 

 hawthorns, whose blossoms fill the air in spring with 

 sweet and heavy scents ; but, in the hollow, gasworks 

 contend with them, and generally, it is sad to say, 

 come off easy victors. Follows then a nondescript 

 bend of the road which brings one presently into 

 Crayford, fifteen miles from London. 



Antiquaries are divided in opinion over the ancient 

 history of Crayford. While some incline to the belief 

 that it is the site of the Roman Noviomagus, others 

 are prone to select Keston Common as the locality 

 of that shadowy camp and city. The question will 

 probably never be settled beyond a doubt, but the 

 weight of evidence is strong in favour of Keston 

 Common, eight miles away to the south-west. Here 

 still exist the traces of great earthworks, covering a 

 space of a hundred acres, while numerous finds of 

 Roman coins and pottery have been made from time 

 to time. At Crayford, on the other hand, the only 

 presumptive evidence is to be found in this having 

 been that old Roman military way, Watling Street, 

 and, in the very slender thread of allusion to the name 

 of Noviomagus, supposed, on the authority of Hasted, 

 to be extant in the title of the half-forgotten manor of 

 Newbury. 



But, however vague may be the connection between 

 Noviomagus and Crayford, certain it is that here, in 

 457, was fought that tremendous battle between the 

 Saxons under Hengist, and the Britons commanded 

 by Vortigern, a conflict in which four thousand of the 

 Romanised Britons were slain. It was in 449 that 



