60 THE DOVER ROAD 



the way up to the Brent. It stands in the old cemetery, 

 on the left. 



Donkin, the historian of Dartford, wrote in 1844 : — 

 " On the Brent are the outlines of the ' Deserter's 

 Grave,' cut in the turf, formerly frequented by the 

 scholars of Hall Place School : the sod of which is still 

 continued to be cut away by the country people in 

 memory of the unknown, traditionally said to have been 

 shot in the adjoining pit." 



Some light on this tradition is shed by an item in the 

 churchwardens' accounts :— 



1679. Payed the coroner for selling on a soldier 



that hanged himself ]3s. (V/. 



Payd lor a stake to drive through him 0.?. 6rf. 



Drink for the Jury Is ed. 



Here the road branches — the Dover Road to the left, 

 the Roman Watling Street to the right ; although, the 

 Roman road being older and itself based on an 

 immeasurably more ancient British trackway, it would 

 be more fitting to say that it is the existing Dover Road 

 which branches off from the parent trunk road. From 

 this point of departure on the Heath, until at the north 

 end of Strood High Street the ways again come to a 

 meeting, over eleven miles of the original route have 

 been abandoned for what in mediaeval times proved to 

 be the more convenient route round by the waterside 

 at Greenhithe and Gravesend. 



But although not for many centuries have these 

 eleven miles or so of abandoned Roman way been in use 

 as a through route, they are not all lost. The first three 

 miles across the Heath form a good local road, which 

 then turns off to the right, leaving the Watling Street 

 to climb the hill of Swanscombe, steeply up, as a 

 tangled lane amid the dense woods. It is a very 

 considerable elevation. Here and there the footpath 

 deviates from the original Roman line, and the ridges, 

 banks and hollows of it can occasionally be glimpsed 

 amid the undergrowth ; but in any case it seems 

 evident that the Watling Street in these eleven miles 



