At a meeting of the archæological section of the Croydon Natural History Society on Tuesday a paper was read by Mr. J. M. Newnham, Honorary Cartographer to the society, on Mr. Alfred Watkins’s theories concerning primitive trackways.
Mr. Watkins (of photographic meter fame) has recently published an argument that all such primitive trackways were mathematically straight between prominent sighting points and that such sighting points determined the sites of early settlements and fortifications.
Mr. Newnham’s paper dealt with the application of the theory to the Croydon district and he instanced many possible trackways (some of them passing through the spot on which the Parish Church now stands) which indicated that several points in the district, and more especially Reston, were spots of considerable importance in bygone days. Croydon itself, according to evidence based on the theory, was but a crossing place of two or more trackways, its importance as a settlement being of comparatively late origin.
Dealing with the Pilgrims’ Way the lecturer offered evidence that the original line ran, not over the chalk hills, but along the ridge of the greensand hills, passing through Godstone, Bletchingley, Nutfield and Reigate instead of, as in the case of the mediæval “old road,” through Merstham and Gatton. He suggested that the alteration indicated that the older, shorter and in many respects easier route was abandoned because the Holmesdale district remained unconquered and held its own, through Roman and Saxon days, as a stronghold of the Britons.
The paper provoked considerable discussion, the general opinion being that the theories put forward by Mr. Watkins, though ingenious and of considerable interest, could only be proved reliable or otherwise by extensive field work, and the Chairman (Mr. Albany Major) expressed the hope that the section would during the summer examine in the field the results that Mr. Newnham, by his work on the maps of the district, had obtained. He considered that the matter was, from an archæological point of view, of importance, as if the theory should prove sound its application to Surrey should settle once and for all such debated points as the site of the Roman town of Noviomagus and of the earliest fords across the Thames.
Source info: MS note by AW “Croydon Advertiser Mar 3 1923”.