The following are some of the ways to get in touch with each otherIt becomes apparent that something or someone is following us. Some distance behind, a figure. The figure doesn’t seem any closer or farther away. It seems to remain, matching our pace, just at the edge of vision – at the edge of the dusk now descending over the grand Lincolnshire parkland surrounding Burghley House. The figure disappears when we stop. It returns when we start again. A shadowy figure, a shrouded silhouette.
Maybe it’s no surprise. It’s a nine mile track that is rich in history. The old Roman highway, now hidden and overgrown, was once the bustling end of a north-south thoroughfare which has been running through Britain in various forms for at least 2,000 year. Unique assemblage of ancient trackway and Roman road. Medieval path, pilgrimage route, coach road, and motorway. Today, hereabouts, its modern incarnation – the A1 – loops west, leaving, as it does in many places, forgotten, discontinued ghost highways to their own devices.
My fascination for the road linking London and Edinburgh began years ago. When I joined an archaeological dig near the A1 in North Yorkshire to unearth a body, I discovered that it was buried alongside an ancient highway from 18 centuries ago. Kneeling by that grave, a stretch of Roman road newly exposed to one side, the torrent-rush of the motorway to the other, the footings of future overbridges being hammered into the ground behind, I’d felt sharply aware of time – of past, present and future all meeting in that moment.
I felt it for a long time. Over the next few months, I became obsessed with finding photographs that hinted at the family connections to the highway. This led me to begin to think of it as more than a road. It was more of a timeline, a collection of collective memories. I was curious about what else lay out there, so I started exploring its 400-mile length whenever I could. I walked and re-walked its tangles and roaring carriageways up and down the nation. The North Road is the result of 10 years’ research. The North Road is a mix of non-fiction, short story and memoir. It’s part road movie, half novel, part history and half personal journey.
The leg to Stamford, then, is my revisiting. A writer and friend who lives in the area wanted to experience the atmosphere of the road. We meet outside. Bell Inn Stilton is a high street that has been preserved as a museum. The A1 bypasses it now, and the town looks a million miles away from the time when it was a rest stop along the old highway. Stilton’s high street was flooded with 42 coaches and mails every day in the 1830s. Their destinations persist, tattooed into the stone of the inn’s arch – as do the ubiquitous (and inevitably false) coaching inn rumours of Dick Turpin escapades. Menus inside are dominated by stilton, the Bell’s best-known export. The Bell’s dining rooms were a huge hit with the cheese that was made miles away in Leicestershire. It was soon being sold by Stilton on every coach that passed. The name stuck.
After a lunch of rarebits, we continue up the A1 towards Water Newton, which is six miles to the north. Old North Road is its only thoroughfare. A second preserved village appears: stone houses, lawns dripping with dew, and willows. Rooks are cawing. A vintage car annual snapshot of England. Imagine the large Roman walled and transport hub of Durobrivae which once existed in the three fields to the East. Travellers, livestock, wagons and soldiers, the smoke, the smell and the fire, the warehouses, the potteries, the kilns, and the villas. Ermine Street was named after the Roman road running north through this area.
To join Ermine Street, we cross the glaze-green River Nene near the Norman church of St Remigius where a slab to a native son, Edward Edwards, reveals him to be the captain of HMS Pandora – the ill-fated frigate tasked with hunting down the mutineers from the Bounty in 1790. Hereward Way is the best way to get there, and then join Ermine Street. However, highway purists may want to walk more along its laser-line straightness. While reduced and buried in earth, the Roman Road still uncannily proclaims its existence via a long, straight ridge, much like a hand thrust under a blanket.
Fields, woods. Early skylarks on dwarf pasture. The afternoon is spent in open-stride walks, with a few diversion to roads and tracks when necessary. Pausing for water, we find the base of a Saxon cross – Sutton Cross – in the undergrowth. These relics from history prove that England has no virgin soil. The track changes into a footpath as it approaches Burghley’s parkland. It is dotted with majestic oaks. As we trace this track along the estate wall as evening begins to fall, we notice a figure following us.
Burghley was built by William Cecil, chief adviser to Elizabeth I, but the area is also profoundly connected to John Clare – the rural labourer and nature poet who was a gardener at the big house in his youth. Clare jumped this estate wall in 1806, on his return from Stamford, to read a poetry book. This Damascene event changed everything. Clare’s last epic journey on foot up the north route in 1841 was to escape an asylum. The figure will appear when we start discussing the topic.
We should speed up to the estate gate, where the path meets the Great North Road. The figure is gone when we reach the estate gate. As we walk down the street, we see the figure shuffle ahead, turn the corner and head towards Stamford before disappearing in the darkness.
Described by Sir Walter Scott as ‘‘the finest sight on the road between Edinburgh and London”, Stamford’s clusters of churches, mazy passageways and twisting thoroughfare give it the air of a condensed Oxford or Cambridge transposed to a leafy fold in Lincolnshire. The George is the old coaching inn, located near the bridge over the River Welland. It is still a very busy place. It’s less a place than a portal to be moved through – a feeling amplified as you pass under its 18th-century “gallows” sign, once doubling as welcome or warning to travellers.
Cromwell reportedly stayed the night. Charles I spent his last night of freedom in the town. After routing Charles I’s greatgrandson Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Duke of Cumberland (Butcher of Culloden) ate dinner in this same panelled room a century ago.
We relive history over a few well-earned pints. It was a dizzying experience to walk along a highway for an afternoon. My friend brings up the figure again – the sheer strangeness of it. He shook his head. You come to accept it. Old roads can lead you to strange places. The time does not stand still. The vast past can often be found in the present.
The North Road, by Rob Cowen, is published by Cornerstone (£22). Order your copy of the Guardian and Observer to support it. guardianbookshop.com. Delivery Charges may Apply
