If Dartford is poor in history, nevertheless it is worth a visit of
more than an hour or so for its own sake, as I have said. It boasts of
a good inn also, and the country and villages round about are
delicious. All that upper valley of the Darent, for instance, in which
lie Darenth, Sutton-at-Hone, Horton Kirby, and, a little way off
Fawkham, Eynsford, and Lullingstone, is worth the trouble of seeing
for its own beauty and delight.
There is Darenth for instance, Darne, as the people used to call it,
only two miles from the Pilgrims' Road, it is as old as England, and
doubtless saw the Romans at work straightening, paving, and building
that great Way which has remained to us through so many ages, and
which the Middle Age hallowed into a Via Sacra. What can be more
worthy and right than that a modern pilgrim should visit this little
Roman village to see the foundations of the Roman buildings, to
speculate on what they may have been, and generally to contemplate
those origins out of which we are come?
And then there is the church too, dedicated in honour of St Margaret,
the dear little lady who is so wonderfully and beautifully represented
in Westminster Abbey for all to worship her, high up over the rascal
politicians.
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