The villages which lie immediately below it are all at much the same
distance--from a quarter to half a mile: it can be said to traverse
one alone--Detling, and this it passes through to the north. The
others, Harrietsham, Hollingbourne, Lenham, Charing, are left just to
the south. They are now connected by the high-road which joins up the
valley, and were once, it may be presumed, isolated from each other by
the common fields and the waste of each village, or if connected,
connected only by paths. They may have depended, during many
centuries, for their intercommunication, upon the Old Road, to which
each of them possesses a definitely marked line of approach: and the
Old Road remains the typical main artery, which passes near, but not
through, the places it serves.[38]