ndations 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. All the village churches in England of my heart are
entrancingly holy and human places, but it is not always that one
finds a church so rare as that of St Margaret in Darenth. For not only
is it built of Roman rubble or brick, the work of the Saxons, the
Normans, and of us their successors, but it boasts also an arch of
tufa, has an Early English vaulted chancel of two stories, and a
Norman font upon which are carved scenes from the life of St Dunstan,
to say nothing of a thirteenth-century tower.

Not far away at Horton Kirby, to be reached through South Darenth, are
the remains of Horton Castle and a very interesting, aisleless
cruciform church of Our Lady with central tower, a great nave, arcaded
transepts, and much Early English loveliness, to say nothing of the
Decorated tomb of one of the De Ros family, lords of Horton Castle,
and fifteenth- and sixteenth-century brasses. Horton got its name of
Kirby in this manner. At the time of the Domesday Survey the place was
held by Auschetel de Ros from Bishop Odo, but the heir of De Ros was
Lora, Lady of Horton, who married into the north-country family of
Kirby, who, however, had for long owned lands hereabouts. In the time
of Edward I. the Kirby of that day, Roger, rebuilt the castle, but it
is not the ruins of his work we see, these being of a much later
building. Nor will any one who visits Horton fail to see Fawks, the
famous old Elizabethan mansion of the London Alderman Lancelot
Bathurst, who died in 1594.

All this valley, as I have said, was used and cultivated by the
Romans, whose work we find not only at Darenth but also here at
Horton. At Fawkham, however, on the higher ground to the east I found
something more germane to the pilgrimage. For in the old church of
Our Lady there, over the western door, is a window in which we may see
one William de Fawkham clothed as a pilgrim with a book in his hand,
and on one side a figure of Our Lord, on the other the Blessed Virgin.

But the goal of my journey from the highway was reached at Eynsford.
Here indeed I found my justification for leaving the road wh