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During the Saxon Heptarchy, the Roman Verulamium had become St. Albans, the shrine of the British protomartyr, and a place of great sanctity, to and from whence pilgrims were constantly moving. I know nothing of Roman roads, and am therefore quite neutral as regards opinion, but am aware that modern antiquaries have wholly overturned the belief of their fathers, and, while quoting Camden as a reliable and careful authority on other matters, ignore the old antiquary’s belief in the long-descended tradition that the Wanderers’ Way, or Watling Street, which passed from Kent to Cardiganshire, cutting through the great forest of Middlesex, in a straight line from station to station, passed by Hampstead Heath. ‘Not by the present road through Highgate, which was made by license of the Bishop of London 300 years ago, but that ancient one, as we gather from the charters of Edward the Confessor, which passed near Edgware.’

John Evelyn.

Old Norden states that on the northern edge of Middlesex the Roman road, commonly called the Watling Way, enters this county, leading straight from old Verulamium to London over Hamestead Heath; from whence one has a curious prospect of a most beautiful city and most pleasant country. Camden, again, tells us that ‘at the very distance that Antoninus in his Itinerary placeth Pulloniacæ, to wit, 12 miles from London, and 9 miles from Verulam, there remaineth some marks of an ancient station, and there is much rubbish digged up upon a hill which is now called Brockley Hill.’ No doubt Norden, with the fond zeal of a believing antiquary, had traced the road many a time to Edgworth (Edgware) and so on to Hendon, through an old lane called Hendon Wante.[19] So completely had this tradition entered into the faith of people generally that we find it embalmed in Drayton’s ‘Polyolbion,’ where, to paraphrase his figurative description of Highgate and Hampstead Hills, he emphatically adds of the latter: