Stone Street

Stone Street ran south from Durovernum Cantiacorum at Canterbury to Portus Lemanis at Lympne on the Kent coast, joining the chief town of the Cantii to one of the Saxon Shore forts that watched the Channel. It is among the straightest of all British Roman roads, holding its line for twenty kilometres across the chalk of the North Downs. The B2068 still follows it almost exactly. Cleared of trees and waiting for the eye, the road's surveying is plain: stand at one end and you can see the other. The name is medieval, simply Stone Street for the road's metalled surface in a country of green lanes.