Routes in Britain: Introduction

Britain being an island, any pilgrimage outside Britain in medieval times involved a sea journey of some sort. Consequently, although few records of pilgrim journeys survive, pilgrims will have headed to coastal ports. For those who lived in a port, that would not have required much effort. Those whose home town was further from the sea will have used the road network of the time, perhaps with more emphasis on visiting shrines en route than commercial travellers. So the most used routes will have been those from the larger towns of the time to the larger shrines and ports. In this way, one can make educated guesses as to routes used by pilgrims. However, it's important not to exaggerate numbers: most travellers were not pilgrims; those pilgrims there were would mostly be going to a local shrine or possibly further afield for an important occasion such as a feast day. Even those going abroad will have been more likely to be going to a local shrine such as Mt St Michel or Boulogne rather than Santiago or Rome.
Having said all that, these pages are for those who wish to recreate a pilgrim journey heading for a seaport, and, although I use the term 'Britain', it must be said it's mainly about England. There are, though, a number of major differences between medieval times and today which create problems for anyone seeking to retrace such journeys.

Demographics and trade

Anyone trying to picture the journeys of pilgrims to the seaports in medieval times has to forget modern demography: most of today's large conurbations barely existed in medieval times. At the time of the Domesday book in the late C11, the great majority of the population of England lived SE of a line from the Severn to the Humber, roughly the line of Foss Way. York was the only large town N of this. By the end of the C14, Newcastle had expanded and Hereford and Shrewsbury had also grown, but the population of N England remained low. London remained pre-eminent, Bristol remained the great port of the west, and York the main northern town. The rise of the wool industry brought great wealth to the Cotswolds, and E Anglia, where Thetford yielded to Norwich as the main centre. In the Midlands, Coventry gained in importance and, although Foss Way provided a clear trade route to Bristol and the ports of the SW, Southampton's toll-books show that it imported dyestuffs and wines to, and exported cloth from, as far away as Coventry and Leicester.

An indication of relative importance of towns is provided by the mendicant friars. Unlike the Cistercians, they headed for towns. In England and Wales, by 1300 all four of the main orders (Dominican, Franciscan, Carmelite, Augustinian/Austin) had friaries in Newcastle, York, Lincoln, Boston, King's Lynn, Norwich, Cambridge, Northampton, Oxford, Bristol, Winchester and of course London. In addition, three of them were in Scarborough, Hull, Chester, Yarmouth, Ipswich, Leicester, Stamford, Shrewsbury, Hereford, Gloucester, Exeter and Canterbury.

Routes

Christopher Taylor's view (see under 'Suggested Reading') is that 'our present road system was virtually complete' by the eleventh century. Various prehistoric ways such as the Icknield Way and what is now called the Pilgrims Way plus of course the Roman roads remained the basis of the road system in England throughout the medieval period, altered where needed to suit changing demographic patterns. The C14 Gough map provides a fascinating snapshot of this.

However, modern England is very much more densely populated than formerly, and also than modern France or Spain. So, because the main roads of medieval times have often remained the main roads of today, many are now far too busy to be pleasant or safe to walk or cycle along. Although there are large numbers of waymarked and promoted long-distance paths, few of these have any relation to pilgrimage. Sections can however be used, and fortunately England does have an excellent network of public footpaths and tracks that can be used in lieu. Ordnance Survey maps show these.

Ports

Medieval ports often do not correspond to modern ferry ports, and there are often no equivalent modern ferries that modern pilgrims can use. Although many medieval pilgrims went direct to Galicia, there are only 2 modern ferries from England to Spain: to Santander and Bilbao, neither of which is very near Galicia. There are also no ferries to SW France, also important in medieval times. In some cases, though, modern budget-airline routes can be used as a substitute for a sea-journey.

Shrines

Unlike in Spain or to a lesser extent France, almost all the pilgrim 'infrastructure' disappeared at the Reformation. Shrines have almost all vanished, and monasteries and pilgrim hostels have only survived where adapted for some other use, e.g. as a house, cathedral or parish church. When privately owned, they may not be accessible.

Suggested Reading

General works on pilgrimage

Pilgrimage in Medieval England by Diana Webb (Hambledon & London, 2000)
Pilgrimage in Medieval Scotland by Peter Yeoman (Batsford/Historic Scotland, 1999)
Pilgrimage: A Welsh Perspective by Terry John & Mona Rees (Gomer Press, 2002)

Pilgrimages to Santiago

The Confraternity of St James publish several booklets on Santiago pilgrimages from both England and Scotland; these relate however to medieval journeys and are not about modern routes.

Walking routes

Many books handle pilgrimage sites and other holy places in Britain (a particular favourite of mine for its excellent photographs is The Way and the Light: Saints and Pilgrims in Celtic and Medieval Britain by Mick Sharp (Aurum, 2000)). But the only one I know of that deals with walking routes is Walking the Pilgrim Ways by Keith Sugden & John Cleare (David & Charles, 1991) - though it must be said most of the routes are of little use to those heading for Channel ports. An excellent tool for detailed planning of walking routes is the complete set of 1:25,000 and 1:50,000 maps made available online by the Ordnance Survey. The most comprehensive map of long-distance walking routes is the Long Distance Path Chart which Harvey's publish.

History of British road system

A good general account of the development of the road system in Britain is Roads and Tracks of Britain by Christopher Taylor (Dent, 1979, revised 1994). There is a good-quality map of Roman roads on the Romans in Britain site (300kB; may take a while to display). The Ordnance Survey publish an authoritative map of Roman Britain, which includes the roads. (They used to produce one for Monastic Britain too, but sadly have not done so for many years. It may still be available in public libraries.) The Bodleian Library plans to digitise the Gough map.

Romanesque sculpture

See the authoritative Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland, a growing database.

Suggestions

The other pages list important medieval seaports, centres of pilgrimage, and churches associated with St James, together with suggestions for routes linking them with the current sea/airports.

The Walking Pilgrim