t.
Catherine's Hill--you can see the rough track; others would turn aside
to the south-east, to visit Compton church; perhaps they would come down
into Compton as you may come down into it from the east to-day, by what
is evidently an old track cut deep in the woods. They would go up north
again from Compton; perhaps they would be tired of the valley, and would
climb the Hog's Back to walk the last mile or so into Guildford in the
wind; perhaps they would join the other stream of pilgrims travelling by
the sandy lane by which you may walk to-day as slowly as they did
towards St. Catherine's Hill. Most of them, I think, would collect on
St. Catherine's Hill; St. Catherine's was more popular than the
Guildford churches. So General James has discovered, examining ancient
records of litigation. The parson of St. Nicholas, Guildford, fearing to
lose his profit from the pilgrims who visited the town, purchased from
the lord of the manor the freehold of the site of the chapel, and
rebuilt it in 1317. Perhaps the attraction of St. Catherine's was that
it was on the way to Shalford Fair. Guildford had two special fairs, on
May 4 and November 22, to catch the summer and the winter pilgrims. But
Shalford Fair was the great fair, and actually covered 140 acres of
ground.

[Illustration: _Coming in to Puttenham._]

The pilgrims would cross the Wey under St. Catherine's Hill by a ferry
or a rough plank bridge. The merchants travelling with their horses, and
the ponies driven from Weyhill Fair out towards Salisbury Plain, would
come through the water by a ford. But the ferry and the bridge were both
of almost immemorial antiquity. In 1736 there was a dispute about the
bridge. The lord of the manor of Braboeuf had built a bridge over the
Wey for a fair on St. Matthew's Day. The owner of the church lands at
Shalford ordered it to be destroyed; he claimed the right of conveying
passengers over the river. They went to law, and it was alleged that
there had been a bridge there time out of record. Judgment, however,
decided "that there had been no bridge except _per unum battellum_ (one
plank) at the mill belonging to the heirs of Henry de la Poyle (a mile
lower), laid for convenience of the pilgrims going to the chapel of St.
Katherine at the time of the fair." General James has unearthed the
decision of the Court, and incidentally added another bypath to the
Pilgrims' Way.

Opposite the ferry under St. Catherine's the line of the Way t