Historia Anglorum, Chronica majora, Part III

The roads and rivers of medieval Europe were crowded with travellers: royal households on the move, government couriers on diplomatic missions, ecclesiastics going to Rome and back, pilgrims on journeys to Jerusalem or Compostela which could take months or even years. This in spite of the fact that maps were rudimentary, carriages uncomfortable and the dangers of robbery real.

Matthew Paris, a monk of St Albans, composed a pictorial itinerary to illustrate the route from London to Apulia. Towns are shown one day’s journey apart. The detail shown here, beginning at the bottom, takes us from Rochester via Canterbury to Dover.