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Historic walking route in England

The Pilgrims' Way (also Pilgrim's Way or Pilgrims Way) is the historical route supposedly taken by pilgrims from Winchester in Hampshire, England, to the shrine of Thomas Becket at Canterbury in Kent. This name, of comparatively recent coinage, is applied to a pre existing ancient trackway dated by archaeological finds to 600–450 BC, but probably in existence since the Stone Age. The prehistoric route followed the "natural causeway" east to west on the southern slopes of the North Downs. The course was dictated by the natural geography: it took advantage of the contours, avoided the sticky clay of the land below but also the thinner, overlying "clay with flints" of the summits. In places a coexisting ridgeway and terrace way can be identified; the route followed would have varied with the season, but it would not drop below the upper line of cultivation. The trackway ran the entire length of the North Downs, leading to and from Folkestone: the pilgrims would have had to turn away from it, north along the valley of the Great Stour near Chilham, to reach Canterbury.

The prehistoric trackway extended further than the present Way, providing a link from the narrowest part of the English Channel to the important religious complexes of Avebury and Stonehenge, in Wiltshire, where it is known as the Harroway. The way then existed as "broad and ill defined corridors of movement up to half a mile wide" and not as a single, well defined track. The route was still followed as an artery for through traffic in Roman times, a period of continuous use of more than 3000 years. and it drew pilgrims from far and wide. Winchester, apart from being an ecclesiastical centre in its own right (the shrine of St Swithin), was an important regional focus and an aggregation point for travellers arriving through the seaports on the south coast. It is "widely accepted" that this was the route taken by Henry II on his pilgrimage of atonement for the death of Bishop Thomas, from France to Canterbury in July 1174, although this has been disputed and some evidence points to his having taken a route via London. Travellers from Winchester to Canterbury naturally used the ancient way, as it was the direct route, and research by local historians has provided much by way of detail—sometimes embellished—of the pilgrims' journeys. The numbers making their way to Canterbury by this route were not recorded, but the estimate by the Kentish historian William Coles Finch that it carried more than 100,000 pilgrims a year is surely an exaggeration; a more prosaic estimate—extrapolated from the records of pilgrims' offerings at the shrine—contends an annual figure closer to 1,000. A separate (and more reliably attested) route to Canterbury from London was by way of Watling Street, as followed by the storytellers in The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. Romantic writers such as Hilaire Belloc were eager to follow this up and they succeeded in creating "a fable of modern origin" to explain the existence of the Way. The official history of the Ordnance Survey acknowledges the "enduring archaeological blunder", blaming the enthusiasm for history of the then Director, General Sir Henry James. However, F. C. Elliston Erwood, a Kentish historian, notes that tithe records dating from before 1815 use the well established name "Pilgrims' Way" to reference and locate pieces of land. The Pilgrims' Way is at the centre of the Powell and Pressburger film A Canterbury Tale, with the camera panning along a map of the route at the start of the film.

[[File:St Martha Hill. jpg|thumb|In the Middle Ages the pilgrims' route left the ancient trackway to climb St Martha's Hill Boxley Abbey, with its revered Rood of Grace, was another recognised detour.

The North Downs Way National Trail parallels the old Pilgrims' Way between Farnham and Canterbury. Much of the traditional route of the Pilgrims' Way is now part of the modern road network and the Ramblers have previously advised walkers wishing to follow it to use St. Swithun's Way between Winchester and Farnham and the North Downs Way between Farnham and Canterbury as an alternative. The route also links with the South Downs Way at Winchester.