In response to the elevated, often roadside track that Kent offers the contemporary pilgrim in the form of the Via Francigena, this project aims to offer an alternative; a low way engaging the river that names much of this landscape.

Drawing its constituency in via a series of staged views from the higher ground from which one must approach, this low way proposes a toolkit of interventions adapted from medieval space use practice, aiming for a matrix of experience that reintroduces psychological moments to characterise pilgrims’ experience more faithfully than the high road signposted today as the Via Francigena.

These textures of experience include incitements to tarry, to wander and to spontaneously create. They are attuned to hydrology in particular, creating a hyper-local matrix of close-set ecologies studded with programme features that invite human interaction. Over time, this path-field is intended to become a destination in the Kent landscape. It stands in opposition to the displays of hereditary wealth arrayed around it in the form of manor houses and landholdings, inviting individuals to raise their personal capacities to the service of community efforts.