HISTORY, MYTH, TRADITION, CONJECTURE, AND INVENTION
Few in the multitude of us who now handle maps are without some vague
awe at the Old English lettering of the names of ancient things, such
as Merry Maidens, Idlebush Barrow, Crugian Ladies, or the plain Carn,
Long Barrow, or Dolmen. Not many could explain altogether why these are
impressive. We remember the same lettering in old mysterious books, and
in Scott’s _Marmion_ and Wordsworth’s _Hartleap Well_. We are touched
in our sense of unmeasured antiquity, we acknowledge the honour and the
darkness of the human inheritance. Most impressive of all, because they
recur across many counties, are the names of roads, like the Sarn Helen
of Wales, the Pilgrims’ Way of England. It is part of their power that
they have no obvious and limited significance, and were certainly not
bestowed by king or minister as names are given by a merchant to his
commodities. Instead of “London Road” we see “Watling Street”; instead
of “North Road” there is “Foss Way” or “Ermine Street.” But all these
make some appeal, however fantastical, to the intelligence. “Icknield
Street” or “Icknield Way” makes no such appeal. It is the name of
two apparently distinct roads: one with a Roman look running north
and south through Worcestershire and Warwickshire, the other winding
with the chalk hills through Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire,
Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire, and Wiltshire.
I shall confine myself as far as possible to this second road. It
runs south-westwards from East Anglia and along the Chilterns to the
Downs and Wessex; but the name is mysterious. For centuries--since
Holinshed--it was supposed to be connected with the East Anglian
kingdom of the Iceni: only fifty years ago Guest confidently translated
it as the warpath of the Iceni, and connected it with the names of
places along its course, such as Icklingham, Ickleton, and Ickleford.
To-day, it is pointed out with equal confidence that “according to
philological laws Iceni would have produced in England a form beginning
with Itch- or Etch-.” Dr. Henry Bradley cannot believe that there
was any knowledge of the Iceni in Berkshire, but finds it “a natural
supposition” that the road was called after a woman named Icenhild,
though he points out that no such person or name is known in myth or
history.
It is a pleasure to see a learned man of the twentieth century thus
playing at the invention of a twilight deity as the patroness of an
old road, like the Helen or Elen of Wales. Two hundred years ago his
invention would have been wholly serious and generations of equally
serious and less inventive antiquaries would have followed him. There
have been other explanations. Camden, at the same time as Holinshed,
accepted the connection with the Iceni, but “what the origin of the
name should be,” he says in his _Suffolk_, “as God shall help me, I
dare not guess, unless one should derive it from the _wedgy_ figure of
the county, and refer to its lying upon the ocean in form of a _wedge_.
For the Britons in their language call a wedge Iken....” John Aubrey
had it from “Mr. Meredith Lloyd” that “Ychen is upper, as to say the
upper country or people,” and that “Ychen” also signifies “oxen.”
Wise, in 1738, linked it with the name of Agricola, because of the
significant core of Ick, or in the form “Ryknield,” rick. Willis, in
1787, said that the road took its name from the Itchen, believing that
it began at Southampton and went parallel to that river to Winchester;
and that Iken-eld was the Saxon name for the Old Iken Street. The poet
William Barnes, lover of ancient Britons, said that it might come from
a word meaning high or upper, either because it was “an upcast way” or
because it was the “upper or eastern road,” while Ryknield seemed to
him to come from a word meaning a trench, and therefore a “hollow way.”
And still nobody knows or believes that anybody else knows. The name,
therefore, throws no light at present on the use or history of the road.
Much has been written about the Icknield Way by antiquaries from the
sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Most of them regarded the
road as one of the four royal roads or Roman roads of Britain, on
the authority not of local evidence and direct examination, but of
half-mythic laws and histories. The earliest of these are “The Laws of
Edward the Confessor.” Here four roads are mentioned--Watlinge strete,
Fosse, Hikenilde strete, and Erminge strete--two of them extending
across the breadth of the land and two throughout the length; and
travellers on them were protected by the king’s peace. But Liebermann
assigns as a probable date to these laws a year between 1130 and 1135:
Pollock and Maitland, in their _History of English Law_, condemn the
work as a compilation of the last years of Henry I; having something
of the nature of a political pamphlet and being adorned with pious
legends, “its statements, when not supported by other evidence, will
hardly tell us more than that sane men of the twelfth century would
have liked these statements to be true.” The French version of the
“Laws of William the Conqueror” is almost word for word the same as
the Laws of the Confessor in the matter of the royal roads: the Latin
version omits Hykenild strete. Roger de Hoveden, in 1200, uses almost
the same words: so does Henry of Huntingdon in 1130, except that he
describes the Icknield Way as going out of the east into the west.
Mr. Harold Peake suggests to me that these writers may all have had as
their inspiration the brilliant Geoffrey of Monmouth, who wrote the
_History of the British Kings_ in the early twelfth century. He tells
us, in language not more credible than that of “The Dream of Maxen” in
the _Mabinogion_, that King Belinus commanded four roads to be made
over the length and breadth of the island:--
“Especially careful was he [King Belinus] to proclaim that the cities
and the highways that led unto the city should have the same peace that
Dunwallo had established therein. But dissension arose as concerning
the highways, for that none knew the line whereby their boundaries
were determined. The king therefore, being minded to leave no loophole
for quibbles in the law, called together all the workmen of the whole
island, and commanded a highway to be builded of stone and mortar that
should cut through the entire length of the island from the Cornish sea
to the coast of Caithness, and should run in a straight line from one
city unto another the whole of the way along. A second also he bade be
made across the width of the kingdom, which, stretching from the city
of Menevia on the sea of Demetia as far as Hamo’s port, should show
clear guidance to the cities along the line. Two others also he made to
be laid out slantwise athwart the island so as to afford access unto
the other cities. Then he dedicated them with all honour and dignity,
and proclaimed it as of his common law, that condign punishment should
be inflicted on any that should do violence to other thereon. But if
any would fain know all of his ordinances as concerning them, let him
read the Molmutine laws that Gildas the historian did translate out
of the British into Latin, and King Alfred out of the Latin into the
English tongue.”
This great north-and-south road is like Ermine Street, the slantwise
roads might be Watling Street and the Foss Way, and that across the
width from Menevia to “Hamo’s port,” the Icknield Way. As Geoffrey
makes one road go from the Cornish sea to Caithness, so Henry of
Huntingdon takes his Fosse Way from Totnes to Caithness. Henry, as is
known, had read part or all of Geoffrey’s book before it was given to
the world and made an abstract of it; and the romancer had warned him
to be silent as to the British kings, because he had not that book in
the British tongue, brought from Brittany by Walter, Archdeacon of
Oxford, and translated into Latin by Geoffrey himself. Here, as usual,
it can safely be said that Geoffrey’s words are not pure invention; but
what his authority in writing or tradition may have been appears to be
undiscoverable. He may have used some tradition which was the basis
also of the account of the Empress Helen’s road-making in “The Dream of
Maxen.” He may have used the so-called laws of Dynwal Moel Mud--“before
the crown of London and the supremacy of this island were seized by
the Saxons”--who measured the length and breadth of the island, in
order “to know its journeys by days.” (_Laws and Institutes of Wales:
Vendotian Code._) Henry of Huntingdon may well have been a meek adapter
of Geoffrey’s majestic statements, and some local knowledge of his own
may have helped him to put names upon the roads of Belinus. To this
second road from St. David’s (Menevia) to Hamo’s port or Southampton
he gives the name of Ichenild or Ikenild. Walter Map, in _De Nugis
Curialium_ (_circa_ 1188), speaks of Canute holding London and the
land beyond Hickenild, and Edmund the rest; the Anglo-Saxon _Chronicle_
says that Edmund had Wessex and Canute the “north part” or Mercia; and
these two together help to define the road.
Whether Henry of Huntingdon’s history owed anything to Geoffrey, Robert
of Gloucester’s metrical chronicle (_circa_ 1300) certainly did, for
he refers to Belinus as the road-maker; but, like Henry, he calls
the road from Totnes to Caithness the Fosse. Of the Icknield Street
he says that it went from east to west, and also, apparently, that
it was the road from St. David’s to Southampton through Worcester,
Cirencester, and Winchester. A writer of _circa_ 1360, Ralph Higden,
mentions Belin, and he gives two theories about the Fosse, but
evidently himself knows nothing. He calls the east-and-west road
from St. David’s to Southampton Watling Street. His fourth road goes
from south to north, from St. David’s, by Worcester and Birmingham,
Lichfield and Derby, Chesterfield and York, to Tynemouth; and its name
varies in different manuscripts from Rikenildstrete to Hikenilstrete.
Guest has pointed out that Higden was following Geoffrey. In the
_Eulogium Historiarum_ (1362) this road goes from south to north from
St. David’s to Tynemouth, and is called once Belinstrete, and three
times Hykeneldstret or Hikeneldstret. The author does not mention
Ermine Street, but two Belinstretes, the other going from St. David’s
to Southampton. It is likely that none of these men except Geoffrey and
perhaps Henry could have mapped the roads.
The one map of the period showing the roads is such as they might have
been expected to make. It belongs probably to the thirteenth century
and was reproduced by Hearne, from a British Museum manuscript, in Vol.
V of his edition of Leland’s _Itinerary_ (1710). It shows the four
roads by means of lines and a brief description--his Fosse going in the
approved manner from Totnes to Caithness, the Ermine Street due north
and south, the Watling Street from south-east to north-west. Ykenild
Street goes straight across from west to east. The artist’s description
of this as of the other roads is almost word for word from Henry of
Huntingdon. But there are these differences and additions: the western
extremity of the Icknield Way is not called St. David’s, but Salisbury,
which is thus placed due north of Totnes where St. David’s should be;
the eastern--or, as he calls it, the southern--is St. Edmunds. At
the point of intersection with Watling Street he writes “Dunstaple,”
which is accurate. Thus he is original only in his description of the
Icknield Way. In putting “Meridies” by St. Edmunds he made a slip due
to his drawing the map with its north end on the right side. It is
impossible to decide the extent of his mistake in marking Salisbury
at the west end of the road. He may have believed that it went to
Salisbury, but have been afraid to deviate from the received opinion
that it was an east-and-west road; or he may simply have put Salisbury
in mistake for St. David’s. Giving Bury St. Edmunds as the eastern
termination suggests local knowledge which the accurate position of
Dunstable confirms. He may have been a man of the eastern counties who
thought that Salisbury was not only the end of the road, as travellers
told him, but a city in the west.
Holinshed, in his _Chronicles_ (1586), mentions Geoffrey as the
authority for the origin of the four great roads, and, after quoting
him, goes on to describe an “Ikenild or Rikenild” beginning somewhere
in the south and going through Worcester, Birmingham, and Chesterfield
to the mouth of the Tyne. “I take it,” he says, “to be called the
Ikenild, because it passed through the kingdome of the Icenes. For
albeit that Leland and others following him doo seeme to place the
Icenes in Norffolke and Suffolke; yet in mine opinion that cannot well
be doone, sith it is manifest by Tacitus that they laie neere unto the
Silures, and (as I gesse) either in Stafford and Worcester shires, or
in both, except my conjecture doo fail me.” Here it is to be noticed,
first, that he gives Ikenild and Rikenild as alternative names of one
road and, second, that he sees the resemblance between “Ikenild” and
“Iceni.” He has evidently thought about the matter, but he shows no
trace of local knowledge or curiosity. Camden (1586) also only mentions
the road in his introduction to the subject of the Iceni; though he has
to speak of many places touched by the road, he ignores the fact, if he
ever knew it. The poet Drayton, in his _Polyolbion_ (1616), substitutes
“Michael’s utmost Mount” for Totnes at the south end of the Fosse
Way, and takes Watling Street from Dover to “the farth’st of fruitful
Anglesey,” and he writes like a Warwickshire man of the country where
those two roads cross (Song xiii, II, 311 _et seq._; Song xxvi, II, 43
_et seq._). In the “Sixteenth Song” of _Polyolbion_ he makes Watling
sing of herself and her “three sister streets”:--
Since us, his kingly ways, Mulmutius first began,
From sea again to sea, that through the Island ran.
Which that in mind to keep posterity might have,
Appointing first our course, this privilege he gave,
That no man might arrest, or debtors’ goods might seize
In any of us four his military ways.
Having sung of the Fosse, Watling continues:--
But O, unhappy chance! through time’s disastrous lot,
Our other fellow streets lie utterly forgot:
As Icning, that set out from Yarmouth in the East,
By the Iceni then being generally possest,
Was of that people first term’d Icning in her race,
Upon the Chiltern here that did my course imbrace:
Into the dropping South, and bearing then outright,
Upon the Solent Sea stopt on the Isle-of-Wight.
“Rickneld” he takes from St. David’s to Tynemouth.
It is very clear that Drayton had read Geoffrey or a disciple. The
notes to _Polyolbion_ reveal the fact that Selden accepted Molmutius
and his laws. “Take it upon credit of the British story” are his words.
He accepted also King Belin and the making of the four roads; but
having noticed that authorities vary as to their courses and even their
names, he is content to say, “To endeavour certainty in them were but
to obtrude unwarrantable conjecture, and abuse time and you.” Evidently
he knew these roads as a whole neither from personal knowledge nor
from contemporary report, but only from books. Had he known anything
he would have betrayed it, for he digresses to tell the little that he
knows of “Stanstreet in Surrey.”
Drayton apparently knew more, though perhaps all his knowledge was not
available for verse. He is the first to distinguish clearly between
the Ricknield and the Icknield Street. He takes the Icknield Way from
Yarmouth to the Solent; the definite “Yarmouth,” now for the first time
connected with the road, the use of the variant Icning, the connection
with the Chilterns, the crossing of Watling Street--all suggest local
knowledge. Here more than ever it is to be wished that Drayton had
either written his book in prose or had given his authorities and his
actual notes of local lore. He was a great lover of England and of
Wales, and could have written one of the finest prose books of the
seventeenth century had he put down what he knew without ramming it
into the mould of rhyme.
Of all these men except Drayton and the man who drew the map, none
betrays personal knowledge of the road. They are all writing of
something either too generally known to need explanation or of
something which they know only from other writers. All their words
together hardly do more than prove that there was or had formerly been
a road, known as Ricknield or Icknield Street; or at most that there
were or had been three roads bearing those names--one from St. David’s
east and then north to Tynemouth; a second running south-westwards
across the east of England from Norfolk to Southampton; and a third
from St. David’s to Southampton. The second seems to owe nothing
to Geoffrey, and all the local knowledge, such as it is, is so far
connected with this.
In 1677 appeared a book by one who had not only heard of the four royal
roads, but had met with what he believed to be one of them. This was
Robert Plot’s _Natural History of Oxfordshire_. He says:--
“Of the four Basilical, Consular, or Prætorian ways, or Chemini
majores, I have met with but one that passeth through this County,
the discovery whereof yet I hope may prove acceptable, because not
described before, or its footsteps any where noted by Sir H. Spelman,
Mr. Camden, or any other Author that I have read or could hear of:
whereat indeed I cannot but very much wonder, since it is called by its
old name at very many places [Ikenildway] to this very day. Some indeed
call it Icknil, some Acknil, others Hackney, and some again Hackington,
but all intend the very same way, that stretches it self in this County
from North-east to South-west; coming into it (out of Bucks) at the
Parish of Chinner, and going out again over the Thames (into Berks)
at the Parish of Goreing. The reason, I suppose, why this way was not
raised, is, because it lies along under the Chiltern Hills on a firm
fast ground, having the hills themselves as a sufficient direction:
which is all worth notice of it, but that it passes through no town or
village in the County, but only Goreing; nor does it (as I hear) scarce
any where else, for which reason ’tis much used by stealers of Cattle:
and secondly, that it seems by its pointing to come from Norfolk and
Suffolk, formerly the Kingdom of the Iceni, from whom most agree (and
perhaps rightly enough) it received its name Icenild or Ikenild; and to
tend the other way westward perhaps into Devonshire and Cornwall, to
the Land’s End.”
He adds, with some triumph, that Holinshed was much mistaken, but he
suspends his judgment because he has read in Dugdale’s _Antiquities
of Warwickshire_ of an “Ickle-street” in that county. He prints a map
showing the road passing, all on its right hand as it goes south,
the villages of “Kempton,” Chinner, Oakley, Crowell Kingston, Aston
Rowant, Lewkner, Sherborne, Watlington, the Britwells, Ewelme, Croamish
Gifford, Nuneham, Warren, Mungewell, the three Stokes, and then south
of Goring Church. He adds that under “Stokenchurch Hills,” about
Lewkner and Aston Rowant, there are two Icknield ways, an upper and a
lower; and here it may be mentioned that Hearne’s diary for September
29th, 1722, has the entry:--
“I went thro’ Ewelm, a 1/4 of a mile from which is Gouldsheath, and
about 2 furlongs east said Ewelm passeth the _lower Hackneyway_.”
Plot gives a substance to a name. He proves the existence of a road
bearing the name of Icknield and variations of it, and having a course
along the Chilterns, like Drayton’s road. He does not exaggerate; in
fact, he thinks it a poor sort of road when compared with the Icknield
Street through Staffordshire, of which he says:--
“I look upon this of Staffordshire as the most remarkable of the two,
and so to be that Iknild street, which is usually reckoned to be
one of the four basilical or great ways of England, and not that of
Oxfordshire, this being raised all along and paved at some places, and
very signal almost wherever it goes, whereas that of Oxfordshire is not
so there, whatever it may be in other counties.”
The next evidence is eighteen years later, and comes from the maps by
Robert Morden illustrating Gibson’s edition of Camden’s _Britannia_
(1695). His map of Hertfordshire suddenly introduces us to a road
called the Icknal or Icnal Way, running west from Royston--perhaps even
from Barley, three miles south-east of Royston--through Baldock, then
more and more south-east, over the Lea to the north of Luton, through
Dunstable, and so, leaving on its right hand Toternhoe, Edlesborough,
Ivinghoe, and Marsworth, going out of the map with Wilston on its
right. In the map of Buckinghamshire this road is continued through
Wendover, and passes Princes Risborough and Bledlow. In the map of
Oxfordshire it is called “Icknield Way,” and follows a line like that
in Plot’s map, crossing “Grime’s Dike,” leaving Ipsden and Woodcot
on its left, reaching the Thames on the south of Goring Church. The
Berkshire map does not show any road of this or similar name, or any
one corresponding to it. Nor is the road to be found on the maps of
Essex, Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, or Norfolk. The extension of it
through Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire may well have come from the
local knowledge of Morden or a collaborator. There must have been
abundant information of the kind used by Plot which escaped antiquaries
who were thinking about a royal road, a majestic basilical or consular
way, running from St. David’s to Southampton, or farther. John Aubrey
(died 1697), the man to tap this local lore, had nothing to say of any
such road in his own county of Wiltshire, but he left some rough notes.
He connects “Iceni” with “Ikenild,” and remarks (on the authority
of Wren) that there were three Itchings on Ikenel Street, including
Itching Stoke in Hampshire, where the Pilgrims’ Way fords the Itchen.
He says also that a Mr. Sherwood told him of “an Ikenil way from
North Yarmouth to Plymouth; the country people will say, ‘Keep along
the Ikenil Way,’ _scilicet_ the Wallington Hills.” Wallington is two
miles south-east of Baldock and south of the Icknield Way, and through
it ran a parallel road (mentioned in _Archæological Journal_, Vol.
XXV) from Barley, by Therfield, Strethall, Sandon, and Wallington to
Clothall; but the term “Wallington Hills” does not exclude the Icnal
Way marked in Morden’s map. The precise _North_ Yarmouth may also have
been accurate, and I should be inclined to believe that at that day men
sometimes went between Plymouth and North Yarmouth by a road or chain
of roads known through perhaps a very large part of its course by some
such name as Ikenil Way.
A period of antiquarian conjecture and invention was now beginning,
with exploration often of an active kind, but usually kept sternly
in obedience to speculation. At the end of the sixth volume of
Hearne’s _Leland_ (1710) is an essay supposed to be by Roger Gale
(1672-1744). He has no doubt about “four great roads,” but regards
the story of Molmutius and Belinus as exploded, and says that “nobody
now questions but that” the Romans made them. He distinguishes, “as
does Mr. Drayton,” between Icknield and Ricknield, and complains of
the old confusion. The Icknield Way, “which has its rise and name
from the people called Iceni,” he finds first “with any certainty
near Barley in Herts,” as in Robert Morden’s map; but he suggests an
eastern continuation through Ickleton, “and so by Gogmagog hills,
and over Newmarket Heath to Ikesworth, not two miles south from St.
Edmundsbury,” and possibly to Burgh Castle, near Yarmouth. Returning
westward, he describes a course which might have been taken from
Morden’s map, except that in the neighbourhood of Luton it touches
Streatley instead of Leagrave, and goes to Houghton Regis as well as
to Dunstable. But having reached Buckinghamshire, he cannot find it
“anywhere apparent to the eye ... except between Princes Risborrow and
Kemble in the Street, where it is still call’d Icknell Way.” These
are words which suggest that the eye was not his own. In Oxfordshire
he leaves the road to Plot. At Goring and Streatley he does not know
what to do, because his guides--Henry of Huntingdon and Drayton and
others--disagree. He conjectures a continuation to Southampton, another
through Speen to Salisbury and beyond, where he has found the name
“Aggleton Road,” locally given to the road near Badbury Castle, the
Roman road from Old Sarum to Dorchester. He thinks “Aggleton Road” can
have no connection with Ickleton, but he shows no other reason for
believing that his Roman road is the Icknield Way.
In 1724 appeared the _Itinerarium Curiosum_ of Gale’s friend William
Stukeley (1687-1765), M.D., F.R.S., F.R.C.P. Here he describes an
exploration of the Icknield Way. He takes it through Ickleton and, like
Gale, through Streatley, near Luton; he mentions the lovely prospect
from the northern sides of the Chilterns and a few more place-names.
East of Ickleton, or his newly discovered Roman camp at Great
Chesterford, he speaks of the road going along the boundary between
Essex and Cambridgeshire “towards Icleworth in Suffolk.” He thinks the
road Roman. Beyond the Thames he has no uncertainty like Gale. He says
straight out that at Speen “the great Icening-street road coming from
the Thames at Goring ... crosses the Kennet river”; also that he found
it a little north of Bridport going to Dorchester, and accompanied it
“with no small pleasure.” If he had any reason for calling any part
of this road “the great Icening Street of the Romans,” it has never
been discovered, nor has anything else confirmed his view, except that
Leland saw two Roman milestones between Streatley and Aldworth, which
have been seen since, but never described except in rumour. William
Stukeley, M.D., F.R.S., F.R.C.P., who read “Oriuna” for “Fortuna” on
a coin, and so invented the belief that one Oriuna was the wife of
Carausius, was soon afterwards unanswerably questioned and plainly
contradicted on matters of fact by Smart Lethieullier (1701-60) and
Richard Willis. He is chiefly memorable here because the now venerable
title of _Via Iceniana_ was conferred by him on the road which he chose
to believe the Icknield Way. The title, translated back into Icknield
Street, is still generally accepted.
Francis Wise (1697-1767) found the road where Gale had lost it, beyond
the ford at Streatley. In his book on _Some Antiquities in Berkshire_
he says that it loses its name at Streatley, but is “visible enough”
to Blewbury and known as the Great Reading Road. From Blewbury through
Upton and Harwell this road is called the Portway, yet he thinks
that it may be the Icknield Way notwithstanding; or, if not, there
is an alternative to the south, lost in the ploughland until near
Lockinge it becomes a raised way called “Icleton Meer”; while after
Wantage it is the “Ickleton Way,” going “all under the hills between
them and Childrey,” Sparsholt, Uffington, so under White-horse-hill,
leaving Woolston and Compton on the right, thence to Ashbury and
Bishopstone. He thought that it was making rather for Avebury than
for Salisbury. This road is marked as Eccleton Street in Roque’s fine
eighteenth-century map of Berkshire, though it is not easy to be
certain of the road indicated by the name, except that it runs at the
foot of the hills.
Richard Willis, in an essay posthumously published in _Archæologia_,
VIII (1787), claims to be the discoverer of two Roman roads which
“fortunately” crossed one another near his house at Andover. One of
these was the road from Southampton by Winchester and Cirencester to
Gloucester, and this was, he says, “I doubt not the Ikeneld Street.”
He does not say why he is certain, but his authority or inspiration
was probably Geoffrey or a disciple. He had an eye for old roads, but
too generally honoured them with the name of Roman. He noticed the
old road leaving his supposed Icknield Street on the right a mile
south of Ogbourne St. George, and going north-east to the inn now
called “The Shepherd’s Rest” at Totterdown, which is on the Roman road
from Speen to Cirencester. Among several roads connecting this Roman
“Icknield Street” with the Ermine Street he mentions a road which he
calls a causeway, from Royston to Ogbourne St. George, or at least to
Bishopston and Wanborough. This has been called Icknield Street, but
he will call it the “Oxford Icknield Street,” which, he says, from
coinciding with his real Icknield Street at Wanborough, acquired its
name. It would be as reasonable to say that London took its name from
the London County Council, or that Julius Cæsar took his from Julius
Cæsar Scaliger. The unquestionable fact--known to him from Morden’s
map, from Plot, and from Wise--that there is a road with the name
of Icknield Way, or a variant of it, between Royston and Wanborough,
he regards as a “stumbling block,” because it stands in the way of
theorists less insolent than himself.
Lysons’ _Magna Britannia_ (1806) brings together two more such
opposites as Wise and Willis. In “Berkshire” a letter is quoted from a
Mr. Church, surveyor of Wantage, describing the Berkshire road, where
Wise had been uncertain, in its eastern half. Mr. Church writes:--
“The Ickleton-way has been ploughed up across Wantage East Field till
it enters Charlton (a hamlet of Wantage); it then passes through West
Lockinge. It is lost across Mr. Bastard’s park in East Lockinge, but
appears again from that park to Ginge Brook, in Ardington parish. It
passes by White’s barn in Sparsholt-court manor, and is afterwards
ploughed up for some way, but appears again, after crossing the
Newbury-way, by Wiltshire’s and Halve-hill barns, in East Hendred
parish; from thence through the parishes of Harwell, West Hagbourne,
and the hamlet of Upton, to the village of Blewbury, and through the
parishes of Aston Tirrold, and Cholsey, to Moulsford on the Thames,
and thence to Streatley; from Upton to Streatley it forms part of the
new turnpike road from Wantage to Reading.” From Upton station to
the east edge of Lockinge Park this road is now an almost continuous
series of cart-tracks known--at least, in the neighbourhood of East
Hendred, which it leaves half a mile to the north--as Ickleton Street
or Ickleton Meer. This evidence of 1911, confirming statements
made a hundred and two hundred years ago, is sufficient to identify
that portion of the road as Ickleton Street. Beyond Wantage, Wise’s
description can be applied only to the modern road from Wantage to
Bishopston, or as far as the “Calley Arms” at Wanborough. East of Upton
the modern road to Streatley--the old Reading turnpike--has a rival in
a series of cart-tracks through Blewbury and the Astons, and possibly
to be connected with the “Papist Way” near Cholsey.
[Illustration: “Ickleton Meer,” Hagbourne Hill, near Upton, Berks.]
Thus there is traditional authority for giving the name of Ickleton
Street or Way to a series of roads in Berkshire between Bishopston and
Streatley, and the name of Icknield or Icnal Way to a road leading from
Royston to Goring; and hence a probability that the two were united by
the ford between Streatley and Goring. To this can be added a strong
impression that this road came from a Norfolk port and went westward to
Avebury, and thence or by another route into Devon or Cornwall; but not
one writer, except perhaps Aubrey’s friend, proves or even implies a
contemporary use of this road throughout its course; while Drayton and
Plot suggest that it had fallen into decay in their time.
Along with “Mr. Church, surveyor of Wantage,” in Lysons’ _Berkshire_,
appeared a bishop, John Bennet (1746-1820), Bishop of Cloyne from
1794 until his death. Without any argument or evidence he makes the
following pronouncement, heralded by the editorial opinion that “his
researches have enabled him to speak with certainty on the subject”:--
“The Ikeneld enters Berkshire from Oxfordshire at Streatley, where it
seems to have divided: one branch by the name of the Ridgeway continued
on the edge of the high ground by Cuckhamsley and White-horse-hill into
Wiltshire; pointing, as Mr. Wise observes, rather to Avebury or the
Devizes than Salisbury; while the other branch went from Streatley,
perhaps by Hampstead and Hermitage, under the name of the West Ridge,
to Newbury, and thence it may be to Old Sarum.”
At first he seems to misunderstand Wise, and to suppose that his
Ickleton Street was a road on the unpopulated ridge and not in the
valley past a string of villages, and he goes on afterwards to assert
that this valley road is Roman and seems to come from a spot near or
rather below Wallingford. In 1806 the Rev. Henry Beeke (_Archæologia,
XV_) expressed the opinion that the Icknield Way crossed the Thames at
Moulsford. As Bennet gives no reason he makes no apology. His reason
for giving the name of West Ridge to a road running _east_ of its
fellow must have been that it went through the village of Westridge,
where doubtless the road was called the Westridge Way, as the road from
Chevington is called the Chevington Way, and so on. He had apparently
no reason for choosing the Ridgeway except that it came from the same
ford at Streatley reached by the Icknield Way at Goring. Nevertheless,
he has been so persistently followed that the Ridgeway is now given by
the Ordnance Survey the alternative title of “Icknield Way,” and also
of “Roman Road,” which even the bishop said it was not; some Berkshire
people even call the Ridgeway the Icknield Way because it is the
“Government name”; and “West Ridge Way” is attached with all the honour
of Old English lettering to the more easterly road. Bennet equals
Stukeley in the grandeur of his fiction and the veneration which it has
earned. In Lysons’ _Cambridgeshire_ (1808) he takes the road through
Newmarket, herein coinciding with later-proved facts, but continues it
to Ickleton on the east of the modern turnpike along a course never yet
identified.
Men who were not bishops now begin to exercise themselves in suggesting
roads which may have been continuations of this Ickleton or Icknield
Way. They print their opinions with varying degrees of certainty.
In 1829 Dr. Mason, rector of Orford, in Suffolk (_Archæologia_,
XXIII), traces it, “after it leaves Ixworth,” to Buckenham and thence
by two forks to Caistor and to Burgh Castle. Samuel Woodward, in
1830 (_Archæologia_, XXIII), also assumes that it passes through
Buckenham, Ixworth, and Bury St. Edmunds. In 1833 Alfred John Kempe
(_Archæologia_, XXVI) takes it for granted that the road “crossed
the kingdom from Norwich towards Old Sarum.” With an “I need hardly
observe,” he connects the road with the Iceni, and explains it as “the
Iken-eld-strete, that is, the old street or way of the Iceni.” Arthur
Taylor (_Archæological Institute: Memoirs_, 1847; Norwich volume)
connects the road with Norwich Castle Hill, which he believes to be
British. Like the Ordnance Survey map, he takes it through Newmarket,
Kentford, Cavenham, Lackford, and Thetford. Like Bennet, both Woodward
and Taylor regard the road as a British trackway. But Taylor earns his
chief distinction by the possession of a deed “apparently of the reign
of Henry iii,” relating to premises at Newmarket and “extending upon
Ykenildweie.”
In 1856, in the form of a discourse afterwards embodied in his
_Origines Celticæ_ (1883), Edwin Guest wrote a long account of the
Icknield Way. He mentions as evidence charters of the tenth century
referring to estates in Berkshire between Blewbury and Wayland’s
Smithy, so minute, he says, as almost to be sufficient foundation for a
map, but not to enable him to trace the road; for he accepts Bennet’s
substitution of the Ridgeway. North of the Thames his earliest evidence
is a parchment, possibly of the fourteenth century, relating to the
foundation of Dunstable Priory at a place where the two royal roads of
Watling and Ickneld cross, a place of woods and robbers near Houghton.
He quotes a “letter testimonial of 1476” proving that this trackway,
west of Dunstable, was known as Ikeneld Strete. He takes the road
from Icklingham and through Ickleton and Ickleford because that is a
possible course and because he believes those names to be connected
with “Iceni” and “Icknield.” What was the one great road described as
Icknield Street in the _Laws of the Confessor_ he finds it hard to
define. But he can find no traces of Roman construction in the road.
Inspired by the map showing Salisbury at the end of the road, he
suggests that “most probably” it joined the Ridgeway east of Avebury
and continued along its course, as recently described by Sir Richard
Colt Hoare.
Messrs. Woodward and Wilks, in their history of Hampshire (1861-9), are
well acquainted with the many theories of the road, and “on the whole
see most reason” for agreeing with Drayton, but also for giving the
name to the Roman road from Winchester to Cirencester and Gloucester,
or another Roman road running north-west of Basingstoke. They speak
of the allegation that in ancient deeds the road to Gloucester
is designated as Hicknel or Hicknal Way; but these have not been
identified.
C. C. Babington, in his _Ancient Cambridgeshire_ (1883), speaks of
the road as easily traced from Thetford to Kentford, and he regards
Woodward’s British way from Norwich by Wymondham and Attleborough to
Thetford as a continuation. But he has no documentary evidence, no
tradition, and no local name to support his conjectures at any point
between Norwich and Royston, except at Newmarket. He could not find
Bennet’s road from Newmarket east of the turnpike. Probably the bishop
meant the roads west of Westley Waterless, past Linnet Hall, west of
Weston Colville, West Wratting and Balsham; it is improbable that
he did more than fly over them in fancy. He is satisfied that where
the parish, and afterwards the county, boundaries coincide with the
present road from Newmarket it is the Icknield Way, especially as at
Stump Cross the county boundary follows the sudden turn out of the
main road along a little-used lane leading over the Cam to Ickleton.
From Ickleton to a point near Chrishall Grange and a tumulus--where
for a mile the lane is a county boundary--it is uncertain; but from
that point to Noon’s Folly he is content with the “nearly disused
track,” which near there again becomes a county boundary. Thus he
connects Newmarket and Royston by a road of the same character as the
well-warranted parts of the Icknield Way without any evidence but
probability.
The Rev. A. C. Yorke (_Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian
Society_, 1903) prefers the road known as Ashwell Street, which runs
for some miles nearly parallel with the supposed Icknield Way and is
most clear from Ashwell, north of Baldock, to Melbourn, north-east
of Royston. In a lucid and vigorous article he says that “there can
be no doubt” that “Ashwell Street is the original Icknield Way.” He
is willing to give up the name of one road, take away the name from
another road which has borne it since 1695, and in one place since
Henry the Third, and give it to the first which has never borne it, so
far as he knows. He thinks the so-called Icknield Way from Newmarket
to Hitchin, Roman; just as others think his Ashwell Street Roman, Mr.
F. Codrington, e.g., holding that Ashwell Street was an alternative
course, leaving the Icknield Way at Worsted Lodge and returning at
Wilbury Camp.
[Illustration: Wilbury Camp.]
Mr. W. G. Clarke (_Norwich Mercury_, Oct. 8, ’04, etc.; _Knowledge_,
II, 99) attempts to connect Newmarket with Norwich and call the road
the Icknield Way. He suggests a route over the Kennett at Kentford and
the Lark at Lackford; then to Icklingham All Saints, and following the
boundary of the hundreds of Blackbourn and Lackford to Thetford, having
crossed the road from Newmarket to Thetford at Marmansgrave, and that
between Bury and Thetford a few yards north of Thetford Gasworks, where
the remains of a British settlement were found in 1870. He crosses the
Little Ouse and Thet where the Nuns’ Bridges now are. On the other side
“the logical and undoubtedly correct continuation of the Icknield Way”
is by Castle Lane and Green Lane. A find of Celtic and Roman pottery at
the south end of Green Lane, old thorns in the fields between Green
Lane and Roudham Heath, old banks on the heath near Peddars’ Way,
“which it crosses about half a mile from where Peddars’ Way is joined
by the Drove,” a “Bridgham tradition” of a waggon road over Roudham
Heath, and the battle of Ringmore, fought there between Sweyn and
Ulfketel, the find of bronze weapons and flint axes at Attleborough,
and the supposed British origin of Norwich Castle Hill, take him by
these places. From Norwich he goes by Sprowston, Rackheath, Wroxham,
Hoveton, Beeston, over the Ant by the “Devil’s Ditch,” or “Roman Camp,”
at Wayford to Stalham and to Happisburgh. Except that Stalham is near
Hickling, this route has nothing--no local map, no documents--to
entitle it to be called the Icknield Way.
Mr. Beloe (Cambridge Antiquarian Society, _Proceedings_, VII) suggests
an easterly line beyond Newmarket by a supposed junction with the
Ailesway from Newmarket, by Brandon Ferry and Narford to Hunstanton.
Mr. J. C. Tingey (_Norfolk Archæology_, XIV) agrees that such a
junction may have been used, but prefers a line through Ickburgh and
Cockley Cley, crossing the Wissey at Mundford. He also proposes another
route from Lackford almost to Thetford, which he avoids, crossing the
Ouse on to Snarehill, with its many tumuli, because he thinks an early
traveller would have done this. Then, with no trace of a road, he goes
over Snare Hill to Shadwell Park, the Harlings, Uphall, Kenninghall to
Banham, where a street was once called Tycknald Street (Blomefield’s
_History of Norfolk_); or he could reach Banham from Elvedon, Barnham,
and Rushford. After Banham he leaves a gap of twelve miles, hastening
to Swainsthorpe, south-east of Norwich, where he has found a Hickling
Lane, called “Icklinge Way,” in a seventeenth-century conveyance, where
it is said to lead to Kenninghall. He has also found in Blomefield a
mention of “the way called Ykeneldsgate,” in that parish, dated 1308.
The partly lost line of this lane he has made out through Mulbarton;
beyond which he is struck by the place-names of Keningham, Kentlow,
and Kenninghall, noticing the other similar names on or near the
supposed Icknield Way--Kentford, Kennet, Kensworth (once “Ikensworth”),
Kennett, in Wiltshire, and, beyond Exeter, Kenn and Kenn Ford. Other
documents of 1482 and 1658 relating to the next parish to Swainsthorpe,
Stoke Holy Cross, enable him to extend the road with some probability
eastward. They also show that the road was known at about the same
time as Hickley Lane in one parish, and Stoke Long Lane in another.
Most remarkable of all, he has found in Blomefield mention of “the
way called Ykeneldsgate” in the same parish of Stoke Holy Cross, in
1306. He suggests reaching Haddiscoe as his “port in Celtic times,” by
Framingham Earl, Bergh Apton, Thurton Church, Loddon, and Raveningham.
He sternly avoids Norwich as post-Roman, and Bury for the same reason.
At the same time he admits the probability of branches to those places
when they became important. Thus he shows that he has in his mind one
road, with one name, and that something like Icknield Street, going
from sea to sea, not only in the Confessor’s time, but before the
Romans.
It is impossible even to outline the multitudinous conjectures at the
north-east end of the Icknield Way. At the south-west conjecture has
been all but silenced by Stukeley’s invention of the Via Iceniana and
Bennet’s substitution of the Ridgeway, both stupefying fictions.
For two hundred years these conjectures have been multiplied and
become venerable by repetition. Plot thinks that the road might go
from Norfolk to Devon and Land’s End. Gale fancies Caistor and Burgh
Castle at one end, and, as Stukeley did, Exeter at the other. Dr. Beeke
“supposes” it went from Streatley towards Silchester, also that it
crossed the Thames at Moulsford. Colt Hoare speaks of it as connecting
Old Sarum with Dorchester and Winchester. Arthur Taylor takes it for
granted that it came from “Cornwall or some extreme point in the
south-west of Britain” to Norwich and Hickling. Isaac Taylor says
that it went from Norwich to Dorchester and Exeter. Mr. H. M. Scarth
conjectures that the road crossing the main street of Silchester,
which runs east and west, may have been an extension of the Icknield
Way from Wallingford to Winchester. In _Social England_ Col. Cooper
King, following Stukeley, takes the road to Exeter, Totnes, and Land’s
End; following Bennet, he takes it along the Ridgeway. Elton calls
it briefly a road from Norwich through Dunstable and Silchester to
Southampton, and to Sarum and the western districts.
The theorists and conjecturers have done little to ascertain the
course of a road which can safely be called the Icknield Way. By far
the greater part of the work has been done by men who used chiefly
local tradition. Plot in Oxfordshire, Wise in Berkshire, perhaps
Robert Morden or an unknown assistant in Hertfordshire. The best of
the conjecturers have only linked up the authenticated parts in a
probable manner. Most have been too busy with their own views to be
anything but benevolent to others. But in 1901 appeared one with no
theory and without benevolence, Professor F. Haverfield. In a chapter
on “Romano-British Norfolk,” in the _Victoria County History_ of that
county, he pronounces that the Icknield Way is not a Roman road; that
it has nothing to do with the Iceni or Norfolk or Suffolk; that the
name Icknield and the names like Ickleton and Kenninghall of places on
the road, or supposed parts of it, cannot, for philological reasons,
be connected with the Iceni. At present he is unanswerable, though his
mind is of a type which commands more interest when it affirms than
when it denies.
[Illustration: Icknield Way, near Ipsden, Oxfordshire.]
Since the time of Wise little has been done except to add proofs of the
antiquity of the road under the Chilterns and the Berkshire Downs. In
his day it was known from Royston to Bishopston. Taylor showed that it
touched Newmarket, but no more. Mr. Tingey shows that it went through
Stoke Holy Cross in Norfolk, but little or nothing has been done to
fill the gap between his fragment of Hickling Lane and Newmarket.
Even the road between Newmarket and Royston depends for its title
only on its respectability as a county and parish boundary. Reaching
the Thames there is no certainty of the principal ford; but Streatley
must have been one, and from there to Bishopston the main line of the
road is clear enough. A man may follow the whole of this road in a few
days, and be upon a beaten track if not a hard road everywhere, except
for a few hundred yards near Ipsden, and two or three miles from the
east side of Lockinge Park. The two lengths north and south of the
Thames make a road of uniform character, keeping almost entirely to
the chalk, but below the steepest wall of the hills. From Dunstable
westward this wall on the left or south of the road is an unmistakable
guide to the traveller; as far as Swyncombe he has only to cling to
the foot of the wall and he is on the Icknield Way. Beyond the Thames
the Downs make a guiding wall equally clear and continuous. It belongs
to what Mr. Harold Peake, in his “Prehistoric Roads of Leicestershire”
(_Memorials of Old Leicestershire_), calls the “hill-side” type of
road, which “winds along the sides of hills just above the alluvium.
Marshes and low-lying ground are avoided, but small streams do not
offer so great an obstacle as in the case of the ridge-roads.” He
compares it with the Pilgrims’ Way from Winchester to Canterbury, which
it closely resembles, except that it keeps always on the northern
slopes, instead of the southern, and commands throughout its course
views of a wide, fertile valley northward.
Until the enclosures and the metalling of roads the ruts and hoof-marks
of the Icknield Way were probably spread over a width of from a hundred
yards to a mile, according to convenience or necessity; from century
to century its course might vary even more. Thus the modern road
between Kentford and Newmarket is at several points some distance from
the Cambridge and Suffolk boundary, which is supposed to follow the
Icknield Way.
A deed already mentioned proves that the road was known in Newmarket
itself.
Beyond Newmarket the modern road is marked as the Icknield Way, but is
only a parish boundary, or rather close to one, for one mile in the
first eight, and is not authenticated by any known documents. Nor is
any parallel road in the same direction a boundary line. That it is on
an old line of road is certain from the number of tumuli which formerly
dotted the surrounding heath. It goes through three dykes, two,
eight, and thirteen miles from Newmarket, and it has been conjectured
both that the dykes defend the road and that the road was made by an
invader to pierce the dykes; one antiquary asserts that the fosse of
the Brent Ditch “has evidently been filled up to admit the road.”
From a little beyond the eighth milestone and Fleam Dyke the road is
a parish boundary, with very short interruptions between the eleventh
and twelfth, as far as the fourteenth, where it becomes the Cambridge
and Essex boundary. Turning west beyond the fifteenth, it is followed
for some distance by the county boundary, and is thrice rejoined by it,
the third time for two miles before entering Royston. By this sharp
turning to the west it avoids a Roman camp at Great Chesterford, and
passes what Camden called the “ancient little city” of Ickleton, where
in his time traces of the “Burrough banks” could plainly be seen. Near
Abbey Farm at Ickleton are the remains of a priory. Where it is again
a county boundary beyond Ickleton, near “a tumulus opened by the late
Lord Braybrooke,” it is a farm road, and continues as such in a clear
line through arable land and alongside hedges, until it joins the
main road into Royston. Here it goes over Burloes Hill, where many
indications of ancient burials have been found.
From Royston onwards, as has been seen, the road is marked in a map of
1695. It is mentioned, says Beldam (_Archæological Journal_, XXV), in
documents of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries among the monuments
of Royston Priory, as “Hickneld” and “Ykenilde.” There are hut-circles
on the heath to the west, associated with neolithic implements. At
Royston, as at Baldock and Tring, gold coins of Cunobelin have been
found; and here the road crosses Ermine Street. West of Royston the
road is again a county boundary, and goes for miles between many
tumuli. “A small Roman habitation” was opened at Slip End near Odsey
by Lord Braybrooke. At “Slip Inn” it bounds parishes instead of
counties. There is a manor-house and moat at Bygrave, and a tumulus on
Metley Hill opposite. Here it passes between two unenclosed parishes,
Bygrave and Clothall. It goes along the edge of Baldock, where they
have found neolithic and Bronze Age implements and coins of Cunobelin
and of “Icenian type,” and Roman urns: here is the crossing of Stane
Street from Godmanchester to Colchester. For five miles beyond Baldock
the road is a parish boundary. It touches a camp at Wilbury Hill,
and near it they have found “a great variety of coins of the Roman
emperors” and a small copper blade, coins of Constantine, bones and
ashes. Ickleford, where it ceases to be a boundary, has produced
palæolithic evidences, and the neighbourhood of Hitchin, a mile south,
palæolithic and neolithic and late Celtic. Two miles farther on it is
a parish boundary for a mile and a half, and then the Hertford and
Bedford boundary to the top of Telegraph Hill. Ravenspurgh Castle is
a mile north of it on the Barton Hills. It turns along Dray’s Ditches
and enters the road from Barton to Luton. Here the parish boundary
goes straight across, following a lane, to Great Bramingham Farm and,
with a break, to Chalton, from which the road might have gone through
to Houghton Regis and “the British town of Maiden Bower,” and to
the north of Dunstable. But the line of the road is continued from
Dray’s Ditches across the Luton road to Limbury, and over the Lea at
Leagrave Marsh, passing, near the moats and the remains of a nunnery
at Limbury, the fortification of Waulud’s Bank, and the scene of many
finds of coins and neolithic implements. This line is clear on Morden’s
seventeenth-century map. A new street called “Icknield Way” and a
footpath lead with recent interruptions into the Luton and Dunstable
road, which is for some time a parish boundary. Here it begins to
follow under the Downs, which have traces of Celtic huts.
[Illustration: Icknield Way, crossing Watling Street, Dunstable.]
The crossing of Watling Street at Dunstable is vouched for by Dugdale’s
ancient parchment relating to the foundation of the priory, and by
the map of the four royal roads. Between two barrows at Dunstable an
ancient trackway used to be traceable to the British camp of Maiden
Bower. In the _Catalogue of Ancient Deeds_ (I, II, III) there are
various references to tenements in the west field or west street
extending upon Ikenild-strete, viz. between the time of Edward III
and Henry VI. West of Dunstable the direction but not the course of
the road is proven by a “letter testimonial” of 1476, where a cross
is mentioned standing “in the field of Toternho, the which cross
standeth in Ikeneld Stret, to the which cross the way leading from
Spilmannstroste directly stretcheth and extendeth, at which place
there hath been a cross standing from time that no mind is.” Toternhoe
parish now includes three-quarters of a mile of the supposed Icknield
Way, from the inn at the turning to Kensworth Common, as far as Well
Head, and between these points the cross may have stood. Round about
the road here are many tumuli on the open downs, and traces of Celtic
huts. Toternhoe has a camp not a mile from Maiden Bower, which is
in Houghton Regis. A chalk pit three-quarters of a mile north-east
of the “Plough” yielded Roman coins in 1769. The “Ykenyldewey” is
mentioned in the description of a piece of land at Edlesborough,
south-west of Dunstable, in 1348 (Close Rolls, Edward III); and the
“Ikenyldstret” at Eaton Bray, close by, in the time of Edward II and
Richard II (_Catalogue of Ancient Deeds_, I, II, III). The villages of
Edlesborough and Eaton Bray are visible a little north of the road.
Passing under Beacon Hill and its tumulus, the road enters one from
Leighton Buzzard to Aldbury and Wigginton, and out of this road, at
points a little north and a little south of the entrance, run two
roads marked as the “Lower” and “Upper” Icknield Way, keeping more or
less parallel courses as far as Lewknor, where the lower is supposed
to join the upper. Neither is a parish or county boundary. At Aston
Clinton the “Lower” is crossed and deflected by Akeman Street, which
it enters for a mile in a north-westerly direction. Aston has yielded
late Celtic pottery. At Weston Turville the “Lower” passes, near the
manor-house, a place where a Roman amphora was found in 1855. Akeman
Street and several other roads cross and deflect the “Upper” Way.
After traversing Wendover you have a camp and barrow on Balcombe Hill,
a little to the south. A Danish entrenchment comes down to it from
Swyncombe Downs near Britwell. It crosses Grim’s Ditch at Foxberry
Wood. Flint implements have been found along its course, e.g. in
Pulpit Wood at Great Kimble, and at Bledlow. At Whiteleaf, above Monks
Risborough, and also above Bledlow, men have carved the turf into
crosses, which may be modifications of much earlier phallic forms.
British coins, inscribed and uninscribed, have been found at Wendover
and Ellesborough, Roman coins between Ipsden and Glebe Farm. Only
beyond, where the upper and lower roads are supposed to have united,
does the track coincide with a parish boundary, and that but seldom and
only for short distances. In Buckinghamshire it was known in the year
903, and mentioned in a “record by King Eadweard, at the request of
Duke Aethelfrid, who had lost the original deed by fire, of a grant
by Athulf to his daughter Aethelgyth of land at East Hrisan Byrg, or
Princes Risborough” (_Cartularium Saxonicum_, No. 603). It is there
called “the Icenhylte,” and the boundary of the land in question runs
along it as far as “the heathen burials.” Through Oxfordshire, from
Chinnor to Goring and the Streatley ford, the road is authenticated by
Plot’s map; but routes to the other fords are at present conjectural.
Streatley meant the longest way round for travellers going west through
Berkshire, but it offered the driest approaches on both hands and
the narrowest possible strip of wet land at the crossing. In summer
at least Wallingford would attract westward travellers; and there
is a thirteenth-century reference in the _Abingdon Chronicle_ to
Ikeneldstrete as running from Wallingford to Ashbury. Men using this
ford would have turned out of the Streatley track at Gypsies’ Corner;
and here, or a mile or two beyond, near Ipsden, they could branch to
Moulsford and the Stokes.
Beyond Streatley there is at first only one road westward on the dry
and rising land. This is the main road between Reading and Wantage,
with a fork to Wallingford. Mr. Church, of Wantage (1806), pronounced
this road to be the Ickleton Way as far as Upton, and his word may
be taken to prove at least that this was the local name. For anyone
crossing at Streatley and going west under the hills, instead of
along the ridge, there is no other road; and even from Moulsford and
Wallingford men would be forced, by the river on one side and bad
ground on the other, to enter this road at Upton, if not at Blewbury,
or before. The ford at Streatley is said to be Roman. Roman pottery
has been found in the river, and coins on the south bank. Roman coins
by the hundred, dating from 43 B.C. to A.D. 383, have been ploughed
up in the neighbourhood. “Near Aston” coins, A.D. 267-74, have been
found. They have dug up Roman things in Blewbury Fields, on Hagbourne
hill, at Hendred, on Charlton Downs, at Wantage, at Letcombe Regis,
in the Dragon Hill near the White Horse, at Woolston, and at Ashbury.
Implements of the Bronze Age have been recorded at Cholsey, Moulsford,
Blewbury, Hagbourne Hill, Wantage, Letcombe Bassett. Wallingford has
yielded palæolithic, neolithic, Bronze Age, and later evidences.
These things, and more that could be mentioned, suggest ancient
settlements and communications below the downs. Ickleton Street would
seem likely to have been the main line of travel here, and a series of
Saxon charters prove that such it was.
A grant of land by Edmund to Ælfric, and by him to Abingdon, shows
that an Ichenilde Wege went through Blewbury in 944, and that the
Ridgeway was distinct and at some distance from it; a grant in 903 by
Eadweard to Tata the son of Æthelhun and by him to Abingdon, one by
Edgar to Ælfric and by him to Winchester in 973, and one by Edgar to
Ælfstan and by him to Winchester in 970, show it at Harwell (Kemble,
_Codex Diplomaticus_, Nos. 1080, 578, 1273). In the grant of 903 the
boundary starts at a brook, the Swyn Brook, and goes along the Harwell
Way to the Icenhilde Wey, then up the old wood-way by the east of
Harwell Camp to a warren, and so up to the stone on the Ridgeway, then
on and back to the Ridgeway, and down on the other side of Harwell
Camp to the Icenhilde Wey, farther down to a spring and an elder
bed, evidently in the low land. This shows that the Icknield Way was
a road running between the Ridgeway and the lowest land. A grant of
land made in 955 by Eadred to Ælfheh and by him to Abingdon at Compton
Beauchamp (Kemble, No. 1172) proves the same. The boundary starts at
the Ridgeway, and goes to the Icenhilde Wey, and on to the Swyn Brook,
and back again past a barrow to the Icenhilde Wey, and up to the
Ridgeway, and over hills, slades, and a green way back to Wayland’s
Smithy. A grant of Æthelstan to Abingdon, of land in Woolston, Compton,
and Ashbury (Kemble, No. 1129), and another (No. 1168) mention as
landmarks Ikenilde Strete, then what is probably Uffington Castle, and
other places on the downs; then what is probably Ælfred’s Castle and
two barrows and the Ikenilde Strete again, and finally a rush bed in
the low land. A grant by Æthelwulf to Winchester and Bishop Stigand
in 854 of lands at Wanborough (Kemble, No. 1053) describes a boundary
passing downs and coombes to the source of the Hlyd (there is a Lyde
spring at Ashbury), along the stream to a ditch, past the Dorc stream,
the Smit stream, and a black pit, over the Icknield Way at or near some
heathen burial place, and so to down country with a white pit, two
stones, and a coombe, etc.--and from a study of the district Mr. Harold
Peake concludes that “the Icknield Way crossed the parish very near the
modern road which on the Ordnance Map bears this name, though I fancy
it ran originally a few hundred yards to the north.” It is clear, then,
that the Icknield Way ran as far as Wanborough between the highest and
lowest ground along a course similar to that of Wise’s Ickleton Street.
The road mentioned must either be Wise’s road or another of similar
course which has been superseded by it in name and use, and can hardly
be other than that now called on the Ordnance Map the Port Way.
Thus the road from Newmarket--or at least from Royston--by Streatley to
Wanborough parish is a venerable and continuous one, which bore almost
the same name at its extremities--Ykenildeweie at Newmarket in the time
of Henry III, Icenhilde Weg at Wanborough in 854. That it is Icknield
Street, one of the “four royal roads,” is proved only by its coming
out of the east and going westward, and by its crossing Watling Street
at Dunstable, as does the Ykenildstrete of the thirteenth-century map.
Unlike the other three roads, the Icknield Way appears not to have been
Romanized at any point, and, assuming that it had in the Middle Ages
the importance suggested by its rank with these roads, its primitive
character would explain its decay. Nothing rescued it as pilgrimages
rescued that part of an ancient east-and-west road now known as the
Pilgrims’ Way from Winchester to Canterbury (_The Old Road_, by Hilaire
Belloc). Its western object had apparently been so deeply lost in
Drayton’s time that the poet took it to Southampton, though whether
this line is to be traced to Geoffrey of Monmouth’s bold definition or
to contemporary usage cannot easily be decided. That this road through
Newmarket and Streatley is the one in Drayton’s mind is certain.
Of the other roads called Icknield Street, most, if not all, of
them difficult, where not impossible, to connect with this road as
continuations or as branches, one is particularly interesting here.
Dr. Macray’s “MS. Catalogue of Magdalen College Deeds” contains several
mentions of Ikenildwey or Hykenyldewey in descriptions of boundaries
at Enham, near Andover, in Hampshire. One belonging to 1270 refers to
land “in the east field of Enham, on the north of the highway called
Ikenildwey”; another of 1317 to two acres of land in Enham Regis in a
field called Bakeleresbury; “of the which one acre lies between the
land of Gilbert Slyk on either side, extending south to Ikenildwe ...”;
one of 1337 to arable land in the fields of Andover, of which half an
acre extends “above Hykenyldewey to the east,” between other estates
in the north and south, while another acre in the same field extends
“above Laddrewey to the north.” I conclude from these descriptions
that the Hykenyldewey here ran east and west, and it is not a region
of winding roads. Batchelor’s Barn and Walworth cottages, about a
mile east of Andover, seem to contain memories of “La Werthe,” “La
Walwert,” and “Bakeleresbury.” Both the barn and the cottages lie close
to the south side of the Harrow Way, which here goes east and west on
its way from Farnham to Weyhill. Walworth cottages are on the east
of the intersection of the Harrow Way and the north-westward Roman
road from Winchester to Wanborough Nythe, and not a mile south of the
intersection of this Roman road with the north-eastward Port Way from
Old Sarum to Silchester. Between the Harrow Way and the Port Way, and
in this part of its course almost parallel with them, is a road from
Stoke and Newbury. One of these roads is perhaps the road referred
to in the deeds as “Hykeynldewey.” The Harrow Way, which still bears
its name in the neighbourhood, is not likely to have been the road.
The Port Way appears to be purely Roman. If the road from Stoke were
the Icknield Way, it might have connected Streatley with Winchester
and Southampton, yet if it went to Winchester and Southampton, it can
hardly have been the road which is several times called Ikenilde Street
in records of the perambulations of the Hampshire forests. The survey
of Buckholt Forest, under Edward I, for example, contains the passage:
“Begin at the Deneway ... and so always by the divisions of the
counties of Southampton and Wilts to th’ Ikenilde Street, and thence
by the same to La Pulle”; and “from Pyrpe-mere to th’ Ikenilde and so
by the same road to Holeweye.” This road I cannot identify, but a road
touching both Enham and Buckholt Forest would probably reach Old Sarum.
There is an Icknield Street, marked as such on the Ordnance Map,
going north from Weston sub-edge to Bidford, and, after a gap, from
Stadley north towards Birmingham. It goes for some miles parallel to
a much higher Ridgeway. It leaves the Fosse Way four miles south of
Stow-in-the-Wold, near Bourton-on-the-Water, and is the road described
by Codrington as Ricknild Street. But Codrington refers to a part of
it--where the railway crosses it at Honeybourne station--as called
Ricknild or Icknield Street, and to the lane north of Bidford going
towards Alcester as Icknield Street. This road, or a longer one in
part coinciding with it, was first called Icknield Street by Ralph
Higden in the fourteenth century. It was one of his four royal roads,
and went from St. David’s to Worcester, Birmingham, and Derby. Some of
the manuscripts of his work called the road Ryckneld, which spelling
may or may not have been due to the local knowledge of a scribe; both
English translators or their scribes retain the R, calling the road
Rykenildes strete or Rikenilde Street. Mr. W. H. Duignan (_Notes on
Staffordshire Place Names_) quotes references to this road in the
twelfth century--between Lichfield and Derby--as Ikenhilde, Ykenild,
and Ricnelde; in the thirteenth century as Rikelinge and Ykenilde; in
the fourteenth century as Rykeneld strete. He also gives instances
which seem to prove that there were unconnected roads known as
Ricknield Street in the thirteenth century; and mentions a place now
called Thorpe Salvin, lying on no known Ricknield Street, but once
known as Rikenild-thorp. Selden found a deed mentioning Ricknield
Street as a boundary near Birmingham, and Dugdale one of 1223 relating
to Hilton Abbey.
The _Eulogium_ of 1362, when it does not call Higden’s road
Belinstrete, calls it Hykeneldstret, though when Gale quotes it he
makes it Rykeneldstrete. Stukeley calls it “the Ricning Way,” and
complains of Plot for calling it Icknil Way; yet he himself heard
it called the Hickling Street near the crossing of Watling Street.
Holinshed calls it “Ikenild or Rikenild.” In the time of the second and
third Edwards there were men named after Ikenilde or Hikenilde strete
(Pat. Rolls) in Worcestershire. One of them was a man of Alvechurch,
which lies west of the road between Stadley and Birmingham; and there
was an Ikeneld street in the sixteenth century within the lordship of
Allechurche in Worcestershire.
Drayton first distinguished between an eastern Icknield Street and a
western Ricknield Street. He evidently knew the Icknield Way along the
Chilterns, and his words about Rikneld Street as coming from Cambria’s
farther shore until the road
“On his midway did me in England meet,”
suggest that he knew the road as a Warwickshire man, and that his
distinction was not wantonness or the precision of ignorance. Gale
accuses the road of taking the name of Ickle or Icknild Street without
any just title. Guest also believes that the western road “gradually
attached to itself the name of Icknield Street” as a famous name to
which it had no right. Wise, in search of something to help him,
suggests Hickling as the origin of the name, but knowing of Ryknield,
he is tempted also by Rickley in Essex--confesses the temptation--and
“must now beg leave to call” the road “the Great Ickle or Rickle
way.” This use of Rickling reminds me of a woman living in a cottage
beside the Ridgeway, near Chiseldon. I asked her the name of the road,
and she said, with some hesitation, “The Rudgeway.” I asked why it
was so called, and she said she did not know. I asked where it went,
and she answered, “Oh, over there!”--pointing west, “--to Rudge, I
suppose,” Rudge being near Westbury. An antiquary in the _Gentleman’s
Magazine_ (1787) comfortably explains the variation as due to the
British particle “yr” prefixed. But no one has found a Ricknield or a
Rickling or any such name along the course of the road from Newmarket
to Wanborough.
It seems likely that Icknield, like Watling and Ermine, was a generic
name for a road, whether due to its use by cattle, to Professor
Bradley’s Lady Icenhild, or to something else. One such road in
Worcestershire and the west, and another in the east tending westward,
were possibly at one time well known as continuous routes over long
stretches of country. The two could be connected. Ermine Street passed
through Wanborough Nythe at the west end of the Icknield Way from East
Anglia, went north-west to Cirencester, and thence both north-east
to Stow-on-the-Wold where it touched the Ricknield Street and the
Fosse Way, and north-west to Gloucester, and so to Worcester or to
Kentchester and the south-west of Wales. Another ancient road from
near Tring, the Akeman Street, would take travellers on the Icknield
Way due west to Cirencester, where they could branch as they pleased
to Gloucester and Wales or the north. Thus at both ends of Ermine
Street and Akeman Street or their continuations there were roads known
as Icknield Street; it is even possible that the whole system was
officially given the one name of Icknield Street, and such a system
might fitly be called a royal road. An eastern extension of the road
to a depôt and several ports in Norfolk is practically certain, though
it has not yet been discovered or satisfactorily reconstructed. A
south-western or western extension beyond Wanborough is almost equally
certain. There is no need to look for a road that is all of one type.
Without antiquarianism or modern regularity only common and continued
travel throughout its course can preserve a road. Even during this
extended use of it variants will be discovered from time to time
and used as alternatives or substitutes. As soon as this use ceases
portions of the road begin to decay, and soon those few having the old
need for it will have found another way. Each kind of civilization
doubtless has its own special kind of road, and gradually old roads
are so transformed or combined as to form such a road. But invaders or
newly organized people have to take what roads they find, unless they
have Roman will, forethought, and resource to make their own; though
by good fortune men suddenly needing a road may find an old one ready
as did the pilgrims from the south and west to Canterbury who used the
Pilgrims’ Way. Men wishing to travel from east to west, especially in
the south of England, would have found many tracks and roads of all
types ready to be linked so as to form a connection between important
points of trade, government, or religion. When it became possible to
traverse England safely, meeting foreign faces and strange tongues
but subjects of one king, traders and travellers would piece together
according to need the old roads which different ages had confirmed--the
high and most ancient roads like the Ridgeway and the Harrow Way,
late roads skirting the bases of the hills, pure Roman roads fearing
nothing, and Romanized trackways. The Icknield Way may have been such
a combination. The Danes might have combined it with the Ridgeway in
1005, when they burnt Wallingford and went by Cholsey and Cuckhamsley
to Kennet. They probably used the road along the Chilterns when they
burnt Thetford and Cambridge and turned south to the Thames; and other
parts of it when they stole inland from their ships through Norwich to
Thetford. Sweyn may have gone along it when he went to Wallingford, and
so over the Thames westward to Bath, where the western men submitted
and gave hostages and he became king of the whole people. Giraldus
may have trodden it in South Wales. At an earlier age, as Mr. Moray
Williams has suggested, the Icknield Way might have been the line of
the Iceni in their alleged migration westward, after the defeat of
Boadicea. It should have been Imogen’s pathway to Milford Haven. There
are not many early references to the travel upon the road. It would be
used chiefly by traders and travellers from a distance. Plot remarked
that it passed through no towns or villages in Oxfordshire, and this,
in his day, made it convenient for stealers of cattle. A road used
by strange travellers and robbers waiting for them was not a likely
one for small settlements and local use. When it was spoken of as the
way the oxen go--unless the phrase implied a road along which came
oxen from a distance--it may already have been degenerating. Guest
says: “Your guide will talk of the long lines of pack-horses that once
frequented the ‘Ickley Way,’ as if they were things of yesterday; and
a farmer in the Vale of Aylesbury told me ... that in the popish times
they used to go on pilgrimage along it from Oxford to Cambridge.”
Messrs. Jordan and Morris (_Introduction to the Study of Local History
and Antiquities_) speak of the road as connecting the flint-knappers’
settlement at Brandon with Avebury and Stonehenge: “The men of
Wiltshire would wish to obtain flint instruments from Brandon; men from
Brandon to have access to Avebury and Stonehenge.” But Wiltshire men
would not go to Suffolk in search of flints except for a wager.
[Illustration: Whiteleaf Cross.]
The Icknield Way is sufficiently explained as the chief surviving road
connecting East Anglia and the whole eastern half of the regions north
of the Thames, with the west and the western half of the south of
England. For the men of Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge, Bedford, Hertford,
Buckingham, and Oxford, it did what the Harrow Way did for men of Kent,
Surrey, Sussex, and East Hampshire.