The Icknield Way

by Edward Thomas

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.

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.