A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



Street,' to the settlement on the Nene which we have above described 

 in connexion with Castor (p. i66). Here it enters Northamptonshire. 

 In this county little of it still remains in use, but its course is certain 

 and has often been described. From the Nene it continues in a straight 

 line its previous north-westerly direction. It passes Sutton Wood and 

 Southorpe (where stone pits for its making or maintenance were found 

 or supposed in the eighteenth century), skirts the west side of Walcot 

 Park and crosses the parish of Barnack, where it is said to have been 

 furnished with a watchtower and to have been very visible two hundred 

 years ago. Entering Burghley Park it deflects somewhat westwards; here 

 its course was partly obliterated in the seventeenth century when part of 

 it was taken to make gravel paths. It then passes near Wothorpe Park, 

 where again it has been damaged : in 1732, as Stukeley records, the 

 overseers of the highways of St. Martin's, Stamford, dug it up 'in 

 sacrilegious manner, to mend their wicked ways withall.' Finally it 

 reaches the Welland at Nun's farm immediately west of Stamford ; 

 thence it runs by Great Casterton and Ancaster to Lincoln and passes 

 outside our scope. ^ Between Castor and Stamford it has sometimes 

 been styled the Forty-foot Way. 



One branch, and indeed perhaps three branches, diverged from this 

 road near the point where it crosses the Nene. Of these the most 

 important and the most certain runs due north. The exact spot where 

 it leaves the other road is not now visible but can be approximately 

 fixed. Somewhere near the Nene and Normangate field it turned off; 

 it becomes traceable near Upton, and from a point slightly north of that 

 village it is still in use as a road. Here or hereabouts it was once and 

 perhaps is still known as Langdyke and High Street, and it forms for 

 some distance a parish boundary. At the south end of Ashton parish it 

 skirts the eastern side of Hilly Wood, where a noteworthy legionary tile 

 was found some years ago (p. 214). Finally it crosses the Welland near 

 Lolham Bridges and enters Lincolnshire ; hence under the name of King 

 Street it pursues its way to Bourn and, as it seems, to Sleaford and Lin- 

 coln — though the section from Sleaford to Lincoln is not at all well 

 attested.' Thus it appears to provide an alternative route from Castor 

 to Lincoln, east of the above described Ancaster route. The exact rela- 

 tion of the two routes — if two there really were — is not quite clear. 

 Their lengths are almost equal. The western (Ancaster) route follows 



• Originally perhaps Erning or Earning Street. The oldest occurrences of it are in a charter of 

 A.D. 957, Earninga-straet at Conington, Hunts {Carlularium Saxonicum, iii. 203 ; Proceedings of the Soc. of 

 Antiquaries, %CT. 1, iv. 326); a charter dated a.d. 955 but really of later origin, Earninge Straet, at 

 AKvalton {Cart. Sax. iii. 71) ; and Erningestrete in Henry of Huntingdon, i. 7. It is quite possible 

 that the name really belongs to Huntingdonshire only ; it is now used both north and south of that 

 area. 



' Camden, ii. 270 ; Morton, p. 502 ; Arcka-ologin, i. 61 ; Bridges, ii. 490; Stukeley, Letters, ii. 

 269, and It'weranum Curiosum, p. 84 ; Gough, Add. to Camden, ii. 292 ; Trollope, Associated Archit. 

 Soc. Reports, ix. i 56. 



3 Morton, p. 502; Stukeley, Letters, ii. and Carausius, i. 172; Trollope, Associated Archit. Soc. 

 Reports, ix. 156. The Ordnance surveyors insert the name King Street south as well as north of the 

 Welland. 



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