ROMANO-BRITISH NORFOLK 



uncertain, and hardly any one has yet professed to detect it in Norfolk.' 

 Its name is equally alien to the eastern counties. Previous to the Nor- 

 man Conquest, our charters mention Icknield Street only in the west — 

 five or six times as a Berkshire road and once as a road near Prince's 

 Risborough. Not till three centuries later do we find its name applied 

 to roads in Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire, while east of Newmarket 

 we never find it at all. Yet if it were really the warpath of the Iceni, 

 we should expect its course to be clearest and its name oldest and most 

 frequent in the eastern counties.* Moreover the place-names like Ick- 

 lingham, which have been sometimes quoted (as remarked above) to 

 fortify the Icenian hypothesis, tell in reality the other way. These 

 names are not confined to the vicinity of Icknield Street, nor was Ick- 

 lingham originally Iceningham, or Ickleton Icenton, or Ickleford Icen- 

 ford.' They occur in many counties, in Sussex and Kent and Middlesex 

 and elsewhere. Their earliest forms are known from charters, and they 

 are derived, for the most part, from well-known English personal names 

 like Icel and Icca. Nor indeed could either the real name Icenhilde, 

 or the supposed names Iceningham and the like, have grown out of the 

 name Iceni. According to philological laws, Iceni would have pro- 

 duced in English a form beginning with Itch- or Etch-. Thus the 

 arguments for connecting Icknield Street and the Iceni break down at 

 every point. The real etymology of the road-name must remain doubtful, 

 but until or unless some new and different evidence be forthcoming, it 

 will be well to separate the road and the tribe. 



The question possesses a greater significance than is, perhaps, always 

 recognized. For, if the English took a name from the Iceni, in order 

 to denote a road which stretched from Berkshire to Norfolk, the Iceni 

 must have been still known and existing as a tribal unit at the time of 

 the English invasion. Now it is characteristic of Roman Britain gener- 

 ally that the Celtic tribe-names died out : the tribes appear to have lost 

 individuality and to have merged greatly in one another under Roman 

 rule. If, however, the Iceni could bequeath their name to a road used 

 by the English, they must have formed a very distinct exception to 

 this rule. And therefore it is worth while, in a description of Roman 



1 Recent attempts have been made in Knowkdge, February, 1899, and by Mr. J. C. Tingey in 

 Norfolk Archceohgy, xiv. 140, but I cannot regard either as successful. Mr. Tingey relies especially on a 

 Hickling Way at Swainsthorpe and Stoke Holy Cross, mentioned in documents of 1592 and later. But 

 this is merely a brief lane ; and, as I have said above, Hickling and similar names cannot be adduced to 

 prove the Iceni or the Icknield Street. It is also impossible, for philological reasons, to connect names 

 like Kenninghall with the Iceni. 



* Guest, Origiaei Celtide, ii. 227 ; Henry Bradley, Academy, October, 1894 ; Cartularium Saxon- 

 icum, No. 6o3 = Stowe Charter 22. The name Icknield Street appears about the same time in the 

 western midlands as the name of the Roman road now usually called Rycknield Street, near Alvechurch 

 in Worcestershire, etc. (Allies, y^nrij!. of Worcestershire, ed. 2, p. 332). In both east and west the twelfth 

 and thirteenth century antiquaries probably helped by their speculations to extend the use of the name 

 beyond its original sphere. 



* Besides the three names quoted, there are Ixworth and Ickworth in Suffolk ; Ickburgh in Norfolk ; 

 Ickwell, near Sandy, in Bedfordshire ; Ickenham in Middlesex ; Ickham in Kent ; Hickstead and 

 Icklesham in East Sussex ; Ickford near Thame in Oxfordshire ; Iccomb near Stow-on-the-Wold ; 

 Hickling in Norfolk and Notts ; Hickleton in Yorkshire ; Ixhull, Oxon ; Iceldown in Somerset ; 

 Hicklesworth in Dorset. 



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