A HISTORY OF NORFOLK 



tainly an ancient road and might be Roman. The eastern part, from 

 Downham Market to Caister, 40 miles in length, is a much more un- 

 satisfactory matter. A piece of old road has been noted at Hethersett, 

 five miles west of Caister, but its Roman character has never been proved 

 and it stands entirely alone.* The eighteenth century writers carried the 

 road right on to the east coast at Happisburgh, but this is the wildest 

 fancy. 



5. The Peddar's Way. The Peddar's Way — Norfolk dialect for 

 the Pedlar's Way — runs through the Eastern uplands of Norfolk in a 

 south-south-easterly direction from the very north to the very south of 

 the county, a distance of some 40 miles. It is traceable nearly the whole 

 way by the straightness of certain modern roads and the straight lines of 

 certain parish boundaries. It is said by most writers to commence at 

 Holme, a village near the coast about 3 miles north-east of Hunstanton, 

 but for 6 miles its course is not certain. From Fring to Castleacre (14 

 miles) it is still in use, and for 6 miles south of Fring it forms a parish 

 boundary. South of Castleacre it can be traced as a road and the parish 

 boundary of SwafFham and Sporle, and further south as the boundary of 

 Tottington, East Wretham, Bridgham and Brettenham parishes, and 

 occasionally as a road. On Galley Hill, a mile north of Wretham rail- 

 way station, its direction becomes slightly more southerly, and it crosses 

 the Little Ouse into Suffolk in Riddlesworth parish.^ In Suffolk it is less 

 easily traceable : it appears to run towards the Roman remains at Stow- 

 langtoft, but its further course is doubtful. It is in some respects a 

 puzzling road. Though several Roman sites are near its course and one, 

 that of Fring (p. 297), is just at the point where it becomes uncertain, it 

 can hardly have been constructed only for these sites. It has been sug- 

 gested that it was intended to provide communication with Lincolnshire 

 by means of a ferry from Holme to Wainfleet or Skegness. This is hardly 

 credible. The mouth of the Wash between the places named is more 

 than I 2 miles wide and its navigation is dangerous and difficult. Even 

 an antiquary, when it came to the test of trial, would shrink from such a 

 trajectus. We may rather incline to believe that the Peddar's Way 

 has some relation to the fort at Brancaster, a little more than four miles 

 west of Holme. It is true that it cannot be traced there and that there 

 is no apparent reason, geographical or other, why it should not have 

 gone there and be traceable thither. But there is no other known road 



1 For Hethersett see the Index. For the Fen road, supposed to be first visible at Denver, see 

 William Dugdale's //;//ory 19/" /OT^an^iw^ (London, 1662 and 1772), pp. 174, 175 ; letter by Dugdale 

 to Sir Thos. Browne of November, 1658, in Browne's Correspondence ; 'journal of the British Archao- 

 hpcal Association, xxxv. 265 ; Cambridge Antiquarian Communications, iv. 205 ; Samuel Wells, Hist, of the 

 Drainage oj Bedford Level (London, 1830), i. 61 ; E. M. Beloe, The Great Fen Road (Lynn, 1889), an 

 account of excavations, read to Cambridge Antiq. Society, November i8th, 1889. Babington in his 

 Ancient Cambridgeshire (ed. 2, p. 53) says he saw traces of the road at Denver in 1853 ; see Cambr. 

 Antiq. Society's Reports of May 22, 1854, p. 6 ; May 24, 185 5, p. 10. 



2 It is so often marked wrong in the maps that I have described its course more fiilly than would 

 otherwise be needed. Gough (edition of Camden, Introduction) takes it to Ely, and Babington to 

 Mildenhall, but both views are impossible. Mr. Beloe discusses the road in the Cambridge Antiq. Society's 

 Communications (ix. 77-95), and seems to consider it British. The course marked on his map differs 

 somewhat from that which I have pointed out. 



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