ROMANO-BRITISH WARWICKSHIRE 



evidence is not convincing. Neither discoveries of remains, nor the 

 local nomenclature, nor the physical features of the country really aid 

 us. No Roman remains have been found in Birmingham except a 

 few coins (p. 244), and coins help little in such a case ; so far as 

 they go, however, they favour a line east of Hutton's and nearer 

 the direct line mentioned at the outset of this paragraph. A piece 

 of ancient road was discovered about 1870 or 1875, near Chad Valley 

 House in Westbourne Road, Edgbaston, and Mr. J. A. Cossins, who 

 saw it, has told me that it was 5 feet underground, paved with large 

 pebbles of local gravel, and was not in line with the commonly supposed 

 direction of the Roman road. A well near Metchley, a bit of old road 

 near Harborne Park Road, and some horseshoe draining tiles found in 

 January, 1902, have all been called Roman, without the slightest reason. 

 Nor do local place-names help us. Icknield Port Road is unquestionably 

 a modern invention, and the title Icknield Street, as applied to the road 

 connecting Hunter's Lane and Monument Lane, is not demonstrably 

 old. Negative evidence is, of course, imperfect ; but I cannot trace the 

 title back beyond 1825, and in 1553 a part, at least, of this road seems 

 to have been called the Slade. The title Icknield Street may therefore 

 have been introduced as a result of Hutton's theory. Certainly, if old 

 names are to be quoted, Holloway Head should not be forgotten, though 

 that would favour rather the direct line indicated in the third sentence 

 of this paragraph. Nor again is it possible, amid the vast developments 

 of a great city, to reconstruct the original hills and valleys and judge 

 whether they were such as to divert a Roman road from its straight 

 course. That kind of judging is always a dangerous speculation ; in this 

 case it is best omitted wholly. After all, the straight course outlined 

 at the commencement of this discussion is the simplest, and in default 

 of other reasons the least improbable. Here we must leave the problem 

 unsolved. It is not inappropriate that a characteristically modern city 

 should have lost for ever the recollection of her most ancient road. 



There remains another problem, almost as difficult as that which we 

 have just dismissed. For convenience we have called the road Rycknield 

 Street : we have now to trace out thie tangled history of that name. We 

 start from the similar name Icknield. Icknield Street, properly so 

 called, is an ancient trackway through Berkshire and Oxfordshire, of 

 which the course is still visible, and the name, under the form of 

 Icenhylt or Icenhilde Street, is attested in documents earlier than the 

 Conquest. It is not a Roman, but perhaps a British road, and so far we 

 have here no concern with it. But we are concerned with its name. 

 For when the antiquaries of the twelfth and following centuries began 

 to treat of the so-called ' Four Roads,' they got hold of the name Ick- 

 nield, obviously without knowing what exactly it meant. One of them 

 said that it ran from east to west which is roughly true and another 

 said that it ran from north to south. This latter was identified with our 

 road ; not, so far as we can tell, because of any local name, certainly not 

 because of any Iceni in the west, but probably because this road alone 

 i 241 31 



