A HISTORY OF WARWICKSHIRE 



fulfilled the condition of a road from north to south. The views of the 

 antiquaries spread abroad, and two Icknield Streets came into ordinary 

 use as names, one for the Berkshire and Oxfordshire trackway, and the 

 other for our road. Now it is just this intrusion of Icknield into the 

 west that seems responsible for the appearance of Rycknield. That name 

 is a misreading of Icknield, spelt, as often, with a prefixed ' H.' Thus 

 much seems to be proved by the facts of the case. The first name given 

 to the road was Icknield Street, and that name occurs in documents of 

 the thirteenth century. A little later Rycknield emerges, first in the 

 writings of Higden. He, like all other medieval chroniclers, mentions 

 the ' Four Roads,' and he calls them Fosse, Watling Street, Ermine Street, 

 and Rykeneld Street. Here Rykeneld Street usurps precisely the 

 place which is given to Icknield Street by all Higden's predecessors and 

 indeed by many after him, and the simplest and most natural explanation 

 is that we have a misreading. 1 Hence arise two names for our road 

 Icknield and Rycknield. Both occur in charters and deeds, though the 

 former is the commoner and also survives in various local names. It is 

 the earliest, but by no means the only, instance in which the antiquaries 

 have given its current name to an ancient road. 



The road has however other names. North of Alcester it is 

 occasionally called Headon or Haydon Way, and also Eagle Street 

 perhaps a corruption of Ickle, that is, Icknield Street. South of Alcester, 

 between Bidford and Weston Subedge, it is called Buckle Street, and 

 this is probably its oldest existing appellation. It is the modern form of 

 a name Bucgan or Buggilde Straet, which appears in documents earlier 

 than the Conquest, and which proves that the road was known in very 

 early English days, at least between Bidford and Weston. 8 



(b] WATLING STREET, FOSSE AND OTHER ROADS 



Watling Street is the name in use since Saxon times to describe 

 the Roman road which ran north-west from London past Verulamium 

 (St. Albans) to Viroconium (Wroxeter). Its course in general is certain, 

 and not least in Warwickshire, where most of it is a county boundary 

 and nearly the whole of it is still in use as a high road. It enters the 

 county from the south at Dunsland, 4 miles south-east of Rugby, and 

 from there to Mancetter it divides Warwickshire, first from Northamp- 

 tonshire and then from Leicestershire. Between Mancetter and Fazeley 



1 So Thorpe. Guest, Origints Celtic*, ii. 220, tries to defend the antiquity of the word 

 Rycknield, but without meeting the real points of the case. The foundation charter of Hilton or 

 Hulton Abbey in Staffordshire (A.D. 1223) mentions a Richmilde or Rikenilde Street near Stoke-upon- 

 Trent Richmilde according to Dugdale's Mmasticon, v. 715 ; Rikenilde according to a seventeenth 

 century copy in the British Museum, Harleian MS. 2060 : I do not know where the original charter is. 

 This suggests that a street-name somewhat like Rykeneld existed in Staffordshire before Higden, and this 

 may help to explain Higden's statements. But that street near Stoke is far away from the road which 

 is now under discussion. 



* On Bucgan, Buggilde, see Napier and Stevenson, Crawford Charter! (Oxford, 1895), p. 56. 

 The name Buckle Street is still known to the country folk within the limits mentioned in the text. For 

 instance, there are ' Buckle Street housen,' a mile north of Honeybourne railway station. The Ordnance 

 surveyors also insert the name on Broadway Down, but this (so far as I can discover by local inquiries) 

 is doubtful. 



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