138 Recent Wiltshire Books, Pamphlets, Articles, &c. 



Camden shows the Icknield Way going west from Royston through 

 Dunstable, Wendover, Princes Risborough, to cross the Thames at 

 Goring. Wise (1697 — 1767) traces it from Streatley through Berks to 

 Blewbury and Harwell where it is called the " Portway ;" whilst another 

 road near Lockinge is called " Icelston Meer" and " Icleton Way," 

 under Whitehorsehill to Bishopstone. Lysons describes this " Ickleton 

 Way " from Streatley to Wanborough. 



John Bennett, Bishop of Cloyne (1794—1820), says the "Ickeneld" 

 Way enters Berks at Streatley and divides into two branches, one, the 

 Ridgeway, goes by White Horse Hill into Wilts,the other, by Hampstead 

 and Hermitage to Newbury, &c. This apparently is the authority for 

 the name " Icknield Way," given by the Ordnance Survey to the 

 Ridgeway. Edwin Quest, in 1856, writing a long account of the Icknield 

 Way, thinks it joins the Ridgeway east of Avebury and continues west 

 along jts course. There are in fact endless theories, all the roads in 

 this part of the country having apparently been pressed into the service 

 as portions of the Icknield Way by one writer or another. 



Mr. Thomas argues that a line of road running just below the escarp- 

 ment of the downs can be traced with few gaps from Newmarket, 

 Royston, and Dunstable, into Wiltshire. It is mentioned in Bucks in 

 903. It crossed the Thames at Goring and Streatley and follows the 

 Reading and Wantage Road. An alternative short cut may have 

 crossed the Thames at Wallingford. In a charter of 903 at Harwell, 

 the Ridgeway and the " Icenhilde " Way are distinguished as separate, 

 one above the escarpment and the other below it. So, too, at Compton 

 Beauchamp in 955. At Wanborough a grant of lands by ^Ethelwulf 

 in 854 to Winchester mentions the Icknield Way, and Mr. Harold Peake 

 believes that the road crosed the parish very near the course of the 

 modern road bearing the name on the Ordnance Survey. "Thus the 

 road from Newmarket — or at least from Royston — by Streatley to 

 Wanborough parish is a venerable and continuous one, which bore 

 almost the same name at its extremities— Ykenilde-weie at Newmarket 

 in the time of Hen. III. Icenhilde Weg at Wanborough in 854. That 

 it is Icknield Street, one of the 'four royal roads,' is proved only by 

 its coming out of the east and going westward, and by its crossing 

 Watling Street at Dunstable, as does the Ykenieldstrete of the thirteenth 

 century map." Unlike the other three roads, the Icknield Way ap- 

 pears not to have been Romanized at any point. " It seems probable 

 that Icknield, like Watling and Ermine, was a generic name for a road." 

 The author shortly describes the other " Icknield," or " Rikenild," or 

 " Hickling " Ways, and after tracing the course of his own Icknield 

 Way from Thetford to Wanborough, in Wilts, as he followed it himself 

 on foot, comes to the conclusion that " beyond Wanborough there is so 

 far no sufficient evidence for tracing the course of the Icknield Way. 

 . . . It is possible that as the Ridgeway in Berkshire has been 

 mistakenly called the Icknield Way, so the lower part of what is now 

 called the Ridgeway in Wiltshire may be the Icknield Way." 



But the whole book gives one the impression rather that the research 

 as to the course of the road is only an excuse really for writing a book 



