“I went thro’ Ewelm, a ¼ of a mile from which is Gouldsheath, and about 2 furlongs east said Ewelm passeth the lower Hackneyway.”
Plot gives a substance to a name. He proves the existence of a road bearing the name of Icknield and variations of it, and having a course along the Chilterns, like Drayton’s road. He does not exaggerate; in fact, he thinks it a poor sort of road when compared with the Icknield Street through Staffordshire, of which he says:—
“I look upon this of Staffordshire as the most remarkable of the two, and so to be that Iknild street, which is usually reckoned to be one of the four basilical or great ways of England, and not that of Oxfordshire, this being raised all along and paved at some places, and very signal almost wherever it goes, whereas that of Oxfordshire is not so there, whatever it may be in other counties.”
The next evidence is eighteen years later, and comes from the maps by Robert Morden illustrating Gibson’s edition of Camden’s Britannia (1695). His map of Hertfordshire suddenly introduces us to a road called the Icknal or Icnal Way, running west from Royston—perhaps even from Barley, three miles south-east of Royston—through Baldock, then more and more south-east, over the Lea to the north of Luton, through Dunstable, and so, leaving on its right hand Toternhoe, Edlesborough, Ivinghoe, and Marsworth, going out of the map with Wilston on its right. In the map of Buckinghamshire this road is continued through Wendover, and passes Princes Risborough and Bledlow. In the map of Oxfordshire it is called “Icknield Way,” and follows a line like that in Plot’s map, crossing “Grime’s Dike,” leaving Ipsden and Woodcot on its left, reaching the Thames on the south of Goring Church. The Berkshire map does not show any road of this or similar name, or any one corresponding to it. Nor is the road to be found on the maps of Essex, Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, or Norfolk. The extension of it through Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire may well have come from the local knowledge of Morden or a collaborator. There must have been abundant information of the kind used by Plot which escaped antiquaries who were thinking about a royal road, a majestic basilical or consular way, running from St. David’s to Southampton, or farther. John Aubrey (died 1697), the man to tap this local lore, had nothing to say of any such road in his own county of Wiltshire, but he left some rough notes. He connects “Iceni” with “Ikenild,” and remarks (on the authority of Wren) that there were three Itchings on Ikenel Street, including Itching Stoke in Hampshire, where the Pilgrims’ Way fords the Itchen. He says also that a Mr. Sherwood told him of “an Ikenil way from North Yarmouth to Plymouth; the country people will say, ‘Keep along the Ikenil Way,’ scilicet the Wallington Hills.” Wallington is two miles south-east of Baldock and south of the Icknield Way, and through it ran a parallel road (mentioned in Archæological Journal, Vol. XXV) from Barley, by Therfield, Strethall, Sandon, and Wallington to Clothall; but the term “Wallington Hills” does not exclude the Icnal Way marked in Morden’s map. The precise North Yarmouth may also have been accurate, and I should be inclined to believe that at that day men sometimes went between Plymouth and North Yarmouth by a road or chain of roads known through perhaps a very large part of its course by some such name as Ikenil Way.
A period of antiquarian conjecture and invention was now beginning, with exploration often of an active kind, but usually kept sternly in obedience to speculation. At the end of the sixth volume of Hearne’s Leland (1710) is an essay supposed to be by Roger Gale (1672–1744). He has no doubt about “four great roads,” but regards the story of Molmutius and Belinus as exploded, and says that “nobody now questions but that” the Romans made them. He distinguishes, “as does Mr. Drayton,” between Icknield and Ricknield, and complains of the old confusion. The Icknield Way, “which has its rise and name from the people called Iceni,” he finds first “with any certainty near Barley in Herts,” as in Robert Morden’s map; but he suggests an eastern continuation through Ickleton, “and so by Gogmagog hills, and over Newmarket Heath to Ikesworth, not two miles south from St. Edmundsbury,” and possibly to Burgh Castle, near Yarmouth. Returning westward, he describes a course which might have been taken from Morden’s map, except that in the neighbourhood of Luton it touches Streatley instead of Leagrave, and goes to Houghton Regis as well as to Dunstable. But having reached Buckinghamshire, he cannot find it “anywhere apparent to the eye … except between Princes Risborrow and Kemble in the Street, where it is still call’d Icknell Way.” These are words which suggest that the eye was not his own. In Oxfordshire he leaves the road to Plot. At Goring and Streatley he does not know what to do, because his guides—Henry of Huntingdon and Drayton and others—disagree. He conjectures a continuation to Southampton, another through Speen to Salisbury and beyond, where he has found the name “Aggleton Road,” locally given to the road near Badbury Castle, the Roman road from Old Sarum to Dorchester. He thinks “Aggleton Road” can have no connection with Ickleton, but he shows no other reason for believing that his Roman road is the Icknield Way.
In 1724 appeared the Itinerarium Curiosum of Gale’s friend William Stukeley (1687–1765), M.D., F.R.S., F.R.C.P. Here he describes an exploration of the Icknield Way. He takes it through Ickleton and, like Gale, through Streatley, near Luton; he mentions the lovely prospect from the northern sides of the Chilterns and a few more place-names. East of Ickleton, or his newly discovered Roman camp at Great Chesterford, he speaks of the road going along the boundary between Essex and Cambridgeshire “towards Icleworth in Suffolk.” He thinks the road Roman. Beyond the Thames he has no uncertainty like Gale. He says straight out that at Speen “the great Icening-street road coming from the Thames at Goring … crosses the Kennet river”; also that he found it a little north of Bridport going to Dorchester, and accompanied it “with no small pleasure.” If he had any reason for calling any part of this road “the great Icening Street of the Romans,” it has never been discovered, nor has anything else confirmed his view, except that Leland saw two Roman milestones between Streatley and Aldworth, which have been seen since, but never described except in rumour. William Stukeley, M.D., F.R.S., F.R.C.P., who read “Oriuna” for “Fortuna” on a coin, and so invented the belief that one Oriuna was the wife of Carausius, was soon afterwards unanswerably questioned and plainly contradicted on matters of fact by Smart Lethieullier (1701–60) and Richard Willis. He is chiefly memorable here because the now venerable title of Via Iceniana was conferred by him on the road which he chose to believe the Icknield Way. The title, translated back into Icknield Street, is still generally accepted.
Francis Wise (1697–1767) found the road where Gale had lost it, beyond the ford at Streatley. In his book on Some Antiquities in Berkshire he says that it loses its name at Streatley, but is “visible enough” to Blewbury and known as the Great Reading Road. From Blewbury through Upton and Harwell this road is called the Portway, yet he thinks that it may be the Icknield Way notwithstanding; or, if not, there is an alternative to the south, lost in the ploughland until near Lockinge it becomes a raised way called “Icleton Meer”; while after Wantage it is the “Ickleton Way,” going “all under the hills between them and Childrey,” Sparsholt, Uffington, so under White-horse-hill, leaving Woolston and Compton on the right, thence to Ashbury and Bishopstone. He thought that it was making rather for Avebury than for Salisbury. This road is marked as Eccleton Street in Roque’s fine eighteenth-century map of Berkshire, though it is not easy to be certain of the road indicated by the name, except that it runs at the foot of the hills.
Richard Willis, in an essay posthumously published in Archæologia, VIII (1787), claims to be the discoverer of two Roman roads which “fortunately” crossed one another near his house at Andover. One of these was the road from Southampton by Winchester and Cirencester to Gloucester, and this was, he says, “I doubt not the Ikeneld Street.” He does not say why he is certain, but his authority or inspiration was probably Geoffrey or a disciple. He had an eye for old roads, but too generally honoured them with the name of Roman. He noticed the old road leaving his supposed Icknield Street on the right a mile south of Ogbourne St. George, and going north-east to the inn now called “The Shepherd’s Rest” at Totterdown, which is on the Roman road from Speen to Cirencester. Among several roads connecting