The Icknield Way: Portraits the English Countryside. Edward Thomas
Чтение книги онлайн.

Читать онлайн книгу The Icknield Way: Portraits the English Countryside - Edward Thomas страница 9

Название: The Icknield Way: Portraits the English Countryside

Автор: Edward Thomas

Издательство: Bookwire

Жанр: Языкознание

Серия:

isbn: 4064066396305

isbn:

СКАЧАТЬ 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 this Roman “Icknield Street” with the Ermine Street he mentions a road which he calls a causeway, from Royston to Ogbourne St. George, or at least to Bishopston and Wanborough. This has been called Icknield Street, but he will call it the “Oxford Icknield Street,” which, he says, from coinciding with his real Icknield Street at Wanborough, acquired its name. It would be as reasonable to say that London took its name from the London County Council, or that Julius Cæsar took his from Julius Cæsar Scaliger. The unquestionable fact—known to him from Morden’s map, from Plot, and from Wise—that there is a road with the name of Icknield Way, or a variant of it, between Royston and Wanborough, he regards as a “stumbling block,” because it stands in the way of theorists less insolent than himself.

      Lysons’ Magna Britannia (1806) brings together two more such opposites as Wise and Willis. In “Berkshire” a letter is quoted from a Mr. Church, surveyor of Wantage, describing the Berkshire road, where Wise had been uncertain, in its eastern half. Mr. Church writes:—

      “The Ickleton-way has been ploughed up across Wantage East Field till it enters Charlton (a hamlet of Wantage); it then passes through West Lockinge. It is lost across Mr. Bastard’s park in East Lockinge, but appears again from that park to Ginge Brook, in Ardington parish. It passes by White’s barn in Sparsholt-court manor, and is afterwards ploughed up for some way, but appears again, after crossing the Newbury-way, by Wiltshire’s and Halve-hill barns, in East Hendred parish; from thence through the parishes of Harwell, West Hagbourne, and the hamlet of Upton, to the village of Blewbury, and through the parishes of Aston Tirrold, and Cholsey, to Moulsford on the Thames, and thence to Streatley; from Upton to Streatley it forms part of the new turnpike road from Wantage to Reading.” From Upton station to the east edge of Lockinge Park this road is now an almost continuous series of cart-tracks known—at least, in the neighbourhood of East Hendred, which it leaves half a mile to the north—as Ickleton Street or Ickleton Meer. This evidence of 1911, confirming statements made a hundred and two hundred years ago, is sufficient to identify that portion of the road as Ickleton Street. Beyond Wantage, Wise’s description can be applied only to the modern road from Wantage to Bishopston, or as far as the “Calley Arms” at Wanborough. East of Upton the modern road to Streatley—the old Reading turnpike—has a rival in a series of cart-tracks through Blewbury and the Astons, and possibly to be connected with the “Papist Way” near Cholsey.

      “Ickleton Meer,” Hagbourne Hill, near Upton, Berks.

      Thus there is traditional authority for giving the name of Ickleton Street or Way to a series of roads in Berkshire between Bishopston and Streatley, and the name of Icknield or Icnal Way to a road leading from Royston to Goring; and hence a probability that the two were united by the ford between Streatley and Goring. To this can be added a strong impression that this road came from a Norfolk port and went westward to Avebury, and thence or by another route into Devon or Cornwall; but not one writer, except perhaps Aubrey’s friend, proves or even implies a contemporary use of this road throughout its course; while Drayton and Plot suggest that it had fallen into decay in their time.

      Along with “Mr. Church, surveyor of Wantage,” in Lysons’ Berkshire, appeared a bishop, John Bennet (1746–1820), Bishop of Cloyne from 1794 until his death. Without any argument or evidence he makes the following pronouncement, heralded by the editorial opinion that “his researches have enabled him to speak with certainty on the subject”:—

      “The Ikeneld enters Berkshire from Oxfordshire at Streatley, where it seems to have divided: one branch by the name of the Ridgeway continued on the edge of the high ground by Cuckhamsley and White-horse-hill into Wiltshire; pointing, as Mr. Wise observes, rather to Avebury or the Devizes than Salisbury; while the other branch went from Streatley, perhaps by Hampstead and Hermitage, under the name of the West Ridge, to Newbury, and thence it may be to Old Sarum.”

      At first he seems to misunderstand Wise, and to suppose that his Ickleton Street was a road on the unpopulated ridge and not in the valley past a string of villages, and he goes on afterwards to assert that this valley road is Roman and seems to come from a spot near or rather below Wallingford. In 1806 the Rev. Henry Beeke (Archæologia, XV) expressed the opinion that the Icknield Way crossed the Thames at Moulsford. As Bennet gives no reason he makes no apology. His reason for giving the name of West Ridge to a road running east of its fellow must have been that it went through the village of Westridge, where doubtless the road was called the Westridge Way, as the road from Chevington is called the Chevington Way, and so on. He had apparently no reason for choosing the Ridgeway except that it came from the same ford at Streatley reached by the Icknield Way at Goring. Nevertheless, he has been so persistently followed that the Ridgeway is now given by the Ordnance Survey the alternative title of “Icknield Way,” and also of “Roman Road,” which even the bishop said it was not; some Berkshire people even call the Ridgeway the Icknield Way because it is the “Government name”; and “West Ridge Way” is attached with all the honour of Old English lettering to the more easterly road. Bennet equals Stukeley in the grandeur of his fiction and the veneration which it has earned. In Lysons’ Cambridgeshire (1808) he takes the road through Newmarket, herein coinciding with later-proved facts, but continues it to Ickleton on the east of the modern turnpike along a course never yet identified.

      Men who were not bishops now begin to exercise themselves in suggesting roads which may have been continuations of this Ickleton or Icknield Way. They print their opinions with varying degrees of certainty. In 1829 Dr. Mason, rector of Orford, in Suffolk (Archæologia, XXIII), traces it, “after it leaves Ixworth,” to Buckenham and thence by two forks to Caistor and to Burgh Castle. Samuel Woodward, in 1830 (Archæologia, XXIII), also assumes that it passes through Buckenham, Ixworth, and Bury St. Edmunds. In 1833 Alfred John Kempe (Archæologia, XXVI) takes it for granted that the road “crossed the kingdom from Norwich towards Old Sarum.” With an “I need hardly observe,” he connects the road with the Iceni, and explains it as “the Iken-eld-strete, that is, the old street or way of the Iceni.” Arthur Taylor (Archæological Institute: Memoirs, 1847; Norwich volume) connects the road with Norwich Castle Hill, which he believes to be British. Like the Ordnance Survey map, he takes it through Newmarket, Kentford, Cavenham, Lackford, and Thetford. Like Bennet, both Woodward and Taylor regard the road as a British trackway. But Taylor earns his chief distinction by the possession of a deed “apparently of the reign of Henry iii,” relating to premises at Newmarket and “extending upon Ykenildweie.”

      In 1856, in the form of a discourse afterwards СКАЧАТЬ