The Icknield Way

Few in the multitude of us who now handle maps are without some vague awe at the Old English lettering of the names of ancient things, such as Merry Maidens, Idlebush Barrow, Cr...

On the following morning early I returned to where I had left my conjectured road, which I shall now call Ickleton Street, at the crossing half a mile south of East Hendred Chur...

Much has been written of travel, far less of the road. Writers have treated the road as a passive means to an end, and honoured it most when it has been an obstacle; they leave...

For supper, bed, and picture gallery my host at Watlington charged me two shillings, and called me at five into the bargain, as I wished to breakfast at Wallingford. I took the...

“Five o’clock, sir,” said the Cockney at my door next morning, and I looked out to see a hot day slowly and certainly preparing in mist and silence. There was nobody in the fiel...

When I was next at Streatley I took the Ridgeway westward chiefly because I like the Ridgeway, partly because I wished to see it again, now that it had to give up the title conf...

I had to go back to the forking of the Icknield Way and follow the Lower road from Ivinghoe. St. Mary’s Church at Ivinghoe stands pleasantly among sycamores and beeches, and nex...

The rooks had been talking in my sleep much too long before I started next day. Their voices and the blazing window-blind described the morning for me before I stirred. I could...

As nearly everybody was agreed that the Icknield Way, coming from the Norfolk ports, probably crossed the River Thet and the Little Ouse at Thetford in that county, I went to Th...

Next morning I paid two shillings and set out at six o’clock. So far as is known the Icknield Way, which certainly went through Newmarket, is the central street and London road,...

When I started from Streatley to see the western half of the Icknield Way it was with several uncertainties. I knew that the Icknield Way was not the Ridgeway, but a lower road...

I was going through Sparsholt the next day just after the children had gone into school after their mid-morning play. The road was quieter than the church on that hot, bright mo...