Chapter I: Front Matter

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THE ICKNIELD WAY

* * * * * *

_UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME_

THE OLD ROAD
By HILAIRE BELLOC
Illustrated by WILLIAM HYDE

THE STANE STREET
By HILAIRE BELLOC
Illustrated by WILLIAM HYDE

THE FOREST OF DEAN
By ARTHUR O. COOKE
Illustrated by J. W. KING

* * * * * *

THE ICKNIELD WAY

by

EDWARD THOMAS

With Illustrations by A. L. Collins

London Constable & Company Ltd. 1916

DEDICATION

TO HARRY HOOTON

When I sat down at the “Dolau Cothi Arms” this evening I remembered my dedication to you. You said I could dedicate this book to you if I would make a real dedication, not one of my shadowy salutes befitting shadows rather than men and women. It seems odd you should ask thus for a sovereign’s worth of--shall I say--English prose from a writer by trade. But though I turn out a large, if insufficient, number of sovereigns’ worths, and am become a writing animal, and could write something or other about a broomstick, I do not write with ease: so let that difficulty give the dedication its value.

It is right that I should remember you upon a walk, for I have walked more miles with you than with anyone else except myself. While I walked you very often danced, on the roads of Kent, Sussex, Surrey, and Hampshire. This evening when I went out on the Sarn Helen everybody was in chapel, I think, unless it was the Lord, for he also seemed to me to be walking in the cool. I was very much alone, and glad to be. You were a ghost, and not a man of fourteen stone, and I thought that perhaps after all that shadowy salute would be fittest. But I have put my pen to paper: I have set out and I will come to an end; for, as I said, I am a writing animal. In the days of those old walks I could have written a dedication in Norfolk jacket style, all about “the open road,” and the search for something “over the hills and far away”: I should have reminded you at some length how Borrow stayed at this inn, and that Dolau Cothi is the house where he could have lived with satisfaction “if backed by a couple of thousands a year.” To-day I know there is nothing beyond the farthest of far ridges except a signpost to unknown places. The end is in the means--in the sight of that beautiful long straight line of the Downs in which a curve is latent--in the houses we shall never enter, with their dark secret windows and quiet hearth smoke, or their ruins friendly only to elders and nettles--in the people passing whom we shall never know though we may love them. To-day I know that I walk because it is necessary to do so in order both to live and to make a living. Once those walks might have made a book; now they make a smile or a sigh, and I am glad they are in ghostland and not fettered in useless print. This book for you was to have been a country book, but I see that it has turned out to be another of those books made out of books founded on other books. Being but half mine it can only be half yours, and I owe you an apology as well as a dedication. It is, however, in some ways a fitting book for me to write. For it is about a road which begins many miles before I could come on its traces and ends miles beyond where I had to stop. I could find no excuse for supposing it to go to Wales and following it there into the Ceidrych Valley, along the Towy to Caermarthen, and so to St. David’s which is now as holy as Rome, though once only a third as holy. Apparently no special mediæval use revived it throughout its course, or gave it a new entity like that of the Pilgrims’ Way from Winchester to Canterbury that you and I walked on many a time--by the “Cock” at Detling, the “Black Horse” at Thurnham, the “King’s Head” (once, I believe, the “Pilgrims’ Rest”) at Hollingbourne, above Harrietsham, past Deodara Villas, above Lenham and Robert Philpot’s “Woodman’s Arms,” and so on to Eastwell; always among beech and yew and Canterbury bells, and always over the silver of whitebeam leaves. I could not find a beginning or an end of the Icknield Way. It is thus a symbol of mortal things with their beginnings and ends always in immortal darkness. I wish the book had a little more of the mystery of the road about it. You at least will make allowances--and additions; and God send me many other readers like you. And as this is the bottom of the sheet, and ale is better than ink, though it is no substitute, I label this “Dedication,” and wish you with me inside the “Dolau Cothi Arms” at Pumpsaint, in Caermarthenshire.

EDWARD THOMAS.

NOTE

I have to acknowledge the very great kindness of Mr. Hilaire Belloc, Mr. Harold T. E. Peake, and Mr. R. Hippisley Cox while I was writing this book, though I do so with some hesitation, because I may seem to make them responsible for some of my possible mistakes and certain shortcomings. A man could hardly have three better guides than Mr. Belloc for his grasp and sympathy with roads, Mr. Peake for his caution and curiosity, and “documents, documents!” and Mr. Cox for his ardour and familiarity with trodden turf; and I must add my testimony to that of my betters to the merits of Mr. Belloc’s _Old Road_, Mr. Peake’s chapter on prehistoric roads in _Memorials of Old Leicestershire_, and Mr. Cox’s _Avebury_. To Mr. Peake I am indebted not only for suggestions that were invaluable to me, notably in the matter of the Ridgeway and the Bishop of Cloyne’s pernicious theory, but for the use of his copies of the greater part of the materials of my second chapter. I have also had great kindness from the Rev. E. H. Goddard and Mr. W. Gough.

EDWARD THOMAS.

LLAUGHARNE,
CAERMARTHENSHIRE.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE
I. ON ROADS AND FOOTPATHS 1
II. HISTORY, MYTH, TRADITION, CONJECTURE, AND INVENTION 32
III. FIRST DAY--THETFORD TO NEWMARKET, BY LACKFORD AND KENTFORD 85
IV. SECOND DAY--NEWMARKET TO ODSEY, BY ICKLETON AND ROYSTON 104
V. THIRD DAY--ODSEY TO EDLESBOROUGH, BY BALDOCK, LETCHWORTH,
ICKLEFORD, LEAGRAVE, AND DUNSTABLE 122
VI. FOURTH DAY--EDLESBOROUGH TO STREATLEY, ON THE UPPER ICKNIELD
WAY, BY WENDOVER, KIMBLE, WHITELEAF, GYPSIES’ CORNER,
IPSDEN, AND CLEEVE 145
VII. FIFTH DAY--IVINGHOE TO WATLINGTON, ON THE LOWER ICKNIELD WAY,
BY ASTON CLINTON, WESTON TURVILLE, CHINNOR, AND LEWKNOR 176
VIII. SIXTH DAY--WATLINGTON TO UPTON, BY EWELME, WALLINGFORD,
LITTLE STOKE, THE PAPIST WAY, LOLLINGDON, ASTON, AND
BLEWBURY 199
IX. SEVENTH DAY--STREATLEY TO SPARSHOLT, ON THE RIDGEWAY, BY
SCUTCHAMER KNOB AND LETCOMBE CASTLE 229
X. EIGHTH DAY--SPARSHOLT TO TOTTERDOWN, “BETWEEN THE DESTINIES”
ON THE RIDGEWAY, BY WHITE HORSE HILL AND WAYLAND’S SMITHY 255
XI. NINTH DAY--STREATLEY TO EAST HENDRED, BY UPTON AND HAGBOURNE
HILL FARM 270
XII. TENTH DAY--EAST HENDRED TO WANBOROUGH, BY LOCKINGE PARK,
WANTAGE, ASHBURY, AND BISHOPSTONE 284

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Streatley Mill and Church _Frontispiece_
PAGE
The Ridgeway, near Blowingstone Hill, Berkshire 11
Under Liddington Hill, Wiltshire 23
The Icknield Way and Old Parallel Tracks, near Newmarket 30
“Ickleton Meer,” Hagbourne Hill, near Upton, Berks 52
Wilbury Camp 59
Icknield Way, near Ipsden, Oxfordshire 64
Icknield Way, crossing Watling Street, Dunstable 69
Whiteleaf Cross 83
Castle Hill, Thetford 87
Bridge and Ford, Lackford 93
Near Cavenham 95
Kentford 97
Newmarket 99
Devil’s Ditch 105
Fleam Dyke 108
Ickleton 111
Approaching Royston 113
Icknield Way, crossing Ermine Street 117
Deadman’s Lane, Baldock 123
The Ford, Ickleford 126
Ickleford Church 128
On Telegraph Hill 130
Dunstable Downs 135
Beacon Hill, Ivinghoe 138
Wendover 151
Ellesborough Church 153
Near the “Leather Bottle” 155
Icknield Way, near Watlington 158
Sinodun Hills 160
Near Cleeve 162
The Bridge at Goring 172
Grand Junction Canal 177
Aston Clinton 181
Watlington 189
Watlington Town Hall 200
Ewelme Cow Common 204
Wallingford Bridge 205
By Lollingdon Farm 216
Blewbury 219
Ridgeway, near Streatley 230
Wayland’s Smithy 235
Letcombe Castle 251
White Horse Hill 256
The Blowingstone 263
Moulsford Bottom 271
East Hendred 277
Port Way, Wantage 287
Under White Horse Hill 291
Dragon Hill 293
Green Terrace, near Ashbury 295
Coombe at Bishopstone 299
Map _At end_

THE ICKNIELD WAY