Mr. W. G. Clarke (_Norwich Mercury_, Oct. 8, ’04, etc.; _Knowledge_, II, 99) attempts to connect Newmarket with Norwich and call the road the Icknield Way. He suggests a route over the Kennett at Kentford and the Lark at Lackford; then to Icklingham All Saints, and following the boundary of the hundreds of Blackbourn and Lackford to Thetford, having crossed the road from Newmarket to Thetford at Marmansgrave, and that between Bury and Thetford a few yards north of Thetford Gasworks, where the remains of a British settlement were found in 1870. He crosses the Little Ouse and Thet where the Nuns’ Bridges now are. On the other side “the logical and undoubtedly correct continuation of the Icknield Way” is by Castle Lane and Green Lane. A find of Celtic and Roman pottery at the south end of Green Lane, old thorns in the fields between Green Lane and Roudham Heath, old banks on the heath near Peddars’ Way, “which it crosses about half a mile from where Peddars’ Way is joined by the Drove,” a “Bridgham tradition” of a waggon road over Roudham Heath, and the battle of Ringmore, fought there between Sweyn and Ulfketel, the find of bronze weapons and flint axes at Attleborough, and the supposed British origin of Norwich Castle Hill, take him by these places. From Norwich he goes by Sprowston, Rackheath, Wroxham, Hoveton, Beeston, over the Ant by the “Devil’s Ditch,” or “Roman Camp,” at Wayford to Stalham and to Happisburgh. Except that Stalham is near Hickling, this route has nothing--no local map, no documents--to entitle it to be called the Icknield Way.
Mr. Beloe (Cambridge Antiquarian Society, _Proceedings_, VII) suggests an easterly line beyond Newmarket by a supposed junction with the Ailesway from Newmarket, by Brandon Ferry and Narford to Hunstanton.
Mr. J. C. Tingey (_Norfolk Archæology_, XIV) agrees that such a junction may have been used, but prefers a line through Ickburgh and Cockley Cley, crossing the Wissey at Mundford. He also proposes another route from Lackford almost to Thetford, which he avoids, crossing the Ouse on to Snarehill, with its many tumuli, because he thinks an early traveller would have done this. Then, with no trace of a road, he goes over Snare Hill to Shadwell Park, the Harlings, Uphall, Kenninghall to Banham, where a street was once called Tycknald Street (Blomefield’s _History of Norfolk_); or he could reach Banham from Elvedon, Barnham, and Rushford. After Banham he leaves a gap of twelve miles, hastening to Swainsthorpe, south-east of Norwich, where he has found a Hickling Lane, called “Icklinge Way,” in a seventeenth-century conveyance, where it is said to lead to Kenninghall. He has also found in Blomefield a mention of “the way called Ykeneldsgate,” in that parish, dated 1308.