“I went thro’ Ewelm, a 1/4 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.