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Title: The Icknield Way

Author: Edward Thomas

Illustrator: A. L. Collins

Release date: May 5, 2018 [eBook #57097]
                Most recently updated: June 15, 2020

Language: English

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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

      *      *      *      *      *      *


[Illustration: STREATLEY MILL AND CHURCH]


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




CHAPTER I

ON ROADS AND FOOTPATHS


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 the impression that a road is
a connection between two points which only exists when the traveller
is upon it. Though there is much travel in the Old Testament, “the
way” is used chiefly as a metaphor. “Abram journeyed, going on still
toward the south,” says the historian, who would have used the same
words had the patriarch employed wings. Yet to a nomadic people the
road was as important as anything upon it. The earliest roads wandered
like rivers through the land, having, like rivers, one necessity,
to keep in motion. We still say that a road “goes” to London, as we
“go” ourselves. We point out a white snake on a green hill-side, and
tell a man: “That is going to Chichester.” At our inn we think when
recollecting the day: “That road must have gone to Strata Florida.”
We could not attribute more life to them if we had moving roads with
platforms on the sidewalks. We may go or stay, but the road will go up
over the mountains to Llandovery, and then up again over to Tregaron.
It is a silent companion always ready for us, whether it is night or
day, wet or fine, whether we are calm or desperate, well or sick. It
is always going: it has never gone right away, and no man is too late.
Only a humorist could doubt this, like the boy in a lane who was asked:
“Where does this lane go to, boy?” and answered: “I have been living
here these sixteen years and it has never moved to my knowledge.” Some
roads creep, some continue merely; some advance with majesty, some
mount a hill in curves like a soaring sea-gull.

Even as towns are built by rivers, instead of rivers being conducted
past towns, so the first settlements grew up alongside roads which had
formerly existed simply as the natural lines of travel for a travelling
race. The oldest roads often touch the fewest of our modern towns,
villages, and isolated houses. It has been conjectured that the first
roads were originally the tracks of animals. The elephant’s path or
tunnel through the jungle is used as a road in India to-day, and in
early days the wild herds must have been invaluable for making a way
through forest, for showing the firmest portions of bogs and lowland
marshes, and for suggesting fords. The herd would wind according to
the conditions of the land and to inclinations of many inexplicable
kinds, but the winding of the road would be no disadvantage to men
who found their living by the wayside, men to whom time was not money.
Roads which grew thus by nature and by necessity appear to be almost
as lasting as rivers. They are found fit for the uses of countless
different generations of men outside cities, because, apart from cities
and their needs, life changes little. If they go out of use in a new
or a changed civilization, they may still be frequented by men of the
most primitive habit. All over England may be found old roads, called
Gypsy Lane, Tinker’s Lane, or Smuggler’s Lane; east of Calne, in
Wiltshire, is a Juggler’s Lane; and as if the ugliness of the “uggle”
sound pleased the good virtuous country folk, they have got a Huggler’s
Hole a little west of Semley and south of Sedgehill in the same county:
there are also Beggar’s Lanes and roads leading past places called Mock
Beggar, which is said to mean Much Beggar. These little-used roads are
known to lovers, thieves, smugglers, and ghosts. Even if long neglected
they are not easily obliterated. On the fairly even and dry ground of
the high ridges where men and cattle could spread out wide as they
journeyed, the earth itself is unchanged by centuries of traffic, save
that the grass is made finer, shorter, paler, and more numerously
starred with daisies. But on the slopes down to a plain or ford the
road takes its immortality by violence, for it is divided into two or
three or a score of narrow courses, trenched so deeply that they might
often seem to be the work rather of some fierce natural force than
of slow-travelling men, cattle, and pack-horses. The name Holloway,
or Holway, is therefore a likely sign of an old road. So is Sandy
Lane, a name in which lurks the half-fond contempt of country people
for the road which a good “hard road” has superseded, and now little
used save in bird’s-nesting or courting days. These old roads will
endure as long as the Roman streets, though great is the difference
between the unraised trackway, as dim as a wind-path on the sea, and
the straight embanked Roman highway which made the proverb “Plain as
Dunstable Road,” or “Good plain Dunstable”--for Watling Street goes
broad and straight through that town. Scott has one of these ghostly
old roads in _Guy Mannering_. It was over a heath that had Skiddaw and
Saddleback for background, and he calls it a _blind road_--“the track
so slightly marked by the passengers’ footsteps that it can but be
traced by a slight shade of verdure from the darker heath around it,
and, being only visible to the eye when at some distance, ceases to be
distinguished while the foot is actually treading it.”

The making of such roads seems one of the most natural operations of
man, one in which he least conflicts with nature and the animals. If
he makes roads outright and rapidly, for a definite purpose, they may
perish as rapidly, like the new roads of modern Japanese enterprise,
and their ancient predecessors live on to smile at their ambition.
These are the winding ways preferred by your connoisseur to-day. “Give
me,” says Hazlitt, “the clear blue sky over my head and the green turf
beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three-hours’ march
to dinner--and then to thinking!” These windings are created by the
undulating of the land, and by obstacles like those of a river--curves
such as those in the High Street of Oxford, which Wordsworth called
“the stream-like windings of that glorious street.” The least obstacle
might bring about a loop, if nothing more, and as even a Roman road
curled round Silbury Hill, so the path of the Australian savage
is to be seen twisting round bush after bush as if it enjoyed the
interruption, though it cannot purl like the river at a bend. Probably
these twists, besides being unconsciously adapted to the lie of the
land, were, as they are still, easeful and pleasant to the rover who
had some natural love of journeying. Why go straight? There is nothing
at the end of any road better than may be found beside it, though there
would be no travel did men believe it. The straight road, except over
level and open country, can only be made by those in whom extreme haste
and forethought have destroyed the power of joy, either at the end or
at any part of its course. Why, then, go straight? The connoisseur had
something of the savage in him when he demanded a winding road.

It is not, however, to a man walking for pleasure that we shall go for
a sense of roads, but to one like Bunyan. _Pilgrim’s Progress_ is full
of the sense of roads. See Christian going to Mr. Legality’s house.
It is a mountain road, and the hill overhangs it so much that he is
afraid to venture further “lest the hill should fall on his head.”
When Goodwill points out the narrow way, he says it was “cast up by
the patriarchs, prophets, Christ, and his Apostles,” i.e. made into a
raised track bounded by ditches from which the earth was cast up to
form the embankment. When Christian comes to the Hill Difficulty you
see the primitive man deciding to go straight uphill, turning not to
the left by the way called Danger into a great wood, nor to the right
to Destruction and the “wide field full of dark mountains.” How full
of plain English country wayfaring is the passage where Hopeful and
Christian take a road by a river-side, and then when it turns away
from the water they see a stile leading into a path which keeps on, as
a path would do, along the bank through By-path Meadow: only, as it
happens, the river is in flood and they must turn back again towards
the stile. This man knew roads, and one of his temptations after
conversion was to try his faith by bidding the puddles on the road
between his own village and Bedford to be dry. Cervantes had the sense
of roads. He begins, indeed, by making Don Quixote sally forth “upon
the plain” like any knight of chivalry “pricking o’er the plain” and
taking the way chosen by his horse because thus would adventures best
be compassed; but it is upon a road that he and most of his knights,
ladies, and enchanters travel. Malory’s book would have less vitality
in its marvel if it were not for the roads: the three highways, for
example, where Sir Marhaus and Sir Gawaine and Sir Uwaine were to
separate for their adventures each with his damosel; and the wild ways
of Sir Launcelot when he “rode many wild ways, throughout marches
and many wild ways,” until he came to a valley and a knight therein
with a naked sword chasing a lady. _Cymbeline_ again, and some of the
historical plays of Shakespeare, give a grand impression of wide tracts
of country traversed by roads of great purpose and destiny.

More often in books we move, as I have said, from place to place as
in a dream. But it is a dream in the _Mabinogion_ which gives one of
the most majestic scenes of travel. I mean the dream of the Emperor
Maxen. He dreamed that he was journeying along a river valley towards
its source, and up over the highest mountain in the world until he saw
mighty rivers descending to the sea, and one of them he followed to a
great city at its mouth and a vast castle in the city. At the end of
his journey the dreaming Emperor found a girl so beautiful that when
he awoke he could think of naught else, while years went by, except
her beauty. He sent out pioneers to discover the road of his dream,
and at last they brought him to the castle and the same girl Helen
sitting in the hall of it. She became his bride, and he gave her three
castles--one at Arvon in North Wales, one at Caerleon, and one at
Caermarthen in the South. Then, says the tale, “Helen bethought her to
make high-roads from one castle to another throughout the Island of
Britain. And the roads were made. And for this cause are they called
the roads of Helen Luyddawc, that she was sprung from a native of
this island, and the men of the Island of Britain would not have made
these great roads for any save her.” It is natural to connect with this
Helen the great ancient roads leading north and south across Wales
known as Sarn Helen or Elen. Nothing could be more noble as the name
of a mountain road than Sarn Helen or Helen’s Causeway. It suggests to
the ordinary fanciful and unhistoric mind the British Helena, mother
of the Emperor Constantine, and that it suggested this long ago is
clear from the old identification of Helen Luyddawc with the only
child of King Cole of Colchester. The name has more recently been
explained as Sarn y Lleng, the Road of the Legions. Sir John Rhys[1]
insists upon Elen instead of Helen, and believes her to be one of the
pagan goddesses of the dusk. “There is,” he says, “a certain poetic
propriety in associating the primitive paths and roads of the country
with this vagrant goddess of dawn and dusk.” These wandering paths are
to the hard white highways what dusk is to the full blaze of day. First
perhaps trodden by the wild herd and still without terrors for it, they
might well be protected by a sort of Artemis, goddess of wildernesses
and of forked ways, kind both to human hunters and the wild quarry.
They belong to the twilight of the world. No doubt the sun shines no
brighter at noon than it did then on a perfectly wild earth, on flowers
that were never gathered, on bright plumage that no man had coveted.
But all the forest and marsh of primeval earth form in the imagination
mists to which the lack of history adds yet another veil. These mists
lie over the world, to my mind, exactly as the white mist of summer
lies, turning into a sea most of what once was land and making islands
of the woods on the steep, uncultivated tracts. The islands rising
out of the mists of time are the hills and mountains, and along their
ridges ran the first roads, and by them are the squares and circles of
the first habitations and the mounds of the first solemnized graves,
used sometimes, it is thought, as guides for travellers.

[1] Hibbert Lectures, 1889, p. 16.

It is particularly easy to think of Southern England as several chains
of islands, representing the Downs, the Chilterns and Gog Magogs, the
Mendips, Cotswolds and Quantocks. I have more than once caught myself
thinking of the broad elephantine back of Butser Hill heaving up,
spotted with gorse but treeless, between Petersfield and Portsmouth,
as Ararat, though my unfaithful eyes fail to imagine the ark. There
are days now when the clear suddenly swelling hills like Tarberry or
Barrow Hill in Hampshire, or Cley Hill or the Knolls of Maiden Bradley
in Wiltshire, or the abrupt promontories like Chanctonbury or Noar
Hill near Selborne, or the long trooping ranges, seem to be islands
or atolls looming dimly through the snowy still mists of morning or
the clouds of rainstorm. Even without mist some of the isolated green
hills rise out of the pale levels of cornland as out of sea; and I have
seen, from near Bruton, the far-distant mass of Cadbury, the hill some
call Camelot in Somerset, look like a dark precipitous isle. When the
early roads along the ridges were made, the hills still more closely
resembled islands emerging out of the forest and out of the marsh. The
watersheds created the roads, as they still do over hundreds of miles
in Africa. The roads keep to the highland, and if this highland were
to form a circle they would follow it; and hunters say, as Mr. H. W.
Nevinson tells us in _A Modern Slavery_, that the elephants do “move
in a kind of rough zone or circle--from the Upper Zambesi across the
Cuando into Angola and the district where they passed me, and so across
the Cuanza northward and eastward into the Congo, and round towards
Katanga and the sources of the Zambesi again.” Somewhere too I have
met the tradition, probably a Welsh one, that this island of Britain
was girdled by a road above its shores. The early nomads would descend
from the ridges only with reluctance, for fear of the marsh and the dim
forest. Doubtless their travelling oxen, especially if burdened, had
the same horror of mud--when they are not free to wallow in it--as they
have to-day. In a very early age it is likely that men would go down to
the rivers only to water their cattle, and then return to the heights.
There would be several drinking-places, and at one of them they would
discover a ford, unless the animals had already marked one, and then if
the river had not become a boundary they might cross and continue their
wanderings along a road upon the next island of hills. Thus island
would be joined to island. The paths ran along the back of each one
and branched over the spurs, and the linking up of these would tend
to form highways of great length, like that trodden by Launcelot, “far
o’er the long backs of the bushless downs” to Camelot. It were easy
to take such a route to-day from anywhere in Berkshire or Hampshire,
travelling high and away from cities, except cities of the dead like
Avebury, far from towns and villages, through Wiltshire into Somerset
or Dorset, on roads which are altogether turf or have so goodly a
border of grass and blossom that the wayfarer need never touch the hard
white grit which is the same on a metalled road whether in London or in
wild country.

[Illustration: The Ridgeway, near Blowingstone Hill, Berkshire.]

Down from the realm-long bridge of islands above the world the
traveller descended to cities of men. Thus Sir Launcelot after long
riding in a great forest came into a low country of fair rivers and
meadows and saw before him the long bridge and the three pavilions on
it, “of silk and sendal of divers hue.” Thus Sir Bevis of Hampton,
cheated of his patrimony by a cruel mother and keeping sheep on the
Downs, looked and saw below him the town and the tower that should have
been his. Thus Cobbett, looking from Portsdown Hill above Portsmouth,
saw the sea for the first time and the English fleet riding at anchor
at Spithead and his heart “was inflated with national pride,” and
though he had walked thirty miles that day he slept not a moment,
but rose at daylight and offered himself for the sea on board the
_Pegasus_. Thus we descend on Winchester or Salisbury out of the hills,
glad to get there what we want as we have for many days gladly wanted
what we could get. It has been, let us say, a day that should be
spring, and in the dark, wet copses there were thousands of primroses.
All day the wind, and often rain and wind together, roared in the
trees. The pale flowers were soaked and frayed and speckled with dust
from the trees, and they hung down or were broken from their soft
stalks. But the high land and the neighbouring sky exalt us. Even the
sight of these tender-blubbering petals ruined in the drenched grass
was pleasant. We should have liked better to see them unspoiled and
wide in the sun; but we did not wish them to be so, and their distress
did but add to the glory of the storm and to our defiance, just as did
the cowering of birds, of bowed trees, of whole woods, under the wild,
shadowy swoop of the mist and rain, and the valleys below us humbled,
their broad fields, their upthrust churches and clustered villages
overwhelmed and blotted out, and everything annihilated save the wind,
the rain, the streaming road, and the vigorous limbs and glowing brain
and what they created. Not that we did not welcome freely the minutes
of dimly shining stillness that were as a secluded garden in a city,
when the storm paused; for then we drank in the blue sky and the dark
revealed tracts of plain and hill that lay stunned and astonished like
a dreamer opening his eyelids after tumultuous dreams; we drank them
with easy joy as of a man reading a great adventure when the heroes of
it have long been dead, for we ourselves were so much above all that
expanse which, powerless and quiet, might almost seem to belong to the
past or to a tale. We and the storm were one and we were triumphant;
and in mid triumph we came down to the lighted streets.

As the first roads were made by men following herds, either as hunters
or as herdsmen, so ox and sheep have long helped to keep them up. The
great road of pilgrimage from Damascus to Mecca is not a made road,
but composed of the parallel strands of old hollow camel paths. These,
says Mr. Charles M. Doughty in _Arabia Deserta_, “one of the ancient
Arabian poets has compared to the bars of the rayed Arabic mantle.” To
our own day in England drovers took the cattle lazily along the old
roads of the watersheds and ridges. “Ox Drove” is the name in several
places of an old green road. Travellers in Wiltshire have noticed on
the one-inch Ordnance Survey Map a “British Trackway” running W.S.W.
out of the road from the Deverills to Maiden Bradley. A large tumulus
stands in the first field, as if for a sign at the beginning of the
track. Locally this is known as the “Ox Road,” and is said to have been
used by droves coming from Mid and East Somerset. It is a continuation
of the hard road which it leaves at the tumulus, and following it and
its continuations you may travel through Kilmington, and between the
Jack’s Castle tumulus and King Alfred’s tower, down Kingsettle Hill,
and on close to Cadbury Castle, to Ilchester, and, joining the Foss
Way, reach Devon and Cornwall. Only one mile of its course is marked
in Old English letters “British Trackway,” and this is apparently not
even a path, but a protracted unevenness of the ground, sometimes
almost amounting to a ridge or terrace in the grass, for the most part
following the hedges, and in one place entering a short, nettly lane.
The road, in spite of its romantic Old English lettering, is at this
point a very humble specimen of an ancient road and ox drove; for it
goes through meadows which are low compared with the fine waves of
Down--White Sheet Downs and the Maiden Bradley Hills--on either side of
it. A far better one is the ox drove which this joins at Kilmington.
It is said to have been used as a road from London to Exeter. Farmers
will tell you that the Ox Drove “never touched water,” which they will
qualify by saying you could go from Monkton Deverill to Marlborough
without touching water or crossing it, and if that also is impossible,
at any rate they have the tradition of the road’s character in their
heads, seldom as they may use it. Along it, says Mr. J. U. Powell,[2]
came “fat cattle from the Somerset pastures to London,” and once
he thinks it was a road leading to the lead of Somerset and tin of
Cornwall.

[2] _Wiltshire Archæological Magazine_, XXXIV.

It goes through the orchards of Somerset as a good hard road, but often
deprived of its right green borders. When these have been lost they
have not always disappeared, and its old breadth is shown probably by
a long, narrow field lying first on one side and then, after a zigzag,
on the other, as near the “Bull” to the east of Bruton. Sometimes with
a green space beside the road, or a depression behind the hedge, or an
aimless avenue of oak trees as at Redlynch, marking the old course, it
is a narrow road going in a determined manner up and down, but with
few deviations and having a purpose obviously unconnected with the few
cottages on its edge. Here it is called the Hardway. The “hard road”
is the countryman’s admiring term for a made road; but it is suggested
that the Hardway is the Har- or Harrow-Way, and is a continuation of a
road running east and west through Hampshire and Wiltshire. It crosses
the little shaded river Brue and ascends Kingsettle Hill between high
banks of beech and oak and bluebell. It mounts, like a savage who
does not mind being out of breath, straight up the steep wooded wall
of the hill until at the top it is eight hundred and fifty feet high
instead of four hundred, and takes you into Wiltshire. On the right
is the huge square tower of brick erected by one of the Colt Hoare
family in honour of King Alfred. The name Kingsettle Hill was thought
by Colt Hoare to mark the pass of King Alfred when, with the chief
men of Somerset, he issued from Athelney “after Eastertide,” in 878,
and marched to Egbert’s stone in the east part of Selwood Forest.
This “stone” or “cliff” has been supposed to be White Sheet Hill, a
very conspicuous and noble place for the King to gather the people of
Somerset, Wiltshire, and Hampshire before leading them to the victory
of Edington. On the right and, like Alfred’s Tower, at the brink of
the hill is the big tumulus known as Jack’s Castle; and from either
you command Somersetshire nearly as far as the curvature of the earth
allows. From the oaks and bluebells of the slopes beneath you stretches
a low subdivided country of many oaks--and cuckoos calling from
them--and the Hardway penetrating it from the south-west. Colt Hoare
calls the tumulus “Selwood Barrow,” a beacon above the great Forest of
Selwood and possibly a direction post for travellers from the west to
Old Sarum. In the north-west the land rises up to a ridge with a comb
of beech trees, which is Creech Hill above Bruton, and at its feet the
masses of Pink Wood and Norridge Wood. The Mendips are a dim cloud
beyond it on the right, the Quantocks a dimmer cloud on the left; and
in the low land between them is Athelney, and near it Glastonbury,
standing above the full-grown Brue. Sometimes the wind-like sound of an
invisible train ascends.

The road takes you through the remains of Selwood Forest. Now it has
a fair green border, often of considerable breadth. That you are in
Wiltshire there can be no doubt on emerging from the trees. For in
front upon the left are those gentle monsters, the smooth Long and
Little Knolls above Maiden Bradley, smooth, detached green dunes
crested and fringed with beeches. Under this side of the Long Knoll
is the tower of Kilmington Church among its trees. Lying across the
road a few miles ahead are the bare White Sheet Downs, which are to be
mounted, and farther to the right the wooded beacons above Fonthill
Gifford and East Knoyle. The road makes for the scar of a high quarry
on the nearest slope of White Sheet, a little to the left of a lesser
isolated hill, a smooth, wooded knoll or islet. The road is gently
and evenly rising, a hard, white road almost straight, between grassy
borders with thorns and brambles under beeches that overhang from
behind the hedge. They are good trees standing on a strip of turf
furrowed as if it had once been the road or part of it; and some
young ones have been lately planted, so that all is not yet over with
English country, though landlords say so. The road crosses another to
Kilmington and Yarnfield, and at once it is older-looking, hard, but
winding slightly among bushy and lush steep banks. You see flowers and
ash trees, and a linnet on the tip of one, but nothing distant save
white clouds and the blue. Here it is called Long Lane, and among its
herbage is an old London milestone. Long Lane is often the title of a
lane coming from somewhere afar off: there is one south of Hermitage,
giving its name to a village, in Berkshire, and one near Cucklington
in Somerset, where there is a Tinker’s Hill also. In another mile Long
Lane crosses the Maiden Bradley road by a smithy and a “Red Lion”;
its name becomes White Sheet Lane, and it goes straight in sight of
the high white quarry and the deep tracks up to White Street Castle.
Like Long Lane, it is a parish boundary. Both are without a house: the
road has hardly passed a house since Redlynch, save at a crossing, and
those living in the houses use the road only for a mile or so on the
way to a village on either side. Slanting uphill under the quarry, with
a parallel green way hollowed beside it, goes the road’s bolder self.
The hedges and banks are low, and the cornland or meadow is open round
about. The lane turns to climb White Sheet Hill, and beeches and some
whitebeam trees cool the beginning of the ascent; there are myriads of
primroses in their season and chaffinches singing. You pass a thatched
house and the lime-kiln of “Tom Gatehouse, Lime Burner,” by the quarry,
and another milestone showing twenty-three miles to Sarum and a date
like 1757--when Blake was born. Looking back, the Knolls are on the
right and Alfred’s Tower on the left among the woods. There are tumuli
on the right as the road comes clear out on to the hill-top and travels
between the wired fences of the downland pasture. Here stand cows
who do not often see a pencil sharpened. Pewits wheel over and before
and behind; all along the high course of the road the pewits cry and
wheel. The road is at first rutted, but is soon a green smooth track
on the highest land, skirting the upper ends of coombes dappled dusky
gold by gorse, and commanding bare downland on the left and wooded
hills on the right, and looking along a great bottom to the church
tower of Mere, and Mere’s beautiful “Long Hill,” and the wide-arboured
vale stretching away to the long ridge of Dorset. It is a high way and
a proud way. After crossing an ancient ditch it is labelled “British
Trackway,” and ahead it is seen going between a wire fence and a dark
line of tussocks. Then it is divided into three or four parallel
terraces grooved by wheels, but with a lark’s nest in the green rut. It
crosses the Mere road as two hollow ways side by side, but in a little
while is only a green track with single thorns on the left. Here is
the twenty-first milestone from Sarum, the ninety-ninth from London,
inscribed 1750, and it is called the London Drove Road; it is still in
sight of Alfred’s Tower, now protruding above White Sheet ramparts. In
one place it is so wide that the milestone stands out in the middle,
like a traveller asleep or turned to stone among mole-heaps that have
blotted the signs of other travellers. On the left, as far as the main
Wincanton road, part of the track is embanked; entering the hard motor
road to Amesbury and London, the old way is outlined chiefly by the
thorns of Old Willoughby Hedge on the left. The road going hedgeless
across the downland is but the thin backbone of the old green way. For
a time the line of thorns diverges, and then, soon after the crossing
of the Warminster road, they come slanting from the right to meet the
road and cross it just before another milestone. Hereby are three
milestones on different roads, all close together, which has caused
the easy winning of merry wagers to run past three milestones in three
minutes. The drove crosses several roads going to Hindon, as a broad
green track with or without a hedge, marked by its greater profusion of
daisies and its paleness and lack of tussocks. Still there are pewits,
and somewhere not far away a Pewit Castle. It is joined again by the
main Amesbury road beyond Cold Berwick Hill, but presently deserted,
the busier white way going boldly off over the ridge, and down to
the Wylye River and up again on to Salisbury Plain by Yarnbury, and
so past Stonehenge to Amesbury. The green road winds along the south
slope of the ridge. Now two lines of thorns show the course far ahead,
or the white weals of an ascent are seen; now gorse encroaches on it,
and at a crossway corned-beef tins and grey embers mark an encampment
of nomads. It passes thickets of thorn and wayfaring trees burying an
old milestone to Sarum. Turf or corn lies on either hand or on both.
It keeps along the edge of Groveley Woods and within sound of the
nightingales until it bends down to Salisbury; once probably it or a
higher parallel course went over a ford to Old Sarum, and evidently
it is vastly older than the eighteenth-century milestones, perhaps old
enough to have guided the Hampshire men and some of the Wiltshiremen to
Alfred, a road such as Cobbett loved for the hammering of horses’ hoofs
on flints.

Another fine ox drove, and dignified by that name and by old lettering
on the Ordnance Map, ran clear for a long stretch along the high land
south of the Ebble River, from a point four miles south of Salisbury
and westwards by Winkelbury to the south of Shaftesbury. It may some
day be proved that one of the most famous of ancient roads, the
Icknield Way itself, was an ox drove. There is said to be a charter
mentioning the Icknield Way as “the way the cattle go”; and one writer
has boldly derived the very name from the British Yken, or Ychen,
meaning oxen. Every district in the chalk country has its tradition of
an old road, now surviving in a footpath or in broken vertebræ of lane
and footpath to provide walkers with endless theories. At Swindon, for
example, it is said[3] that the Holy Well stood on a road coming from
the east and going westward past Bradenstoke Abbey into Somerset, and
on another used by pilgrims to the shrine of St. Anne’s in the Wood,
at Brislington in Somerset, which went by Elcombe, Hay Lane Bridge,
Bushton, Clyffe, Calne, Studley, Chippenham, Pewsham Forest, Bradford,
Keynsham Abbey, and Whitchurch, to Brislington, which is in the
south-east of Bristol and has now a station called St. Ann’s Park. But
this is not the place to give way to the fascination of a roll-call of
country names.

[3] _Swindon Fifty Years Ago_, by William Morris.

Except that bridges superannuated fords, the conditions for the
travelling of cattle cannot have changed much from Alfred’s time until
the day of railway trucks carrying thickets of moaning horns and square
blocks of sheep. The turnpike system helped to preserve the old roads
because drovers using them could avoid the tolls; their cattle could
also feed by the wayside. Canon Jackson,[4] in 1862, said that the
Ridgeway of Berkshire and Wiltshire was part of the road used for ages
and to this day for driving cattle from Anglesey into Kent. Mr. Walter
Money, in a note to Miss Gossett’s _Shepherds of Britain_, said much
the same thing. Unfortunately neither has told us anything of their
route. I have no doubt they could have covered most of the distance on
grass. I should like to have travelled with them. You will find “Welsh
Ways” all over England. Walkers or Workaway Hill, where the Ridgeway
descends southward from Wansdyke to the Pewsey Valley, is said to be a
corruption of Weala-wege, and to have been called Walcway (or Welshway)
by a shepherd not long ago. There is a “Welshway” in Northamptonshire
making past Northampton for Wales by way of Banbury and the Cotswolds,
and said to have been the route of Welsh drovers. There is a “Welsh
Lane” in the Cotswolds turning out of the Gloucester road, three or
four miles from Cirencester, and going up the hill by Four Mile
Bottom towards Barnsley. I met an old man who remembered helping the
Welsh drovers with their black cattle there sixty years ago. They were
putting up near by for the night, and they liked the boy because his
name was David. In the downland these roads would be practicable for
the most part all the year round; but Defoe tells us that the clay
roads of the Midlands used to be so bad that graziers sold their stock
in September and October: they could then be taken to the neighbourhood
of London and kept until mid-winter to be sold at a high price.
Cheshire men used to send their cheese to London either all the way by
sea or overland to Burton, and so by the river to Hull and thence by
sea. Gloucester men sent their goods by land to Lechlade or Cricklade,
and then onward by the Thames; but their flocks doubtless could travel
by Bath and go along the down ways eastward. But he says that now the
roads are good, and mutton comes straight from the country in December,
and almost as cheap as in summer.

[4] _Wiltshire Archæological Magazine_, VII, 125.

[Illustration: Under Liddington Hill, Wiltshire.]

I have not had the fortune to meet drovers from Wales, but where the
Icknield Way through Buckinghamshire rounds the promontory Beacon
of the Ivinghoe Hills I have seen men with sheep from Berkshire
or Dorset journeying towards Dunstable, Royston, and the farms of
Cambridgeshire and Suffolk. They have to go much on the hard grit
to-day, and I have heard that they are kept off the unfenced Ridgeway
lest the flock should eat too much of the pastures in their passage.
The sheep dislike the grit as much as Mr. Burroughs loves it and I
hate it, and what with the traffic and the harshness of the road it
is not surprising to hear of a Welsh flock taking a week to get from
Warminster to Monckton Deverill.

Where the high down roads are fenced there could be no better
wayfaring. The track is twenty or thirty yards wide or more. It
is untouched by wheels, and grows nothing but grass and the most
delicate flowers. Along similar droves doubtless the sheep go up to
the alpine grass in summer, as the shepherd in California told Miss
Mary Austin.[5] “We went between the fenced pastures, feeding every
other day and driving at night. In the dark we heard the bells ahead
and slept upon our feet. Myself and another herdboy, we tied ourselves
together not to wander from the road.... Whenever shepherds from the
Rhone are met about camps in the Sierras they will be talking of how
they slept upon their feet and followed after the bells.” The best time
to meet travelling sheep is after one of the fortnightly markets at
East Ilsley among the Berkshire Downs, or at the time of the Ram Fair
there on August 1st, or at the time of Tan Hill Fair on August 6th,
or Yarnbury Fair on October 4th. Tan Hill and Yarnbury fairs are both
held within the circuit of an old camp on the high chalk. Yarnbury is
a meeting-place of trackways over Salisbury Plain. Tan Hill is close
to the great Ridgeway and other trackways. Tan is supposed by some to
be connected with the Celtic “tan,” meaning fire, and with Celtic
religious festivals having ceremonies of fire. This fair was held at
a very early hour, and there is an obvious temptation to suggest a
religious origin for the beacons said to have been lighted to guide the
drovers.[6] I do not know what number of sheep would be sold at this
fair. Defoe says that as many as five hundred thousand were sold at
Weyhill Fair, one farmer attending to represent ten or twenty in his
own county of Sussex or Oxfordshire. If this number came to Tan Hill
it was worth a night’s drenching to see the beacons and the multitudes
arriving, to hear the bells and the sea of tired bleating and the sharp
chiding of the overstrung dogs and the curses of the sleepy drovers
upon that smooth, bare mountain without house or hut or a white road,
or anything much newer than Wansdyke except the square of mustard that
began to dawn through the mist like a banner not far away.

[5] _The Flock_, by Mary Austin.

[6] _Wiltshire Archæological Magazine_, XXXIV.

The Arab’s answer to Mr. Doughty’s[7] question whether he knew all the
strange spires, pinnacles, and battlements of the wind-worn sand rock
in the desert was that he knew, “as good as every great stone” in all
his marches over three or four thousand square miles; and there were
drovers who could have said as much of the landmarks on the downs, the
tumulus and camp, the furze thicket, the hawthorns, solitary or in
line, the beech or fir clump, the church tower, the distant white wall
or scallop of a chalk-pit, the white horse carved through the turf into
the chalk, the church towers of the valley, the long coombes.

[7] _Travels in Arabia_, by Charles M. Doughty.

Even when deserted, these old roads are kept in memory by many signs.
The grass refuses to grow over the still stream of turf in the same
way as at either side of it. A line of thorn trees follows their
course, or the hedge or fence or wall dividing two fields. They
survive commonly and conspicuously as boundaries between fields,
between estates, parishes, hundreds, and counties. It is one of the
adventurous pleasures of a good map thus to trace the possible course
of a known old road or to discover one that was lost. A distinct chain
of footpath, lane, and road--road, lane, and footpath--leading across
the country and corresponding in much of its course with boundaries is
likely to be an ancient way. By this means much of the line of a road
like the Icknield Way might be recovered if document and tradition had
not preserved it. Without these signs few men to-day could tell an old
from a new road, though, in fact, there are not many great lengths
of entirely new road except in new towns and newly drained regions;
elsewhere the new roads have been made by linking up or improving
old ones. The life of cities has destroyed at once the necessity and
the power to judge the expanse of earth under our eyes, and few but
soldiers educate whatever gift they have for this kind of judgment. If
we learn to use a map, it is without fundamental understanding, without
the savage’s or the soldier’s or the traveller’s grasp; we must have
inherited glimmerings of the old power, but they help us chiefly to an
æsthetic appreciation of landscape. Let a man take an old map--not a
very old one, which may be faulty or deficient--of his own district,
and see if he can really grasp the system of the hills and rivers, and
the bones of the land and the essential roads, and not be long baffled
merely by the absence of certain new roads and familiar names; for few
old ones will have entirely disappeared. If he is not so baffled he has
cause for pride. Many are to be found who can hardly read a map when
going from north to south, i.e. down the map instead of up it, with
the east on the left and the west on the right and the north behind;
and their difficulty is increased by being in a railway train. Such
men may be very good walkers and very good men, though they be walking
for exercise, or to improve body or soul, which is a reason that has
lately been condemned by Mr. Belloc. “The detestable habit of walking
for exercise,” he tells us, “warps the soul.”[8] He is perhaps assuming
that the man always keeps this one object in view, and is always
looking at his watch or feeling his pulse. But even a man walking for
exercise may forget his object and unexpectedly profit; he may surprise
happiness by the wayside or beyond the third stile, and no man can do
more, whether he have the best and the most Bellocian object in the
world. Then he condemns also men who ride along the road and into an
inn yard and feel that they are “like some one in a book.” This is a
rather serious matter. Authors have unintentionally persuaded simple
men to suffer many blisters for the chance of drinking ale in the
manner of Borrow and meeting adventures, in the hope of being heartily
and Whitmanesquely democratic. Even Leslie Stephen half-seriously
lamented that he was unworthy of Borrovian adventures; for they never
fell to him. A writer in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ has made a good
piece of prose in which he speaks of himself reading the _Essays of
Elia_ in an old inn at Llandovery--as Hazlitt read _La Nouvelle Heloise_
at Llangollen on his birthday. A great many must be walking over
England nowadays for the primary object of writing books: it has not
been decided whether this is a worthy object. Mr. John Burroughs also
condemns a walk taken as a prescription, but goes so far as to regard
walking itself as a virtue. He says that his countrymen “have fallen
from that state of grace which capacity to enjoy a walk implies”;
that they pride themselves on small feet, though “a little foot never
yet supported a great character.” He says they could “walk away from
all their ennui, their worldly cares, their uncharitableness, their
pride of dress; for these devils always want to ride, while the simple
virtues are never so happy as on foot.” He concludes by singing “the
sweetness of gravel and good sharp quartz-grit.” He must be singing
the grit of yester-year, or he never walked all day in the full blaze
of summer upon the grit between Newmarket and Hitchin. Leslie Stephen
thought the true walker one to whom walking “is in itself delightful”;
he regarded walking as a panacea for authors, and believed that it
could have cured Johnson and made Byron like Scott. A year or two ago
Mr. Harold Munro took a month across France into Italy, for a part of
the time putting himself out of reach of letters--to prove to himself
that he could do it. There are plenty of adventures in modern life,
but we still crave for the conspicuous ones which look so splendid
when their heroes are distant or in the grave. These are the only
adventures which we deign to recognize as such, and walking being a
primitive act “natural to man,” as Mr. Belloc says, we feel restored
to a pristine majesty, or Arcadianism at least, when we undertake it.
Perhaps if we walk long enough we shall discover something about roads.
There could be few better objects for walking, unless it be to meet a
mistress or to fetch a doctor. We walk for a thousand reasons, because
we are tired of sitting, because we cannot rest, to get away from towns
or to get into them, or because we cannot afford to ride; and for
permanent use the last is perhaps the best, as it is the oldest.

[8] See his Introduction to _The Footpath Way: an Anthology for
Walkers_.

[Illustration: The Icknield Way and Old Parallel Tracks, near
Newmarket.]




CHAPTER II

HISTORY, MYTH, TRADITION, CONJECTURE, AND INVENTION


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, Crugian Ladies, or the plain Carn,
Long Barrow, or Dolmen. Not many could explain altogether why these are
impressive. We remember the same lettering in old mysterious books, and
in Scott’s _Marmion_ and Wordsworth’s _Hartleap Well_. We are touched
in our sense of unmeasured antiquity, we acknowledge the honour and the
darkness of the human inheritance. Most impressive of all, because they
recur across many counties, are the names of roads, like the Sarn Helen
of Wales, the Pilgrims’ Way of England. It is part of their power that
they have no obvious and limited significance, and were certainly not
bestowed by king or minister as names are given by a merchant to his
commodities. Instead of “London Road” we see “Watling Street”; instead
of “North Road” there is “Foss Way” or “Ermine Street.” But all these
make some appeal, however fantastical, to the intelligence. “Icknield
Street” or “Icknield Way” makes no such appeal. It is the name of
two apparently distinct roads: one with a Roman look running north
and south through Worcestershire and Warwickshire, the other winding
with the chalk hills through Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire,
Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire, and Wiltshire.
I shall confine myself as far as possible to this second road. It
runs south-westwards from East Anglia and along the Chilterns to the
Downs and Wessex; but the name is mysterious. For centuries--since
Holinshed--it was supposed to be connected with the East Anglian
kingdom of the Iceni: only fifty years ago Guest confidently translated
it as the warpath of the Iceni, and connected it with the names of
places along its course, such as Icklingham, Ickleton, and Ickleford.
To-day, it is pointed out with equal confidence that “according to
philological laws Iceni would have produced in England a form beginning
with Itch- or Etch-.” Dr. Henry Bradley cannot believe that there
was any knowledge of the Iceni in Berkshire, but finds it “a natural
supposition” that the road was called after a woman named Icenhild,
though he points out that no such person or name is known in myth or
history.

It is a pleasure to see a learned man of the twentieth century thus
playing at the invention of a twilight deity as the patroness of an
old road, like the Helen or Elen of Wales. Two hundred years ago his
invention would have been wholly serious and generations of equally
serious and less inventive antiquaries would have followed him. There
have been other explanations. Camden, at the same time as Holinshed,
accepted the connection with the Iceni, but “what the origin of the
name should be,” he says in his _Suffolk_, “as God shall help me, I
dare not guess, unless one should derive it from the _wedgy_ figure of
the county, and refer to its lying upon the ocean in form of a _wedge_.
For the Britons in their language call a wedge Iken....” John Aubrey
had it from “Mr. Meredith Lloyd” that “Ychen is upper, as to say the
upper country or people,” and that “Ychen” also signifies “oxen.”
Wise, in 1738, linked it with the name of Agricola, because of the
significant core of Ick, or in the form “Ryknield,” rick. Willis, in
1787, said that the road took its name from the Itchen, believing that
it began at Southampton and went parallel to that river to Winchester;
and that Iken-eld was the Saxon name for the Old Iken Street. The poet
William Barnes, lover of ancient Britons, said that it might come from
a word meaning high or upper, either because it was “an upcast way” or
because it was the “upper or eastern road,” while Ryknield seemed to
him to come from a word meaning a trench, and therefore a “hollow way.”
And still nobody knows or believes that anybody else knows. The name,
therefore, throws no light at present on the use or history of the road.

Much has been written about the Icknield Way by antiquaries from the
sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Most of them regarded the
road as one of the four royal roads or Roman roads of Britain, on
the authority not of local evidence and direct examination, but of
half-mythic laws and histories. The earliest of these are “The Laws of
Edward the Confessor.” Here four roads are mentioned--Watlinge strete,
Fosse, Hikenilde strete, and Erminge strete--two of them extending
across the breadth of the land and two throughout the length; and
travellers on them were protected by the king’s peace. But Liebermann
assigns as a probable date to these laws a year between 1130 and 1135:
Pollock and Maitland, in their _History of English Law_, condemn the
work as a compilation of the last years of Henry I; having something
of the nature of a political pamphlet and being adorned with pious
legends, “its statements, when not supported by other evidence, will
hardly tell us more than that sane men of the twelfth century would
have liked these statements to be true.” The French version of the
“Laws of William the Conqueror” is almost word for word the same as
the Laws of the Confessor in the matter of the royal roads: the Latin
version omits Hykenild strete. Roger de Hoveden, in 1200, uses almost
the same words: so does Henry of Huntingdon in 1130, except that he
describes the Icknield Way as going out of the east into the west.

Mr. Harold Peake suggests to me that these writers may all have had as
their inspiration the brilliant Geoffrey of Monmouth, who wrote the
_History of the British Kings_ in the early twelfth century. He tells
us, in language not more credible than that of “The Dream of Maxen” in
the _Mabinogion_, that King Belinus commanded four roads to be made
over the length and breadth of the island:--

“Especially careful was he [King Belinus] to proclaim that the cities
and the highways that led unto the city should have the same peace that
Dunwallo had established therein. But dissension arose as concerning
the highways, for that none knew the line whereby their boundaries
were determined. The king therefore, being minded to leave no loophole
for quibbles in the law, called together all the workmen of the whole
island, and commanded a highway to be builded of stone and mortar that
should cut through the entire length of the island from the Cornish sea
to the coast of Caithness, and should run in a straight line from one
city unto another the whole of the way along. A second also he bade be
made across the width of the kingdom, which, stretching from the city
of Menevia on the sea of Demetia as far as Hamo’s port, should show
clear guidance to the cities along the line. Two others also he made to
be laid out slantwise athwart the island so as to afford access unto
the other cities. Then he dedicated them with all honour and dignity,
and proclaimed it as of his common law, that condign punishment should
be inflicted on any that should do violence to other thereon. But if
any would fain know all of his ordinances as concerning them, let him
read the Molmutine laws that Gildas the historian did translate out
of the British into Latin, and King Alfred out of the Latin into the
English tongue.”

This great north-and-south road is like Ermine Street, the slantwise
roads might be Watling Street and the Foss Way, and that across the
width from Menevia to “Hamo’s port,” the Icknield Way. As Geoffrey
makes one road go from the Cornish sea to Caithness, so Henry of
Huntingdon takes his Fosse Way from Totnes to Caithness. Henry, as is
known, had read part or all of Geoffrey’s book before it was given to
the world and made an abstract of it; and the romancer had warned him
to be silent as to the British kings, because he had not that book in
the British tongue, brought from Brittany by Walter, Archdeacon of
Oxford, and translated into Latin by Geoffrey himself. Here, as usual,
it can safely be said that Geoffrey’s words are not pure invention; but
what his authority in writing or tradition may have been appears to be
undiscoverable. He may have used some tradition which was the basis
also of the account of the Empress Helen’s road-making in “The Dream of
Maxen.” He may have used the so-called laws of Dynwal Moel Mud--“before
the crown of London and the supremacy of this island were seized by
the Saxons”--who measured the length and breadth of the island, in
order “to know its journeys by days.” (_Laws and Institutes of Wales:
Vendotian Code._) Henry of Huntingdon may well have been a meek adapter
of Geoffrey’s majestic statements, and some local knowledge of his own
may have helped him to put names upon the roads of Belinus. To this
second road from St. David’s (Menevia) to Hamo’s port or Southampton
he gives the name of Ichenild or Ikenild. Walter Map, in _De Nugis
Curialium_ (_circa_ 1188), speaks of Canute holding London and the
land beyond Hickenild, and Edmund the rest; the Anglo-Saxon _Chronicle_
says that Edmund had Wessex and Canute the “north part” or Mercia; and
these two together help to define the road.

Whether Henry of Huntingdon’s history owed anything to Geoffrey, Robert
of Gloucester’s metrical chronicle (_circa_ 1300) certainly did, for
he refers to Belinus as the road-maker; but, like Henry, he calls
the road from Totnes to Caithness the Fosse. Of the Icknield Street
he says that it went from east to west, and also, apparently, that
it was the road from St. David’s to Southampton through Worcester,
Cirencester, and Winchester. A writer of _circa_ 1360, Ralph Higden,
mentions Belin, and he gives two theories about the Fosse, but
evidently himself knows nothing. He calls the east-and-west road
from St. David’s to Southampton Watling Street. His fourth road goes
from south to north, from St. David’s, by Worcester and Birmingham,
Lichfield and Derby, Chesterfield and York, to Tynemouth; and its name
varies in different manuscripts from Rikenildstrete to Hikenilstrete.
Guest has pointed out that Higden was following Geoffrey. In the
_Eulogium Historiarum_ (1362) this road goes from south to north from
St. David’s to Tynemouth, and is called once Belinstrete, and three
times Hykeneldstret or Hikeneldstret. The author does not mention
Ermine Street, but two Belinstretes, the other going from St. David’s
to Southampton. It is likely that none of these men except Geoffrey and
perhaps Henry could have mapped the roads.

The one map of the period showing the roads is such as they might have
been expected to make. It belongs probably to the thirteenth century
and was reproduced by Hearne, from a British Museum manuscript, in Vol.
V of his edition of Leland’s _Itinerary_ (1710). It shows the four
roads by means of lines and a brief description--his Fosse going in the
approved manner from Totnes to Caithness, the Ermine Street due north
and south, the Watling Street from south-east to north-west. Ykenild
Street goes straight across from west to east. The artist’s description
of this as of the other roads is almost word for word from Henry of
Huntingdon. But there are these differences and additions: the western
extremity of the Icknield Way is not called St. David’s, but Salisbury,
which is thus placed due north of Totnes where St. David’s should be;
the eastern--or, as he calls it, the southern--is St. Edmunds. At
the point of intersection with Watling Street he writes “Dunstaple,”
which is accurate. Thus he is original only in his description of the
Icknield Way. In putting “Meridies” by St. Edmunds he made a slip due
to his drawing the map with its north end on the right side. It is
impossible to decide the extent of his mistake in marking Salisbury
at the west end of the road. He may have believed that it went to
Salisbury, but have been afraid to deviate from the received opinion
that it was an east-and-west road; or he may simply have put Salisbury
in mistake for St. David’s. Giving Bury St. Edmunds as the eastern
termination suggests local knowledge which the accurate position of
Dunstable confirms. He may have been a man of the eastern counties who
thought that Salisbury was not only the end of the road, as travellers
told him, but a city in the west.

Holinshed, in his _Chronicles_ (1586), mentions Geoffrey as the
authority for the origin of the four great roads, and, after quoting
him, goes on to describe an “Ikenild or Rikenild” beginning somewhere
in the south and going through Worcester, Birmingham, and Chesterfield
to the mouth of the Tyne. “I take it,” he says, “to be called the
Ikenild, because it passed through the kingdome of the Icenes. For
albeit that Leland and others following him doo seeme to place the
Icenes in Norffolke and Suffolke; yet in mine opinion that cannot well
be doone, sith it is manifest by Tacitus that they laie neere unto the
Silures, and (as I gesse) either in Stafford and Worcester shires, or
in both, except my conjecture doo fail me.” Here it is to be noticed,
first, that he gives Ikenild and Rikenild as alternative names of one
road and, second, that he sees the resemblance between “Ikenild” and
“Iceni.” He has evidently thought about the matter, but he shows no
trace of local knowledge or curiosity. Camden (1586) also only mentions
the road in his introduction to the subject of the Iceni; though he has
to speak of many places touched by the road, he ignores the fact, if he
ever knew it. The poet Drayton, in his _Polyolbion_ (1616), substitutes
“Michael’s utmost Mount” for Totnes at the south end of the Fosse
Way, and takes Watling Street from Dover to “the farth’st of fruitful
Anglesey,” and he writes like a Warwickshire man of the country where
those two roads cross (Song xiii, II, 311 _et seq._; Song xxvi, II, 43
_et seq._). In the “Sixteenth Song” of _Polyolbion_ he makes Watling
sing of herself and her “three sister streets”:--

    Since us, his kingly ways, Mulmutius first began,
    From sea again to sea, that through the Island ran.
    Which that in mind to keep posterity might have,
    Appointing first our course, this privilege he gave,
    That no man might arrest, or debtors’ goods might seize
    In any of us four his military ways.

Having sung of the Fosse, Watling continues:--

    But O, unhappy chance! through time’s disastrous lot,
    Our other fellow streets lie utterly forgot:
    As Icning, that set out from Yarmouth in the East,
    By the Iceni then being generally possest,
    Was of that people first term’d Icning in her race,
    Upon the Chiltern here that did my course imbrace:
    Into the dropping South, and bearing then outright,
    Upon the Solent Sea stopt on the Isle-of-Wight.

“Rickneld” he takes from St. David’s to Tynemouth.

It is very clear that Drayton had read Geoffrey or a disciple. The
notes to _Polyolbion_ reveal the fact that Selden accepted Molmutius
and his laws. “Take it upon credit of the British story” are his words.
He accepted also King Belin and the making of the four roads; but
having noticed that authorities vary as to their courses and even their
names, he is content to say, “To endeavour certainty in them were but
to obtrude unwarrantable conjecture, and abuse time and you.” Evidently
he knew these roads as a whole neither from personal knowledge nor
from contemporary report, but only from books. Had he known anything
he would have betrayed it, for he digresses to tell the little that he
knows of “Stanstreet in Surrey.”

Drayton apparently knew more, though perhaps all his knowledge was not
available for verse. He is the first to distinguish clearly between
the Ricknield and the Icknield Street. He takes the Icknield Way from
Yarmouth to the Solent; the definite “Yarmouth,” now for the first time
connected with the road, the use of the variant Icning, the connection
with the Chilterns, the crossing of Watling Street--all suggest local
knowledge. Here more than ever it is to be wished that Drayton had
either written his book in prose or had given his authorities and his
actual notes of local lore. He was a great lover of England and of
Wales, and could have written one of the finest prose books of the
seventeenth century had he put down what he knew without ramming it
into the mould of rhyme.

Of all these men except Drayton and the man who drew the map, none
betrays personal knowledge of the road. They are all writing of
something either too generally known to need explanation or of
something which they know only from other writers. All their words
together hardly do more than prove that there was or had formerly been
a road, known as Ricknield or Icknield Street; or at most that there
were or had been three roads bearing those names--one from St. David’s
east and then north to Tynemouth; a second running south-westwards
across the east of England from Norfolk to Southampton; and a third
from St. David’s to Southampton. The second seems to owe nothing
to Geoffrey, and all the local knowledge, such as it is, is so far
connected with this.

In 1677 appeared a book by one who had not only heard of the four royal
roads, but had met with what he believed to be one of them. This was
Robert Plot’s _Natural History of Oxfordshire_. He says:--

“Of the four Basilical, Consular, or Prætorian ways, or Chemini
majores, I have met with but one that passeth through this County,
the discovery whereof yet I hope may prove acceptable, because not
described before, or its footsteps any where noted by Sir H. Spelman,
Mr. Camden, or any other Author that I have read or could hear of:
whereat indeed I cannot but very much wonder, since it is called by its
old name at very many places [Ikenildway] to this very day. Some indeed
call it Icknil, some Acknil, others Hackney, and some again Hackington,
but all intend the very same way, that stretches it self in this County
from North-east to South-west; coming into it (out of Bucks) at the
Parish of Chinner, and going out again over the Thames (into Berks)
at the Parish of Goreing. The reason, I suppose, why this way was not
raised, is, because it lies along under the Chiltern Hills on a firm
fast ground, having the hills themselves as a sufficient direction:
which is all worth notice of it, but that it passes through no town or
village in the County, but only Goreing; nor does it (as I hear) scarce
any where else, for which reason ’tis much used by stealers of Cattle:
and secondly, that it seems by its pointing to come from Norfolk and
Suffolk, formerly the Kingdom of the Iceni, from whom most agree (and
perhaps rightly enough) it received its name Icenild or Ikenild; and to
tend the other way westward perhaps into Devonshire and Cornwall, to
the Land’s End.”

He adds, with some triumph, that Holinshed was much mistaken, but he
suspends his judgment because he has read in Dugdale’s _Antiquities
of Warwickshire_ of an “Ickle-street” in that county. He prints a map
showing the road passing, all on its right hand as it goes south,
the villages of “Kempton,” Chinner, Oakley, Crowell Kingston, Aston
Rowant, Lewkner, Sherborne, Watlington, the Britwells, Ewelme, Croamish
Gifford, Nuneham, Warren, Mungewell, the three Stokes, and then south
of Goring Church. He adds that under “Stokenchurch Hills,” about
Lewkner and Aston Rowant, there are two Icknield ways, an upper and a
lower; and here it may be mentioned that Hearne’s diary for September
29th, 1722, has the entry:--

“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.

A period of antiquarian conjecture and invention was now beginning,
with exploration often of an active kind, but usually kept sternly
in obedience to speculation. At the end of the sixth volume of
Hearne’s _Leland_ (1710) is an essay supposed to be by Roger Gale
(1672-1744). He has no doubt about “four great roads,” but regards
the story of Molmutius and Belinus as exploded, and says that “nobody
now questions but that” the Romans made them. He distinguishes, “as
does Mr. Drayton,” between Icknield and Ricknield, and complains of
the old confusion. The Icknield Way, “which has its rise and name
from the people called Iceni,” he finds first “with any certainty
near Barley in Herts,” as in Robert Morden’s map; but he suggests an
eastern continuation through Ickleton, “and so by Gogmagog hills,
and over Newmarket Heath to Ikesworth, not two miles south from St.
Edmundsbury,” and possibly to Burgh Castle, near Yarmouth. Returning
westward, he describes a course which might have been taken from
Morden’s map, except that in the neighbourhood of Luton it touches
Streatley instead of Leagrave, and goes to Houghton Regis as well as
to Dunstable. But having reached Buckinghamshire, he cannot find it
“anywhere apparent to the eye ... except between Princes Risborrow and
Kemble in the Street, where it is still call’d Icknell Way.” These
are words which suggest that the eye was not his own. In Oxfordshire
he leaves the road to Plot. At Goring and Streatley he does not know
what to do, because his guides--Henry of Huntingdon and Drayton and
others--disagree. He conjectures a continuation to Southampton, another
through Speen to Salisbury and beyond, where he has found the name
“Aggleton Road,” locally given to the road near Badbury Castle, the
Roman road from Old Sarum to Dorchester. He thinks “Aggleton Road” can
have no connection with Ickleton, but he shows no other reason for
believing that his Roman road is the Icknield Way.

In 1724 appeared the _Itinerarium Curiosum_ of Gale’s friend William
Stukeley (1687-1765), M.D., F.R.S., F.R.C.P. Here he describes an
exploration of the Icknield Way. He takes it through Ickleton and, like
Gale, through Streatley, near Luton; he mentions the lovely prospect
from the northern sides of the Chilterns and a few more place-names.
East of Ickleton, or his newly discovered Roman camp at Great
Chesterford, he speaks of the road going along the boundary between
Essex and Cambridgeshire “towards Icleworth in Suffolk.” He thinks the
road Roman. Beyond the Thames he has no uncertainty like Gale. He says
straight out that at Speen “the great Icening-street road coming from
the Thames at Goring ... crosses the Kennet river”; also that he found
it a little north of Bridport going to Dorchester, and accompanied it
“with no small pleasure.” If he had any reason for calling any part
of this road “the great Icening Street of the Romans,” it has never
been discovered, nor has anything else confirmed his view, except that
Leland saw two Roman milestones between Streatley and Aldworth, which
have been seen since, but never described except in rumour. William
Stukeley, M.D., F.R.S., F.R.C.P., who read “Oriuna” for “Fortuna” on
a coin, and so invented the belief that one Oriuna was the wife of
Carausius, was soon afterwards unanswerably questioned and plainly
contradicted on matters of fact by Smart Lethieullier (1701-60) and
Richard Willis. He is chiefly memorable here because the now venerable
title of _Via Iceniana_ was conferred by him on the road which he chose
to believe the Icknield Way. The title, translated back into Icknield
Street, is still generally accepted.

Francis Wise (1697-1767) found the road where Gale had lost it, beyond
the ford at Streatley. In his book on _Some Antiquities in Berkshire_
he 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.

[Illustration: “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 embodied in his
_Origines Celticæ_ (1883), Edwin Guest wrote a long account of the
Icknield Way. He mentions as evidence charters of the tenth century
referring to estates in Berkshire between Blewbury and Wayland’s
Smithy, so minute, he says, as almost to be sufficient foundation for a
map, but not to enable him to trace the road; for he accepts Bennet’s
substitution of the Ridgeway. North of the Thames his earliest evidence
is a parchment, possibly of the fourteenth century, relating to the
foundation of Dunstable Priory at a place where the two royal roads of
Watling and Ickneld cross, a place of woods and robbers near Houghton.
He quotes a “letter testimonial of 1476” proving that this trackway,
west of Dunstable, was known as Ikeneld Strete. He takes the road
from Icklingham and through Ickleton and Ickleford because that is a
possible course and because he believes those names to be connected
with “Iceni” and “Icknield.” What was the one great road described as
Icknield Street in the _Laws of the Confessor_ he finds it hard to
define. But he can find no traces of Roman construction in the road.
Inspired by the map showing Salisbury at the end of the road, he
suggests that “most probably” it joined the Ridgeway east of Avebury
and continued along its course, as recently described by Sir Richard
Colt Hoare.

Messrs. Woodward and Wilks, in their history of Hampshire (1861-9), are
well acquainted with the many theories of the road, and “on the whole
see most reason” for agreeing with Drayton, but also for giving the
name to the Roman road from Winchester to Cirencester and Gloucester,
or another Roman road running north-west of Basingstoke. They speak
of the allegation that in ancient deeds the road to Gloucester
is designated as Hicknel or Hicknal Way; but these have not been
identified.

C. C. Babington, in his _Ancient Cambridgeshire_ (1883), speaks of
the road as easily traced from Thetford to Kentford, and he regards
Woodward’s British way from Norwich by Wymondham and Attleborough to
Thetford as a continuation. But he has no documentary evidence, no
tradition, and no local name to support his conjectures at any point
between Norwich and Royston, except at Newmarket. He could not find
Bennet’s road from Newmarket east of the turnpike. Probably the bishop
meant the roads west of Westley Waterless, past Linnet Hall, west of
Weston Colville, West Wratting and Balsham; it is improbable that
he did more than fly over them in fancy. He is satisfied that where
the parish, and afterwards the county, boundaries coincide with the
present road from Newmarket it is the Icknield Way, especially as at
Stump Cross the county boundary follows the sudden turn out of the
main road along a little-used lane leading over the Cam to Ickleton.
From Ickleton to a point near Chrishall Grange and a tumulus--where
for a mile the lane is a county boundary--it is uncertain; but from
that point to Noon’s Folly he is content with the “nearly disused
track,” which near there again becomes a county boundary. Thus he
connects Newmarket and Royston by a road of the same character as the
well-warranted parts of the Icknield Way without any evidence but
probability.

The Rev. A. C. Yorke (_Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian
Society_, 1903) prefers the road known as Ashwell Street, which runs
for some miles nearly parallel with the supposed Icknield Way and is
most clear from Ashwell, north of Baldock, to Melbourn, north-east
of Royston. In a lucid and vigorous article he says that “there can
be no doubt” that “Ashwell Street is the original Icknield Way.” He
is willing to give up the name of one road, take away the name from
another road which has borne it since 1695, and in one place since
Henry the Third, and give it to the first which has never borne it, so
far as he knows. He thinks the so-called Icknield Way from Newmarket
to Hitchin, Roman; just as others think his Ashwell Street Roman, Mr.
F. Codrington, e.g., holding that Ashwell Street was an alternative
course, leaving the Icknield Way at Worsted Lodge and returning at
Wilbury Camp.

[Illustration: Wilbury Camp.]

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.

The partly lost line of this lane he has made out through Mulbarton;
beyond which he is struck by the place-names of Keningham, Kentlow,
and Kenninghall, noticing the other similar names on or near the
supposed Icknield Way--Kentford, Kennet, Kensworth (once “Ikensworth”),
Kennett, in Wiltshire, and, beyond Exeter, Kenn and Kenn Ford. Other
documents of 1482 and 1658 relating to the next parish to Swainsthorpe,
Stoke Holy Cross, enable him to extend the road with some probability
eastward. They also show that the road was known at about the same
time as Hickley Lane in one parish, and Stoke Long Lane in another.
Most remarkable of all, he has found in Blomefield mention of “the
way called Ykeneldsgate” in the same parish of Stoke Holy Cross, in
1306. He suggests reaching Haddiscoe as his “port in Celtic times,” by
Framingham Earl, Bergh Apton, Thurton Church, Loddon, and Raveningham.
He sternly avoids Norwich as post-Roman, and Bury for the same reason.
At the same time he admits the probability of branches to those places
when they became important. Thus he shows that he has in his mind one
road, with one name, and that something like Icknield Street, going
from sea to sea, not only in the Confessor’s time, but before the
Romans.

It is impossible even to outline the multitudinous conjectures at the
north-east end of the Icknield Way. At the south-west conjecture has
been all but silenced by Stukeley’s invention of the Via Iceniana and
Bennet’s substitution of the Ridgeway, both stupefying fictions.

For two hundred years these conjectures have been multiplied and
become venerable by repetition. Plot thinks that the road might go
from Norfolk to Devon and Land’s End. Gale fancies Caistor and Burgh
Castle at one end, and, as Stukeley did, Exeter at the other. Dr. Beeke
“supposes” it went from Streatley towards Silchester, also that it
crossed the Thames at Moulsford. Colt Hoare speaks of it as connecting
Old Sarum with Dorchester and Winchester. Arthur Taylor takes it for
granted that it came from “Cornwall or some extreme point in the
south-west of Britain” to Norwich and Hickling. Isaac Taylor says
that it went from Norwich to Dorchester and Exeter. Mr. H. M. Scarth
conjectures that the road crossing the main street of Silchester,
which runs east and west, may have been an extension of the Icknield
Way from Wallingford to Winchester. In _Social England_ Col. Cooper
King, following Stukeley, takes the road to Exeter, Totnes, and Land’s
End; following Bennet, he takes it along the Ridgeway. Elton calls
it briefly a road from Norwich through Dunstable and Silchester to
Southampton, and to Sarum and the western districts.

The theorists and conjecturers have done little to ascertain the
course of a road which can safely be called the Icknield Way. By far
the greater part of the work has been done by men who used chiefly
local tradition. Plot in Oxfordshire, Wise in Berkshire, perhaps
Robert Morden or an unknown assistant in Hertfordshire. The best of
the conjecturers have only linked up the authenticated parts in a
probable manner. Most have been too busy with their own views to be
anything but benevolent to others. But in 1901 appeared one with no
theory and without benevolence, Professor F. Haverfield. In a chapter
on “Romano-British Norfolk,” in the _Victoria County History_ of that
county, he pronounces that the Icknield Way is not a Roman road; that
it has nothing to do with the Iceni or Norfolk or Suffolk; that the
name Icknield and the names like Ickleton and Kenninghall of places on
the road, or supposed parts of it, cannot, for philological reasons,
be connected with the Iceni. At present he is unanswerable, though his
mind is of a type which commands more interest when it affirms than
when it denies.

[Illustration: Icknield Way, near Ipsden, Oxfordshire.]

Since the time of Wise little has been done except to add proofs of the
antiquity of the road under the Chilterns and the Berkshire Downs. In
his day it was known from Royston to Bishopston. Taylor showed that it
touched Newmarket, but no more. Mr. Tingey shows that it went through
Stoke Holy Cross in Norfolk, but little or nothing has been done to
fill the gap between his fragment of Hickling Lane and Newmarket.
Even the road between Newmarket and Royston depends for its title
only on its respectability as a county and parish boundary. Reaching
the Thames there is no certainty of the principal ford; but Streatley
must have been one, and from there to Bishopston the main line of the
road is clear enough. A man may follow the whole of this road in a few
days, and be upon a beaten track if not a hard road everywhere, except
for a few hundred yards near Ipsden, and two or three miles from the
east side of Lockinge Park. The two lengths north and south of the
Thames make a road of uniform character, keeping almost entirely to
the chalk, but below the steepest wall of the hills. From Dunstable
westward this wall on the left or south of the road is an unmistakable
guide to the traveller; as far as Swyncombe he has only to cling to
the foot of the wall and he is on the Icknield Way. Beyond the Thames
the Downs make a guiding wall equally clear and continuous. It belongs
to what Mr. Harold Peake, in his “Prehistoric Roads of Leicestershire”
(_Memorials of Old Leicestershire_), calls the “hill-side” type of
road, which “winds along the sides of hills just above the alluvium.
Marshes and low-lying ground are avoided, but small streams do not
offer so great an obstacle as in the case of the ridge-roads.” He
compares it with the Pilgrims’ Way from Winchester to Canterbury, which
it closely resembles, except that it keeps always on the northern
slopes, instead of the southern, and commands throughout its course
views of a wide, fertile valley northward.

Until the enclosures and the metalling of roads the ruts and hoof-marks
of the Icknield Way were probably spread over a width of from a hundred
yards to a mile, according to convenience or necessity; from century
to century its course might vary even more. Thus the modern road
between Kentford and Newmarket is at several points some distance from
the Cambridge and Suffolk boundary, which is supposed to follow the
Icknield Way.

A deed already mentioned proves that the road was known in Newmarket
itself.

Beyond Newmarket the modern road is marked as the Icknield Way, but is
only a parish boundary, or rather close to one, for one mile in the
first eight, and is not authenticated by any known documents. Nor is
any parallel road in the same direction a boundary line. That it is on
an old line of road is certain from the number of tumuli which formerly
dotted the surrounding heath. It goes through three dykes, two,
eight, and thirteen miles from Newmarket, and it has been conjectured
both that the dykes defend the road and that the road was made by an
invader to pierce the dykes; one antiquary asserts that the fosse of
the Brent Ditch “has evidently been filled up to admit the road.”
From a little beyond the eighth milestone and Fleam Dyke the road is
a parish boundary, with very short interruptions between the eleventh
and twelfth, as far as the fourteenth, where it becomes the Cambridge
and Essex boundary. Turning west beyond the fifteenth, it is followed
for some distance by the county boundary, and is thrice rejoined by it,
the third time for two miles before entering Royston. By this sharp
turning to the west it avoids a Roman camp at Great Chesterford, and
passes what Camden called the “ancient little city” of Ickleton, where
in his time traces of the “Burrough banks” could plainly be seen. Near
Abbey Farm at Ickleton are the remains of a priory. Where it is again
a county boundary beyond Ickleton, near “a tumulus opened by the late
Lord Braybrooke,” it is a farm road, and continues as such in a clear
line through arable land and alongside hedges, until it joins the
main road into Royston. Here it goes over Burloes Hill, where many
indications of ancient burials have been found.

From Royston onwards, as has been seen, the road is marked in a map of
1695. It is mentioned, says Beldam (_Archæological Journal_, XXV), in
documents of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries among the monuments
of Royston Priory, as “Hickneld” and “Ykenilde.” There are hut-circles
on the heath to the west, associated with neolithic implements. At
Royston, as at Baldock and Tring, gold coins of Cunobelin have been
found; and here the road crosses Ermine Street. West of Royston the
road is again a county boundary, and goes for miles between many
tumuli. “A small Roman habitation” was opened at Slip End near Odsey
by Lord Braybrooke. At “Slip Inn” it bounds parishes instead of
counties. There is a manor-house and moat at Bygrave, and a tumulus on
Metley Hill opposite. Here it passes between two unenclosed parishes,
Bygrave and Clothall. It goes along the edge of Baldock, where they
have found neolithic and Bronze Age implements and coins of Cunobelin
and of “Icenian type,” and Roman urns: here is the crossing of Stane
Street from Godmanchester to Colchester. For five miles beyond Baldock
the road is a parish boundary. It touches a camp at Wilbury Hill,
and near it they have found “a great variety of coins of the Roman
emperors” and a small copper blade, coins of Constantine, bones and
ashes. Ickleford, where it ceases to be a boundary, has produced
palæolithic evidences, and the neighbourhood of Hitchin, a mile south,
palæolithic and neolithic and late Celtic. Two miles farther on it is
a parish boundary for a mile and a half, and then the Hertford and
Bedford boundary to the top of Telegraph Hill. Ravenspurgh Castle is
a mile north of it on the Barton Hills. It turns along Dray’s Ditches
and enters the road from Barton to Luton. Here the parish boundary
goes straight across, following a lane, to Great Bramingham Farm and,
with a break, to Chalton, from which the road might have gone through
to Houghton Regis and “the British town of Maiden Bower,” and to
the north of Dunstable. But the line of the road is continued from
Dray’s Ditches across the Luton road to Limbury, and over the Lea at
Leagrave Marsh, passing, near the moats and the remains of a nunnery
at Limbury, the fortification of Waulud’s Bank, and the scene of many
finds of coins and neolithic implements. This line is clear on Morden’s
seventeenth-century map. A new street called “Icknield Way” and a
footpath lead with recent interruptions into the Luton and Dunstable
road, which is for some time a parish boundary. Here it begins to
follow under the Downs, which have traces of Celtic huts.

[Illustration: Icknield Way, crossing Watling Street, Dunstable.]

The crossing of Watling Street at Dunstable is vouched for by Dugdale’s
ancient parchment relating to the foundation of the priory, and by
the map of the four royal roads. Between two barrows at Dunstable an
ancient trackway used to be traceable to the British camp of Maiden
Bower. In the _Catalogue of Ancient Deeds_ (I, II, III) there are
various references to tenements in the west field or west street
extending upon Ikenild-strete, viz. between the time of Edward III
and Henry VI. West of Dunstable the direction but not the course of
the road is proven by a “letter testimonial” of 1476, where a cross
is mentioned standing “in the field of Toternho, the which cross
standeth in Ikeneld Stret, to the which cross the way leading from
Spilmannstroste directly stretcheth and extendeth, at which place
there hath been a cross standing from time that no mind is.” Toternhoe
parish now includes three-quarters of a mile of the supposed Icknield
Way, from the inn at the turning to Kensworth Common, as far as Well
Head, and between these points the cross may have stood. Round about
the road here are many tumuli on the open downs, and traces of Celtic
huts. Toternhoe has a camp not a mile from Maiden Bower, which is
in Houghton Regis. A chalk pit three-quarters of a mile north-east
of the “Plough” yielded Roman coins in 1769. The “Ykenyldewey” is
mentioned in the description of a piece of land at Edlesborough,
south-west of Dunstable, in 1348 (Close Rolls, Edward III); and the
“Ikenyldstret” at Eaton Bray, close by, in the time of Edward II and
Richard II (_Catalogue of Ancient Deeds_, I, II, III). The villages of
Edlesborough and Eaton Bray are visible a little north of the road.
Passing under Beacon Hill and its tumulus, the road enters one from
Leighton Buzzard to Aldbury and Wigginton, and out of this road, at
points a little north and a little south of the entrance, run two
roads marked as the “Lower” and “Upper” Icknield Way, keeping more or
less parallel courses as far as Lewknor, where the lower is supposed
to join the upper. Neither is a parish or county boundary. At Aston
Clinton the “Lower” is crossed and deflected by Akeman Street, which
it enters for a mile in a north-westerly direction. Aston has yielded
late Celtic pottery. At Weston Turville the “Lower” passes, near the
manor-house, a place where a Roman amphora was found in 1855. Akeman
Street and several other roads cross and deflect the “Upper” Way.
After traversing Wendover you have a camp and barrow on Balcombe Hill,
a little to the south. A Danish entrenchment comes down to it from
Swyncombe Downs near Britwell. It crosses Grim’s Ditch at Foxberry
Wood. Flint implements have been found along its course, e.g. in
Pulpit Wood at Great Kimble, and at Bledlow. At Whiteleaf, above Monks
Risborough, and also above Bledlow, men have carved the turf into
crosses, which may be modifications of much earlier phallic forms.
British coins, inscribed and uninscribed, have been found at Wendover
and Ellesborough, Roman coins between Ipsden and Glebe Farm. Only
beyond, where the upper and lower roads are supposed to have united,
does the track coincide with a parish boundary, and that but seldom and
only for short distances. In Buckinghamshire it was known in the year
903, and mentioned in a “record by King Eadweard, at the request of
Duke Aethelfrid, who had lost the original deed by fire, of a grant
by Athulf to his daughter Aethelgyth of land at East Hrisan Byrg, or
Princes Risborough” (_Cartularium Saxonicum_, No. 603). It is there
called “the Icenhylte,” and the boundary of the land in question runs
along it as far as “the heathen burials.” Through Oxfordshire, from
Chinnor to Goring and the Streatley ford, the road is authenticated by
Plot’s map; but routes to the other fords are at present conjectural.
Streatley meant the longest way round for travellers going west through
Berkshire, but it offered the driest approaches on both hands and
the narrowest possible strip of wet land at the crossing. In summer
at least Wallingford would attract westward travellers; and there
is a thirteenth-century reference in the _Abingdon Chronicle_ to
Ikeneldstrete as running from Wallingford to Ashbury. Men using this
ford would have turned out of the Streatley track at Gypsies’ Corner;
and here, or a mile or two beyond, near Ipsden, they could branch to
Moulsford and the Stokes.

Beyond Streatley there is at first only one road westward on the dry
and rising land. This is the main road between Reading and Wantage,
with a fork to Wallingford. Mr. Church, of Wantage (1806), pronounced
this road to be the Ickleton Way as far as Upton, and his word may
be taken to prove at least that this was the local name. For anyone
crossing at Streatley and going west under the hills, instead of
along the ridge, there is no other road; and even from Moulsford and
Wallingford men would be forced, by the river on one side and bad
ground on the other, to enter this road at Upton, if not at Blewbury,
or before. The ford at Streatley is said to be Roman. Roman pottery
has been found in the river, and coins on the south bank. Roman coins
by the hundred, dating from 43 B.C. to A.D. 383, have been ploughed
up in the neighbourhood. “Near Aston” coins, A.D. 267-74, have been
found. They have dug up Roman things in Blewbury Fields, on Hagbourne
hill, at Hendred, on Charlton Downs, at Wantage, at Letcombe Regis,
in the Dragon Hill near the White Horse, at Woolston, and at Ashbury.
Implements of the Bronze Age have been recorded at Cholsey, Moulsford,
Blewbury, Hagbourne Hill, Wantage, Letcombe Bassett. Wallingford has
yielded palæolithic, neolithic, Bronze Age, and later evidences.

These things, and more that could be mentioned, suggest ancient
settlements and communications below the downs. Ickleton Street would
seem likely to have been the main line of travel here, and a series of
Saxon charters prove that such it was.

A grant of land by Edmund to Ælfric, and by him to Abingdon, shows
that an Ichenilde Wege went through Blewbury in 944, and that the
Ridgeway was distinct and at some distance from it; a grant in 903 by
Eadweard to Tata the son of Æthelhun and by him to Abingdon, one by
Edgar to Ælfric and by him to Winchester in 973, and one by Edgar to
Ælfstan and by him to Winchester in 970, show it at Harwell (Kemble,
_Codex Diplomaticus_, Nos. 1080, 578, 1273). In the grant of 903 the
boundary starts at a brook, the Swyn Brook, and goes along the Harwell
Way to the Icenhilde Wey, then up the old wood-way by the east of
Harwell Camp to a warren, and so up to the stone on the Ridgeway, then
on and back to the Ridgeway, and down on the other side of Harwell
Camp to the Icenhilde Wey, farther down to a spring and an elder
bed, evidently in the low land. This shows that the Icknield Way was
a road running between the Ridgeway and the lowest land. A grant of
land made in 955 by Eadred to Ælfheh and by him to Abingdon at Compton
Beauchamp (Kemble, No. 1172) proves the same. The boundary starts at
the Ridgeway, and goes to the Icenhilde Wey, and on to the Swyn Brook,
and back again past a barrow to the Icenhilde Wey, and up to the
Ridgeway, and over hills, slades, and a green way back to Wayland’s
Smithy. A grant of Æthelstan to Abingdon, of land in Woolston, Compton,
and Ashbury (Kemble, No. 1129), and another (No. 1168) mention as
landmarks Ikenilde Strete, then what is probably Uffington Castle, and
other places on the downs; then what is probably Ælfred’s Castle and
two barrows and the Ikenilde Strete again, and finally a rush bed in
the low land. A grant by Æthelwulf to Winchester and Bishop Stigand
in 854 of lands at Wanborough (Kemble, No. 1053) describes a boundary
passing downs and coombes to the source of the Hlyd (there is a Lyde
spring at Ashbury), along the stream to a ditch, past the Dorc stream,
the Smit stream, and a black pit, over the Icknield Way at or near some
heathen burial place, and so to down country with a white pit, two
stones, and a coombe, etc.--and from a study of the district Mr. Harold
Peake concludes that “the Icknield Way crossed the parish very near the
modern road which on the Ordnance Map bears this name, though I fancy
it ran originally a few hundred yards to the north.” It is clear, then,
that the Icknield Way ran as far as Wanborough between the highest and
lowest ground along a course similar to that of Wise’s Ickleton Street.
The road mentioned must either be Wise’s road or another of similar
course which has been superseded by it in name and use, and can hardly
be other than that now called on the Ordnance Map the Port Way.

Thus the road from Newmarket--or at least from Royston--by Streatley to
Wanborough parish is a venerable and continuous one, which bore almost
the same name at its extremities--Ykenildeweie at Newmarket in the time
of Henry III, Icenhilde Weg at Wanborough in 854. That it is Icknield
Street, one of the “four royal roads,” is proved only by its coming
out of the east and going westward, and by its crossing Watling Street
at Dunstable, as does the Ykenildstrete of the thirteenth-century map.
Unlike the other three roads, the Icknield Way appears not to have been
Romanized at any point, and, assuming that it had in the Middle Ages
the importance suggested by its rank with these roads, its primitive
character would explain its decay. Nothing rescued it as pilgrimages
rescued that part of an ancient east-and-west road now known as the
Pilgrims’ Way from Winchester to Canterbury (_The Old Road_, by Hilaire
Belloc). Its western object had apparently been so deeply lost in
Drayton’s time that the poet took it to Southampton, though whether
this line is to be traced to Geoffrey of Monmouth’s bold definition or
to contemporary usage cannot easily be decided. That this road through
Newmarket and Streatley is the one in Drayton’s mind is certain.

Of the other roads called Icknield Street, most, if not all, of
them difficult, where not impossible, to connect with this road as
continuations or as branches, one is particularly interesting here.

Dr. Macray’s “MS. Catalogue of Magdalen College Deeds” contains several
mentions of Ikenildwey or Hykenyldewey in descriptions of boundaries
at Enham, near Andover, in Hampshire. One belonging to 1270 refers to
land “in the east field of Enham, on the north of the highway called
Ikenildwey”; another of 1317 to two acres of land in Enham Regis in a
field called Bakeleresbury; “of the which one acre lies between the
land of Gilbert Slyk on either side, extending south to Ikenildwe ...”;
one of 1337 to arable land in the fields of Andover, of which half an
acre extends “above Hykenyldewey to the east,” between other estates
in the north and south, while another acre in the same field extends
“above Laddrewey to the north.” I conclude from these descriptions
that the Hykenyldewey here ran east and west, and it is not a region
of winding roads. Batchelor’s Barn and Walworth cottages, about a
mile east of Andover, seem to contain memories of “La Werthe,” “La
Walwert,” and “Bakeleresbury.” Both the barn and the cottages lie close
to the south side of the Harrow Way, which here goes east and west on
its way from Farnham to Weyhill. Walworth cottages are on the east
of the intersection of the Harrow Way and the north-westward Roman
road from Winchester to Wanborough Nythe, and not a mile south of the
intersection of this Roman road with the north-eastward Port Way from
Old Sarum to Silchester. Between the Harrow Way and the Port Way, and
in this part of its course almost parallel with them, is a road from
Stoke and Newbury. One of these roads is perhaps the road referred
to in the deeds as “Hykeynldewey.” The Harrow Way, which still bears
its name in the neighbourhood, is not likely to have been the road.
The Port Way appears to be purely Roman. If the road from Stoke were
the Icknield Way, it might have connected Streatley with Winchester
and Southampton, yet if it went to Winchester and Southampton, it can
hardly have been the road which is several times called Ikenilde Street
in records of the perambulations of the Hampshire forests. The survey
of Buckholt Forest, under Edward I, for example, contains the passage:
“Begin at the Deneway ... and so always by the divisions of the
counties of Southampton and Wilts to th’ Ikenilde Street, and thence
by the same to La Pulle”; and “from Pyrpe-mere to th’ Ikenilde and so
by the same road to Holeweye.” This road I cannot identify, but a road
touching both Enham and Buckholt Forest would probably reach Old Sarum.

There is an Icknield Street, marked as such on the Ordnance Map,
going north from Weston sub-edge to Bidford, and, after a gap, from
Stadley north towards Birmingham. It goes for some miles parallel to
a much higher Ridgeway. It leaves the Fosse Way four miles south of
Stow-in-the-Wold, near Bourton-on-the-Water, and is the road described
by Codrington as Ricknild Street. But Codrington refers to a part of
it--where the railway crosses it at Honeybourne station--as called
Ricknild or Icknield Street, and to the lane north of Bidford going
towards Alcester as Icknield Street. This road, or a longer one in
part coinciding with it, was first called Icknield Street by Ralph
Higden in the fourteenth century. It was one of his four royal roads,
and went from St. David’s to Worcester, Birmingham, and Derby. Some of
the manuscripts of his work called the road Ryckneld, which spelling
may or may not have been due to the local knowledge of a scribe; both
English translators or their scribes retain the R, calling the road
Rykenildes strete or Rikenilde Street. Mr. W. H. Duignan (_Notes on
Staffordshire Place Names_) quotes references to this road in the
twelfth century--between Lichfield and Derby--as Ikenhilde, Ykenild,
and Ricnelde; in the thirteenth century as Rikelinge and Ykenilde; in
the fourteenth century as Rykeneld strete. He also gives instances
which seem to prove that there were unconnected roads known as
Ricknield Street in the thirteenth century; and mentions a place now
called Thorpe Salvin, lying on no known Ricknield Street, but once
known as Rikenild-thorp. Selden found a deed mentioning Ricknield
Street as a boundary near Birmingham, and Dugdale one of 1223 relating
to Hilton Abbey.

The _Eulogium_ of 1362, when it does not call Higden’s road
Belinstrete, calls it Hykeneldstret, though when Gale quotes it he
makes it Rykeneldstrete. Stukeley calls it “the Ricning Way,” and
complains of Plot for calling it Icknil Way; yet he himself heard
it called the Hickling Street near the crossing of Watling Street.
Holinshed calls it “Ikenild or Rikenild.” In the time of the second and
third Edwards there were men named after Ikenilde or Hikenilde strete
(Pat. Rolls) in Worcestershire. One of them was a man of Alvechurch,
which lies west of the road between Stadley and Birmingham; and there
was an Ikeneld street in the sixteenth century within the lordship of
Allechurche in Worcestershire.

Drayton first distinguished between an eastern Icknield Street and a
western Ricknield Street. He evidently knew the Icknield Way along the
Chilterns, and his words about Rikneld Street as coming from Cambria’s
farther shore until the road

    “On his midway did me in England meet,”

suggest that he knew the road as a Warwickshire man, and that his
distinction was not wantonness or the precision of ignorance. Gale
accuses the road of taking the name of Ickle or Icknild Street without
any just title. Guest also believes that the western road “gradually
attached to itself the name of Icknield Street” as a famous name to
which it had no right. Wise, in search of something to help him,
suggests Hickling as the origin of the name, but knowing of Ryknield,
he is tempted also by Rickley in Essex--confesses the temptation--and
“must now beg leave to call” the road “the Great Ickle or Rickle
way.” This use of Rickling reminds me of a woman living in a cottage
beside the Ridgeway, near Chiseldon. I asked her the name of the road,
and she said, with some hesitation, “The Rudgeway.” I asked why it
was so called, and she said she did not know. I asked where it went,
and she answered, “Oh, over there!”--pointing west, “--to Rudge, I
suppose,” Rudge being near Westbury. An antiquary in the _Gentleman’s
Magazine_ (1787) comfortably explains the variation as due to the
British particle “yr” prefixed. But no one has found a Ricknield or a
Rickling or any such name along the course of the road from Newmarket
to Wanborough.

It seems likely that Icknield, like Watling and Ermine, was a generic
name for a road, whether due to its use by cattle, to Professor
Bradley’s Lady Icenhild, or to something else. One such road in
Worcestershire and the west, and another in the east tending westward,
were possibly at one time well known as continuous routes over long
stretches of country. The two could be connected. Ermine Street passed
through Wanborough Nythe at the west end of the Icknield Way from East
Anglia, went north-west to Cirencester, and thence both north-east
to Stow-on-the-Wold where it touched the Ricknield Street and the
Fosse Way, and north-west to Gloucester, and so to Worcester or to
Kentchester and the south-west of Wales. Another ancient road from
near Tring, the Akeman Street, would take travellers on the Icknield
Way due west to Cirencester, where they could branch as they pleased
to Gloucester and Wales or the north. Thus at both ends of Ermine
Street and Akeman Street or their continuations there were roads known
as Icknield Street; it is even possible that the whole system was
officially given the one name of Icknield Street, and such a system
might fitly be called a royal road. An eastern extension of the road
to a depôt and several ports in Norfolk is practically certain, though
it has not yet been discovered or satisfactorily reconstructed. A
south-western or western extension beyond Wanborough is almost equally
certain. There is no need to look for a road that is all of one type.
Without antiquarianism or modern regularity only common and continued
travel throughout its course can preserve a road. Even during this
extended use of it variants will be discovered from time to time
and used as alternatives or substitutes. As soon as this use ceases
portions of the road begin to decay, and soon those few having the old
need for it will have found another way. Each kind of civilization
doubtless has its own special kind of road, and gradually old roads
are so transformed or combined as to form such a road. But invaders or
newly organized people have to take what roads they find, unless they
have Roman will, forethought, and resource to make their own; though
by good fortune men suddenly needing a road may find an old one ready
as did the pilgrims from the south and west to Canterbury who used the
Pilgrims’ Way. Men wishing to travel from east to west, especially in
the south of England, would have found many tracks and roads of all
types ready to be linked so as to form a connection between important
points of trade, government, or religion. When it became possible to
traverse England safely, meeting foreign faces and strange tongues
but subjects of one king, traders and travellers would piece together
according to need the old roads which different ages had confirmed--the
high and most ancient roads like the Ridgeway and the Harrow Way,
late roads skirting the bases of the hills, pure Roman roads fearing
nothing, and Romanized trackways. The Icknield Way may have been such
a combination. The Danes might have combined it with the Ridgeway in
1005, when they burnt Wallingford and went by Cholsey and Cuckhamsley
to Kennet. They probably used the road along the Chilterns when they
burnt Thetford and Cambridge and turned south to the Thames; and other
parts of it when they stole inland from their ships through Norwich to
Thetford. Sweyn may have gone along it when he went to Wallingford, and
so over the Thames westward to Bath, where the western men submitted
and gave hostages and he became king of the whole people. Giraldus
may have trodden it in South Wales. At an earlier age, as Mr. Moray
Williams has suggested, the Icknield Way might have been the line of
the Iceni in their alleged migration westward, after the defeat of
Boadicea. It should have been Imogen’s pathway to Milford Haven. There
are not many early references to the travel upon the road. It would be
used chiefly by traders and travellers from a distance. Plot remarked
that it passed through no towns or villages in Oxfordshire, and this,
in his day, made it convenient for stealers of cattle. A road used
by strange travellers and robbers waiting for them was not a likely
one for small settlements and local use. When it was spoken of as the
way the oxen go--unless the phrase implied a road along which came
oxen from a distance--it may already have been degenerating. Guest
says: “Your guide will talk of the long lines of pack-horses that once
frequented the ‘Ickley Way,’ as if they were things of yesterday; and
a farmer in the Vale of Aylesbury told me ... that in the popish times
they used to go on pilgrimage along it from Oxford to Cambridge.”
Messrs. Jordan and Morris (_Introduction to the Study of Local History
and Antiquities_) speak of the road as connecting the flint-knappers’
settlement at Brandon with Avebury and Stonehenge: “The men of
Wiltshire would wish to obtain flint instruments from Brandon; men from
Brandon to have access to Avebury and Stonehenge.” But Wiltshire men
would not go to Suffolk in search of flints except for a wager.

[Illustration: Whiteleaf Cross.]

The Icknield Way is sufficiently explained as the chief surviving road
connecting East Anglia and the whole eastern half of the regions north
of the Thames, with the west and the western half of the south of
England. For the men of Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge, Bedford, Hertford,
Buckingham, and Oxford, it did what the Harrow Way did for men of Kent,
Surrey, Sussex, and East Hampshire.




CHAPTER III

FIRST DAY--THETFORD TO NEWMARKET, BY LACKFORD AND KENTFORD


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 Thetford. In the railway train
I asked a man who knew all the country about him whether he knew the
Icknield Way, but he did not. He knew where the oaks and pines grew
best and what they fetched, the value of the land, the crops on an acre
of it and what they fetched. He knew men’s rents and what each farm
cost when it changed hands last. He knew also the men living and dead,
and the lives they lived, what they were worth, and whose bed they
died in. He was a man himself, a vast handsome fellow nearing sixty,
well bearded, whiskered, and moustached, but not so as to hide full
red lips and small, cheerful, and penetrating dark eyes. He weighed
eighteen stone and a half and was not scant of breath, though he smoked
strong tobacco rapidly in a large pipe. After much about the price
of potatoes, etc., that came in at one ear and bolted straight out
of the other, he told about himself and his family. Everyone at the
railway stations knew him, and I suppose he thought I should naturally
not wish to remain ill-informed. He was the youngest but one of six
brothers, all weighing over sixteen stone; and his two sisters weighed
over fourteen. He himself had eight children, the sons above six feet
in height, the daughters above five-feet-eight--all of them persons
who would not be blown away in a storm. His father before him was
six-feet-three and weighed seventeen stone. After a time, pointing to a
satchel with my name and address on it, he said:--

“Do you know anyone of the name of Fencer in your neighbourhood?”

“No,” I said.

“Her father,” he said, “used to own the Largease Mill. Polly Fencer.
Very likely he has gone away now. She may be dead. It is twenty-five
years ago that I am thinking of, and I will tell you what made me ask.
My next brother was in love with her twenty-five years ago. She was a
well-educated person, good-looking, and had the nicest temper of anyone
I ever met, but not soft or at all weak. She liked my brother; but she
was a companion to some lady and she did not want to marry at once. He
did, however, and when she refused to be in a hurry he got cool for a
time. In that cool fit he married another woman and had plenty of time
to repent it. He lived with her twenty years and more, and she was
always ailing. He never cared much about her and now she is dead, and
it struck me, seeing the address on your bag, that perhaps if Polly was
alive and free and hadn’t altered her mind, my brother might be glad
to marry her. Certainly he couldn’t do a better thing than marry Polly.
I know he never forgot her. But twenty-five years is a long time, and
she may be married herself.... I should have liked to see him marry
Polly, one of the nicest women that ever I saw....

[Illustration: Castle Hill, Thetford.]

“I used to be very fond of walking myself,” he said, changing the
subject. “And I still do a lot of it. It is very good for the health. I
suppose you are walking for your health.”

As he perceived that I was not in business he assumed that I was taking
a dose of walking, one of the most expensive medicines, and, as he
believed, one of the best. I left him behind me in Thetford.

This was a most pleasant ancient town, built of flints, full of turns
and corners and yards. It smelt of lime trees and of brewing. At the
east edge was a green “Castle Hill” and a surrounding rampart without
a castle, and between the ramparts, round about the hill, a level
green where people rest or play in sunshine or under elm, ash, and
sycamore. Beside the steep artificial mound, so huge and uncouth, men
mowing the grass looked smaller than ever, the children playing more
beautiful, and both more transitory. The dark hill seemed a monster
watching them at their play and work, as if some day it would swallow
them up. It was like a personification of stupid enormous time. Yet
this ponderous symbol did not spoil the pleasantness of the grass and
trees and the green hill and the little town, but rather increased it;
and I walked backwards and forwards lest I should forget that I had
been to Thetford, a place sometimes burnt, sometimes fortified, by
the Danes, and once a bishop’s see. These things made the old brewery
seem older, the lime trees sweeter, the high-walled lanes darker, as
I walked about. One of the lanes, Castle Lane, which goes through the
ramparts of the castle, is possibly part of the Icknield Way. As you
stand at the east edge of the town, a little past the Castle hill, a
lane comes slanting from the north-east over the railway to an open,
dusty place, at a meeting of five ways, a “five went way.” This lane,
now only a mile long to where it is cut short by the Kilverstone and
Brettenham road and having no obvious continuation to the north-east,
is the Green Lane, or Clover Lane, which has been suggested as a
Norfolk portion of the Icknield Way. At the south end of it, in 1870,
were found remains of Celtic and Roman pottery. Castle Lane takes up
the line of Green Lane and leads through the east edge of the town
towards the rivers. Before leaving the town by it, I noticed on the
right hand a very strange fish on a signboard, a very curly fish, with
curly whiskers, three curled plumes on his back, and a curled tail; and
he was himself curled and boldly painted withal; but whether this fish
or the landlord was named Mullett I have forgotten. My apparent road
took me southward over the Thet, and then the Ouse, by two low bridges
called the Nuns’ Bridges. Chestnuts darkened the clear water of Thet.
Between the two rivers was only a narrow space of grass and buttercups.
Here, and a little east towards Place Farm, is the gravel which fitted
this spot for a ford. Beyond the Ouse the main road goes straight away
southward to the Workhouse, the open, sandy heath, and ultimately
Bury St. Edmunds. On the left was the isolated doorway of a vanished
nunnery, and Place Farm standing within a wide, low-walled space. I
turned to the right along a road parallel with the river and divided
from it by a narrow hedgeless band of grass. This is supposed by Mr.
W. G. Clarke to be the Icknield Way, and he has sketched it over the
Bury and Thetford road north of the gasworks, near where the remains of
a British settlement were found in 1870. But I found nothing to save
me from going on to the main road to Mildenhall and Newmarket and then
following that for two miles. On the ten miles between Thetford and
Mildenhall there is nothing but Elveden Church, motor-cars, milestones,
and dust; and Mildenhall is only the half-way village to Newmarket. It
is a straight road easily provoked to a fierce whiteness, and it goes
through a dry heathy land planted with limes and parallelograms of fir
trees. Nevertheless, a nightingale was singing at noon in the blaze
of a strong sun close to the left side of the road, not a mile out of
Thetford. His voice in the heat was like the milky kernel of a hard,
bearded nut.

Less than half a mile past the second milestone, and just over the
Suffolk border, I took the opportunity of leaving that road by entering
a private drive apparently to Elveden Hall. This was at least in the
right direction for Lackford, the next ford, near which the Icknield
Way is satisfactorily ascertained. In three-quarters of a mile the
drive emerged into a road coming from the main road I had left, and
going east to Barnham. I turned to the left along this to reach
Marmansgrave Wood, which sounded old, and at that point, as I hoped, a
cart track, crossing the road from north to south, looked possible. As
it fell out, this track was a parish boundary and the boundary between
the hundreds of Blackbourn and Lackford; and for more than half its
course it was on one side or the other of an oak or fir plantation. I
went southward along it, down the east edge of the long fir plantation
marked on the map as “New Barnham Slip.” It was a broad and hedgeless
track, often riddled by rabbit burrows which were masked by nettles.
At its best it was a rough, tussocky sheaf of cartways. Everywhere sand
and flints, parallelograms of fir trees, nettles, and more nettles and
the smell of nettles. Rarely it passed a square, now, or several years
ago, given to corn. I like nettles, especially with elder trees in
blossom above them, as at Lackford Road Heath, half-way along. There
was also some gorse. The road was not straight, but wound along in a
series of straight lines, slightly up and down, but usually on the high
level sand with views of nothing else. I had no company but pewit and
stone-curlew and wheatear for those seven miles, and neither passed a
house nor saw one anywhere. The sun blazed from the sky overhead and
the sand underfoot; it burnt the scent out of the pines as in an oven;
it made the land still and silent; but it wrenched no word or thought
of blasphemy out of me. On the other hand, I felt no benevolence
towards the planters of trees in straight lines; for by doing this
they had destroyed the possible sublimity of this sandy land, and at
the same time increased its desolation by the contrasting verdure of
foliage and the obviously utilitarian arrangement. It was country
which, if I owned it, I should gladly exchange with the War Office for
Salisbury Plain. For if the nettles, the rabbit holes, and the elders
were exceptionally good they could be equalled. The rabbits seemed to
love the track as in other places they love tumuli, and for a distance
they had wiped out its resemblance to a road.

Crossing the Brandon and Wordwell road at Shelterhouse Corner or
Elveden Gap, I reached the east end of the Icklingham belt of firs.
From near the west end of this belt goes a south-westerly path called
“Pilgrim’s Path,” down to Icklingham All Saints’ Church. This is said
not to be the Icknield Way, though Icklingham, partly on account of
its name, and partly on account of its great age and Roman villa, has
been alleged to be on the road. Two miles east of my road at Lackford
Road Heath is a “Traveller’s Hill,” marked by a tumulus, but this is an
east-and-west road and ends at a farm. I continued over Jennet’s Hill
and along the edge of a second and greater Icklingham belt, and past
some cultivated fields, on the right, sunk two yards or so below the
level of the track. Then I dipped down among corn and deeper grass, and
between good hedges at last, towards the River Lark, the cool valley,
and the broader woods of Lackford and Cavenham. At the foot of the
descent a road crosses to West Stow, and in half a mile passes a gravel
pit and the place where Anglo-Saxon coins, weapons, and arms have
been found. After this crossing there were water meadows, with swift
crystal flashing among buttercups and flag blossom, the home of snipe.
The great meadow on the right is called Rampart Meadow, because of the
sudden lift of the land at its far side, which seems to be ringed like
an old camp with ramparts. Just before the river the road became merged
in the main road from Mildenhall to Bury St. Edmunds. Alongside the
bridge was the ford, and the path to it was hollowed out beside the
road on the south. Over the bridge the boundary leaves the road and
joins the Lark.

[Illustration: Bridge and Ford, Lackford.]

Lackford is a village that straggles along a mile of road with such
intervals of foliage that I thought I was past the end of it when I
came to where I could get tea. There was no inn; but the shop was
better than the inn could have been. My hostess was one of those most
active, little, stoutish and cheerful women who never go out if they
can help it. Being descended from suffering and sometimes roofless
generations, they seem to see no reason for returning to inclement
nature when they have a good digestion and a water-tight roof; they
make good jam and good tea. There were a number of things I should have
seen near Lackford, such as the burial mound, north of Culford Church,
wittily called the “Hill of Health,” and the road between Pakenham and
Stowlangtoft called Bull Road, and some of the moats, at Maulkin’s Hall
and other “Halls” of Suffolk. But the Icknield Way turned sharp to the
right out of the road I had taken, opposite Lower Farm, soon after the
ford of the Lark. When it was more important than the eastward road to
Bury the Way curved round westward beyond the river, and its old course
is marked by a depression through the furze on the right, which finally
reaches the present road and is lost in it.

[Illustration: Near Cavenham.]

My road was now an ordinary white road between hedges, but with a furzy
heath on both sides beyond the hedges. It had no grassy borders, but
at the turning to Lackford manor-house there was a little triangular
common on the left, of grass, gorse, hawthorns, and an ash tree. On the
right there was a larger common, called Clamp’s Heath. On my left I
saw corn and a field of pale sainfoin extending to the edge of a dark
oak wood. The road was, if anything, slightly embanked over this level
ground. After passing the Heath it had grassy borders and low hedges
and corn on both sides, and then, after a short distance, no border,
and on the right no hedge. Where it descended towards the woods of
Cavenham it was sunk a little and had a left-hand border of grass. Just
before this I saw the first chalk pit under the road on my left, with
wild rose and elder on its floor. At Cavenham a new flat bridge of two
arches crossed a tiny tributary of the Lark; but on the left of this
was an old single arch about seven feet broad of narrow bricks, still
firm but all grass-grown over its high curved crown which passengers
used to mount like a barrel. The new bridge probably took the ford’s
place. At Cavenham the road went under the trees of Cavenham Park--oak,
beech, elm and sycamore, ash and aspen. Turtle-doves were cooing
unseen. The house was some way off, the church farther, the village
yet farther along a by-road. At each turning there was an open space
for trees and men, for example, at the two ways down to Lark Hall.
Beyond the second of these the road was lined by beech trees and wych
elms standing in grass: it was cool, but gave a view of sunlit barley
between the trunks, and soon afterwards of an undulating lowland, heath
and corn, and wooded ridges on the right; while on the left the land
fell away and I felt the curve of the earth, the wooded horizon being
lower than the road. Before reaching Tuddenham Corner the bank of
bird’s-foot trefoil was wide enough for a path; only on the left was
there a hedge, on the right was tall barley. Past Tuddenham Corner the
road was narrow and shaded by beech trees of half a century’s growth;
it had hedges and grassy borders, and down the middle two lines of
grass between the ordinary course of the horses’ feet and the wheels.
On both sides were many long, straight plantations of trees, but in
a low, cultivated country where they gave little offence. Presently
the road touched a tumulus on the left, and drew near another on the
right. Then it was crossed by the Great Eastern Railway, and turning
sharper to the right than probably it used to, went due west towards
Kentford. Being now a highway between Newmarket and Bury St. Edmunds,
it was broader, and had also grassy margins of twice its own width, and
beeches in the hedgerows.

[Illustration: Kentford.]

Until this I had met and passed nobody, nor had anyone passed me;
no man of Lackford or Cavenham, or vagrant bound for Norwich or
Newmarket; no long-lost sailor son whom I could tell of his expectant
mother selling roses at Piccadilly Circus. At Kentford motor-cars
tyrannically owned the road. Here were men going into the “Fox and
Bull,” or standing contented by the “Old Cock.” In the shade of the
old flint church tower and the chestnuts of the churchyard someone was
cheerfully clipping grass at evenfall. I looked up and saw a greyhound
as a weather vane, and it was running northward. A ford went through
the Kennett and a new bridge over it, alongside of great fragments
of an old one. Just beyond, at the cool heart of the dusty roadside
shrubberies, a nightingale was singing in oblivion.

From Kentford the road ran straight for four miles into Newmarket,
taking with it the Suffolk and Cambridge boundary now on its right and
now on its left. Telegraph posts and trees accompanied it, and below
them very broad, rough margins, half overgrown by thorns and young
elms, and marked by half a dozen parallel footpaths. The old course of
the road from the third milestone was doubtless the green track on the
right, divided from the new by a broken hedge; for it is this that the
boundary follows. Before the second milestone this track traversed the
new and was continued thenceforward by a beech grove shadowing deep,
narrow horse-paths to the first milestone and the beginning of the
Newmarket red brick. On the right no hedge came between the road and an
open country sloping down to the treeless fenland of Fordham, Wicken,
and Soham, where fifty feet above sea-level makes a hill. Nearest the
road were plains from which tumuli have long been smoothed to make an
exercising ground for horses.

By the first milestone a child came running up to me to ask if I had
found a penny among the trees, and I did not until afterwards suspect
that this was a brilliant variation from straightforward begging.

[Illustration: Newmarket.]

As I came into Newmarket before dark, but after the closing of shops,
the long wide street and a strange breed of men standing or slowly
walking about on its pavements made me feel that scarcely after a
dozen reincarnations should I enter Newmarket and be at home. The man
who discovered that we are “all God’s creatures” had an uncanny eye
for resemblance, and I often doubt the use of the discovery, without
disputing its accuracy. Everyone was talking of horses except those
who preferred lords and professional golfers. I saw some caddies
industriously swallowing temperance hot drinks instead of beer, in the
hope of earning as much as James Braid at some distant time. As for
the horsy men, they seemed to understand lords as well as horses, so
well as to illustrate the saying, “To know all is to pardon all”: nay!
to go beyond that, to admire all, and to believe that men are more or
less worthy as they are more or less lords. One of them was imitating
the bad language of Lord ----, and it was admitted perfect; but I can
quite believe that to be a lord is very different from being able to
imitate one after a glass of ale. There can be little doubt that to the
influence of either lords or horses, or perhaps both, we must attribute
the brilliant beggar at the first milestone. A Scotch baker directed me
to a place--“It is not very elaborate, but it is clean”--where I could
get a bed such as I could afford.

I lay awake for some time listening to the motor-cars. Most of them
rushed through the town; a few came there to rest and silence; others
paused for a minute only with drumming suspense. I thought I should
not easily tire of these signals from unknown travellers. Not that
I spent much time on definite and persistent conjecture as to who
they were, whence they had come, and whither and why they travelled.
I was too sleepy, though at any time such a labour would have been
irksome. No; I was more than content to let these noises compose a
wordless music of mystery and adventure within my brain. The cars
could bring together lovers or enemies or conspirators so swiftly that
their midnight alarums suggest nothing else. It is hard to connect
their subjugated frenzy with mere stupid haste. The little light
steals through a darkness so vast that the difference between a star
and a lantern is nothing to it. The thing is so suitable for a great
adventure that straightway the mind conceives one. Hark! on a winter’s
night the sound and the idea are worthy of the storm and in harmony
with it:--

    Hark ’tis an elfin storm from fairyland,
    Of haggard seeming but a boon indeed....

It was easy to imagine myself the partner in magnificent risks quite
outside my own experience, and to feel the glory and even the danger
with no touch of pain, whilst I lay as careless as the friendly near
neighbourhood of sleep could make me. The touch of arrogance in the
voice of the motor is to its credit by night. In a measure it revives
the romantic and accepted arrogance of horn and trumpet. It gives
at least an outward bravery which has long been dropping away from
drivers of horses. I do not disparage the sound of hoofs and wheels and
the private voice of a solitary traveller on the dark roads, but there
is something melancholy in it, and more endurance than enterprise....
But, above all, the sounds of the motor-car have added immensely to the
London night, at least for good sleepers with minds at ease. Formerly,
to those out of the Covent Garden routes, the only sound of night
travel at all provoking to the mind was the after-midnight hansom’s
clatter, which challenged conjecture more often than imagination; I
pictured most likely a man with bleared eyes and a white shirt who
had let his cigar out--at most, a man whose achievement was behind
rather than before him; and certainly I was always very well content
to be in bed. But the motor-horn is turbulent and daring, though it
may be innocent to say so. Even if it is coming home there is a proud
possibility of distance left behind, and either it seems that the
arrivers have not returned for nothing or the sudden stop suggests
at the least a sublimity of dejection from proud heights. As to the
car setting out in darkness, it gathers to itself all the pomp of
setting out, as we have imagined or read of it in stories of soldiers,
travellers or lovers, and as we have experienced it when children,
going to fish or to find bird’s nests or mushrooms, and as we still
fancy it would be for ourselves, were we ever to advance towards
adventures. I suppose, also, that the speed of a motor-car, to the
outsider, unconsciously suggests a race, an unknown end, an untold
prize.... These thoughts and mere listening to the horns and machinery
occupied me and led on to sleep in such a manner that I ignored a man
next door imitating a gramophone quite seriously, and in less than half
an hour I was asleep and began to dream drivel.




CHAPTER IV

SECOND DAY--NEWMARKET TO ODSEY, BY ICKLETON AND ROYSTON


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, and along this I mounted out of
the town. The road was a straight and dusty one, accompanied by a great
multitude of telegraph wires, on which corn buntings were singing their
dreary song. On the right was the main stretch of Newmarket Heath,
then a few gentle green slopes, with clusters of ricks and squares of
corn, rising to a low wooded ridge far off. It was beginning to be
hot, though it was windy and the deep blue of the sky was visible only
through folds in the hood of grey clouds.

There were dusty tracks for exercising horses on both sides of the
road. I like to see fine horses running at full speed. To see this
sight, or hounds running on a good scent, or children dancing, is to me
the same as music, and therefore, I suppose, as full of mortality and
beauty. I sat down for some time watching the horses.

[Illustration: Devil’s Ditch.]

Beyond the second milestone, and just before the turning to the right
for Cambridge, the road passed through the Devil’s Ditch, a deep ditch
with a high bank on the Newmarket edge of it, stretching several miles
on either side of the way from north-west to south-east in a straight
line. At the gap made by the road stood what seemed to be old turnpike
houses. Beyond the ditch the road was a hedged one, shaded by beeches
on both sides, and having borders of deep, dusty grass, in which stood
the telegraph posts. The long, narrow copse of beech on the right was
not strictly closed, but remained unspoilt and tenanted by doves. Yet
it was not long before I began to look out for a cart to carry me over
the next six miles of the straight road. Such a road is tiring, because
either the eye or the mind’s eye sees long, taunting, or menacing
lengths before it, and is brought into conflict with sheer distance,
and the mind is continually trying to carry the body over this distance
with her own celerity, and being again and again defeated and more and
more conscious of defeat, becomes irritated, if not happily numbed, by
the importunate monotony.

This was country, moreover, which the unaided eye could easily explore.
It lay open and without mystery. Nothing had to be climbed or quested
for. Therefore still more did the legs resent doing what wheels or
other legs could do far better. Any wheeled vehicle, from a motor-car
to a legless beggar’s trolley, would help a man through this country.
In Wiltshire or Cardiganshire there is nothing so good as your own
legs, even if they are bad. But in Cambridgeshire I recommend elephant,
camel, horse, mule, donkey, motor-car, waggon, or cart, anything except
a covered cab or a pair of hobnailed shoes.

A fine region spread out upon the right as I was approaching Six Mile
Bottom--a sweep of arable, mostly corn-covered, but with reddish,
new-ploughed squares, and here and there a team at work, rising up
to a copse or two on the low ridges--not a building visible but a
windmill--and far beyond these, blue hills. A very simple country it
was, that might have been moulded by a strong north wind when the land
was docile as snow. Over it hung a sky of perfect summer and a sun
like a god that made me ashamed to crawl as habit and the necessity
of writing a book compelled me to do. It was a country for clouds,
but there was none. Had there been, I should not have been so well
acquainted with the hard, straight road, often slightly embanked, or
having depressions on either side, and in the right-hand one several
well-worn paths. By the turning to Weston Colville and West Wratting it
went level and straight as usual. On the left the corn was hedgeless;
on the right a low hedge separated me from ploughland and the windmill
on a mile-distant ridge; and the depression on the left was thrice the
width of the road, and used as a cart track, with merely a white centre
and ruts among the flowers of plantain and lady’s slipper. Many larks
were singing. I became a connoisseur in road-sides, and noticed each
change, as that when the road was cut or embanked it usually lost its
breadth of margin, and that now there was a hedge on both hands instead
of one, and in them roses--the pink roses which have the pure, slender
perfume connected by the middle-aged with youth.

[Illustration: Fleam Dyke.]

Past the eighth milestone the road went through Fleam Dyke, which is
shorter than the Devil’s Ditch, because the fen to which it stretches
northward is nearer. The ditch is on the far side, a green farm track
goes along the mound on the near or Newmarket side. Just before it
I saw a green way, a parish boundary, branching up out of my road
eastward between separate thorns and making over the highland to the
valley of the Stour. Beyond the dyke was another fine open cornland
northward, lines of trees down its slopes, woods on its ridges, and the
tall chimneys of Cambridge six miles away. On the other hand a beech
plantation lined the road and shadowed the grassy edge on which I
walked. After the beeches there were wayside roses, and a low hedge and
still a broad, grassy border, where the short-tailed young blackbirds
hurried before me among the paper wrappers of sausages, etc., thrown
out by motorists from Cambridge.

On my right was an artificial wall of turf going in the same direction
as the road. This might have been an ancient earthwork, if the map
had not said “Old Railway.” A disused railway embankment gave me more
pleasure than a prehistoric dyke. It was also charming in itself, and
had thorns prettily growing on its green slopes. Soon it was changed
to a cutting, and, above it, a little round rise crowned by eight poor
firs in a tragic group, a few hundred yards from the road. Past the
tenth milestone the main road reaches Worsted Lodge and crosses the
straight line of a Roman road from Grantchester and Godmanchester.
The line of my road is continued by a lesser way to Babraham and
Pampisford, but the road itself turns abruptly from a south-westerly
almost to a southerly course, yet still straight. Nearly all the roads
hereabout were as straight as if Roman, the low and even land offering
no impediments. There was one, for example, parallel with the Roman
road and crossing the Icknield Way exactly at the tenth milestone,
having come down from Fulbourn Valley Farm alongside a regiment of
beeches, and continuing, after an interruption by a kitchen garden, to
Gunner’s Hall beyond. Between this and the Roman road, at the wayside,
was a long, flint-tiled building of respectable age, with a mansard
roof, small latticed windows in three tiers, and a louvre on top like a
small oast cone. The line of the old railway continued to be marked by
a slight bank and thickets of thorns. My road had broad green borders
which the copse of Grange Farm interrupted. There were now more copses,
and the land was more broken up, though still mainly supporting corn
and hurdled sheep. At Bourn Bridge, near the twelfth milestone, there
was a ford through the Granta, shaded by elms and poplars and occupied
by cattle swishing their tails in silence. At the milestone the common
road to Royston branches off to the right with broad green borders, but
my way lay straight on over the new railway by Pampisford station and
through Brent Ditch. After the thirteenth milestone the old railway
had gathered quite a copse of ash and thorn and brier about it. Near
the fourteenth milestone I began to see a pleasant valley land below
on the right, and groves marking the Cam’s course by the spires of
Hinxton and Ickleton, and beyond them gentle, bare hills with crowns
of trees. At this milestone I saw myriads of a most delicate blue flax
shuddering in the wind. Here Essex comes up to the road and pursues it
to Ickleton, even though at Stump Cross it turns sharp to the right out
of the London road and becomes a lane to Ickleton, a green lane with
white ruts making for the church, and crossing an artificial embankment
which turned out to be the old railway again. My road forded the Cam
at Ickleton. This was a quiet white and grey village, built partly
about the road which encircles the church, but chiefly on both sides of
a road leading west. The walls were of flint or of plaster, sometimes
decorated with patterns in line, and there was abundant thatch. Here
and there the cottages were interrupted and a gateway opened into a
farm-yard. The church, a flint one, was as cool as it was old, and full
of christened sunlight and the chirping of sparrows. There were many
tablets in it to the memory of people named Hanchett--a name not in the
_Dictionary of National Biography_. The most conspicuous thing in the
church was a circular frame over an arch, enclosing the inscription in
large letters: “This church was repair’d 1820. Henry Chambers and John
Hill, Churchwardens.” Much smaller letters below said: “Fear God and
honour the King.”

[Illustration: Ickleton.]

Leaving Ickleton by its chief street, Abbey Street, I entered an open
country rising on all sides. I took the south-westerly road towards
Elmdon, and then a right-hand turning out of that which went in a
straight line to Ickleton Granges. This is probably a new country road,
with hedges and only the narrowest of green strips beside it: it is not
the Icknield Way. The old road possibly ran along the gently rising
ploughland half-way up it, past Rectory Farm. There is still a footpath
from near Abbey Farm and the Priory remains to Rectory Farm, which
may represent the course of the Icknield Way, continued by a broken
line of thorns reaching almost to Ickleton Granges fifty or a hundred
yards north-west of the present road. Past the Granges I turned sharp
to the right along a drove coming through the corn from Littlebury and
Saffron Walden. At a turning on the left to Redland’s Hall this road
became a county boundary, and I went uphill to the corner of a copse,
where it made another bend westward. At the bend there was a triangle
of turf upon the right, so that the right-hand bank, which lies beyond
this turf, suggested a road coming from the east, that is to say from
Rectory Farm and Ickleton Priory. The road was now well up above the
land to its right, and I could see the straight ridge near Cambridge
which carries the Mare Way. On the other hand were the gentle Anthony
Hill and Clay Hill, and in front the high land above Royston and its
straight bars of wood. The road was making almost due west for Royston.
It went between corn, clover, or new-ploughed land; white bryony grew
in its low hedges, and even sprawled over the dusty, rabbity mound by
the wayside; and it had grass borders of its own width. At first it was
rough, but hard and white. Soon it became practically a green road,
and then wholly so, but level and rideable. In one place it was lined
by lime trees; in others all was elder flower, wild rose, and lady’s
slipper, and the chatter of young birds. Beyond the road to Dottrell
Hall and the lovely group of sycamore and hornbeams at the crossing, it
was much worn again. It was a farm road used only by waggons and men
between field and field, or at most between farm and farm. It might
have seemed no more than a series, four miles long, of consecutive
cart tracks, rarely with a hedge on both sides, between it and the
cultivated land. It gave a sense of privacy and freedom combined. At a
cottage, one of two that had once been a single farm, and still had a
thatched shed and a weedy yard, I knocked to ask for water.

[Illustration: Approaching Royston.]

A huge wheel and windlass and a seven-gallon tub stood above a well
in the yard. A wild-looking cat bounded through the window of one of
the cottages which seemed to be empty. The other might also have been
empty, in spite of its dirty muslin curtain, for I knocked long and no
one came. Just as I was turning to get water for myself a human being
with black hair and wild eyes looked out of an upper window and hailed
me with a kind of scream. As she was not half dressed, I told her to
leave me to look after myself. The well seemed bottomless, but I had
the seven gallons of dark, bright water up on the edge by the time my
hostess appeared with a dirty cup. She was a thin, hawk-faced woman,
bare and brown to the breast, and with glittering blue eyes, and in her
upper jaw three strong teeth. She was dressed in black rags. She shaded
her eyes to look at me, as if I were half a mile away.

“You’re thin, boy,” she said, “like me.”

“Yes.”

A pause.

“Are you middling well off?”

“Yes, middling. Are you?”

“Oh, middling; but times are hard.”

“They are.”

She looked extraordinarily sad, and I said:--

“Still, we shall have a few years to wait for the workhouse.”

“Have to wait a few years!” she repeated, very serious, though smiling.
“Have you come from Royston?”

“No; Newmarket.”

“Newmarket. Are you going far?”

“To Odsey, between Royston and Baldock.”

“It’s a long way. You’re thin, boy.”

“Food doesn’t nourish me. Men cannot live on bread only, not even brown
bread made at home.”

“No.”

“Now in the moon, perhaps, I should get fat.”

“Perhaps indeed, and I too. But look at the moon. You give me the
horrors. You couldn’t live _there_.”

It was a thin three-quarters of a circle in a hot sky.

“But,” I said, “I should like to try.”

“Would you?”

“Yes, provided I were someone different. For, as for me, this is no
doubt the best of all possible worlds.”

“Better than the moon?”

“Yes, better than the moon; and there is nothing better in it than your
well water, missus. Good afternoon.”

Framed clearly against her solitary pink-washed cottage, she stared
after me, shading her eyes.

Two or three times along these four miles of road I saw a square of
trees protecting a farm or “grange,” most of the villages having a
grange out in the open country named after them, as Duxford Grange,
Ickleton Grange, Chrishall Grange, Heydon Grange. But on the road
itself there were no houses except Noon’s Folly and one called
Shapens, not even at the crossings of more important roads. For the
most part it kept level: where it had to dip slightly after the
turn to Great Chishall it was worn several feet deep, but this was
exceptional. Beyond that it was worn unevenly into two parallel tracks
between hedges with beech trees and elders. To the right the pleasant
tree-crowned rise of Goffer’s Knoll stood up on the other side of the
main Newmarket and Royston road, now fast nearing my road. Past Noon’s
Folly Farm the road had a narrow and embanked course, but parallel with
it a depression seamed by paths and cart tracks. Here and for some way
past--from half-way between Noon’s Folly and the Barley road--the way
is a boundary between Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire. I had not been
out of Cambridgeshire since I left Suffolk at the Kennett bridge.

[Illustration: Icknield Way, crossing Ermine Street.]

Half a mile west of Noon’s Folly the main road reached my road,
and, turning west instead of south-west, made use of its course for
the two miles into Royston. For most of the two miles this piece of
road, exactly continuing my old way, had broad green edges, and on
the left hand, beeches. Coming to a rise it was cut through the ridge
and embanked again below. It went straight through the big village
or little town of Royston, where it crossed Ermine Street, and took
the name of Baldock Street from the town ahead. As it was market day
everyone was driving out of Royston with his trap full of chickens
and parcels of all kinds, not to speak of wife and children. This was
my first real chance of a lift. For between Ickleton and the Royston
road only farm waggons went, and they were all in the hayfields; and
only motor-cars travelled the road from Newmarket, all passing me as
if I needed nothing but more dust to fill eyes, mouth, nose, ears,
shoes, and spirit. I have never been offered a lift by a stranger
in a motor-car, but friends of mine have told me they have heard of
others who have. With the increase of dust and heat the likelihood of
a merciful motorist becomes less, because dust and heat do not produce
the appearance desirable in a motorist’s companion; in fact, by the end
of the day, or of the week, especially if he has forgotten to shave,
or has always arrived in a town after shop-shutting, the wayfarer runs
the risk of being called “mate” by the baker’s man who refuses to let
him ride. “Mate” sounds like liberty, equality, and fraternity, but
it can really be contemptuous pity. It is no better than “my man”
from a gentleman, or “unfortunate sister” from a lady, or “my friend”
from a Nonconformist minister. In London it may be different, and I
should say that a navvy would use it in a friendly manner. But from
the Wallingford baker’s man on a country round it means “Poor ----,”
perhaps even “Dirty ----.” By this time essays on walking and walking
tours begin to wear very thin. You pitch Stevenson at any rate over
the hedge, and cannot find a place suitable for ---- and ----. Borrow
is safe, but then, he got really tired, and did not regard walking as
an amusement. I have no doubt that he had learned to stick out his
under-lip at the end of some of his marches.

Nevertheless, stumping along on a shoeful of blisters is not bad
when you are out of Royston and have Pen Hills upon your left; low,
insignificant, restful stretches upon your right; and Odsey before you
in the cool of evening. For some distance there was no hedge on the
left side of the road beyond the town, and the turf, marked for many
yards with tracks made before metalling, rose up to considerable swells
of chalk cloven sometimes gently and sometimes abruptly into coombes,
some smooth as lawns, some beautiful with trees. Tumuli were scattered
over this smoothest sward, and down from the ridge of the high land
came deep, curving trackways. At Odsey beyond they have found with
Samian pottery the shin bones of men who ran instead of walking. People
were walking for pleasure on the grass up above, and children were
laughing somewhere near but out of sight.

It was one of those delicious cool ends to perfect days which give
a man the feeling of having accomplished something, but by no means
compel him to inquire what. The road still possessed the hills even
when it was enclosed on both sides, for it kept broad margins, the
hedges were low between it and the grass or corn land, and it mounted
higher and higher. They were the gentlest of chalk hills crested
with trees--Thrift Hill, Gallows Hill, Crouch Hill, Pott’s Hill,
Rain Hill, Wheat Hill, Windmill Hill, and Weston Hills--and at their
highest points there were villages, like Therfield, Kelshall, Sandon,
Wallington, Clothall, Weston. I had still four or five miles to walk
at the feet of these hills, through a silence undisturbed by the few
market carts at long intervals. I am glad now that I walked them.
It seems to me now that my purely physical discomfort intensified
the taste of the evening’s beauty, as it certainly made sweeter the
perfection of enjoyment which I imagine possible at such an hour and
in such a place. The road was serpentining very little, but enough
to conceal from me for a long time the chief wayside marks ahead,
as well as my destination. I could always see about a quarter of a
mile before me, and there the white ribbon disappeared among trees.
And this quarter-mile was agreeable in itself, and always suggesting
something better beyond, though itself a sufficient end, if need were.
Moreover, I was looking out for a house which I had never seen or heard
described. A wood-pigeon came sloping down from the far sky with fewer
and fewer wing strokes and longer and longer glidings upon half-closed
wings as it drew near its home tree. It disappeared; another flew in
sight and slanted downward with the same “folding-in” motion; and then
another. The air was silent and still, the road was empty. The birds
coming home to the quiet earth seemed visitors from another world. They
seemed to bring something out of the sky down to this world, and the
house and garden where I stayed at last were full of this something.
I heard rooks among the tall beeches of just such a house as I knew I
ought to have been able to imagine, with the help of the long white
road and the gentle hills, the tall trees, the rooks, and the evening.
There were flowers and lawns, beeches and sycamores, belonging to three
centuries, perhaps more, and stately but plain red brick of the same
date, and likely to endure for a yet longer period, if not by its own
soundness, then by its hold upon the fantasy of men who build nothing
like it.




CHAPTER V

THIRD DAY--ODSEY TO EDLESBOROUGH, BY BALDOCK, LETCHWORTH, ICKLEFORD,
LEAGRAVE, AND DUNSTABLE


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 see and feel it all; and if I
could write it down as I saw and felt it this would be a good book and
no mistake. The long grasses were dewy cool, the trees lightly rustling
and full of shadow, the sky of so soft a greyness that it seemed an
impossible palace for a sun so gorgeous. The thrushes sang, and seeing
a perfect crimson strawberry, I picked it, and found that it was as hot
as a strawberry can be, and therefore at its sweetest and richest.

[Illustration: Deadman’s Lane, Baldock.]

Winding a little more than before, and still closely attended on its
right by the Great Northern Railway, the road entered Baldock, or
rather it approached that town, and then, refusing to be a main road
any longer, turned off before the Toll Bar Inn to the right. Thus it
dipped into the northern edge of the town close to the railway and the
station, as a long, sordid lane called Bygrave Lane or Deadman’s Lane,
past the gasworks, past the “Stag,” the “Swan,” and the “Black Eagle”
in a row. This was the abode of the “Sand Boys,” who sold sand all over
the country, and bought bones and rabbit skins. It is also the reputed
scene of the death of Gypsy Smith’s wife and his own conversion. Past
the nobly named public-houses the narrow street became a lane, rutted
and half green, and edged on the left with nettles of wondrous height
and density. The railway was closer and closer on the right; on the
left was a new cemetery behind tall railings. At length the railway
passed under the road. I was now again between high, extravagant hedges
of thorn and wild roses. The road was wider, but rough, half green and
half rutted, and in places divided into two by a thicket of blackthorn
standing in the midst. A nightingale was singing among the roses above
some old chalk pits.

After a road from a level crossing had come in on the left, I kept
straight on along the right side of a hedge dividing the railway from a
big field, and past the left edge of a shallow chalk pit. There was no
road here, but several tracks went through the long grass, and mistake
was impossible. On the right two paths went off to some of the new
houses of the Letchworth Garden City, and to a building gigantically
labelled “IDRIS.” This was, I suppose, the temple of this city’s god,
though the name, except as the Welsh equivalent for Arthur, was unknown
to me. They say now that Arthur was a solar hero, and when in doubt
men might do worse than to worship the sun, if they could discover
how. At Letchworth they were endeavouring to do so. The sun was not
benign or even merciful in return for these efforts. He responded by
telling the truth with his most brilliant beams, so that the city
resembled a caravan of bathing machines, except that there was no sea
and the machines could not conveniently be moved. At the end of the
big field I crossed a new road and entered among the elders and thorn
trees of the edge of Norton Common. Here there were several parallel
paths, and on the left behind a hedge was a garden-city street called
“Icknield Way.” This represented the line of the road, but whether this
or the path on the other side of the hedge was more on the old course
I cannot say. Past the houses “Icknield Way” ceased to be a road fit
for perambulators and became a rough track, chiefly used for carrying
building materials. It followed along a hedge and past a sand pit,
in one place a little hollowed out. It was miserable with the rank
grass of newly “developed” districts. After a road came in from under
the railway on the left, it began to curve away north and leave the
railway. Once more it was between hedges; but with all its vicissitudes
it had remained a parish boundary all the way from Slip Inn Hill near
Odsey. It was going uphill, and presently I could see not only the
corn, sainfoin, and houses growing round about, but in the south-west
the line of hedged and wooded hills above Ippollitts, Offley, and
Pirton. Letchworth was still in sight, like so many wounds on the
earth and so much sticking-plaster. But, though behind me, it was
fascinating, like all these raw settlements. It is a curious pleasure
to see them besieged by docks and nettles, and, as sometimes happens,
quietly overcome by docks and nettles. They look new until suddenly
they are unvenerably old. Letchworth may turn out to be an exception,
but as I hurried through it, some back gardens, some forlorn new
roads, and the tune of “She’s off with the wraggle-taggle gipsies, oh!”
sent my thoughts mysteriously but irresistibly to the desolate new-old
settlements I have known.

[Illustration: The Ford, Ickleford.]

[Illustration: Ickleford Church.]

At the hill-top the road made westward, a shady hedge on the left,
sunny sainfoin on the right, and arrived at Wilbury Camp. The north
side of the camp touched the Bedfordshire border. The high, irregular
earth walls overgrown with thorn trees made an uneven and much delved
enclosure, where it was impossible to distinguish gravel pit from camp,
and through this hollow and among its thorns went the path I took
instead of along the southern hedge and wall, which appears to be the
canonical Icknield Way and the parish boundary. Across it goes the hard
road coming from Brook End over Wilbury Hill and down to Walsworth. On
the other side of this road it was a wide, many-tracked, green way,
winding through open cornland down to the trees of Ickleford; and on
its left, at the convenient distance of two miles, the tower and roof
clusters and trees of Hitchin replaced the spots of Letchworth. There
were hedges with elms for the mowers to rest under, and on the right
was the white wall of a chalk pit, with roses and privet overhanging,
and black bryony and elder growing below. The way descended to be
crossed by two lines of railway a few yards apart. Between the two
it was grassy and elm-shaded. Beyond the second the road forded the
River Hiz, and even waded in it for thirty yards or so. Ickleford
village had a green with chestnut trees, a “Green Man” and an “Old
George,” and a church wall decorated regularly all over with an incised
design of saws, swords, handcuffs, crowns, etc. The road passed St.
Catherine’s Church and the “Green Man” on its right, and went out of
Ickleford at “Ickleford Gate” on the Hitchin road. This it crossed and
went against the course of the River Oughton, which flowed and turned
a mill a little below upon the left. At first it was a green-edged
road of good surface, with hedges and telegraph posts, making for the
downs, for Telegraph Hill, Deacon Hill, and Tingley Wood, between
Pirton and Lilley. But at the mill, its modern use gone, the road was
once more a broad, green way dipping with many ruts down among the
willowy buttercup meads of the Oughton. Doves cooed; blackcaps poured
out their cool, fiery wine of melody; and the cattle meditated about
nothing under the elms. The road was rising again, crossed the Pirton
and Hitchin road at Punch’s Cross, and entered through the gate of
an oat-field, travelling along its hedge and out by another gate. At
Punch’s Cross it became a parish boundary, which it ceased to be at
the River Hiz. Up on the right above the ploughland lay Tingley Wood
and a beech clump. On the left charlock and corn divided by elms and
hedges extended to a wall of low wooded hills. Out of the field the way
was a green-hedged lane entered under the rustling welcome of beech
trees. Then it became part of the main road from Barton-in-the-Clay
to Hitchin, and at the turning southward to Offley a boundary between
Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire. This part of the road was partly on
a terrace along the side of a hill sloping to the south, and there
were roses and traveller’s joy buds in the hedges. At one point the
land on the left had apparently been too steep to enclose at its lower
side, and the hedge was at the top of this steep portion, which was
therefore a broad, rough triangle of open turf beside the road. Beyond
this the way had good grass banks or level margins with hazel and
thorn hedges, and ash or elm trees above them. It was drawing near to
a rough and thorny chalk hill called Deacon Hill, and as it was bent
on climbing over this range, the modern road left it, and, going
westward, avoided the heights above three hundred feet. The Icknield
Way took a south-westerly course, and mounted steeply up as a green,
almost rutless lane between high hedges. It was green and even as soon
as it left the hard road, and now for the first time made a real bold
ascent of the chalk. It looked more like a part of the Ridgeway, but
for the high hedges, than the unadventurous road that I travelled
from Thetford. There were daisies all over it, and roses hung upon
either side. Nearing the hill-top it narrowed, and had steep banks on
the left with brambles and thorns over them. But right to the top it
kept those high hedges. Below on the right lay a neat, green-hedged
vale and a long, gentle slope covered with woods or horizontal lines
of trees up to a straight low ridge. Telegraph Hill, which the road
crossed, is over six hundred feet high. It is difficult to understand
why it should make this climb instead of circumventing the hill by a
sharp curve southward. It never again does such a thing or rises to
such an altitude. At the summit a green ridgeway leaves it. It was
easy to glide into this and wind with it to Lilley Hoo and Lilley. The
track was a hedgeless, green band among thistles and isolated thorns,
glittering dark hollies, and ash trees. Here and there the sheep rested
in the shade of a little bramble and thorn thicket, where an oak or ash
buried its trunk, and roses climbed. The clear, high tinkling of the
bells on still wandering sheep was almost as gay as if the bells were
on dancers’ feet. The turf on the track was the finest, and was bounded
by a tussocky line on one side, if not both. And so it serpentined on
the high, flat back of the hills, always among old, isolated thorns or
small, clear-cut thickets.

[Illustration: On Telegraph Hill.]

But this was not the Icknield Way, which went straight over Telegraph
Hill, and steeply and deeply worn, down to a green lane on the other
side, where it was joined on the left by another track descending
from a little tumulus with two thorns on it. The green lane winding
south-westward was broad, but the spread of the beeches on its left
side was broader and roofed it wholly; the turf was better when this
line of trees came to an end. Suddenly a chalk pit on the left narrowed
it, and this narrowness had been continued on, and used for wheat as
far as the next turning. Thenceforward it widened, and had rough hedges
of elder and nettles, holly and ash, between it and the undulating
corn. In front bulked the smooth ridge of Galley Hill. Past the turning
to Offley there were four or five tracks parallel but on different
levels, with an embanked one in the centre. Soon it was again on the
turf of the Downs, curving around the right base of Galley Hill, the
open land on the left, hedges and fields on the right; past the hill
there were two hedges and ploughed land on either hand. Hereby was the
entrance into Bedfordshire. Then it came almost at right angles to the
straight mound of Dray’s Ditches, but turned to the right along it,
followed by the parish boundary into the Luton and Bedford road. If,
instead of going alongside the ditches, I had gone straight ahead upon
the line of the way, I should have struck this road at the sixteenth
milestone, and at the opposite turning to Leagrave which I actually
took. The boundary, on the other hand, went on over the main road
towards Houghton. The road down to Leagrave was an ordinary hedged road
with narrow, green edges. After passing a little copse on the left I
turned on the same side, by an ash a century old, into a broad green
track to Limbury. It had hedges, but that on the left strayed away
round a huge rushy space. Beyond this was the clean orange wall of a
sand pit, and then a green field, and then the tree-tops, and the crowd
of roofs and the tall chimneys of Luton, and in the midst a tower above
all the rest. But the hedge returned and the way narrowed, and it had
to cross Leagrave Marsh and the tiny Lea. There was a choice of road
or path. Entering the brand-new, jerry-built, slated cages of combined
Limbury and Leagrave Marsh, I turned to the right along Limbury Road,
and found on my left the Icknield Way, giving its name to an estate and
a new street.

Leagrave Marsh was evidently a pleasant little ford village before it
became what it now seems to be--a safety-valve for Luton. The harsh,
new streets led me to a rushy common threaded by the Lea, and bounded
on my side by a road that crossed the stream with a bridge. At one
side of the bridge the “Three Horse Shoes” faced over the common and
along the water; ponies, traps, and dogs were clustered at the door
in the sun. Their owners were either inside, getting hot, or lying
on the grass over the way. But one driver was taking his horse and
trap through the stream close to the bridge; and the whipped foam was
shining and the spokes flashing. Some boys were paddling a little way
above; and above them the village geese were nibbling among the rush
tufts. In and out among horses and traps, men, dogs, boys, and geese,
the martins were flying.

The Icknield Way went between the new houses and across the Midland
Railway and so down a field rotten-ripe for building into Oak Road,
which leads from old Leagrave into the Luton and Dunstable road. This
road interrupted my way, which went formerly as a footpath straight
across it and into the main road a little west of the Half-way House,
between Dunstable and Luton. This path was ploughed up and its course
only in part noticeable among the crops. The Luton and Dunstable road
now looked like a river and the footpath a tiny brooklet whose drying
up made no difference to the main stream. But in Robert Morden’s map
of 1695 the “Icnal Way” is a clear, good road past Leagrave and into
Dunstable, while the road to that town from Luton is parallel with the
“Icnal Way,” and apparently the same as the road and footpath running
half a mile south of the present road and just south of the Hatfield,
Luton, and Dunstable branch of the Great Northern line. This main road
was a substantial, broad, straightforward highway running along level
ground and parallel to the downs on its left. There were a few beeches
in its low hedges, and the margins of grass were of the ordinary width
and rich in dust. Three or four miles of the clear hills, here and
there crowned by trees, curved alongside and then slightly across my
course. Opposite the turning to Houghton the lime works of Blow’s Down
broke the green wall with white.

[Illustration: Dunstable Downs.]

As I entered Dunstable there was already a touch of night in the
light, and it fell with a sad blessing upon the low-towered church
and the sheep grazing in the churchyard up above the road on my left.
The crossing of the Icknield Way and Watling Street makes Dunstable.
Watling Street was wider and had the town hall, the post office, the
bigger shops, and the chief inns. The Icknield Way, known first as
Church Street, then as West Street, was the more rustic, humble, and
informal, and beyond the crossing it had trees by its side; and this
seemed natural and just. It had become thoroughly suburban before
leaving the town and coming to the smooth high downs on the left, where
children were playing and girls walking about above a field of barley
and charlock beside the road. On my right there was a wide border of
level down turf and no hedge between it and the corn. The downs, or I
should say the Chiltern Hills, proceeded majestically southward, but
six or seven miles away advanced somewhat to the east, half clothed in
woods, until the bare Beacon Hill stopped steep and abrupt above a high
plateau of cornland which fell away into a broad, wooded lowland on my
right. Round this Beacon I could see that my road would bend; I thought
I could see the ledge it must follow. In that lower land on my right
there were several rises. Such was the smooth, easy sweep of Toternhoe,
close to Luton; such the wooded heave upon which rose the dark,
noble tower of Edlesborough Church; and such the terraced hill near
Edlesborough, with a few thorns on the slopes between the terraces, and
at its foot a long, neat orchard of late plums or “prunes.” The broad,
wayside strip on the right hand sometimes showed the old course of my
way much below the level of the present road; and after Well Head this
lower course was beyond and below the modern hedge. On the left, at
Well Head, I noticed a little hill on this side of the main ridge very
prettily terraced, with thorns on the slopes between the terraces. At
Well Head a deep, smooth-sided cleft winds away to Dolittle Mill, with
the first waters of the Ouse. A similar cleft a mile or so beyond, at
the Cross Waters, close to the entrance into Buckinghamshire, carries
water to the mills of Eaton Bray. As I came out of Dunstable I thought
there could be nothing there equal to the sweep of the downs before
me, ending in the wooded Ivinghoe Hills and the Beacon. But when I had
gone more than half-way towards the end of the sweep I looked back and
saw that the downs behind me were equal to those I was approaching, and
even advanced a little out of the straight like the others, ending also
in a promontory above Dunstable. The air was now still and the earth
growing dark and already very quiet. But the sky was light and its
clouds of utmost whiteness were very wildly and even fiercely shaped,
so that it seemed the playground of powerful and wanton spirits knowing
nothing of earth. And this dark earth appeared a small though also a
kingly and brave place in comparison with the infinite heavens now so
joyous and so bright and out of reach. I was glad to be there, but I
fell in with a philosopher who seemed to be equally moved yet could
not decide whether his condition was to be described as happiness or
melancholy. He talked about himself. He was a lean, indefinite man;
half his life lay behind him like a corpse, so he said, and half was
before him like a ghost. He told me of just such another evening as
this and just such another doubt as to whether it was to be put down
to the account of happiness or melancholy. He said that he had
been digging all day in a heavy soil, often jarring the fork against
immovable flints, lifting more often than not a weight of clay only
just short of the limit of his strength. He had thought and thought
until his brain could do nothing but remain aware of dull misery and
the violent shocks of the hard work. But his eyes saw the sun go down
with a brief pomp of crimson soon covered up by funereal drifts, and
these in their turn give way to a soft blue, full of whitest stars
and without one cloud. They saw the far hills once more take on their
night look of serene and desolate vastness, and felt the meadows of the
valley become dark and uncertain, the woods much duller but distinct.
The woods immediately below him on the hill-side thickened and appeared
more wild and impossible; the road winding up between them like a long
curl of smoke was wholly concealed. Slowly the solid world was whittled
away. The lights of the small town half-way across the valley, towards
the hills, came out.

[Illustration: Beacon Hill, Ivinghoe.]

As an owl in the woods announced the triumph of night with one large,
clear note, he straightened himself slowly and painfully among the
clods. It would have been easier to continue his toil than to do this,
but he did it, and then cleaned the prongs of his upright fork with the
toe of his boot, prolonging the action as if he either hoped to arrive
now at some significant conclusion with its help or feared the next
step that had to be taken. When he could no longer clean the prongs he
raised his head and looked out beyond the woods over the valley to the
far hills. The quiet, the magnitude of space, the noble lines of the
range a little strengthened his spirit. He remained still. The surface
of his hands was dry to brittleness; he was stiff and yet unsatisfied
with the result of his labour; he felt the dulness of his eyes; and no
thing or person in the world or out of it came into his mind with any
conscious delight or quickness; yet he still looked along the ridges
of the hills from one end to the other, from star to star, without a
thought save the sleeping, underlying one that he was growing old.

A motor-car climbed nervously up the invisible hill-road, the lamps of
it darting across a hundred little spaces between one tree and another
of the vague woods. It left the silence stronger than ever.

The man leaned with his chest upon his hands, which were upon the
handle of his fork. Only a few years ago--either three or four--he
could not have ascertained by any searching of memory--he had been
young, and treated with contempt or with pitiful kindness by those
of more years. But now he had come by unknown ways to feel that he
differed from mature men, not by anything positive that could be called
youth, but only by some undefinable lack which condemned him to a kind
of overblown immaturity. Thus when he consciously or unconsciously
demanded a concession such as might be due to youth for some act or
attitude, he met, in the individual or in society in some corporate
form or other, a blankness or positive severity at which he recoiled
with open but as yet uncertainly comprehending eyes. Of young men he
was now sometimes jealous; of middle-aged men afraid and no longer
defiant. Towards the contemporaries with whom he had shared thought
and experience for some years he felt jealousy, if he seemed to have
outstripped them in the unwilling race; fear, if it was himself that
lagged; and towards only one or two a fair and easy freedom, and that
only intermittently. Therefore no more destitute and solitary man
looked that night on the stars. Yet they were as bright and the hills
under them as noble as those we saw to-day on the road from Dunstable.

Suddenly he awakened and thrilled to the sound of a woman’s voice
singing alone somewhere away from where he stood. He forgot who and
where he was. He was no longer weary and muddied by self-supporting
thoughts. His imagination went out of him and grasped each note simply
and boldly. Where there had been nothing, there the liquid voice
mounted in its beautiful, unseen form amidst the darkness. The singer
was among the dark trees, probably in the climbing road to one side
of him; the curve of that ascent, always a thing of simplicity and
nobleness, was now glorious, romantic as it soared out of the valley to
the clear heights.

Either the singer was walking slowly up or she was riding, but no
footfall or turn of wheel was to be heard. It was a powerful voice,
confident and without care. It leapt up with a wild, indolent flight,
for one short verse of indistinguishable words, in a melody exulting in
the wildness of love and pride of youth, and then fell upon silence.
That silence bore its part also.

But the listener had no sooner lost the first joy over the insurrection
of melody, begun to consider--whilst waiting breathless for its
return--who she might be, what she was doing now, whether a lover
was walking beside her, when she sang again, higher up the road. The
first note rose up to the highest stars, clear and fresh and having a
power like light over the gloom. Other notes hovered after it at the
same height, and then with one swoop as of an eagle fell to the earth
and silence before even a verse was finished. A low laugh drawn out
very long an instant afterwards confirmed the first impression of the
singer’s ease and joyousness. The man could see her neck lifted eagerly
and her eyes flashing towards the lover or towards the stars, her lips
parted, her breast heaving with deep draughts of the night and passion,
her feet pacing with languid strength. He himself stood still as any
tree in the ebb of the wind.

Oh, for a horse to ride furiously, for a ship to sail, for the wings
of an eagle, for the lance of a warrior or a standard streaming to
conquest, for a man’s strength to dare and endure, for a woman’s beauty
to surrender, for a singer’s fountain of precious tones, for a poet’s
pen!

He trembled and listened. The silence was unbroken; not a footstep or
whisper was to be extracted from it by his eager and praying ear. He
shivered in the cold. The last dead leaves shook upon the beeches, but
the silence out there in that world still remained. She was walking or
she was in her lover’s arms, for aught he knew. No sound came up to
him where he stood eager and forlorn until he knew that she must be
gone away for ever, like his lyric desires, and he went into his house
and it was dark and still and inconceivably empty.

As I turned into the inn and left him he was inclined either to put
down that evening half to happiness and half to melancholy, or to cross
out one or other of those headings as being in his case tautological.

The landlady at my inn was the first that ever told me outright, at
once, and without being asked, what she charged for a bed, and as the
sum was reasonable I was doubly pleased. She was a jaunty, probably
childless London woman not far from forty, who referred to her husband
as “my sweetheart.” She had a skittish, falsetto laugh, whether she was
talking to me about their old horse John and all his merits, or to the
labourers about such and such a “sweet old house” in the neighbourhood.
They were speaking of the coronation bonfire that was building on the
Beacon Hill, and she became important and full of reminiscences of
the Hampstead Heath bonfire, and, thereanent, the Spaniards, Vale of
Health, and so on. She hovered between them and me, anxious to tell
me that much as she liked a country life she missed the gas and the
bathroom of a London house. Now and then she left us all, to talk to
the parrot in a loud voice intended for mankind as well as Polly. Her
“sweetheart” turned out to be a little active man, superficially jaunty
but silent and brooding and hanging down his head. He was sandy-haired
with dull, restless, blue eyes, and had not recently been shaved. His
turned-out feet stepped quickly hither and thither. He was dressed
anyhow and as if he slept in his clothes to ensure a fit; a white scarf
was tied round his neck and his trousers were turned up. He carried a
cigarette either in the corner of his mouth or behind his ear. He was
one of those creatures provided by an almighty providence for attending
on that “noble animal” (such he called it) the horse; but this did not
prevent him from calling his own horse John “old son.” He never carried
a whip, because, he said, he did not believe in hurting “dumb animals.”
A man who knows horses well is equally at home in town or country, and
though this man was as full-blooded a Cockney as his wife, he was, like
her, contented with his three or four years of country solitude; it
was, he said, a “happy life, yes, a happy life,” better than what we
had learnt to call the “bustle and confusion” of London. I asked him
about the Icknield Way, which he knew by that name, and he told me that
it was a Roman road and that he had heard a man could walk on it for
twelve months and come back to the same place again. What that place
was he did not say; probably he meant any place and imagined that the
road made a circuit of this island or belike of the great globe itself.
There could be no better landlord and landlady of a small wayside inn
with one horse, one trap, and one spare bed. The bed was clean and
comfortable, and I fell asleep in it while the stone-curlews were
piping on the downs and a pair of country wheels were rolling by, late
and slow.




CHAPTER VI

FOURTH DAY--EDLESBOROUGH TO STREATLEY, ON THE UPPER ICKNIELD WAY, BY
WENDOVER, KIMBLE, WHITELEAF, GIPSIES’ CORNER, IPSDEN, AND CLEEVE


“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 fields. The hay-waggon stood by the
rick where it had arrived too late to be unloaded last night. To one
bred in a town this kind of silence and solitariness perhaps always
remains impressive. We see no man, no smoke, and hear no voice of man
or beast or machinery, and straightway the mind recalls very early
mornings when London has lain silent but for the cooing of pigeons.
That silence of so many things that can and will make sounds gives some
of its prestige to the country silence of very quiet things. Therefore
when I have looked out of a strange window for the first time and seen
nothing move but leaves on the earth and clouds in the sky, I have
often for a moment felt as if it were dawn and have slipped into a mood
of dawn; it might be possible on a cloudy day and in a new country to
be deceived thus even at noon. Thus the innocence of silent London is
transferred to the downs, the woods, the vacant fields, and the road
without a wheel or a foot upon it for miles and miles.

I had about forty miles to cover before the end of the daylight, so
I had to help myself by driving with my host and his “old son” John.
I was now thoroughly foot-sore. One foot was particularly bad, and
in trying to save it I used different muscles in the leg, which were
quickly tired. Then, to help myself, I had leaned heavily on my stick
at every step and so brought arm and shoulder to a state of discomfort,
if not pain. Finally, the stick was unsuitable for its purpose and
sorely afflicted the palm of the hand that grasped it. I had carried
the stick for many single days of walking and liked it. For it was a
tapered oak sapling cut in the Weald and virtually straight because
its slightly spiral curves counteracted one another. But it had almost
no handle, and so drove itself into one small portion of the palm when
leaned on. It had also in the winter shown itself hard to retain in
the hand when a few inches of it were in mud. Nevertheless, it was so
nicely balanced and being oak so likely to last a lifetime that, for
six years, I put up with its faults, and now, having been in my company
for so many miles in a splendid June, it has a fresh hold upon me. Also
I am not certain that any other handle, a larger and rounder knob or a
stout natural crook, would have been much better in a hand not made of
iron. Perhaps a really long staff grasped some way from its upper end
would be right. But there is something too majestic, patriarchal even,
about such a staff. A man would have to build up his life round about
it if it had been deliberately adopted. And gradually he would become
a celebrity. Of course, if he had an inclination towards such a staff,
as the natural and accredited form among pedestrians, there would
be an end of the matter, but that is not very likely in a town-bred
Englishman. He must meditate upon what might have been, and be content
to make five shillings out of his meditation, if he is a journalist.

It was a pleasure to drive with Mr. Willcocks. He became quite silent
apart from civility. He evidently understood the horse, and the horse
him, in the mutual manner usually expected from a legal monogamous
union. If he had sat on the horse’s back the combination would have
been nothing like a centaur. But with one between the shafts and the
other holding the reins they were one spirit in two bodies.

As we began to curve round the foot of the Ivinghoe Hills, which were
on our left, we passed another but larger deep cleft, like those at
Well Head and Cross Waters, below the road, upon our right, called
Coombe Hole. There was another Coombe a mile to the south; but before
this I had not met the name (hardly the thing, except on the west of
Royston) since I left Thetford. We went close under the steep slope of
Beacon Hill which was tipped with a tumulus and scored upon its flanks
by many old descending trackways. Away to the right there was no land
so high as our road--about five hundred feet; the hill-tops were half
as high again--for farther than eye could see; and to all this low
land of dairy and garden the road was a boundary. We were approaching
the place where the Icknield Way is said to divide into two parallel
courses. A road from Leighton Buzzard strikes athwart the course and
following along this to the left for half a mile you turn to the right
into the “Upper Icknield Way”; following it to the right you reach
Ivinghoe and there turn to the left into the “Lower Icknield Way.” We
were going to take the Upper, so called as being higher up the slope
of the land. Just before the Leighton Buzzard road we passed on our
left a long cleft, smooth and flat-bottomed, with horses feeding in
it, and hereabouts the old course or part of its original width was
clear over the left-hand hedge. On our right was a high bank round
which went the road to Ivinghoe, and this bank would explain the sharp
turn. Originally it may well have been that the road forked, the Lower
going past the old windmill straight ahead and so to Pitstone Green
and missing Ivinghoe; the Upper going with it to the old windmill and
there diverging to the left past Pitstone Church and out into the road
now marked “Upper Icknield Way” at Folly Farm. Along this road there
was a border of close grass; chestnuts or sycamores of about thirty
years stood up here and there in the hedge, and over it I saw Ivinghoe
Church tower and the silly spire, short and sharp, on top of it, the
misty woods behind, and the protuberance of Southend Hill, having
its sides carved into thorny terraces, “linces” or “linchetts”; the
Pitstone Church tower and an elm, throned on a rise together, and the
broad wooded valley beyond. The air was sweet now with roses, now
with yellow bedstraw. Larks sang, and a yellowhammer that forgot the
end of its song, and once a blackbird. I had left behind the Ivinghoe
Hills, but Pitstone Hill, their successor, was of the same brood. It
was chiefly bare, and its flanks much-modelled as well as scarred by
a slanting trackway. The land between the foot of it and the road was
carved with the utmost ingenuity of which chalk is capable. Once there
was a succession of long parallel deep rolls at right angles to the
road; wheat and barley grew on them except in one or two places where
the fall was too steep and there were thorns amidst the corn. I saw
also several of those natural walls formed by a sudden change of level.
These are generally used as divisions between fields. Here there was
wheat above and wheat below, and along the bottom of the wall a cart
track went between lines of poppies up to the hill. Another such wall,
but higher, had beeches on its slope, and it made a fine curve up to
its end at the foot of the hill.

Half a mile past the turn to Pitstone Church the way becomes a boundary
between Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire as far as the bridge over
the Grand Junction Canal, where I entered Hertfordshire again, leaving
it nearly two miles beyond and not far from the junction with Akeman
Street. At a dip from Tring wharf the road narrowed and lost its green
edges, but regained them on the more level ground. For a little while
after the crossing to Tring Church a narrow green track was raised on
the right above the road and between it and the hedge. Here there was
an elm, and there several, and here an ash; and there was never no
charlock. The hills on the left were more and more wooded with beeches;
and they curved round so as to lie slightly across our course. On the
right lay the broad reservoirs of the canal at the edge of the Vale of
Aylesbury.

[Illustration: Wendover.]

Now once more the Icknield Way is thrown out of its course for a little
way, this time by Akeman Street, a modern road to Aylesbury, the
ancient road from this region to Cirencester, which was the junction
for Wales, Devon, and Cornwall. It enters Akeman Street a third of
a mile east of the thirty-third milestone from London. The Icknield
Way was presumably older; it was at least old when Akeman Street was
Romanized and came cutting in a straight line across its meanders;
and therefore it lost confidence for half a mile and forsook them and
took to the Roman straight line until suddenly stumbling upon itself
again at one of its meanders further on it returned to its old way.
The scene is like the picture of a wandering life interrupted by a
year of discipline. The stark telegraph-posts in line seem part of the
discipline. Possibly for years, for centuries, the meanders survived,
more and more faintly, with the straight line, enclosing a rough
and crooked space. This space beside Tring Hill should have been a
common for ever; but either it never was or a common award handed it
over to the largest mouth. Opposite the milestone it turns out from
the main road in its old south-westerly direction, and escapes the
telegraph-posts. For some time it was unlike its old self because it
had hardly any grassy margin. It went up and down again and again, and
often steeply, and the more hilly a modern road the less likely it is
to have wide margins. Near Halton there was a wayside border but little
if at all trodden, and not fed down by sheep. A traveller joining the
road for a mile or so would have failed to see in it any distant or
ancient purpose; it was a winding country lane metalled for modern
uses, and by Halton House made polite with firs and laurels. In one
place, as we neared Wendover, I saw the old course and its bank and
also a hedge beyond the present one. Past Halton Woods the hills recede
southward and there is a gap of a mile between steep Boddington Hill
and steep Bacombe Hill. Through this gap comes the road from London,
Uxbridge, and Amersham to Aylesbury, and the railway with it: at the
entrance stands Wendover. Through this long little town of cottages the
Icknield Way goes as High Street and Pound Street. We were now close
under Bacombe Hill, with its camp and barrow. In front, jutting out and
making the road curve west before it could resume its south-west course
by a sharp turn south, lay the Coombe Hill and its obelisk, Beacon Hill
sprinkled with thorns, and Pulpit Hill. As we climbed the lower slopes
of Bacombe Hill I noticed that the roadside green had been dug up and
enclosed by a second hedge. Beyond there was a good green margin now
on the left and now on the right, and beeches rustled from the hedges;
and on both sides grew corn. The road went up and down, coming thus
suddenly in sight of Ellesborough Church tower rising pale ahead out
of its trees against the clear line of the hills. Past Butler’s Cross,
where the road from Aylesbury to Hughenden and High Wycombe crosses,
the sycamores on the left were beautiful, and so were the beeches,
wych-elms and ashes following, and then more sycamores, and still more
in a cluster above the high bank by Ellesborough Church. The Chekers
Park limes and ashes on the left cooled the road until we came to a
pool and Little Kimble Church. Then there were more park trees, lime
and elm and chestnut, as we went up to the church tower of St. Nicholas
at Great Kimble.

[Illustration: Ellesborough Church.]

At Great Kimble--at the “Bear and Cross”--I got tired of riding at
a walk up steep hills and down steep hills, and I took to my feet
again. Just before the second milestone from Princes Risborough, in
obedience to my map, I turned to the left and took the right-hand road
at a fork. For a quarter mile this was a narrow chalky lane, having
at its entrance a sycamore and a thatched cottage, and traveller’s joy
all over its low hedge; but crossing a road from Great Missenden it
became more important, hard and white, with a green border. I climbed
up past the “Red Lion” at Whiteleaf, under Whiteleaf Hill, crossed the
Wycombe road, and went down a hedged and rutty lane, leaving the spire
of Princes Risborough half a mile below on the right. The way was some
distance up on a steep slope, and itself in places so steep from side
to side that there were two tracks, one two yards above the other. Then
it was a broad track of level turf, next a narrow and rough one, the
ruts, as near the Horsenden road, mended with lemonade bottles and meat
tins. That road also thwarts the Icknield Way, and diverts it half a
mile to the left; an old course seemed perhaps to be indicated by a
hedge continuing the line of the lane behind. Turning to the right out
of this road the Icknield Way was white with green edges, of which one
presently became a terrace above the road. Over one railway and under
another its level green edges were trimmed with silver-weed; in the
hedges there were elms. Past the Bledlow road it was a broad, rough
lane, soon green, between hedges; the Chilterns and Wain Hill woods
on the left, charlock on the right. It climbed until at the “Leather
Bottle” it reached its highest point since Telegraph Hill, and it had
woods both above and below--which rarely happens to it--as it passed
above the head of a beech-sided coombe having an entrance apparently
higher than its back. There were roses in the hedges through these
beech woods. The “Leather Bottle” marked the far edge of the wood and
the passing of the border into Oxfordshire. Here a steep track slanted
down from the hill-top. The road was now narrower, confined by a hedge
and bank on the right and the steep wall of the thorn and juniper hill
on the left. Presently another deep track came slantwise down from
Chinnor Hill towards Bledlow and crossed my way. Beyond this the vale
was lovely. At the foot of the hill beyond the railway which followed
it was an irregular space of two or three square miles, nearly level
but not quite. This was divided into large fields of grass or corn by
scarce perceptible hedges or ditches, and crossed by one winding road
visible and white at only one of its bends. Along this road and the
hedges a very few elms were distributed with indescribable felicity.
There would be five at a bend; a row, then a break, and only one or two
more; and they made only one long line. One of the fields so divided
was lemon-coloured with charlock; on one which was slightly tilted up
a few sheep were scattered. Beyond and on either side of this space
the trees were thicker, and closed in so that two or three miles
away all seemed woodland with an interspace or two, then a grey, dim
ridge beyond, all under a grey-folded sky. Above the juniper hill the
jackdaws were jacking merrily.

[Illustration: Near the “Leather Bottle.”]

Afterwards the road descended and was a green-hedged line with a
narrow ploughed field between it and the edge of the juniper. Above
Chinnor it was for a long way almost straight, broad and green, with
elms in the left hedge. Here the Chilterns had beeches on the upper
slope and dots of juniper below. Suddenly after this straightness the
way had to descend a little over undulating ground, and it wriggled
ahead confusedly, narrow and without trees in its hedge, widening
where a hump was useless, to the ploughland below. In front now stood
the clumped Beacon Hill above Lewknor, which was the end of a long
curve of hills carrying the woods of Crowell, Kingston, and Aston,
woods reaching from the ridge down to the arable in most parts, but
with lawny or chalky intervals. At the crossing to Kingston Blount
the railway came up to my road and from there went close and parallel
for a mile to the station of Aston Rowant. It was here a broad green
track at the foot of the slope, though still above everything lying
on its right, and leaving the villages at least half a mile on that
side. It rounded Beacon Hill, which was capped with a tree-clump and
sprinkled with junipers, and went along under Bald Hill and Shirburn
Hill, which was wooded. Before crossing the road from Great Marlow and
Fingest to Watlington, it wound round a chalk pit and rubbish heap.
Then the telegraph-posts joined it, though it was only a green lane in
two terraces going under thorny Watlington Hill, and past cornfields
sprinkled with charlock and white campion. At one point ten elm trees,
one a triple tree, stood out in the middle of the wide green trackway.
Beyond the road from Nettlebed the way was white between high, level
green banks, and then long grass, thistles, and thorns in a thicket,
before coming to the elm-shaded pond where a lane goes up on the left
under more elms to Dame Alice Farm. Then it narrowed and widened again
among nettles and elder, and a little farther it became a company
of four parallel grooves paved with the pure down turf, a little
silver-weed, and thyme. The undulations of the cornland were bolder now
towards Britwell Salome, and in a hollow a roof nestled among elms;
beyond these were dim, low hills. A line of elm trees, now many deep,
now in narrow file, half hid the village of Britwell. Above my road a
steam-plough stood idle; the men lay on their faces under the elms;
and beyond was their caravan. Crossing the Britwell Salome road I came
in sight of the clear heavings of the Sinodun Hills and their clumps
of trees, and the dim length of the main downs far past them. Britwell
House, looking at its monument and Swyncombe Downs, lay a little to the
right. Down the slope of the hill at the north edge of the beeches and
firs of Icknield Bank Plantation came a Danish entrenchment.

[Illustration: Icknield Way, near Watlington.]

[Illustration: Sinodun Hill.]

Emerging from the trees the road was narrow and hard, but sent a
green branch southward over Littleworth Hill, and the adjacent land
was equally high on both sides, on the left Ewelme Downs, on the
right Huntingland. I went along the south side of Ewelme Cow Common,
a shallow, irregular hollow of grass, with many thorns and much
bird’s-foot trefoil in it, bounded on all hands by roads without
hedges. I entered the Henley road a little west of the fourteenth
milestone from Oxford, and turned along it to the right, and then
almost at once to the left at Gipsies’ Corner, and so went south,
avoiding the road on the right to Crowmarsh Gifford and Wallingford.
Here was a new land before me, of sweeping corn, big thatched barns on
a low ridge above it, and the main Downs beyond. It was a narrow and
low-hedged road that kept away from the low, elmy Thames land on the
west. Over the hazels and elders of its hedgerows climbed roses and
bryony. Between Oakley Wood and Coldharbour Farm it made southward,
crossing the Nettlebed and Crowmarsh and Nuffield and Crowmarsh roads
within a few yards; the three ways framing a pretty triangular waste
of impenetrable thorns, elders, and nettles. Sinodun Hills were always
distinct on the right. Then I traversed Grim’s Ditch, where it borders
the south edge of Foxberry Wood and of a broad, herbless ploughland;
the ditch being on the south side of the bank. In half a mile I crossed
another road from Crowmarsh, going south-east. There my way ceased
to be a road, but its line was clear along the natural wall of earth
between upper and lower fields; and when there was no more wall, along
the strip of rough grass between two stretches of ploughland; and when
that ended, the course of the way was clearly on a terrace with a
central path through the long grass and some thorns on the bank to the
right of it, between two fields of sainfoin. Ahead, on the left, stood
the little solitary church of Ipsden on an east-and-west road from
North Stoke which I crossed. Onwards there was a rough, hedgeless road
still going south. After the next cross-road to Ipsden the probable
line was marked only by a hedge between grass and arable, and even that
gave out for the last fifty yards before entering the Mongewell road.
Over this road a gap in the hedge might have been used when the road
had dwindled to a footpath going to Glebe Farm, which is on a road now
largely used to connect Brazier’s Park with Goring. I thought I saw
the ghost of it coming down to Glebe Farm, though amidst corn. This
road to Goring is henceforward along the course of the Icknield Way.
It is a hard and hedgeless road, winding and undulating through corn
that rises on either hand to crested ridges. It passed Icknield Farm,
crossed the South Stoke and Woodcote road, and went up as Catsbrain
Hill to where I saw below me the red roofs and walls of suburban
Cleeve and the Berkshire downs, their woods and pastures, beyond.
The road dipped, and at the cross-road below was lost in streets and
building land. Therefore I turned west along the cross-road, and then
south again to Goring, the ford, and Streatley. Goring and Streatley
railway station, and the cutting and the new houses have probably
covered up where they have not destroyed all traces of the Icknield
Way. But there is a Ferry Lane leading down to the towing-path and
river, to where there was a ferry before the bridge, and a “Roman” ford
over the gravelly bottom before that. On the opposite side Streatley
Vicarage and its lawn lie across the probable way, but beyond them a
path continuing the line of Ferry Lane goes straight up to the Reading
road a quarter mile south of the “Bull.” I went into Goring Church
and churchyard, and was pleased with the names of “John Lammas” and
of “James, Ann, and Ruth Thresher” on tombstones. What clear visages
of men and women these call up, each perfect in its way, shorn of the
uncertain, vague, or incongruous elements of the living! By a kind of
art the mere names in the churchyard sketch the characters. I have seen
mere names that suggested as much as those two beautiful verses express
which Mr. Walter de la Mare, the author, calls “An Epitaph”:--

    Here lies the most beautiful lady,
    Light of step and heart was she;
    I think she was the most beautiful lady
    That ever dwelt in the West Countrie.

    But beauty vanishes; beauty passes;
    However rare--rare it be;
    And when I crumble who will remember
    This lady of the West Countrie?

[Illustration: Near Cleeve.]

I have seen some that had in them no touch of death except the word,
and that did no more than make a rustle and a shadow in the beauty as
death does in the same poet’s “Three Cherry Trees”:--

      There were three cherry trees once
      Grew in a garden all shady;
    And there for delight of so gladsome a sight
      Walked a most beautiful lady,
      Dreamed a most beautiful lady.

      Birds in those branches did sing,
      Blackbird and throstle and linnet,
    But she walking there was by far the most fair--
      Lovelier than all else within it,
      Blackbird and throstle and linnet.

      But blossoms to berries do come,
      All hanging on stalks light and slender,
    And one long summer’s day charmed that lady away
      With vows sweet and merry and tender,
      A lover with voice low and tender.

      Moss and lichen the green branches deck,
      Weeds nod in its paths green and shady;
    Yet a light footstep seems there to wander in dreams,
      The ghost of that beautiful lady--
      That happy and beautiful lady.

As if I had not had enough of it in passing through, I walked out again
to Cleeve, and looked at the blocks of red brick houses. Only people
with immortal souls could be content with houses like those. For a man
without an immortal soul, but a few senses for a substitute, a house
like one of these is, to use one poor word instead of a dozen better
ones, unsuitable. I have lived in three, and one of them would compete
with any house at Cleeve for the title of The Red Brick House.

The Red Brick House was a raw naked building in the county of Kent with
a triple bay window to left and right of the front door, and, above
these, two large windows and a small one in the middle; on one side
there were no windows, on the other only one very small one low down;
the back was flat and had a door between a large window and a small,
and three windows above. The roof was of slate and low-pitched, and
there was a stack with three chimney pots at either side of the house,
and a single chimney at the back.

The house stood in a level, oblong piece of land cut out of a large
field by posts and wire, and separated from the road by a cheap but
rustic fence. There were two other buildings of the same species within
two hundred yards, all looking across the same road between elm trees
to a ploughed field, many hedges, a rise of orchard land, and some
heavy wooded hills at the horizon. For the sake of the houses the elms
on their side had been felled and taken away. Breaking-down, temporary
fowl-houses were littered about two of the gardens, which someone had
begun to dig once upon a time, and even to plant and sow; but there was
not a living tree in either of them.

The soil was light. There was no higher ground in the near
neighbourhood, and it had therefore been chosen as the site of a square
water-tank, imperfectly sequestered among elms close to the house. To
the south the view was gentle and perfect, especially when the blossom
snow hung in the orchards and the sky was milky soft above the dark
woods of the horizon. At the lower edge of these woods stood a white
house that was always mysterious, even though it was often seen from
a gateway not a hundred yards distant. The Downs flowed to the north.
Eastward and westward the last undulations of the Downs could be seen
beyond orchards and elms.

The village clustered round a triangular green half a mile away, and
in the woods on the slope from the Red Brick House down to the Green,
several bigger houses half hid themselves, looking toward the far
Downs and the orchard rise. Many other folds of the land held cottages
in groups, farm-houses and their spreading dependencies, conical
oast-houses, single or sociable, and not a few churches; yet from the
Red Brick House only the White House at the wood’s edge was visible
when the leaves were on the elms of the hedges, on the orchards, and on
the oak and beech of the copses and greater woods.

All other houses that I have known, beautiful, plain, dear, hateful, or
dull, have been somehow subdued and made spiritual houses in course of
time and of memory. The Red Brick House is the only unconquerable one.
To this day it remains a body, and dead. Its fires are black grates
that burnt coal. Its walls are wall-paper in strips at a certain price.
Its garden is still mere hard ground to be dug (and to grow chiefly
the inexorable couch-grass). I saw a beautiful spring come into the
world from that house: spring passed down the elms on the opposite
side of the road, led one morning by a wry-neck screaming loud in the
tops of the trees. Pewits came to the ploughed field beyond, and tossed
in the sunny wind, as I would have done in such days of March, had I
been a bird. Beautiful autumn, beautiful spring, beautiful summer,
triumphed round about that building. Many days can I remember from
those seasons, a February day, for example--a pale morning after a
night of lashing rain, a pale, still morning. The puddles, the ruts of
the cartways, the smooth surface of the winding roads, glistened in the
brown, ploughed world. The Downs were clear and dark and hard under a
silver-clouded blue sky, and far beyond them were the upper ridges of
small mountainous clouds of a yellowish and sunlit white. Very sombre
were the woods. Each thing was dark or bright; all was fresh and cold.
Suddenly a bee twanged through the air to a snowdrop on the south side
of the Red Brick House. Inside the house a subtle devil was refusing to
let a soul enter into its walls--a subtle but a bodiless and soulless
devil, negative and denying. During the nine years since it was built
eight families had sojourned in the house, and had not given it a soul;
nor had the several intervals of vacancy given it a ghost.

Sometimes death will give a soul to a house. I once saw the soul of a
dead man given to a new little house with a verandah. The swifts were
racing to and fro between the rows of new houses. They flew just above
the level of men’s hats, except when they turned with a rapier-like
twist up into the air. While they raced they screamed continually
shrill screams of a fierce hilarity. There were half a hundred of them
all flying as upon the surface of an invisible stream surmounted by a
few black, bobbing hats, or, very rarely, an upturned white face; and
no part of the streets was for more than a second without a crescent
black wing and a shriek. They had taken possession of the town. Under
their rush and cry the people in the streets were silent, walking
blankly and straight ahead, and all looking old in contrast with the
tumultuous and violent youth of the birds. The thought came into my
head as I was passing the last of the houses that even so must the
birds have been racing and screaming when the Danes harried this way a
thousand years ago, and thus went they over the head of Dante in the
streets of Florence. In the warriors and in the poet there was a life
clearly and mightily akin to that in the bird’s throat and wing, but
here all was grey, all was dead.

When I came to the bridge leading over the railway to the meadows I
stood and watched the birds flying beneath me, above the slowly curving
metals; for I could not tire of the wings and voices that ripped the
dead air, and I crossed to the other parapet to see how far they went
in the opposite direction. Then for the first time I noticed a house
built almost at the edge of the bank which fell steeply down to the
railway. Only the cutting separated it from the town, and beyond it
could be seen nothing but trees lining the road, and fields on either
side as far as the woods of the horizon. It was the last house of the
town, and one of the newest. Not being in a street it needed not to
be exactly like the rest, square, pierced with oblong windows on two
sides, and blank on the other two; but so it was, except that its
lower windows looked across the railway between the thin, white posts
of a verandah. A strip of garden, not more than equal to it in area,
surrounded the house, and this was enclosed by rusty iron railings
upon all sides. Every window was shut, and the light and air blocked
out by venetian blinds painted grey. The white paint of the window
frames and the verandah was dirty, but the red bricks of the walls
were still harshly new and untouched by vegetation or any stain. The
garden had never been cultivated: it was given over to long grasses of
the unhealthy rankness peculiar to soil which is composed of builders’
refuse, and the stalks were matted and beaten down so as to suggest
the soaked hair of something dead. The door and gate were shut. The
verandah and the white paint gave the building a pretentious air of
being a pleasure house; yet it looked over the railway at the back
parts of the town, at the railway station on one hand, at the cemetery
and a tall chimney on the other. It had apparently not been occupied
or for a little time only, and was now empty; or it had been used for
a month at a time by perhaps half a dozen families; certainly it had
never become a house; it was the corpse, the stillborn corpse of a
house.

Beyond it, between the two lines of elms and on either side of them,
was the open country. The road was old, too, worn down like a river-bed
into the sandy soil, and the elms above either side made it dark as
it rose towards the north. I had not gone many yards along it when
I came to a place where the bank had been excavated long ago. There
was a smooth sandy floor, and behind that a firm wall of orange sand
interlaced by the stony and snake-like roots of a great oak which
towered up from the top of the wall; and behind the trunk the sun was
a scarlet round in a dull sky at the moment of going down. It was dark
and still in this hollowed place, and I had looked at it for some time
before I heard the crying of a child and saw three children playing
in the sand. Under the oak they had dug a cave in the sand, and a
black-haired boy and a fair-haired girl were carrying away little
spadefuls, while the third sat still among the roots. The two workers
went silently backwards and forwards. They moved gravely and without
a word, and I might have thought they were unaware of one another
had they not made way for one another in their comings and goings.
They worked as if in a dream and being moved by some unseen power.
Their faces also were fixed and expressionless; their wide-open eyes
seemed to be upon something which travelled always before them and was
invisible to me. They were perhaps seven years old. The other was not
more than three, and he took no notice of them as he sat, his face
smeared with tears and sand, and a paper bag upon his lap. Now and
then he burst out into a fresh sobbing cry just as suddenly, and not
more loudly than the robin singing above his head. When he did this
the little girl went up to him and shook him gently, and took a cherry
from the paper bag and put it into his mouth. At this he became silent
again for a little, holding the cherry-stone in one hand, and with the
other rubbing his eyes. When this cure had been tried several times,
and the scarlet sun had gone down out of the dull heavens, the child
began to cry more steadily, and it was in vain that a cherry was put
into his mouth; for he held it a little while between his lips, and did
not notice when it fell out, but sobbed on and on as if he saw nothing,
heard nothing, thought nothing, felt nothing, but only sobbed.

I asked the little girl: “What is the matter with him?”

“He wants his mother,” she said.

“Where does he live?” I asked, as I stepped towards the child, meaning
to lift him up.

“Over there,” she replied, pointing with her eyes to the house of the
verandah.

“Then why doesn’t he go home?” I said, stopping still and thinking
again chiefly of the house.

“His father is dead,” said the little girl and the little boy
simultaneously. Then they went on with their digging, while I turned
and saw the house looking as if it had grown suddenly old in those few
moments--old and haggard, and so cold that I shivered to think how cold
it must be in the death-room behind the venetian blinds. The silence
of the house and road was like a sea suddenly expanding infinitely
about me. As I turned away, the child’s sob, the song of the robin, the
scream of the swifts, fell into that dark silence without breaking it,
like tears into a deep sea. And I looked at the house and saw that the
soul of the dead man had entered it.

[Illustration: The Bridge at Goring.]

Remembering this, I gave up my spiritual frivolity at Cleeve, and
escaped to an inn. I suppose I had been too much taken with churchyard
names in the grey evening to be quite fair to the living landlord
at the inn. He was a short, heavy, fair-haired man, who had a too
distinguished moustache, and talked through his nose, and had a straw
hat tilted back on his neck. He and a wealthy Scotchman were talking
together, and invariably--by a slight effort--agreeing with one
another. His little niece came in with a flag, but he successfully put
her off by saying that he had a lot of things to show her by and by,
and she ran away shouting: “Uncle has a lot of things to show me.”
He explained to the Scotchman that he really had--“flags and things
for the coronation”--“must do something”--“everybody will”--“have
spent half a sovereign”--“it isn’t much--but still....” The child,
he said, was very excitable, not that there was anything wrong; oh,
no; but she would make a wonderful actress. He asked the Scotchman
what he would take, and then ordered two whiskies, which I understood
the other to pay for. They talked of drinks and of champagne, of
course. The landlord began laughing at “some _ladies_” who like it
sweet. He implied huge contempt for a man who could like such stuff.
Nevertheless, he hastened to say: “You don’t like sweet champagne?...
No.... No, of course you don’t.... Oh, yes, well, tastes differ.” This
naturally led to Freemasonry, and it turned out that the Scotchman
had done everything as a Mason (except work in stone); had served
as chairman, etc. etc., and the landlord showed great eagerness of
admiration by saying: “Have you really?” several times. They returned
to the subject of drink. The Scotchman announced that he took nothing
but whisky, except when he had to. The landlord hastened to remark:
“You are quite right. You’ll live the longer for it.” Then the landlord
related how when he was three-quarters drunk he always found it so hard
to drink champagne, which was only good, really, if you were run down,
or for medicinal purposes. A very great deal of natural philosophy was
uttered over those three or four glasses of whisky. After the Scotchman
had gone the landlord was claimed by two young gentlemen who were
staying under his roof for the fishing, boating, and alcoholic drinks.
They called him “Arthur,” and lured him into frivolities which he was
not born to, such as arranging a band with tennis rackets, etc., for
instruments, and serenading the other visitors and the inhabitants of
the surrounding houses. In the intervals they fortified themselves with
his whisky to such an extent that his leniency towards its effect was
not to be surprised at. They also took care to keep up their reputation
of commonplace luridity with the barmaid, a plain, hard-worked girl,
whose smile--and, they evidently believed, everything else--was at
their command. When he could slip away from these sportsmen the
landlord straightened his hat and talked business to the barmaid with
some anxiety and no false generosity. But they were always shouting
for “Arthur” in shriller and more discordant voices until at last the
second fiddle of the two burst through the door of his bedroom and
rushed across and fell heavily on the other side. Then his leader went
quietly to bed. The landlord turned to his accounts, and the barmaid
went on washing up glasses.




CHAPTER VII

FIFTH DAY--IVINGHOE TO WATLINGTON, ON THE LOWER ICKNIELD WAY, BY ASTON
CLINTON, WESTON TURVILLE, CHINNOR, AND LEWKNOR


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 next door to a small
creeper-covered brewery which is next door to a decent creeper-covered
house with round-topped windows and a most cool and comfortable
expression. Some stout and red-faced men stood talking outside the
brewery in cheerful mood. On the opposite side of the road was a green
enclosed by a low railing. The village was a straggling one, and there
were many newish houses, of pale brick here and there, as well as old
timbered cottages. I went into a grocer’s shop at the moment when they
were killing a pig on the other side of the wall. Neither the shrieking
nor the end of it disturbed the stout proprietor cutting up lard and
the women talking of the coronation.

[Illustration: Grand Junction Canal.]

The road was a dull, straight one going south-westwards over the London
and North Western Railway a mile north of the Upper road, and two and
a half miles north-west of Tring station. It passed allotment gardens
and had the company of heavy-laden telegraph-posts, whose wires cut
across the terraces or “linces” of Southend Hill on the right. But if
the corn-bunting sang its curst dry monotony on the telegraph-wire a
blackbird also sang in an oak. Beyond the railway the road was better
and had level green edges up to the roses of the high hedge on the
right and the low one on the left, over which I could see across the
oats to the Chilterns lying dark under the sun. On the other side of
the barley, which was a cold and bluish green, rose Marsworth Church
tower to the right. The reservoirs beyond the turning to Marsworth were
broad and rough-edged, and with some trimmed poplars at a corner, a
straight rank of trimmed elm trees near the further edge, and the line
of telegraph-wires on this side, they made a foreign scene, against the
background of the Chilterns, of a fascinating dreariness; one man was
fishing from the bank. Crossing the canal I was in Hertfordshire, which
I left at the far side of the last reservoir. These dreary waters had
attracted some thickets which the sedge-warbler loved and sang in, as
by the Wilstone Reservoir. The inns (where they provide for anglers)
and the houses near the locks had the look of canalside and wharfside
settlements, a certain squalor more than redeemed by the individuality.
The unpopulated hills on the left of it, and the Vale of Aylesbury on
the right, emphasized this half-urban, half-marine character. The road
here was very much broken into sharp turns not always by a crossing.
Immediately after the last reservoir, before the turning to Drayton
Beauchamp, the road was at its best, winding between not too level
green edges of unequal breadth, and hedges of thorns and roses and a
few ash trees; and on the edges the grass had been cut and was lying
across the low clover. Doves cooed and a lark overhead sang “as if he
never would be old.” Then, at a bend where a ditch came in and had a
willow above it and some meadow-sweet round about, a sedge-warbler was
singing, the soul of a little world ten yards across. The crossing of
the road to Drayton was one I shall not forget. The signpost pointed
back to Ivinghoe, forward to Aylesbury, Buckland, and Aston Clinton,
on the right to Puttenham, on the left to Drayton. There was a small
crook to the left before my road went forward again. In the midst of
the meeting ways the signpost had a green triangle to stand on. Also,
each road had green borders which all widened to the crossing; some of
the borders had rushes. The road to Puttenham swelled up a little and
fell, and over the rim showed the trees of the vale. Ahead and to the
left were the wooded downs. As I left the signpost I had a very sweet,
gentle-spoken “Good morning” from a traveller coming towards me, a
little and rickety dark foreign man, cheerful and old, carrying a thick
satchel on his back and looking neither to the right nor to the left.

Instead of going on into Akeman Street and then turning at right angles
along it for a mile, I took a path half a mile on this side of it which
led towards Buckland Church. Where the path crossed the first hedge, a
narrow, low embankment went off to the left along the hedge, followed
by the path to the church and entering at last an elmy and nettly lane.
Buckland village has many elm trees, plain little houses, twisting
lanes, and a “Buck’s Head” in a dim corner of them. Its church is of
alternating flints and freestone, but the tower all of stone. It was a
very cool place with a slow, muffled, beating clock and a carpet of sun
lying across the floor from the netted open door. One of the tablets on
the wall was to Judith ----. High on the wall under the tower was an
inscription saying:--

“Near this place, together with those of an infant daughter, lie the
earthly remains of Frances Russell, relict of William Russell of Great
Missenden, daughter of Edward and Frances Horwood of this place. She
died October 8, 1793, aged 73 years.

“The fleeting moments of Prosperity, the tedious hours of Adversity,
and the lingering illness which Providence allotted, she bore with
equanimity and Christian resignation.

“Reader! Go and do likewise.”

It was a rusty and dusty inscription read mostly by the bellringers
standing under the tower, and one of the most dismal certificates of
life, marriage, motherhood, religion, death and the philosophy of
relatives that I have seen. It was cheerful afterwards to read the name
of Peter Parrot on a tombstone out in the sun.

[Illustration: Aston Clinton.]

Past Buckland Church, I turned to the right and almost at once to the
left along a road which went through a hayfield and then became a
borderless hedged road, but with parallel marks as of traffic on the
left. It came out opposite Aston Clinton Church into Akeman Street,
a main road of elms, chestnuts, and telegraph-poles, going through
a typical “peaceful” village street, with a smithy and a “Rose and
Crown,” “Swan,” and “Palm in Hand,” an advertisement of petrol, a
horse’s brass trappings gleaming under a tree, and in the park on
the left hand a peacock proclaiming the neighbourhood of a large
house. I had to turn to the right along Akeman Street for a quarter
mile before turning out to the left into a road with houses facing
the park. They were poor cottages, a little sordid and all jammed in
a row, and three public houses amongst them. Past these houses the
road was a dull, straight one under elms, with a clear view over a
level beanfield to the Downs and their trees, with bright tops and
dark, misty shadows below. Presently a brooklet appeared alongside
the road among willow-herb and overhung by alder, elder, and willow,
and at the beginning of Weston Turville it provided entertainment for
half a hundred ducklings. The road went through the midst of Weston
Turville and among inns on both sides and down the turnings, a “Vine,”
a “Chequers,” a “Plough,” a “Six Bells,” a “Black Horse,” a “Chandos,”
and a “Crown,” followed not much beyond the church by a “Marquis of
Granby” and a “Swan”--but these were at World’s End. It was a village
with here a house and there two or three round a square of streets,
with the manor-house and elmy church tower outside it to the south;
and between the houses there were intervals of garden. I noticed a
little house lost between the great bare trunks of half a forest of
trees in a timber merchant’s yard. I found an inn which had a straight
settle facing a curved one of elm with a sloping back and reasonable
arm-rests. There were quoits on pegs under the ceiling, and above the
usual circular target for darts; the open fireplace had a kitchen range
placed in it. The floor was composed of bluish-black and red tiles
alternating.

I did not make certain how the Icknield Way went through Weston
Turville, though a possible course seemed to turn left on entering
the village and go by Brook Farm and Malthouse Row, and a little west
of the old manor-house and by the “Vine.” Unless it took some such
course, it could hardly have got to Terrick and Little Kimble, but must
rather have gone straight on through Stoke Mandeville, Kimblewick, and
Owlswick and into the road now marked “Lower Icknield Way” at Pitch
Green. I went past the Weston reservoir to World’s End, and then over
the Wendover and Aylesbury road only a mile north of Wendover, having
clearly in view the obelisk on Coombe Hill, and a little later the
towered Ellesborough Church looking ghostly in the sunlight under
Beacon Hill. The hay was cut on both sides, and the road wound between
broad borders of thistles and nettles. Near Terrick I saw the first
meadow crane’s-bill of that season and that country--the purple flower
whose purple is the emblem of a rich inward burning passion. At the
very edges of the roadside turf the white clover grew. In the hawthorns
a blackbird sang.

Soon I came to Kimble station on the Aylesbury branch of the Great
Western and Great Central Junction Railway, and some new houses, one
of them named “Beware of the Dogs.” Under the railway I turned left
to Risborough and Longwick, not right to Hartwell. And now the road
settled down to a fairly straight course for about ten miles, with
meadow-sweet and rose in its low hedges and a view over the wheat to
the Chilterns. It was usually about a hundred feet lower than the
Upper way, and from one to two miles north of it. It was crossed by
hardly any road more important than itself, except that from Thame to
Princes Risborough. At this crossing, outside “The Duke of Wellington”
or “Sportsman’s Arms,” a street organ played “Beside the Seaside”
and other national anthems. Little more than a mile beyond I entered
Oxfordshire. I left the road to see Chinnor Church, half a mile south,
which looks southward on the juniper-dotted hills skirted by the Upper
way. The most notable thing in the church was an oval tablet near the
screen inscribed with the words:--

  Beneath
  lie
  the remains of
  William Turner
  Esq^{re}
  who died 23^{rd} March
  1797 aged 61
  “Here the wicked cease
  from troubling and
  the weary are
  at rest.”

The word “here” my fancy took quite literally, and I saw a skeleton
cramped behind the tablet protesting to the living that there, inside
the wall, denuded of flesh and of all organs, nerves, and desires, a
wicked man ceased from troubling and a weary one could be at rest; the
teeth of the skeleton shook in their dry sockets as it, now a hundred
and ten years old, uttered those sweet words: “Here the wicked cease
from troubling and the weary are at rest.” Some of the dead outside
bore formidable monosyllabic names, such as Wall, Crook, Saw, and
Cocks. At the “Royal Oak” I listened for half an hour to information
and complaints about the heat, which was at the time about ninety
degrees in the shade, and then went out to make the most of the heat
itself, which I could well do, having myself, as a good critic has
pronounced, an unvarying temperature of about forty-five degrees
(Fahr.).

I left the “Bird in Hand” and a squat, white windmill on the left and
entered a fine green road going straight south-west. One of the hedges
was high enough for shade, in the other some young chestnut trees were
growing up. After some distance the left half of the road was rough and
had a ditch along it; then a tiny stream flowed across, and the way
lost its left hedge and went slightly raised between wheat and oats,
poppy and tall, pale scabious. After that I had clover and bird’s-foot
trefoil and bedstraw and rest-harrow underfoot--corn on the left as far
as elms in masses, and behind these the Chilterns--corn on the right
and ridges of elms beyond. Then another rillet traversed the road and
cooled the feet. In places the grass was very long. Crossing the road
to Kingston Blount the way was more used and rougher; as before it
had corn on both hands--barley and oats speckled like a partridge.
Then a third rillet, and then wheat, barley, oats, and beans in turn;
on the other side of the way wych-elms. There were always elms, and
here and there a farm under them, beyond the corn on the left. Aston
Rowant lay near on my left, with a towered church, a big house, and
men upon a rick, at the edge of the elms. To cross the Aston road my
way made a slight crook to the left and then skirted the hay of Aston
Rowant park, with elms and sweet limes amidst the hay: it was a good
grass and clover track, not deeply rutted. Presently in the mowed and
cleared fields on both sides cattle were walking out from milking.
With another slight crook to the left the way crossed the High Wycombe
and Stokenchurch and Oxford road, where yellow-hammers were singing
in the beeches alongside the telegraph-posts. My way was now a hard
road bordered by beeches and firs, through which I could see the tower
of Lewknor Church across a hayfield. A willow-wren, with a voice like
the sweet voice of someone a thousand years away, was singing among
the tops of the trees. Below, briers and thorns were interwoven, and
silver-weed grew at the edge of the dust. Some country people say
that silver-weed is good for the feet, a belief which might well have
no better foundation than the fact that it grows commonly close to
the road which is cruel to the feet. On the right I passed a little
deserted lodge with pointed windows and doorway gaping blank, and on
the left a wood of beech, elm, and chestnut shadowing a wall in which
there was a door barricaded almost to the lintel by nettles. This cool
wood was full of the chiding of blackbirds and one thrush’s singing.
Near the end this piece of road turns decidedly to the left; but over
the wall on the right are some signs of a track which had not this
southward bend. At the end of the present road, but a little way to the
right along the road to Wheatfield, which it enters, is Moor Court, a
small old house of bricks and tiles, with wings at each side, and a
massive stone chimney at the road end; and it has a range of thatched
farm buildings and a line of Lombardy poplars all enclosed in a wet
moat. A little farther up, a farm road, which might have continued the
track on the right of the road just quitted, turns out to the left and
with a short break leads to Pyrton and Cuxham and Brightwell Baldwin
and so to Wallingford; or from Pyrton the route might be to Watcombe
Manor, Britwell, and Ewelme. But the Lower Icknield Way is, to judge
from the map, supposed to give up its individuality at Moor Court and
make straight away through Lewknor and by Sheepcote Lane to join the
Upper road. There seems no good reason why this connection between the
two, if it were such, should have been more than a convenience for
a few travellers, unless we suppose that the very hilly and uneven
portion of the Upper road, between the beginning of the separation and
Chinnor Hill, so frequently became impassable that it was abandoned
for short or long periods or altogether. But as a road close to Ewelme
was known in the seventeenth century as the Lower Icknield Way, I was
determined to go by Ewelme. From Moor Court I went down to the pretty
group of a smithy, a “Leather Bottle,” and Lewknor’s towered church
at the crossing, where I entered the high road, making past Shirburn
Castle to Watlington. At Watlington the road bends sharp to the right,
and so comes into line with the Lower Icknield Way, as it was near Moor
Court.

This road between the Chilterns and the corn was followed by a single
line of telegraph wire. It had a slightly raised green edge on the
right, marked by footpaths. It went within a few yards of the moated
castle of Shirburn. Here, says the marvelling countryside, the
drawbridge is nightly drawn up, presumably with the philanthropic
motive of giving work to somebody. I wished to see the castle as the
home of a library which has lately given to the world a collection of
ballads from manuscript of the early sixteenth century--“The Shirburn
Ballads.” But a great length of eight-foot wall alongside the road shut
off the view. It was a bad wall too, and could not be liked or admired
for its own sake. I succeeded only in seeing one new battlemented
tower, which, I was told, supplied water for the castle laundry. The
best thing at Shirburn was almost opposite the castle entrance--a
narrow strip of land raised above the road, and protected from it by
a row of goodly elm trees, so that I walked between a high hedge and
them in a private coolness and green gloom as of an airy church about
a hundred yards long. On the hedge side of this strip there was a
depression which might have been the old road: or perhaps at one time
the elms stood in the middle of the road like those yonder on the Upper
Icknield Way under Watlington Hill. Hereby they have set up the reputed
remains of one of Queen Eleanor’s funeral crosses.

[Illustration: Watlington.]

Watlington is a big square village of no great beauty or extraordinary
antiquity, all of a piece and rustic, but urban in its compression of
house against house. A castle stood at the north edge near the present
church. The Oxford road bounds the town on its garden side, where
farm-houses begin and cottages with gardens of monkshood and roses.
Near this road there was a “pleasure fair,” where the roundabouts and
swings of some travelling company were putting in time on their way
to a bigger town and a regular engagement. There must be great wisdom
in the men of Watlington, to be able to harmonize their grave, rustic
streets with the town-bred music as of a steam-engine in pain. It was
a feat I could not accomplish. The most I could do was to go into a
taproom, where the music did not penetrate and the weary were at rest.
It was a most beautiful evening, and the swifts were shrieking low down
along the deserted streets at nine o’clock. I should like to see them
crowded with sheep from Ilsley, and the old drover wearing a thistle
in his cap, or with Welsh ponies going to Stokenchurch Fair over the
Chilterns. But there is no market at Watlington, and nothing but a
“pleasure” fair; a cheap week-end railway ticket to London pleases the
country people by making them feel near London, whether they go or
not; and it may encourage new residents. This was what my host wanted;
his taproom was much too peaceful for living men, though he liked well
enough to smoke his last pipe there, sitting in his shirt sleeves
until the silent room was quite dark and his children came home from
the roundabouts. A man came heavily down the street wheeling a barrow,
stopped outside and called for a pint; while he waited he ruminated,
looking down the street to the first stars and whistling “Beside the
seaside, beside the sea,” then he tipped up his tankard, emptied it,
and went off in a determined manner.

When I went up to bed I was astonished to find a bedroom that was not
at all new to me, though I had never before, to my knowledge, stopped
at this inn. If it was an illusion, the pictures created it. I had
certainly seen them before, in Wales, in Cornwall, in Wiltshire, and
in Kent. What first caught my eye was a beauteous female of a far from
slender type kneeling unharmed in the midst of roaring waters. She
had on a snowy night-dress, over which her curls flowed far down in
admirable disorder. The foam of the sea flew all over and round her
without wetting her night-dress or taking the gloss out of her curls.
Her face also seemed unaffected by her extraordinary position on a
small, isolated rock in the sea, and wore an expression that would have
been better suited to an afflicted lady in her own apartment. She was
suffering, but not from exposure to cold and wet, and what was more
extraordinary still was, that on this solitary rock she had found a
quantity of thick, velvety stuff, and on this, as was natural, she was
kneeling to save her tender knees from the unaccustomed rock.

On the opposite wall hung a similar picture, I suppose by the same
artist, for surely there could be only one man who had these marvellous
visions--visions they must have been, since no one could invent things
so improbable and, without their visionary character, so ridiculous.
Here also the scene was a wild sea and a rock in the midst. One
beauteous girl of the same type as in the other picture was in the
water, another had apparently just clambered up on to the rock. I say
apparently, but her night-dress was dry, snow-white, and untorn. I
say apparently, because I could only imagine that the two had been
swimming together and one had got first to the rock; for it was not
likely that one should find herself on a rock in this position and then
by mere chance see a fellow-mortal of the same sex, age, beauty, and
costume struggling with the waves close by. Her struggle was nearly
over, for the beauty on the rock, kneeling on the velvet carpet which,
by a fortunate accident, almost covered it, bent over in an attitude
of much grace and caught her unhappy sister by one of her fair hands.
The face of the swimmer was upturned and exquisitely sad, but, as in
the other picture, it was not the sadness of a swimmer in stormy and
dark waters, but rather of a lady inwardly tormented by some difficulty
of the “heart” or of the “spirit,” to use a popular physiology. Her
sadness was great, and naturally so; but I should have expected to
see astonishment mingled with it, because what could be seen of her
night-dress was dry as it had ever been in the linen cupboard at her
stately home; and her hair, though loose, was not untidy and would have
pleased a lover, had she confessed one and had he, instead of another
lady, been aiding her in distress. I had last seen these two pictures
at Tregaron, and I sighed with a serene and pleasant recollection of
the place, the season, and the company.

I was glad also to see a third work of the same artist, or at least of
the same school. It belonged to a different period, geological rather
than marine; and again it must be insisted that the work was visionary
because no one capable of a mere invention so ridiculous is likely to
have the power and the patience to execute it with such completeness
and finish. The scene was midnight in a valley of rocks and of high,
precipitous, rocky sides, wide enough apart to have admitted a mountain
torrent of some size. But it was dry, and over the sharp rocks went
a most beautiful lady. She was dressed in thin and clinging garments
from her shoulders down to her ankles. To meet a woman so beautiful
and so suitably and yet unusually dressed all alone in the mountains
would be at least as surprising as to see her on a little rock in the
sea as one was passing in a storm. I could imagine her easily upon the
velvet-covered rock. Her arms were bare, and with one she clasped a
book to her left breast, while with the other she felt her way along
the precipitous wall of the valley and steadied herself over the cruel
rocks. It was to be noticed that there was no velvet over these rocks,
and this is another proof of the genuineness of the artist’s vision,
unless it should be suspected that he disliked the appearance of a long
strip of carpet all down a valley. A fierce and extravagant vision,
you will say. But the gentleness which had somehow ensured the carpet
in the marine vision had not been eclipsed in the geological. From
the edge of the farther wall of the valley shone a light. Someone was
up there with a lantern and was turning its beams down on to the spot
under the fair traveller’s feet. There could be little doubt that he
was following her along with the light, but he could not be seen. The
lantern would have been more _natural_ in a narrow alley in a town,
but there was no question here of mere nature. If it comes to nature,
was there ever a period when a woman of such beauty, and of very great
refinement, strayed out with a book among inhospitable mountains,
clad in a dress that was fitted rather to suggest and even display
the form of limbs and bosom than to protect them from rocks, thorns,
and weather, not to speak of men and other wild beasts? A voluptuous
Oriental or Frenchman might of course sit down and invent an earthly
paradise with a small population of like beauties, but their object
would be as unmistakable as it would be objectionable to persons of
sensibility and discipline, except when alone or off their guard. But
an Englishman or a German could only have copied such a picture from a
vision having nothing to do with the flesh, and a charge of any such
thing would recoil upon the accuser. I believe it was by an Englishman
or a German. I should like to see some of the work of his less
visionary moods. I should like to see him with his family, talking to
his wife about the butcher’s bill and his daughter’s marriage--I should
like to know if he had a daughter or a child at all. I should like to
see him with his friends after dinner, and reading Mr. George Moore’s
_Memoirs of my Dead Life_.

I thought at one time that one of the other pictures was by the same
man, partly because it is so often to be seen with his work and appeals
to the same people, such as myself, and partly because it had a
similar detachment from modern life; but I could not feel sure that it
was the result of a vision and not of pure invention. The scene was a
summer garden sloping down to a river, and at the foot of the slope
a terrace of turf and a flight of steps to the water. On the terrace
four girls were having tea. They were much thinner than those on the
rocks; they wore white clinging dresses and their heads were bare. They
were all smiling and their faces were such that no man could imagine
a god, providence, fate, parent, lover, doctor or little boy in the
street hard-hearted enough to interrupt the smiles. Human beings like
them are not to be seen now, and no portraits or records of them in
the past have come down to us. They seemed born to eat chocolate and
drink sweet lemonade and never suffer from the consequences. There
had been five of them, but one stood on the bottom step feeding two
swans without any apparent effort. She had a hat in her hand either
because a hat is more beautiful than a hand or because it is more easy
to draw. She was hanging down her head thinking of something--or it
might be nothing--unconnected with the swans or the slow, still river.
Behind her a person whose mouth would not melt butter stood looking
at her back. He was dressed in pretty breeches and buckled shoes, and
was interesting chiefly as making the observer marvel what witty power
had added a creature so appropriate to such a company. As marvellous
must have been the artist’s invention. If it could be imagined that
dresses should, out of their own spirit, magically produce beings to
wear them they would be like these five ladies; and if dainty breeches,
silk stockings, and buckled shoes should have the same power they would
unfold a man like the lover. The effect of the whole was to suggest
summer, a lovely and harmless place (for the artist’s fresh water
would not drown, any more than his sea water would wet a night-dress),
wealth, luxury, happiness, youth, frivolity, innocence, benevolence--to
suggest them, especially to those who know very little of these things.

There were several pictures of scenery. One showed a steep and very
romantic forest road. It was deep in snow, and enormous trees, whose
roots were nourished in Hades, towered up above on either hand, but let
in the light of a full moon that shone straight down the road. Towards
the moon and up the road went a tall, mantled traveller, leaning on
a staff and turning his head to look into the wood. The picture had
no name, text, or explanation. It was a nameless man and a nameless
traveller, both unknown to history. Nothing was happening. It was
simply a combination of four or five grand, simple elements; a mighty
forest--a moon--snow--a solitary road--a tall traveller.

One of the other pictures was the same, except that a foaming river
took the place of the snowy road. The forest and the moon were the
same. The traveller was not there, and to one who had seen the last
picture there was a touch of tragedy in his absence which atoned for
it; he might have been surprised at the very moment when the snowy
road was being changed into a foaming river. Those who had not seen the
other had to be content with a moon, a romantic forest, a river running
down through it, and foam instead of snow. It hardly seemed to me to
be enough--lacking the human interest. A small flock of sheep among
the trees, with or even without a shepherd, would have made a vital
difference, and the picture could then also have been recognized by
purchasers and recipients of Christmas cards. And this picture was one
which would appeal to those who knew the kind of thing depicted. Rough
woodlanders and their wives, people who have suffered in snow, poor men
who have travelled alone and leaned on their staffs, would gladly put
both pictures on their walls. There were photographs of such people on
the mantelpiece, people whom no best clothes or photographer’s polish
could turn into poetic heroes or cigar-box beauties; men with queer
hairy faces, legs bent like oak branches, and eyes squinting at the
photographer; women their equals, but if anything more hardened, more
tortured, more smiling upon the occasion of being photographed.

Between photographs of a gamekeeper, whose face was like a furze bush
with eyes in it, and a card of mourning for Jane Mary Sims, aged
seventy-three, hung a picture seeming to have little to do with either.
It was of a high-born and well-dressed lady with regular features and
graceful, mature figure sitting beside a cradled child. She was bending
over towards the child, and her face, though composed, was sorrowful.
Had she looked up she would have seen an unusual sight, and it was a
mercy that she did not, for it would have certainly upset her composure
through astonishment and fear. For not many feet from her was the head
of a human being who was coming towards her head foremost through the
window, or more probably the ceiling. I say a human being because her
body--it was a mature and athletic, slender lady--was of the same
general form, size, and proportions as those of our own species, and
she wore the clinging night-dress so much favoured by the visionary
artist. But she had wings attached to her shoulders, not large enough
to be of any use, supposing her to have learned their management, but
sufficient to make part of a becoming fancy dress or fairy dancing
costume. She had apparently dived from some height, and in a bewitching
attitude was making straight for the cradle. As she was no Ariel’s
sister capable of playing “i’ th’ plighted clouds,” the danger both to
her and to the cradle was great. She faced it with no sign of fear,
her soft eyes and her even and not too full lips expressing a mind
in tranquillity and scarcely, if at all, stirred by expectation or
surmise. There was no sequel to this daring but painful picture, nor,
of course, any explanation. It was, I should say, the fancy of a genius
who had mingled the common and the improbable in dreams produced by
opium or other drug.




CHAPTER VIII

SIXTH DAY--WATLINGTON TO UPTON, BY EWELME, WALLINGFORD, LITTLE STOKE,
THE PAPIST WAY, LOLLINGDON, ASTON, AND BLEWBURY


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 turning to Ewelme out of the
Oxford road, and was soon high up among large, low-hedged fields of
undulating arable, with here and there a mass or a troop of elms at a
corner, above a farm, or down a hedge. Farther away on the left I had
the Chilterns, wooded on their crests and in their hollows, not very
high, but shapely. The sky was misted at the horizon, but overhead
milky blue, with thin-spun, dim white cloud; the sun a burning disc;
half-way up the sky hung heavier white clouds, which might develop
later. The road was clover-edged, winding, and undulating, and by no
means an improbable connection of the Icknield Way. Britwell Salome
Church lay on my right, across a willowy field, and having no tower
or spire, it was like one of the farm buildings surrounding it. Then
my road mounted between nettly and elmy banks, and had a bit of waste
on the right where chalk had been dug--a pretty tumbled piece, all
nettles and gix and white bryony under ash trees. There was not much
hedge between the road and the corn before I got to the “Plough” at
Britwell Salome, and next the “Sun.” The village was scattered among
trees, not interrupting the smell of hay. The road skirted it, and was
soon out again amongst the wheat, and passing Britwell park, where
the cattle were crossing in a straight line between groups of elms. In
the hedge there was bracken along with the yellow bedstraw and white
bryony. For a time there were gorse and bracken together on the green
strip above the road. Then, instead of going straight on to Benson, I
turned to the left for Firebrass Hill, Ewelme, and Wallingford. Beyond
this turn all the country round was high, bare cornland undulating to
the darker hills. The road had nettles for a hedge, or sometimes brier,
scabious, knap-weed, and rest-harrow, and once some more purple meadow
crane’s-bill; it had steep banks, but no green border. But this was not
the Icknield Way, which would never have dipped down to the lower part
of Ewelme and up again at once. The first houses of the village were
decent, small ones, standing high and looking down at the farm-house
thatch, the cottages, gardens of fruit trees, and elms of the main
village. The churchyard covered the slope down from the upper to the
lower village, and in the midst stood the church, a venerable one with
a particularly neat growth of ivy across the tower. I could not get
into the church, but could hear the clock ticking in the emptiness.
In the churchyard I noticed this devout fancy over the body of Alice
Heath, who died in 1776:--

    Kind angels, watch this sleeping dust
    Till Jesus comes to raise the just;
    Then may they wake with sweet surprise
    And in their Saviour’s image rise.

[Illustration: Watlington Town Hall.]

I should like to know what was in the verse-writer’s mind when he
penned the first line. The word “surprise” pleased me most, though
due to a rhyme. It occurred to me that the writer’s mind, through
grief, might have been in the same condition as the bedroom artist at
Watlington who drew the lady and the cradle and the beautiful winged
diver. I believe that this artist would have translated literally into
pictorial form the words:--

    Kind angels, watch this sleeping dust.

He would have shown a neat, grassy churchyard with an immemorial
church tower in the background. Scattered over the turf close to the
church would be an indistinct crowd of tombstones. Nearer and clearer
he would present a new and costly stone, probably in the form of a
cross, standing at the top of three or four steps. Many wreaths of
rare and costly flowers would lie unfaded at the foot of the steps. On
the lowest step two figures of exceptional beauty and dignity would be
kneeling without sign of impatience or any other emotion. They would
be in the customary costume of these pictures, and the onlooker would
marvel what they were doing; and if he knew that they were watching
the dust below, he would still conjecture as to what they were to
watch against, and how they proposed to resist the attempts of any
robbing man, beast, dragon, or other monster. But it is unlikely that
any such picture was in the mind of the Ewelme epitaph-writer. He or
she had perhaps no distinct image; choosing words that would fit the
metre and not be in any way surprising to the religious, he thought of
“angels” and of “dust,” and the need of epithets pretty soon suggested
“kind” and “sleeping.” Nevertheless, when I read it I came so near to
forming an image, rather in the style of the bedroom artist, that it is
possible the writer had an image or vision of some sort, and handed it
on to me in that early July morning before anyone was on the roads or
in the churchyard.

There was a much better stone and delicately writ inscription near the
east window. The stone, a very thin, shouldered one, had slipped down
into the earth, and was less than two feet in height and in breadth.
The words were:--

  Here lyeth the Body
  of Margaret Machen
  who departed this
  life the 5^{th} of April
  being aged 20 years
  Anno Dom. 1675.

Here the smallness and prettiness of the thin stone, its being half
swallowed up in earth and grass, the fineness of the written, not
printed, lettering, the name a poem in itself and half Welsh, the youth
of the girl, her death in April more than two hundred years ago, all
together produced an effect like that of beauty, nay! which was beauty.
Not far off was a ponderous square chest with as much reading on it as
a page of newspaper, dated 1869. The sparrows were chittering in the
elms.

[Illustration: Ewelme Cow Common.]

My road dipped down through the village, and to the left by the
“Greyhound” and up between steep banks under larch trees. On the right
a few yards up that road a footpath used to go for two miles towards
Wallingford, but it was covered by corn for the first part, and I kept
to the road. I was soon going past the Ewelme cow common again, but
along the opposite side; and there were cows among its thorns. For a
few yards, after crossing the Benson and Dorchester road at Gypsies’
Corner, I was in the Upper Icknield Way again, but turned to the right,
due west, leaving Clack’s Farm on the south instead of the west. I
was then going down towards the green-striped cornland, the clustered
trees of the Thames Valley, and the pale spire and tower of Wallingford
rising out of it. The low, long curves of land meeting or intersecting
a little above the river were like those of a brier with nothing to
climb. In the hedges there were wild roses and masses of traveller’s
joy, with all its grey-green buds very large. Instead of following the
road round its bend to the south-west, I turned just past the bend
into a green lane to the right, which made straight for Wallingford
spire; and into this lane presently came the footpath from Ewelme and
a parallel old lane. However, I had to turn sharp to the left to reach
Crowmarsh Gifford and Wallingford. Crowmarsh is a wide street of old
cottages leading to Wallingford bridge. Wallingford climbs the right
bank up from the bridge, and out of its crowded brick rise the tower
and the spire of two churches, and the ivied tower of a castle, of the
kind that looks as if it had been ready-made ruinous and ivied, with
a flagstaff on top. I crossed the bridge to the town, and went up the
narrow, old street, past an inn called “The Shakespeare,” to the small
square of small shops, where red and blue implements of farming stood
by the pillared town hall and the sun poured on them. I went into the
“private bar” of an inn, but hearing only a blue-bottle and seeing
little but a polished table, and smelling nothing else, I went out and
round the corner to the taproom of the same inn. Here there were men,
politics, crops, beer, and shag tobacco.

[Illustration: Wallingford Bridge.]

This contrast between the “private bar” and the taproom round the
corner reminded me of another town which illustrates it perfectly. At
the edge of the town, its large front windows looking up the principal
street, its small back windows over a windy common to noble hills, is a
public house called “The Jolly Drover.” The tap of “The Jolly Drover”
is the one blot upon the face of Coldiston. The town is clean and
demure from the decent old houses of the market-place to the brand-new
cottages, more like conservatories than dwellings, on the outskirts.
The magistrates are busy week after week in sentencing men and women of
all ages for begging, asking for hot water to make tea, sleeping under
hedges or in barns, for being unseemly in act or speech; if possible,
nothing offensive must happen in the streets. A market is held once a
week and is a byword in the county. Any animal can be offered for sale
there; the drover creeps along behind a beast that attracts as much
attention as a menagerie in the wayside villages; they know where it is
going; they have seen a pig resembling a greyhound, except that it had
not the strength to stand up, sold there for a shilling. Three or four
times a year a builder and contractor of Coldiston is sold up, because
he has been trying to get work by doing it for nothing, and these sales
are the chief diversion of the neighbourhood. The town is a model of
neatness and respectability, as if created by a shop-window decorator;
and of all the public-houses--all named hotels--“The Jolly Drover”
is the neatest and most respectable outside, and the most expensive
inside. It is painted white at short intervals. The chief barmaid is
a Londoner, white-faced and coral-lipped, with a love-lock over her
marble brow; and her way is brisk and knowing, and her speech more than
equal to the demands made upon it of an evening by the tradesmen who
will come until they are rich enough to quit the town for ever. Every
form of invitation adorns the exterior.

But round the corner, towards the common, “The Jolly Drover” is
white no longer. It has no pavement outside, but a space of bare
earth overshadowed by an enormous elm’s last two living branches and
roughened by its wide-spreading roots. There is no invitation to enter
here, but simply the words upon a low lamp, “The Jolly Drover Tap.”
No invitation is needed, for the windows are not curtained and the
passer-by cannot fail to see the contented backs of drinkers and the
long tiers of bottles. At night almost as much can be seen through the
yellow blinds. The door stands open opposite the old tree, and through
it the eye finds the bar, the plain country barmaid, the lamp, and the
bright bottles. A mongrel dog or two and a gypsy’s broken-down cart and
wild-eyed horse are usually outside, or a tramp’s woman waiting, or a
group of men talking quietly before going in or after coming out. Here
“The Jolly Drover” answers to its name. It is a hedge public house of
old red brick and tiles, joined, nevertheless, to the white-fronted
hotel and connected with it in the proprietor’s accounts. It is noisy.
They sing there. No plain man is afraid to go in who has the price of
half a pint in his pocket. In the summer benches are set outside, and
men can sit and see the discreet going to and fro of the town life a
few yards away.

Old Jack Runaway (who will borrow sixpence and then lose half a year’s
custom in watercress for fear of showing his face again) has lost six
heifers that he was taking to the fair over the hill, but he has a pint
inside and a pint before him--the clock stands still--and as the people
go by he comments to himself:--

“My young Lord Drapery, may he go to gaol for being a poor beggar
before he’s forty. A brood mare; what with living between a policeman
and a postman, with a registrar in front and a minister behind, _her_
children ought to be tin soldiers. Now I wonder what’s _he_ worth?
But if I was coined into golden sovereigns I wouldn’t have married
his missus when I was twenty, no, I wouldn’t. Pretty Miss Ladybird,
Ladybird, Ladybird, fly away from home; you’re a tantalizer for a fine
day, to be out with a young chap drinking a glass of six and nobody
looking. What we do lose by being old, to be sure, more than by being
poor! What a clean, white beard, now, that Mr. Welcome has got, like an
angel. Eh, old Colonel High and Mighty, there’s doctors for sciatica
and gout, but there’s something we have both got by being sixty that
they won’t cure, not if your purse is as long as your two legs. How
much do _you_ weigh, bombarrel? They don’t allow a carriage and pair in
Kingdom Come. Now, _that_ young fellow could break a good few stones
on a summer’s day; kind, too, and don’t his heels kick the pavement
proud; but mind the women don’t bend your back for you, or you might
as well be dust to dust any day. That’s what I call a good piece, neat
and not too stuck up, not so young as she was, keeps the house tidy,
and knows where they sell the best things cheap; now, I’d like to walk
into your parlour and have a cup of tea, missus, after wiping my feet
on the mat and hanging up my hat; and then that little ladybird of a
nursemaid brings in the baby, and we feed it on cake and weak tea; it
must be weak, or it’s bad for the health ...; and wouldn’t I be proud
to have you brushing my coat as I goes out of a morning, a black coat,
and putting a rose in my button-hole, and kissing me before all the
street--ha, ha! dirty Jack Runaway. How they do dress up the youngsters
these days, like little angels; hark at them talking, and when the
mother whispers to them and they run over as if you dropped it and
give you a penny, you might think it would turn into a flower in their
hands, and they give you a kind of look as much as to say, ‘God is
feeding His sparrows,’ and then they run away without a word, and you
look at the price of half a pint, and either you bless them or else
you curse them. _You_, Reverend Sir, would give me a cold in the head
if you were to talk; then you’d give me sixpence; if you go to heaven,
there’s a bit of luck left for those who don’t, you freezing point, you
Monday’s loaf, you black-and-white undertaker’s friend. Oh, this town!
it’s rotten without stinking, gilt without gingerbread. Look at them
staring at us as if we were wild beasts taking an airing _outside_ the
cage....”

The town in its turn does watch “The Jolly Drover Tap” and its life.
Why should there be all that space wasted where the elm stands?
people wonder; it is quite old-fashioned, and they smile pityingly,
yet tenderly, when the old tree is crowding into leaf. But when there
are half a dozen rough men and women talking aloud and gesticulating
like foreigners over the price of a long, brown dog that shivers
under a cart, they do not see why it should be so; only, it is “The
Jolly Drover,” and rather difficult to attack. It is extraordinary,
they think as they pass by the turning down to the Tap, how a lot of
lazy fellows, with nothing to do and with only rags on them, can
get enough to spend half a day there. That ought certainly not to be
allowed. These are not the honest poor. Either a man must work, or be
looking out for work in a serious manner, or be so well dressed that he
obviously need not work; or something is wrong. Nor do they invariably
look starved and miserable. They eat and drink and talk to one another.
Where do they come from? Of course they do not live in Coldiston: then
why come here to drink? They cannot, of course, be stuffed into prison
or workhouse or asylum; but is there no other cesspool possible in an
age with a genius for sanitation?

When the blinds are down and the lamp lit, what a jolly place it is!
The light pours out through the door on to the old tree, and makes it
look friendly as you go in, and romantic as you come out. It is best
at haymaking or harvest time in fine weather. The irregular labourers
come into the town, especially on a Saturday, and break their journey
at “The Jolly Drover Tap.” The townsman glances in as he passes, and
sees a tall, straight man in a restful attitude standing up at the
bar, and he has just raised his pot to drink. It is only a glimpse of
a second, but it remains in the mind. The passer-by could not say how
the drinker was clad, except that he wore a loose, broad-brimmed hat on
his head, pushed back so as to leave quite clear against the lamp the
whole of a big-featured, long face, the brow, and the curled hair up
to the crown. Was it coat and trousers, or just shirt and trousers? At
any rate the whole man could be seen underneath. Not that the observer
did not as a rule admire a man fully and fashionably dressed. Only, in
this light, just this harvest evening of purple and of great silence,
the tall man drinking with head thrown back at the end of the passage
looked more like the statues of a bygone age, or the representations
of magnificent men seen in pictures, or the soldiers he has read of
in books about the wars of Roundhead and Cavalier or the invasions of
Wales and Scotland--yes! the height and carriage of this man call up
the words “rough borderer.” A lance or a long sword would look well
in his hands. His hat is not unlike a foot-soldier’s helmet. And then
the face--coarse, fearless, and careless--is an enigma. He is some
fellow without a house, or wife, or any goods or gods, yet this is how
the admirer used to picture lords and generals when a little boy at
school. He is not thinking about rent, accounts, education, clothes,
the poor, church, chapel, appendicitis, or this time next year. He is
not apparently in a hurry. He has no vote, and one party in power is
as good as the other to him. No doubt a wasteful fellow--has fallen,
perhaps, through drink--is good-natured possibly, but would not stop
short at violence on occasion--idle with all his strength--and yet....
And yet? The figure and face against the light stick in the mind of
the man out in the street. He is discontented. He grumbles at his wife
when he goes in because she has not done something, and he does more,
he grows enraged, when he finds that she really has done it, but has
not had time to tell him. He lies still in bed on his back, thinking
for a long time. His wife lies still, and he knows that she also is
awake thinking. He says “Good night,” hoping she will say something to
comfort him for his fruitless wakefulness. But she says “Good night,”
and no more. They remain silent. He has the image of the drinker clear
in the darkness before he falls asleep. Left entirely alone his wife
sighs, and presently she also is asleep.

But I do not wish to say that Wallingford is as respectable as
Coldiston. All I can say is that the ford below is very old, and it
is highly probable that some travellers on the Icknield Way followed
the road I had been on from Gypsies’ Corner to Wallingford and then
into the Berkshire Ickleton Street at Blewbury, if not before. Others,
avoiding Wallingford, might have crossed at Little Stoke, from which a
westward road goes up, called the “Papist Way.”

From Wallingford I made for the “Papist Way,” following a series of
paths and roads about a quarter of a mile east of the river. I went
past the little towerless and spireless church of Newnham Murren,
which had a number of crooked, ivy-coloured tombstones, and was itself
covered with ivy, which traveller’s joy was beginning to climb. Then
over Grim’s Ditch, a mile and a half west of the Icknield Way crossing,
I came to Mongewell park, and my path was along a line of huge elms
and sweet limes. On my left, the main road and its telegraph wires
ran bordered with charlock along the top of a low ridge above these
meadows. From North Stoke there was a good road. I turned aside to the
church, but found what was better, a big range of tiled, thatched sheds
and barns extending on either side of my path, with a cattle-yard in
the midst full of dazzling straw and richly-stinking cow dung, and a
big black sow lying on it like a recumbent statue on a huge pedestal.
Swifts were shrieking above and chickens clucking in the corners.
From the road the tiled church and the thatched barn fell into line,
and seemed one, especially as the farm pigeons were perched on the
ridges of both. On a corn-rick behind I saw the figure of a sheep on a
weather-vane. This road went alongside hedgeless barley on the left,
over which I could see the bare, low hills between me and the Icknield
Way, and far beyond them the wooded hills about Nuffield and Nettlebed;
on the right there was hay to the river; there was succory on the
roadside, scabious, knapweed, rest-harrow, and long grass.

To reach the ferry at Little Stoke I turned off to the right under
elm trees and was rowed across. The boy told me that the road up from
the ferry was called Asylum Road, there being a big, red lunatic
asylum on the right-hand side of it, just as it crossed the Reading
and Wallingford road. Only beyond this crossing is it marked “Papist
Way” on the map. I have not discovered why it was named so, for the
name suggests too late a date to be connected with the monastery which
lay near where the road reaches the Great Western railway station at
Cholsey. It points to the Astons, Blewbury, and Upton, and may at one
time have formed part of a road running through them to Wantage;
unless this road is rather a protraction of the road from South Stoke
and Moulsford, which may, however, have joined the “Papist Way” at
Lollingdon.

They were talking about roads at the “Morning Star” on the left side of
the “Papist Way.” The fat drayman and the smart butcher’s boy agreed
that motor-cars were ruining the good roads. The rubber wheels can
travel on the smoothest possible surface, which is the modern ideal.
Hoofs, on the other hand, need something to bite into. The drayman,
with his heavy waggon, would do away with steam-rollers. Here the needy
cyclist interrupted, and said that he had never known better times; the
smooth roads were as good for him as for motor-cars. All cursed their
dust, their stink, their insolence, and all looked with some admiration
at the foreign-looking chauffeur who came in for a glass and out again
in a minute. Outside, the flies were “terrifying” the horses for the
first time in the summer, and the drivers inside yelled at them, but
seldom moved from their beer. One driver was a man with big, red ears,
and a serious, quizzical face, with a beard. He came in wearing a fine
musk thistle, which he seemed to think was Scotch, but immediately on
being given a bunch of sweet peas he threw it away. If this had been
his preference it would have been absurd enough--as if a musk thistle
were not better than all the sweet peas ever contrived by man and
God!--but he took the garden flowers because they were things having a
price, and because they were a gift.

[Illustration: By Lollingdon Farm.]

The “Papist Way” was a hard road winding between wheat and beans for
half a mile. Then it crossed the Wallingford and Cholsey road, and was
interrupted by the railway embankment. Its course on the farther side
of this seemed to be marked by a division between barley and potatoes
to the left of the present road. This line was continued through
Pancroft farm-yard, from which a path went south-westward along the
hedges to Lollingdon. This was over black, rushy lands haunted by
pewits. The road a little on the left, leading also to Lollingdon Farm,
was on better ground, winding westward under the wooded swell of the
round hill called Lollingdon Hill. The farm had a big home meadow with
ash and poplar enclosing it, almost as if it had been a quadrangle
with cloisters round. There were many thatched farm buildings in the
corner, and a fine walnut tree and a beautiful abundance of poppies
and dusty nettle and dusty mallow against the walls. The road had an
elmy hedge on its right, but nothing on the left between it and the
oats that reached up to the beeches of Lollingdon Hill-top. The long
grass and knapweed and succory by the roadside were blossoming with
white and meadow-brown butterflies, which flew away from their stalks
as ducklings swim away from their unamphibious foster-mothers. The
butterflies flew after one another, sometimes a white after a brown.
The sun was perfect for them, there being fewer clouds than there were
eight hours back--for as I walked I heard a pleasant, gong-like bell
strike two at Aston.

Aston Tirrold and Aston Upthorpe make a square of roads with many
lanes and paths crossing from one side to another. In the square are
big houses and small, and their gardens and old, nettly orchards,
and many sycamores, elms, chestnuts, and acacias in the gardens and
along the paths; there are even some small fields within it. Running
water goes through it. Here you pass a mud wall, there a hedge, here
a boarded, there a thatched, and again a tiled, cottage. At some of
the corners and in the churchyard stand lime trees. If a happy child
had all the ingredients of old villages to play with, it would, if it
were ingenious, probably combine them thus. The farms are all outside
the square but close to it. The churches are near the edge but within
it. I hardly believed that anybody remained alive in the village until
I failed to open the door of Aston Tirrold Church. Aston Upthorpe
church was a small tiled building with a stupid little spire stuck on
yesterday, to show that it was not part of the neighbouring tiled farm
and outhouses. The village hid itself well on both sides under its
elms. From the east it seemed all trees and orchards, from the west
only the new thatch of a rick betrayed it.

My road led along the south side of the village and commanded a simple,
perfect piece of downland--a bare, even wall of down with an almost
straight ridge, which was also bare but for one clump; along the foot
of the wall ran the main road to Wantage; up from it, an old trackway,
very deeply worn, rose slanting and showing one old steep green bank,
up to the ridge and over; and at the point where the trackway crossed
the main road the turf was carved by a chalk-pit.

[Illustration: Blewbury.]

A broad track and several parallel paths went fairly straight without
hedges, westward through the corn to Blewbury, passing close under the
south side of a bare, sudden hill--Blewburton Hill--and the ramparts
of a supposed Danish camp. Blewbury was like Aston, with a streamlet,
many trees and orchards, and a towered church standing in the midst
of several paths and roads. The clock was beating slowly with such
gigantic and ancient peace inside the church that I did not enter. It
was as if some hoary giant were sleeping inside away from the sun, if
indeed he had not been there for some centuries. Outside the church lay
a dilapidated and weed-grown pair of prostrate effigies. If it were not
disturbing the sleeper in Blewbury Church I should suggest that these
effigies might be taken in. They are much to be preferred to the clean
effigies which have never borne the weather of God or the pocket-knives
of men; but if they are left outside much longer they will hardly pass
as representations of two human beings lying on their backs.

The south side of Blewbury touched the main Reading and Wantage road,
and had several inns: a “Barley Mow,” a “Catherine Wheel,” a “George
and Dragon,” a “Sawyer’s Arms,” a “Load of Mischief,” and at its west
end a “New Inn.” I was glad to see that the “Load of Mischief” still
upheld its sign and name. I feared that it might have been renamed
“The Red Lion” or the “Crown,” and have been robbed of its sign. But
there was the sign, and almost opposite a window, where I was equally
glad and surprised to see an advertisement of “Votes for Women.” The
“Load of Mischief” was a woman, of a type belonging to a day hardly
later than Hogarth’s, mounted on the shoulders of a man. The man was
a mere small beast of burden. The woman was magnificent--a huge,
lusty, brown virago--and she was holding in her hand a glass clearly
labelled “GIN.” This woman and her ill-chosen spouse were painted on
both sides of the sign-board, so that all coming from north and from
south should see it. I forgot to inquire whether “The Load of Mischief”
was a fully licensed house and sold gin. Probably it was. The sign
was not a beerhouse’s defamation of gin. It did not deny that gin was
a very good thing. It did not assert anything more than that a big,
gin-drinking woman on a small man’s shoulders was a “load of mischief.”
How impossible it is--even in this sporting country--to think of a
sign depicting a big, gin-drinking man on a little woman’s shoulders.
No woman ever painted a sign-board, I suppose, and no woman keeping
an inn would put up such a one as “The Load of Mischief.” A woman who
drank gin was a load of mischief. On the other hand, a man who made
the gin for her, provided that he grew rich on it, became a justice
of the peace or a member of Parliament; if his father made it he
became a bishop. It is the difference between mind and matter, between
brain-work and manual labour. The member of Parliament or the bishop’s
father had only to think about gin; he might never have tasted it. The
woman had to swallow it and pay for it. Therefore she grew poor while
he grew rich. A history of England was once written entirely to show
this difference, to insist upon it, and to teach the consumer that he
must never forget his duties and responsibilities to the manufacturer,
and to remind the manufacturer of his privileges. It was called “A
History of England for Shoe-Blacks and Sons of Gentlemen: or, A Guide
to Tuft-hunting, Sycophancy, Boot-licking, and other Services to the
Aristocracy and Plutocracy, and to Keeping in Your Place.” It was
published in 1911, and is used in schools.

When I went into one of the inns there was a woman seated in the
taproom drinking beer, a shrill and lean, large-eyed woman of middle
age, somewhat in liquor, and with ill-fitting boots, in which she had
walked fifteen miles and had nine still to do. Whether or not because
he had drunk more, her husband had gone on by train; she said she had
“sent him.” She foresaw that it was not going to rain that day. She
claimed no credit for the foresight. Her corns alone had the power. In
about a quarter of an hour she left. She was a woman that walked fast
but stopped often. She carried her hands in the pockets of her black
skirt. Not long after she had started the rain fell down upon her, as
it did upon the roofs, mackintoshes, and umbrellas of the brewers,
publicans, and brewery shareholders.

From the west of Blewbury to Upton there was another mile of broad,
green tracks through corn, without a tree between them and the round,
smooth downs, with their tumuli clear against the sky on the left hand.
At Upton this series of roads from Little Stoke entered the main road,
or crossed it, and continued without touching any villages on the way
to Lockinge and Wantage. But this further road was a continuation of
the line of the main road before it turned north to Upton and west to
Hagbourne, and might have been an alternative course to Wantage, or
part of an earlier way, perhaps the Icknield Way itself, which some
have supposed to go nearer the Downs than the main road now does. As
I meant at another time to travel this road and its parallels from
Streatley to the Wiltshire border, I returned to Blewbury, and at one
of the six inns read James Montgomery’s _Pelican Island_, a poem of
A.D. 1827, in nine cantos. The poem seemed to have been started and
carried on under the influence of an ecstasy given to the author by
an explorer’s book. In his _Voyage to Terra Australis_, then not long
published, Captain Matthew Flinders had described two little islands,
the breeding-place and antique cemetery of pelicans, “islets of a
hidden lagoon of an uninhabited island, situate upon an unknown coast,
near the antipodes of Europe.” This evidently impressed Montgomery with
a strong feeling of solitariness. He imagined himself alone when “sky,
sun, and sea were all the universe,” himself a spirit, “all eye, ear,
thought”--“what the soul can make itself at pleasure, that I was.” For
“thrice a thousand years” he saw none but the people of the sea:--

    Beings for whom the universe was made,
    Yet none of kindred with myself. In vain
    I strove to waken sympathy in breasts
    Cold as the element in which they moved,
    And inaccessible to fellowship
    With me, as sun and stars, as winds and vapours.

Under the sea also he saw:--

        Relics huge and strange
    Of the old world that perish’d by the flood,
    Kept under chains of darkness till the judgment.

He watched the making of a coral islet, compared with which men’s work
seemed nothing. A comparison which set him thinking of the grandeurs of
earth, among them of Babylon, built for eternity, though where it stood,

    Ruin itself stands still for lack of work,
    And Desolation keeps unbroken Sabbath....

He saw the islet grow and become hospitable. The sea-wrack and many
sea-changed things were swept up on to it,

                        While heaven’s dew
    Fell on the sterile wilderness as sweetly
    As though it were the garden of the Lord.

Grass grew. Insects swarmed. He witnessed “the age of gold in that
green isle.” Trees and flowers rose up. Reptiles and amphibious
monsters appeared. Then came “more admirable” beings:--

    Flocking from every point of heaven, and filling
    Eye, ear, and mind with objects, sounds, emotions
    Akin to livelier sympathy and love
    Than reptiles, fishes, insects could inspire;
    --Birds, the free tenants of land, air, and ocean,
    Their forms all symmetry, their motions grace;
    In plumage, delicate and beautiful,
    Thick without burthen, close as fishes’ scales,
    Or loose as full-blown poppies to the breeze;
    With wings that might have had a soul within them,
    They bore their owners by such sweet enchantment;
    Birds, small and great, of endless shapes and colours,
    Here flew and perched, there swam and dived at pleasure;
    Watchful and agile, uttering voices wild
    And harsh, yet in accordance with the waves
    Upon the beach, the winds in caverns moaning,
    Or winds and waves abroad upon the water.

His was an eager, rapturous temperament. Next to birds he seems to have
loved the insect legions--“children of light and air and fire” he
calls them,

    Their lives all ecstasy and quick cross motion.

But birds and insects did not confine his sympathy. They did not, e.g.,
turn it aside from the elephant, leading his quiet life “among his old
contemporary trees.”

Whether it was through the impulse of the discoverer’s words, or, as is
more likely, through his own nature, he was able to suggest with some
power the world that does without men, the “sterile wilderness” not
neglected by the dew, the Paradise without man and without death, where

                            Bliss had newly
    Alighted, and shut close his rainbow wings,
    To rest at ease, nor dread intruding ill.

I think he was enchanted by those tropical

    Airy aisles and living colonnades,
    Where nations might have worshipp’d God in peace.

For, with an energy which a tree would call religious, he describes
their flourishing, and how the Indian fig was multiplied:--

    From year to year their fruits ungather’d fall;
    Not lost, but quickening where they lay, they struck
    Root downward, and brake forth on every hand,
    Till the strong saplings, rank and file, stood up,
    A mighty army, which o’erran the isle,
    And changed the wilderness into a forest.

His love of things that are not men, that are happy and without
conscience, is more instinctive than his desire for men in his
solitude. They, though “kindred spirits,” never moved him to a picture
like the flamingoes flying,

    Till, on some lonely coast alighting,
    Again their gorgeous cohort took the field.

I was not surprised, then, at the seventh canto, to find him saying, in
Wordsworthian strain, that we only begin to live

                        From that fine point,
    Which memory dwells on, with the morning star,
    The earliest note we heard the cuckoo sing,
    Or the first daisy that we ever pluck’d,
    When thoughts themselves were stars, and birds, and flowers,
    Pure brilliance, simplest music, wild perfume.

My copy of the book was printed in 1827. It had the date 1856 under
the old owner’s name; and I suppose that not many editions have been
published since 1827, or any since 1856. Yet this individual character
of the writer, original as much in degree as in kind, had kept the book
alive. The energy of his ecstasy gave his blank verse a gushing flow
that may cause sleep, but seldom impatience, and never contempt. The
overflowing of so many lines into an extra unaccented syllable seemed a
natural effect of his possession by his subject, and not a device or a
mere habit. At its best it had the eloquence of an improvisation.

As I shut this book it reminded me of a poem called _To Deck a Woman_,
by Mr. Ralph Hodgson, where a similar rapt picture of a manless Eden is
painted, but with a passion that is controlled to a quivering repose
by an art finer than Montgomery’s. There the passion is double, for
the poet’s love of the life and beauty of birds is turned to an anger
too deep for hate against the woman Bloodwant, “shrill for Beauty’s
veins,” and the men who satisfy--and provoke--her desire for feathers.
The same poet’s _Stupidity Street_ is a curious instance of passion
submitting itself to the quietest of smiling rhymes:--

    I saw with open eyes
    Singing birds sweet
    Sold in the shops for
    The people to eat,
    Sold in the shops of
    Stupidity Street.

    I saw in vision
    The worm in the wheat
    And in the shops nothing
    For people to eat,
    Nothing for sale in
    Stupidity Street.

I was glad that I had taken _Pelican Island_ with me as my only book;
for if I had not I might very likely never have read it. Yet it might
have escaped me even though it was in my pocket. Unless a man always
carries a book with him, when he does take one it is often a little
too well chosen, or rather chosen too deliberately, because it is a
very good one, or is just the right one, or is one that ought to be
read. But walking is apt to relieve him of the kind of conscience that
obeys such choices. At best he opens the book and yawns and shuts
it. He may look about him for any distraction rather than this book.
He reads through a country newspaper, beginning and ending with the
advertisements. He looks at every picture in an illustrated magazine.
He looks out of the window for some temptation. He takes down _The
Lamplighter_ or Mrs. Humphry Ward’s _East Lynne_ from the landlord’s
shelves. He looks through the magazine again. If he opens the choice
book he finds in it an irresistible command to go to bed at nine
o’clock. The same book may be taken out thus a score of times, and
acquire a friendly and well-read appearance.




CHAPTER IX

SEVENTH DAY--STREATLEY TO SPARSHOLT, ON THE RIDGEWAY, BY SCUTCHAMER
KNOB AND LETCOMBE CASTLE


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 conferred on it by Bishop Bennet,
of the Icknield Way. I went up from the bridge and at the “Bull”
turned to the right and northward along the Wantage road, which is
probably the Icknield Way. After getting well up on the chalk above the
river this road maintains the same level of from two to three hundred
feet, and for two miles keeps within a mile of the river on a terrace
half-way up the slope of the hills. Streatley had spread itself in red
spots along the side of the road, past the fork to Wallingford and up
to where the Ridgeway turns off to the left and westward into the long
coombe leading to Streatley Warren. At its mouth this coombe was wide
and shallow, and was all grass, except on the left hand where there
were new houses. In places, as by Rectory Farm, the road, a hard one,
had a pleasant green terrace above it with wild roses rambling over
it. The coombe deepened and the road ascended above a golf course
near Warren Farm. Thus far it was hedged, but soon, still mounting the
right wall of the long coombe, it was rough and hedgeless, and old
parallel tracks were to be seen above and below it. It was now near the
southern edge of Thurle Down Woods on its right. Below, on the left,
were the steep walls of the winding coombe, dotted by thorn, juniper,
and elder, and here called Streatley Warren. Of the unwooded coombes
or inlets into the downs this is one of the most pleasing to me, and I
shall always remember it, as I do the great coombe winding into Butser
Hill on the north side, and others of those vast turf halls which the
sky roofs. As it passed the head of the coombe the road was six hundred
feet up, going a little north of westwards between sheep on the left
and corn on the right. It was two or three miles or more from the
villages on the north, Moulsford, Cholsey, the Astons, and Blewbury,
and two or three hundred feet above them; it was almost as far away
from the Wantage road, and as far above it. The villages on the south
were nearer, but not within a mile--Aldworth, the Comptons, and East
Ilsley. It gained a hedge near Warren Farm, but was a rough way, now
wide, now narrow, among the hazel, brier, elder, and nettle. Sometimes
there was an ash in the hedge, and once a line of spindly elms followed
it round a curve. It was high, but not yet free among these hedges.
Then it descended, deeply worn and rough, to where a signpost marked
roads to Aldworth and Compton on the left, Cholsey and Wallingford
on the right. Then all was open country, mostly turf, carved by many
trackways and with trees, as a rule, only to shelter the thatched,
solitary farm-house and barns, or to make a clump and landmark at
a summit where there was a tumulus, as on Churn Hill. The road was
scattered in pieces over the open turf among thorn bushes and alongside
a Scotch fir clump, as it went down towards Churn station. These tracks
were green with a central white one, and that had green banks and a
few thorns. On reaching the road from Moulsford to East Ilsley my way
seemed to be continued by one passing Chance Farm and keeping on the
north side of the hills through an uninhabited hollow among downs which
are bare of everything but grass, Churn railway station, and a farm,
except when dotted with soldiers’ tents. But there was now a little to
the south of this a clear and unbroken high ridge extending westwards
into Wiltshire, and this the Ridgeway undoubtedly followed: only the
connection between my way over Roden Downs and the higher ridge was no
longer a direct one. The connecting road was that from Moulsford to
Ilsley, and along it I had to turn round west and even south to gain
the ridge, where the Ridgeway left it at right angles to go north-west.
Hedges no longer bounded either side of the broad turf track. It was
as free as the blue paths in the snowy heavens. It looked down upon
everything but the clouds, and not seldom on them in the early morning
or in rain. On its left the downward slope was broken and very gradual,
so that it was far rarer to see a church tower like Ilsley within a
mile than a ridge of woods five miles off or a bare range that might be
twenty. It was already higher than the Icknield Way at Telegraph Hill;
it had climbed out of choice, and it would descend only of necessity.
On its right the slope was far steeper, and sometimes a little way from
the foot lay the villages; sometimes the land rose again in several
rolls this way and that, and the nearest village would be beyond the
last of them, three or four miles away. Either corn or pure turf and
scattered furze lay about the road. One piece of furze was called
“Poor’s Furze,” and what is more, the poor were gathering it for fuel
though it was Midsummer: tall rye came up to the edge of it.

[Illustration: Ridgeway, near Streatley.]

Now the Ridgeway had risen up to its perfect freedom, away from the
river and the low land, from the glaring roads and the collections of
houses. This way men of old came of necessity; yet I found it hard not
to think now that the road was thus climbing to heights of speculation,
to places suited for exploring the ridges and solitudes of the spirit;
it seemed in one mood a hermit road going out into the wilderness to
meditate and be in lifelong retirement; in another mood a road for the
young, eager warrior or reformer going up and away for a time from
cloying companions to renew his mighty youth.

I saw, however, more racehorses than confirmed hermits or aspiring
warriors or reformers. Before it was ordained that cricket should be
played on billiard tables, there were a pitch and a pavilion here
beside the Ridgeway near the Abingdon road. Elevens drove up from
Oxford, and a cheerful scene it was, albeit nobody’s fortune was made.
It was too good and rustic a custom not to decay. After that, they
say, the pavilion became an early-morning rendezvous for men with
lurchers after the hares, a refuge for belated soldiers, a convenience
for several breeds of idlers, philosophers, and adventurers. These it
was decided to centralize as much as possible in prisons, workhouses,
lunatic asylums, cemeteries, town “rookeries,” and the like. The
pavilion thus became useless and was pulled down. Nevertheless, there
it is, still very clear in a number of aging heads. So far as I could
learn, it was the nearest approach to a permanent hermitage on the
ridge of these downs. In their season there are shepherds’ shelters,
and caravans for the steam-plough men or for persons engaged in the
writing of books; but nothing permanent except Wayland’s Smithy.

[Illustration: Wayland’s Smithy.]

Suppose a philosopher were to live in and about these old stones, for
a year or two he might be quite undisturbed. Then he would be arrested
on suspicion after some crime. A ploughman would reveal that he had
seen the man about. It would reach a pressman with a camera. He would
get somebody to pose either in Wayland’s Smithy or a similar place at
Wimbledon or Balham. A column about “the simple life” would be printed
in a newspaper illustrated by these photographs. By this time the real
philosopher, a hairy and uncommunicative man, would have been released.
A rival pressman would travel to Wantage Road with a third-class
ticket, which he would call either second or first class in his list of
expenses. He would assail the philosopher, and with as much grace as is
compatible with haste and a preoccupied mind, would bid him describe
his experiences in answer to well-chosen leading questions. The
philosopher might possibly fail to understand the pressman’s object,
or even his English; he might seem to refuse. Then the other would
produce his card, claiming instant attention as the representative
of both the _Hourly Deceiver_ and the _Evening Tinkle-Tinkle_. This
would amuse, puzzle, or infuriate the hairy man. His laughter or his
anger would be mistaken for rudeness. The pressman would return to
Wantage Road and in the train invent far better things than ever were
on sea or land, and he would have no difficulty in illustrating his
article by photographs which the philosopher would never see. But
the people of the neighbourhood would see. Then boys would go up on
a Sunday afternoon and stare and perhaps trample down the wheat. A
town councillor or a retired missionary or other man of culture would
inspect the scene. In the philosopher’s absence it would be discovered
that Wayland’s Smithy was undrained and improperly ventilated. A woman
would be scared at a distant view of the philosopher. It would be time
for something to be done. Then one of two things would happen. Either
the man would disappear as quietly as mist or as last year’s books: or
he would be told to go, roused to eloquence or violence, arrested and
imprisoned, and his story told in twenty lines in the local papers.
From time to time the police of neighbouring counties would torment
him until at last he could be certified as a lunatic. Instead of
giving him a large plate of ham and eggs, followed by apple dumplings
and then prussic acid, they would shut him up for ever in a building
with innumerable windows, from any of which he could look out and see
lunatics. Nevertheless, he would have had that one year unmolested at
Wayland’s Smithy.

This, however, is only a possibility comparatively picturesque. The
real thing was less amusing, and the scene of it was not Wayland’s
Smithy but Lone Barn. That winter a man might have picked up the paper
after breakfast and found descriptions of funerals and marriages, the
well-attended presentation to the local member of Parliament, the
successful meeting of his rival, the list of hunting appointments,
and a column and a half headed, “Suffering Children--Parental
Neglect--Queer Defence--Severe Sentences--Magistrate’s Scathing
Condemnation.” A capital fox-hunter presiding, the bench had given
four months’ hard labour to a man and wife for neglecting their seven
young children “in such a way as to cause them unnecessary suffering
and injury to their health.” Having scorched his back parts the reader
would turn his front parts to the fire and read on. These nine had been
living for some weeks at Lone Barn, which lies unexpectedly in a small
hollow at one of the highest points of the downs, three miles from the
nearest hamlet. It had long been deserted. The farm-house was ruinous,
and a fox taking refuge there could not be dislodged from the fallen
masonry and elder and yew tree roots. The hunters had noticed nothing
in the barn.

I knew the farm-house and had often wondered about the man who built
it in that solitude somewhere in the eighteenth century. It had walls
of unusual thickness, such as could not have been overthrown simply
by time and weather. It must long have been empty and subject to the
hostility of discontented spirits such as probably infest a house, as
they do a man, left utterly alone. I had not suspected that anybody was
living in the barn, but I remember a pale, shuffling man carrying a
child who begged from me monotonously as I came down the hill in mist a
little before dark. I had given him something without exactly realizing
that he was a man, so frail, subdued, and weak-voiced had he been--a
creation of the mist quite in harmony with the hour. This was probably
Arthur Aubrey Bishopstone, who was now in prison.

He and his wife and six children had arrived at the barn on Christmas
Eve. For a week before they had been at a barn nearer the village, but
as this had to be repaired they were turned out. They were allowed to
settle in Lone Barn because Bishopstone had done an occasional day’s
work for the farmer on whose land it stood. During January and February
he did several more days’ work. The wife and children remained in the
barn. The two eldest had measles, the sixth had pneumonia; all were
verminous. On Christmas Day a seventh had been born in Lone Barn. The
mother, who had fainted in court a week before and had been remanded,
pleaded guilty of neglect, but said that “she could not do in a barn
as she could in a cottage,” there being no bed, no furniture, and no
water except from a cattle pond half a mile away. The man had been
unable to get a cottage. The family had been found lying round a fire
in the barn, and after medical examination arrested. Bishopstone
hardly spoke in answer to the questions and insults of the bench, but
he was understood to say, “The Lord is on my side,” and several other
blasphemous or unintelligible things, which were no defence or excuse.
The nine were now condemned to the comfort of the workhouse and the
prison until haymaking time.

I went to Lone Barn again, the birthplace of Francis Albert Edward
Bishopstone.

The black brook, full of the white reflections of its snowy banks and
beginning to steam in the sun, was hourly growing and coiling all its
long loops joyously through the land. The dabchick was laughing its
long shrill titter under the alder roots. Faint, soft shadows fell on
to the snow from the oaks, whose grey skeletons were outlined in snow
against the clear deep blue of the now dazzling sky. Thrushes were
beginning to sing, as if it had always been warm and bright. In hedge
and thicket and tall wood, myriads of drops were falling and singing
in the still air. Against the south the smooth downs were white under
a diaphanous haze of grey, and upon them seemed to rest heavenly white
mountains, very still, dream-like, and gently luminous. Lone Barn lay
up in the haze invisible.

At the foot of the hills the land was divided by low hedges into broad
fields. There no birds sang and no stream gurgled. The air was full
of the pitiful cries of young lambs at their staggering play in the
shallow snow. One ewe stood with her new-born lamb in a stamped, muddy
circle tinged with blood amidst the pure white. The lamb was yellowish
green in colour; it stumbled at her teats, fell down and sucked upon
its knees. The big mother stood still, shaggy, stubborn, meek, with her
head down, her eyes upon me, her whole nature upon the lamb buried in
her wool, part of her.

The hill was hedgeless save where a narrow, ancient road deeply
trenched it in ascending curves, lined by thorns. The road had probably
not been trodden since that procession of ten had descended towards
the town six miles away. A kestrel had killed a gold-crest upon the
bank, and as I approached it sailed away from the crimson-centred
circle of feathers on the snow. But the wind had been the chief
inhabitant of the slopes, and unseen of mortal eyes it had been
luxuriously, playfully carving the snow which submerged the hedge.
The curved wind-work in the drift, deeply ploughed or deliberately
chiselled, remained in the stillness as a record of the pure joy of
free, active life contented with itself. It was the same blithe hand
which had shaped the infant born in this black barn.

An old plum tree, planted when barn and house were built, and now dead
and barkless, stood against one end, and up it had climbed a thick
ivy stem that linked barn and tree inseparably with a profusion of
foliage, emerald and white. The last of its doors lay just outside in
the dead embers of the tramps’ fire. Thus open on both sides to the
snow-light and the air the barn looked the work rather of nature than
of man. The old thatch was grooved, riddled, and gapped, and resembled
a grassy bank that has been under a flood the winter through; covered
now in snow it had the outlines in miniature of the hill on which it
was built. The patched walls, originally of tarred timber laid in
horizontal planks, were of every hue of green and yellow that moss,
lichen, and mould can bestow, each strip of board being of a different
date and a different shade. What gave them something in common with one
another was the fresh black stains which ran from the melting eaves
to the nettle-bed below. The porches, lofty enough to admit a waggon
piled as high as possible with sheaves of corn, had slipped somewhat
away: it was to them alone that the exterior of the building owed a
faint suggestion of a church and, consequently, a pathetic, undermined
dignity: without them it would have seemed wholly restored to nature,
amiably and submissively ruinous, with a silence in which not the
most perverse mind could have detected melancholy. But within it was
unexpectedly lofty, and the ponderous open timber-work, rough-hewn and
naturally curved, was obviously performing too efficiently the task of
supporting the roof: it at once inspired the thought that it should
ere now have relaxed the strain of its crooked arms and acquiesced and
slipped or collapsed. The oak floor was pierced in many places by wear
and by drippings from the broken roof; grass and corn had grown up
through the crevices and died. Some of the fallen thatch had been piled
in a dry corner for a bed. In the centre of the floor was another sign
of its late use--squares chalked by the children for the playing of a
game. I walked to and fro. There were no ghosts, or so it seemed.

A starved thrush lay dead in a corner. That was all. I stirred the bed
with my stick, meaning to set fire to it. An old coat was concealed
beneath it, and out of the pocket fell a book.

On the front page was written, “A. A. Bishopstone, ---- College,
Oxford, October, 1890.” The first pages were filled with accounts of
expenditure, subscriptions, purchases, etc., the items abbreviated
as a rule beyond recognition. Apparently he had soon ceased to keep
accounts. Several pages were torn out and a mere few left only to
save their other halves farther on. The book had then begun to serve
another purpose. Under the date March, 1891, there was a list of books
read during the term ending in that month--“_The Letters of Flaubert_,
Gilchrist’s _Blake_, etc.” He had meant to make a comment on this
reading, perhaps, but it was crossed out deliberately lest he should
be tempted to decipher the hateful thing. He had left only the words,
“It is a mistake to leave comments of this kind on record, as in after
years one is unable to get back at their meaning and the imperfectly
expressive words are irritating and humiliate. The mere names of books
read, people seen, places walked to and the like are more eloquent
far. This day I have burnt my old diaries. They help the past to
haunt us out of its grave.” Consequently there were from time to time
carelessly written jottings of names of books, lists of places visited
with dates: they were eloquent enough. On some pages short poems and
passages of prose were copied out in a very neat hand, showing a kind
of priestly sense of reverence for Claudian’s poem _On the Sirens_,
etc. These entries needed no comment, the serious worship implied in
the caligraphy was unmistakable; Bishopstone would have no difficulty
in recalling to his mind the mood in which they were copied out. They
were headed usually by no more than the year in which they were written
down, sometimes not at all. Thus he wrote “1892” at the head of a page
and apparently added nothing, for it was in an altered hand that the
prayer from Shelley was copied:--

    Make me thy lyre even as the forest is.

Next, in March of the same year, he had written down, perhaps from
dictation, the names of historical books, with a few words showing that
in the following summer he would have to go up for the examination
which had qualified him for a degree. Evidently he was resolved to work
hard at special books and to put behind him the intellectual luxuries
of Rabelais, etc. Whether he read too hard or not is uncertain, but the
entry for September of that year was merely, “Brain fever and a 2nd
class. I am now alone.”

The next entry was in 1893: “Sell all thou hast and follow Me.” In the
same year came the words: “I possess my working clothes and a Greek
testament. I earn 14s. a week.”

There was no more for that year, but under 1894 were a number of
detached thoughts, such as:--

“‘All men are equal’ is only a corollary of ‘All men are different’--if
only the former had been forgot instead of latter. It might have
changed things less--and more.”

“Forgive we one another, for we know not what we do.

“Each man suffers for the whole world and the whole world for each
man. There is little distinction between the destinies of one man and
another if this is understood.

“Let us not exalt worldly distinctions, titles, etc., by saying that
they make no difference.”

In 1895 came the words, “East Anglia--the Fens--Yorkshire--the Lakes,”
and the isolated thought:

“To be alone in eternity is the human lot of a man, but to be alone in
time, alas! alas!”

The next year he had not touched the book: it was the year of his
marriage, for in 1897 he had written: “We have now been married one
year.” A list of villages followed showing a zigzag course right
across England; then the thought: “There is nothing like the _visible_
solitude of another soul to teach us our own. Two hungers, two thirsts,
two solitudes, begetting others.”

Was it perhaps at the birth of a child--the date is not given, it might
have been the same year, 1897--that he wrote this? “To him who is born
into eternity it matters little what happens in time, and a generation
of pain is as the falling of a leaf.” Then:--

“Unhappiness is apart from pain. When they tell us that in the Middle
Ages and even in the last century men suffered more pain and discomfort
than we, they do not tell us that they also had less unhappiness. Many
a battlefield has seen more joy than pain; many a festival as little of
either.”

And then, on a page to itself:--

“We are looking for straight oak sticks in a world where it is hazel
that grows straight.”

That he was still travelling was indicated only by names of places
written down without comment. A week’s accounts showed the expenditure
of 10s. on the food of himself, his wife, and John and Paul, two
children. In March, 1898, he wrote:--

“The road northward out of Arundel leads to Heaven”; to which he had
added, “So does Lavender Hill.”

Other thoughts were set down in the same year:

“The man who is discontented with this world is like a blackbird who
desires to be a plover that calls by night in the wandering sky.

“To have loved truly, be it for an hour only, is to be sure of
eternity. Love is eternity. And if we have not loved, then also we are
destined to eternity in order that in some other condition we may yet
love.

“If only we did not _know_ that in this world it is often well to
attempt what it would not be well to achieve.

“Preach extravagance and extremes and ideals that haply we may achieve
something above mediocrity. If we preach compromise we may not achieve
more than desolation. And yet even out of desolation may bloom the rose.

“Exactly the same proportion of marriages as of illicit unions are
immoral, even in a worldly sense.”

In 1899 it must have been the death of a child that dictated the
words:--

“I do not shed tears: I did that when she was born, for I saw her lie
dead in the cot where she smiled.”

There was a long interval and then one short entry:--

“I possess everything, but in the world’s sense nothing but my
name--A. A. B.; if I could lose that I should be a better citizen, not
of the world, but of the universe of eternity. Are the stars called
Procion and Lyra except by astronomers? Then why should I have a
name?--unless, indeed, there were a name which described me as a poem
describes an emotion. I will be nameless. I will no longer condemn
myself to this title of A. A. B.”

The next and final entries all belonged to the winter which he spent in
the barn.

On Christmas Eve:--

“Life will never be better or nobler, nor has ever been, than here at
this instant in my breast. But--may I never be content to know it lest
to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow be the less for it.”

Then:--

“What is man? One moment he is a prayer, another a flower of God,
another a flame to consume he knows not what save that it is himself.
And, again, he is but a dungeon in which an infant’s cry is echoing.
One day I saw soldiers, and I was nothing but, as it were, a sea-shell
to record the clattering hoofs, the scarlet, the shattering trumpet.

“The children have a doll that was given to them. They are talking to
it and about it--as I talk to and about another man.

“I heard the wind rustle in the dead leaves this morning, I heard it
rustle over my grave, and over the world’s, and over the embers of all
the stars, and I was not afraid.

“What name has my beautiful barn in heaven? In it was born a man in
the sight of his brothers and sisters. God has told me my seed shall
be multiplied as the sands of the sea. Can it be that out of this barn
will grow the regeneration of the world, or will the forgotten memory
of it trouble the well-being of some citizen far hence in time and so
give birth to a flame, a prayer, a rose out of the soul of him? It is
cold, yes, but the frost is one of the angels.

“A doctor has been here, a man not used to our life. He too felt that
it was cold. He said that little Francis--whom Mary calls Albert
Edward--is ill and may die. If he does, then it may be from the corpse
of an infant the saviour of society will be born.”

These were the last words. On the day after the doctor’s visit the
arrest was made. Arthur Aubrey Bishopstone and two of the children died
in the infirmary of the prison. Francis Albert Edward, born at Lone
Barn on Christmas Day, recovered from the effects of his birth and left
the workhouse at the end of June with his mother and four brothers. I
believe that after Lone Barn there was nothing they missed less than
Arthur Aubrey Bishopstone. If they had been given to considering such
matters, they would have said that he ought to have lived solitary and
let his hair grow in Wayland’s Smithy instead of marrying and begetting
seven children, of whom only two were able to die in infancy.

Lone Barn has since been burnt to the ground, and should Francis Albert
Edward (his real name) or the world visit the scene of his nativity,
to worship or verify the facts, they would find in that hollow of the
downs only a square space of nettles, poppies, and bachelor’s buttons,
amidst the turf....

Coming to the telegraph posts of Abingdon Lane--the Abingdon and
Newbury road--the turf was furrowed this way and that. Gorse and thorn,
surrounding the crossing of the straight, white road and the green
way, made a frame as for some wayside event of no common kind, such as
the birth of Francis; but the sun shone and the wind blew and betrayed
nothing. Then the road was a central track of very little rutted turf,
and flowers and long grass on either side; it had banks, but no thorns
growing on them. The valley was beautiful, the mile-distant tedded hay
looking like sea sand, the elms very dark in their lines or masses
above the green corn, the villages hidden and the single farm-houses
dim among trees, and the land rising beyond to a ridge saddled here and
there with dark clumps on the horizon. In one place a far-off upland of
newly ploughed chalk was almost snowy in misty whiteness. The clouds
of the sky and the hot mist of earth dimmed the pale ploughland and
the corn until the trees appeared to be floating on them as on a sea.
They were cutting hay a little way off to my left, and as the horses
and the mowing-machine came into sight at some speed it seemed to me
that but for the seat it was probably much like a British war chariot.
To the right the slope of the down was turf. Sometimes the road had
a bank on each side, sometimes only on one; near the crossing of the
road to East Hendred it was for a time without a bank; in other places
the ditch was clearer than the bank. There was corn with its poppies,
white campions, and charlock on the right, hay on the left. Woods,
now on the left and now on the right, sometimes touched the road; but
they never reached it from both sides at once--it never passed through
a wood. In one of the roadside woods on the left a great tumulus
stood disembowelled among the beeches: this was Scutchamer Knob on
Cuckhamsley Hill--or, as I have heard it called, “Scotchman’s Hob.”
This name an old carter had apparently justified to himself in part
by the fact that an old road coming from the north--perchance from
Scotland--passes close by, namely Hungerford Lane, which has a separate
existence from Milton Hill near Steventon to Land’s End on Knoll End
Down near Farnborough.

Above Lockinge Park the road was about forty yards wide of level turf,
between a bank and fence on the right and a natural low wall of turf
above it on the left. But the new reservoir, the new plantation of
firs and their iron fences, at this point might have persuaded the
traveller that Lockinge Park was going to absorb the Ridgeway as it
did the Icknield Way two centuries ago. At a very high point near by
was a slender white column and cross upon a mound of turf erected in
memory of Robert Loyd Lindsay, Baron Wantage, by his wife. The road
went lightly away from this over the bare turf, having on its left the
thorny slopes of Yew Down and on the right a sunken tumulus. Several
deep tracks descended towards Lockinge, and at a tumulus beyond the
first road to Wantage a branch entered on the left from Farnborough
exactly like the main track--if it can be called a branch that was
itself a parish boundary and gave its course to the main track for some
distance. This tumulus formed part of the right bank of the Ridgeway.

I noticed that I seldom did more than glance at the country southward
on my left. The steep downward slope that was never far off on the
right, the wide vale below and the very distant hills sometimes visible
beyond, could always draw my eyes from the south. On that side there
was a beautiful region falling and then rising again to a height not
much lower than the Ridgeway, and crowned with trees at the top of
the rise, as e.g. beyond Fawley. There were several rough, thorny
slopes on that side, each thorn distinct; and these are peculiarly
attractive. Yet I could not look at them long. It was the same when
I walked back in the opposite direction. The vale spread out in the
north was satisfying, and the horizon was distant enough to quiet
if it ever awakened desire: I never wished to descend. The two or
three miles of country visible in the south was far more positively
attractive, as well as by chance less known to me. Perhaps the horizon
was too near and was soon merely tantalizing: certainly it gave no
rest. Also the land fell away very little before rising again to this
horizon, and consequently gave none of the pleasure of a low and, as
it were, subject landscape. The scene awakened desire, but I could not
turn aside to satisfy it. Therefore, perhaps, since it could not be
satisfied and stilled as by the distant northern horizon, I turned away.

The road was going broad and green and straight between bare banks in
the course set by the tributary from Farnborough, when suddenly it
bent to the south for a few yards, and then again west by a little
pond under some willows. It descended, much narrowed and hedged, past
the ash trees and sycamores of White House, and then, with a sharp
northward turn along the Wantage road and in a few yards another to
the west at Red House, it recovered its direction and presumably its
original course. Probably the half a mile or more between the two
crooks is not an innovation, but the crooks themselves are, as it were,
the punishment inflicted on the old road by two newer or at some time
more vigorous roads cutting across it.

[Illustration: Letcombe Castle.]

Beyond Red House I passed Letcombe Castle or Segsbury Camp, the
road running close and parallel to its straight south side. A road
crossed mine and penetrated the green ramparts of the camp from a
corrugated-iron farm that stood with a thatched barn under some ash
trees--behind it a grassy down with clumps beyond. The road was now
so broad that it was hardly at all marked except downhill, or where a
crossway roughened it, or at some busy section between one cross-road
and another, where it would have one narrow, well-worn strip. At the
right-hand turning to Letcombe Bassett stood a sycamore and some ash
trees, and there were roses in the thorn hedge. Letcombe Bassett was
at the foot of a round buttress of the downs called Gramp’s Hill, but
was half hidden in grouped trees which continued above and alongside
the winding white road to Letcombe Regis a mile beyond. Gramp’s Hill
and the next and far more prominent hill formed between them a long,
deep hollow, winding up into the hill and terraced on its slopes with
flights of green steps. This winding made almost an island of a small
hill, round and flat-topped, and the top of this hill had been mown and
a waggon in the centre was being loaded with hay. Here was the place to
build a castle in the air--and also on the turf of the downs. The man
who did so would probably inhabit somewhat longer than the philosopher
did Wayland’s Smithy. He might live there even until he died. But it
is not likely that his heir--supposing that he had an heir--would
continue after him. In any case it would at once be called the “Folly.”
Clumps of trees planted on high places to please the eye and to be
a landmark are now called “Follies” almost as a matter of course.
Any house built high or in a great solitude is likely to be called a
“Folly.” A house may earn the name by having walls more than a foot
thick, in a district of jerry-builders where builders are bankrupt once
a month. Thus people condemn the extraordinary. If it is a little thing
like a white blackbird, they shoot at it: if it is a big, helpless
thing like a whale stranded in Cornwall, they carve it alive. But to
call it a “Folly” and have done with it is the most innocent form of
condemnation. In fact, it is by this time rather venerably pretty. They
call the far-seen clump of beeches on Liddington Hill the “Folly”; the
clump a quarter-mile north-west of Wayland’s Smithy is Odstone Folly;
Ashbury Folly is the clump at the crossing over the Ridgeway down to
Ashbury Church. They call a house a “Folly” with less benevolence. They
see--or they feel--in the strange, high, or solitary situation part of
an attempt to mould the course and conditions of life, or to escape
from them. They see--or they dimly imagine--a being who is trying to
make his, or some woman’s, like a poem, or like a work of art--

    Carved with figures strange and sweet,
    All made out of the carver’s brain....

It is not that they see the blasphemy of it like that of Babel or of
the Titans. But they know that the builders of Babel and the Titans
will fail, and if they cannot beat them themselves they will be on the
side of the one who can. I should myself be sorry to see a house--such
a one as is likely to be built--on that island between Gramp’s and
Hackpen hills. But if it were such a house as Morgan’s Folly! I
warmed with the thought of transporting that hill-top tower to this
peninsulated table of turf, by the expenditure of a sum sufficient to
have given a free library to Letcombe Bassett.

I do not know if it was called a Folly, but there was a plantation
at the cross-road from Sparsholt to Lambourn which I liked--a long,
narrow plantation of beeches close together alongside the cross-road
and touching the Ridgeway on one side; on the other was a tumulus. Here
it was a broad road with no hedges, there being corn on the right, and
sheep, enclosed by a wire fencing, on the left. It was now near its
highest point, nearly eight hundred feet, at the Hill Barn that stands
with its company of stacks amidst a group of ash trees above Sparsholt.
The purple meadow crane’s-bill was growing beside the road near Hill
Barn.

I left the Ridgeway that morning by the Blowingstone Hill and its
woods, and went to Sparsholt, which has a quarter-mile of chestnut and
lime, and then beech and elm shadow on the road to its church. One bee
was buzzing inside as I walked over the stones and brasses of the floor
and looked at the Commandments, the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the
royal arms, on the wall, but chiefly at three recumbent stone effigies
lying asleep and private within a chapel, guarded by stone lions,
railings, and a locked gate.




CHAPTER X

EIGHTH DAY--SPARSHOLT TO TOTTERDOWN, ON THE RIDGEWAY, BY WHITE HORSE
HILL AND WAYLAND’S SMITHY


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 morning. As I walked under the
garden trees I came slowly within hearing of a melody played so
lightly, or so far lost among winds or leaves, that I could hardly
distinguish it. It was an hour when nearly everyone is at work. A
poor, ragged girl was walking in front of me in awkward haste. But
she stopped at the same time as I did, to listen. The music was not
everything. The shadow and the filtered light, the silence of the music
half submerged, the busy hour so steeped in tranquillity, helped the
player to express perfect carelessness and freedom from the conditions
of life--summer, wealth, luxury, happiness, youth, gaiety, innocence,
and benevolence. They expressed it for us, as that river-side garden
picture at Watlington doubtless expressed it for others. But presently
the player lighted upon a melody which took me right away from
Sparsholt and the summer morning and the tranquillity. I could not
catch every note, but even the fragmentary skeleton of “Caradoc’s Hunt”
could not be mistaken. At a first hearing this old hunting song seemed
to be much the same thing as Scott’s

    Waken, lords and ladies gay,

and little more than the north countryman’s

    One morning last winter to Holm Bank there came
    A noble brave sportsman, Squire Sandys was his name.

[Illustration: White Horse Hill.]

Many have heard it and thought it just one of the best, perhaps the
princeliest, of hunting songs. With a little change it might have been
a battle song; for it was martial and high-tempered, and would launch
cavalry as well as huntsmen. It was a little too nervously quick and
dancing for a battle song; such pace, such height of spirit could
not endure. Yet the trumpets before a charge have often brought the
song into the hearts of young soldiers, and their chargers and they
have done extravagant things for the gay tune’s sake. It suggested the
haughtiness and celerity of youth, audacious and fantastic pleasures,
voices of command and laughter, many-coloured and all splendid dresses,
neighing and prancing horses, hounds lazily quarrelling in the sun,
gallant March weather. The gates of a castle stood all wide open for
the first time since the beginning of winter, and arrowy winds and
humid fragrance were invading the stale shadows. As the first flowers
break out of the old, dark earth, so the youths and maidens with their
purple and gold, green and white, broke out of this old, dark castle
upon the Welsh moorland. The sharp horseshoes trampled the first
green of spring and the first yellow blossoms, even as the riders
would trample the hearts of men and women, and as freely upon their
own hearts, their own strength and health and happiness. The sunlight
played like a thousand sprites, on rippling waters, on the gold and
silver ornaments of riders and horses, on horns of gold. Bright as the
sun, clear as the west wind, joyous as the heart of man and hound and
horse sounded the horns.

There was nothing more in the three verses, there seemed little more
in the melody. After a little talk and much laughter and shouting
with deep and shrill voices, blowing of horns, cheering, and chiding
of steeds, summoning and urging of hounds, they rode away. They
climbed the wild hills and saw an angry sea of yet wilder hills in the
distance. They descended into the rich vales. They scattered joyfully.
They gathered together as joyfully. They feasted until better than any
wit or beauty or adventure seemed sleep. Then they slept.

Other listeners to the song might think rather of a later hunt
assembling before a cheerful Georgian mansion with many windows, and
behind one of them a lady playing “Caradoc’s Hunt” on a spinet, and
warbling it in Saxon. I thought of such a one as I heard the invisible
lady playing at Sparsholt.

Others, again, would be content with nothing later than the age
of chivalry and the _Mabinogion_. The hunters would all be auburn
or yellow-haired young men. They are clad in yellow tunics, green
hose, and shoes of parti-coloured leather clasped at the instep with
gold. Some carry bows of ivory strung with deer sinews, the shafts
of whalebone headed with gold and winged with peacock’s feathers.
Others have silver-headed spears of ash-wood coloured azure. All wear
whalebone-hafted and gold-hilted daggers and horns of ivory. Their
hunting is earnest, though elaborated with much decoration of custom,
style, and ceremony. They are men who must go hungry but for the chase.
They run or ride to hunt the stag or the boar, and nobly beautiful and
blithe look they as they begin to move away from the castle, and their
tall, brindled white-breasted greyhounds, wearing collars of rubies,
are sporting like sea-swallows from side to side of them. But they may
encounter foes instead of quarry; they may kill or be killed by young
braves from other borders. So with all the gallantry of dress and
harping there is something grim in their going forth; nor is it idle
bombast for one among them to ride out carrying only what he calls the
mightiest of all weapons--the harp--on which he plays “Caradoc’s Hunt”
at the starting.

These things and others, according to the singer and the hearer,
the song readily suggested. But they are mistaken who are contented
by these suggestions, sufficient as they are for a warm summer’s
morning in a green lane. They are deceived by the qualities which
“Caradoc’s Hunt” has in common with other hunting songs, especially
by the galloping rhythm and the notes like a challenge of horns. Even
when that boastful riding harper played it the tune was old. He was a
bard, and though he played it for the young hunters for the flashes of
gaiety and mettle upon its surface, it intrigued his own heart with
a rich mystery of antiquity. Already legend as well as the bards and
harpers had begun to play with the melody. It was said, for example,
to have been the favourite hunting song of the “Lady of the Night” in
her earthly days, and even that she sang it, or had it sung and harped
to her, now that she was an inhabitant of night and the underworld.
Solitary, benighted peasants or travellers saw her black hair streaming
over her green vest and crimson mantle as she galloped fiercely over
the mountains or in the heavens. Her horse was white. She hallooed as
she rode in a wild voice, at times harsh and abrupt like a heron’s,
at others clear and laughing like a wood-owl’s. The hounds streamed
after her, howling in tumultuous chorus, and the sound grew louder
as the pack raced farther and farther away. They were the hounds of
the underworld. They followed her in a stream or fan as closely as
if the foremost held the tip of her mantle. In some packs the hounds
were small, and were white all over except the shells of their ears,
which were rose-coloured; and they had eyes like lighted pearls. Some
were black with red spots, others red with black spots. There were
also hounds all blood-red, with eyes of flame. They hunted the spirits
of men destined to die soon, or of the dead who were unfit either
for heaven or for hell. They prophesied deaths and calamity. However
fierce, they were always even frantically joyous, but some thought the
hallooing of the lady was often close to lamentation. Only when the
sound of “Caradoc’s Hunt” was heard was she as joyous as her hounds.
Her sadness made it believed in places that she was no huntress at all,
but the quarry, or at least that she hunted for a punishment, that she
was doomed by god or devil thus to flee all night through cloudland or
the most desert regions of earth. Hunting or hunted, it was certain
that she was powerless to change her fate. Hunting was what she most
loved on earth. Perhaps she still loved it, or she was being punished
for the crime of pride or immoderate love of the chase. One story
was that she had been very beautiful and vain of her beauty, and on
her death-bed had exacted a promise to bury her in her most radiant
apparel. Another story, more venerable, was that she had so loved
hunting as to cry out once in a strong passion: “I care nothing for
heaven if I cannot hunt there.” When she died, therefore, her spirit
was cursed with an everlasting compulsion to slake this most dear
desire. She had to hunt eternally with the hounds of the underworld.
When she heard “Caradoc’s Hunt” she could not but start or follow the
chase. “If I forget ‘Caradoc’s Hunt,’ then I shall be dead indeed,” she
said. “I shall be quiet and sleepy as anyone else among the ghosts.”
When men saw her dark eyes flashing at thought of the song they could
not believe that if anything of this beautiful creature was to survive
the immortal remnant would not take with it “Caradoc’s Hunt.” She heard
it at many different and some monstrous times. People thought that the
tune was in her head, but she averred that she heard it outside--in
the clouds or the trees or the hallooing woods--and her immediate
attendants knew this to be true. She would break away from marriage or
funeral to ride. She would suddenly rise up from mass to mount. She
would dress at dead of night, uncouple the hounds, and hunt alone.
Love, wine, sleep, religion were impotent against the melody. Everyone
admitted that it was a beautiful melody; they called it gay, or
spirited, or said that it was perfectly suitable to a knightly company
of riders. This lady heard it and rode away. Hers was not the fate of
the lord of Radnor Castle. He and his hounds impiously passed the night
in the church of Llan-Avan, near Builth, to be near the day’s coverts
early; but when he rose at the dawn he found himself blinded and his
hounds mad, so that he escaped only with difficulty, to earn pardon by
a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The lady’s life was charmed. She rode
anywhere without fear. She died young, but it was in bed. On horseback
she could defy man or God.

Such was the Lady of the Night, and her legend was at least not
unworthy of “Caradoc’s Hunt.” But as the belief in the hounds of the
underworld is earlier than the Middle Ages and the ghostly hunter in
darkness more venerable than the Norman lady, so is the tune. The
legend might have grown to explain the tune, and it does help to
illuminate the depths of which the surviving words, the mere cheerful
chivalry, are no more than the glancing surface. But the tune has depth
under depth, and when it is heard the plummet of the soul sinks to a
profound far below the region of the lady who rides by night. What
darkness the plummet fathoms, what “bottom of the monstrous world” it
touches, is not to be understood. Perhaps the mystery is only that
which at once haloes and enshrouds common things when we no longer feel
them as common. But if at the sounding of the melody the mind’s eye
still sees a cavalcade of antique hunters, it is not stag or boar or
questing beast that they are to follow; the castle that sends them out
of its gates and may receive them at nightfall is no feudal or faery
stronghold, but an image, perhaps, of the great world itself.

[Illustration: The Blowingstone.]

But I must confess the melody did not lighten my step as I mounted
again to the Ridgeway by Blowingstone Hill. The Blowingstone is a block
of brown, iron-like sarsen stone standing on end, and of such a height
that a man can bend over and comfortably blow into the mouthpiece at
the upper side. This natural mouthpiece is the small roundish entrance
to a funnel through the stone which emerges at a larger hole lower down
at the back. A well-breathed person blowing bugle-fashion can make a
booming that is said even now to carry five miles, if sustained for
some time. At the hill-top, where it stood before it became a procurer
of charity, a skilled and deep-chested hillman might have made himself
heard much farther. From this hill-top, nearly seven hundred feet high,
the Ridgeway rises to its greatest height. Hitherto it had hardly ever
had higher land on either side of it for very many miles. At Uffington
Castle it is over eight hundred feet high, but a little lower than the
highest part of the camp. From the rampart about this circle of almost
level turf I could see the Quarley Hill range and far over the Lambourn
Downs to Martinsell Hill by Savernake; I could see Barbury Castle and
the wooded hills of Clyffe and Wroughton, and Badbury, the Cotswolds,
the Oxfordshire hills, Sinodun, and the Chilterns. The Dragon Hill
below it is an isolated eminence shaped like the butt of an oak tree,
and similar to that one in the hollow between Gramp’s and Hackpen
hills, but ruder and more distinct.

Past the south and lower side of Uffington Castle the Ridgeway went
fairly straight, with a thorn or two on either side, towards the thick
beech clump above Wayland’s Smithy, sometimes a green road, sometimes
worn white. The hill-side was divided among charlock and different
greens in squares and triangles, and here and there a thatched barn
or rick at a corner. Southward I saw the pleasant, dappled scatter of
Knighton Bushes over the turf, sometimes considerable woods like those
of Ashdown by Alfred’s Castle; in several places the long stretch of
turf reared itself up with beautiful but detached hills, like Tower
Hill, as high as the main ridge. The hot, misty sun drew out all the
odour from uncut grass, clover, cockscombs, yellow bedstraw, ox-eye
daisies, and bird’s-foot trefoil, and the light air mixed them.
Whatever was visible or hid on the left, the road always commanded the
northward valley, the main expanse, and also for the most part the
nearer land where the villages lay, close to the foot of the hills on
which it was travelling. An enemy might have lain or moved concealed
within a very short distance on the south, but never on the north, and
it might be conjectured, therefore, that attack was to be feared from
that side only, and that the other was friendly country to those most
commonly upon the road. The camps of Lowbury, Letcombe, and Uffington
were all to northward; Alfred’s Castle alone was on the south, at
Ashdown, among the greatest woods now surviving on this part of the
Downs. It is hardly possible for unhistorically minded men to think of
war on these hills, unless troops are manœuvring over them. Yet the
Ridgeway is like nothing so much as a battlement walk of superhuman
majesty. The hills between Streatley and Liddington form a curve in
the shape of a bow, a doubly curved Cupid’s bow. Following this line,
always keeping at the edge of the steep northward slope and surveying
the valley, the Ridgeway carries the traveller for thirty miles as if
along the battlements of a castle. He begins at Streatley by having the
early morning sun of spring over his right shoulder; the full light of
midday is on his left as he passes Letcombe Castle; the sun is going
down on his right hand as he descends to Totterdown and the pass for
the Roman road and modern traffic between the hills.

It is still debated whether most or little of the downland was once
covered with trees. Those recently planted on very high places have
often failed to make more than a spindly and ruinous growth, as at
Chanctonbury Ring, Liddington Hill, and Barbury. But wherever there is
a tertiary deposit beech and oak, not to speak of lesser trees, abound
and even flourish in great size and noble forms. Gorse, hawthorn, and
elder rapidly take possession anywhere of neglected ground, and make
an impenetrable scrub. Yews expand and beeches grow tall and close on
steep and almost precipitous slopes where the chalk is easily bared by
rain, traffic, or rabbits. There is thus some reason for thinking that
the open downland is largely the product of cultivation and nibbling
flocks.

The flocks no longer feed much on the hills, and, except when folded in
squares of turnips or mustard, are seldom seen there. They have become
more and more a kind of living machinery for turning vegetables into
mutton, and only in their lambhood or motherhood are they obviously
of a different tribe from sausage-machines, etc. In time, with the
discovery of a way of concentrating food and sunlight and of adapting
the organs of the sheep to these essences, it will be possible to dine
carnivorously on Sunday upon what was grass on Friday; but “for ever
climbing up the climbing wave,” men shall sigh for lambs born filleted
with a double portion of sweetbreads.

From Uffington Castle the road descended slowly, and reached six
hundred feet at the Wiltshire border, a third of a mile past the
road from Idstone to Ashdown. Then gradually it rose towards a point
much above seven hundred feet between two distinct breasts of down
south-westward. In places it had a good hedge of thorn, maple, and
brier on one side, at others only isolated little thickets of thorn,
brier, and black bryony, or groups where the last May-blossom met the
first guelder roses. Once at a corner before Ridgeway Farm five beeches
stood together making a shadow. The highest point showed me the beeches
of Liddington clump, each stem distinct, the fall of clear turf down
to the plain, and beyond that the Barbury clump and the long down wall
bending to Avebury.

The Ridgeway was now rapidly descending, with a disused track on the
left, to the gap where the Roman Ermine Street from Silchester to
Gloucester, now the Swindon and Hungerford road, penetrated the hills.
Without this descent from its ridge the road must have turned back so
as to point almost to Streatley again, and it would have done this to
avoid only about a mile of lowland before rising again to the hills
which were its natural soil. Probably it did so rise, though the road
called the Ridgeway in Ordnance Maps keeps to the lowland for five or
six miles.

I crossed Ermine Street at Totterdown and an inn called “Shepherd’s
Rest,” and the Ridgeway became a hard road of ordinary width
between hedges and ditches. It was more like the Icknield Way than
the Ridgeway, and still greater was this likeness when it reached
Liddington, but made no effort to climb again to the ridges, or to keep
Liddington Camp on its north side. One road does climb the ridge, going
south-westward to Liddington Hill, and then south, having turned from
this present road to the left at a point marked by the “Ridgeway Bush”
in the time of Hoare--three-quarters of the way from Totterdown to the
Swindon road. But the Ordnance Map gives the name of Ridgeway to a
road going straight across the low land to Barbury, mounting the hill
on the north side of that camp, and continuing along the ridge beyond
Barbury to near Avebury, up over the downs again to the Avon Valley,
up to Salisbury Plain, and across it, perhaps, to the Dorset coast,
or skirting it to Warminster and the west. But the site of “Ridgeway
Bush” is within a few yards of the westward boundary of Wanborough, and
beyond Wanborough there is so far no sufficient evidence for tracing
the course of the Icknield Way. The two roads came very near to one
another in that parish; they may even have touched before the Ridgeway
returned to its own place high up; and it is possible that as the
Ridgeway in Berkshire has been mistakenly called the Icknield Way, so
the lower part of what is now called the Ridgeway in Wiltshire may be
the Icknield Way.




CHAPTER XI

NINTH DAY--STREATLEY TO EAST HENDRED, BY UPTON AND HAGBOURNE HILL FARM


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 which was in several places not more
than a mile or two away from it. This lower road, it has been said,
was the Wantage-to-Reading turnpike for part at least of its course;
one writer’s road clearly lay south of this turnpike; another had
expressed a doubt whether it was the turnpike or a road to the south.
The decision that the Icknield Way in Berkshire was distinct from the
Ridgeway had added this difficulty; that the Ridgeway, supposing it to
have come up from the ford at Streatley, must have been a road from
beyond the Thames, and what that road was I had not discovered, though
it had been suggested that it was the Upper Icknield Way. But if the
Icknield Way of Oxfordshire and the Icknield Way of Berkshire were
linked, it must have been at Streatley, though it may also have been at
other fords.

[Illustration: Moulsford Bottom.]

The first half-mile of the main road through Streatley to Wantage is
the beginning of the Ridgeway’s ascent; but a little past the fork to
Wallingford the Ridgeway becomes separate from this main road, and goes
westward out of it. There was at first no possibility of an alternative
out of Streatley to the west, and I set out on the same road as when
I followed the Ridgeway. On my left I saw “Lyndhurst,” “Bellevue,”
and “Montefiore,” or their more expensive equivalents. I ignored the
first coombe, the turning up it of the Ridgeway, and went on upon the
roadside grass bordered with wormwood and traveller’s joy. Almost
at once the road crossed the entrance to another coombe running up
westward into the Moulsford Downs, and those woods which the Ridgeway
skirts on the south. It was a shallow coombe, the sides dappled with
thorns, the bottom covered with corn, and in the midst of it a barn
called Well Barn. Through the mouth of the coombe which opened towards
the river in the east I saw the pale corn, and the dark woods above it,
of the Chilterns. Crossing this coombe the road had no hedges, but corn
on both sides. It was usually hedgeless, but banked as it went up and
down, and dipped into another coombe of the same kind called Moulsford
Bottom, where a quarter-mile north of the thirteenth milestone from
Wantage a road came in from the South Stoke Ferry, the continuation,
perhaps, of a track from the Icknield Way near Ipsden. From Moulsford
Bottom the main road went visibly curving uphill, but from the top of
Kingstanding Hill, at three hundred feet, it went straight between its
low hedges and grassy banks towards Blewburton Hill. It had still corn
on both sides in stooks, downs on the left, and on the right the valley
of dark trees stretching far away into mist. It was a plain, well-kept
road of easy gradients, no corners, and such banks or hedges that
anything approaching in front could be seen. It lacked the company of
telegraph wires.

The villages of Aston were almost completely hidden on my right, as
I passed within a third of a mile of them. That was by the eleventh
milestone from Wantage, and there the road was following along and
under one of the low, natural walls of chalk which so often guide a
road and are in turn defined by it. My road, Icknield Way or not, went
hedgeless under this wall, with oats above and stubble below. The
flowers on its narrow green edges were chiefly yellow parsnip and white
carrot, both dear for their scents, and succory, that pale blue flower
which a strange fate has closely attached to the coarsest and stiffest
of dark stems and placed where dust is likely to be most thick.

Here the dust was thick, and I was glad to feel, to hear, to smell and
to taste, and to see the rain falling as I passed the “Barley Mow” at
Blewbury. According to custom I stood under the broad, overhanging
eaves of one of Blewbury’s thatched roofs and watched the rain, but it
was better to be in it and to smell the wetted dust which association
alone has made pleasant. Any road was good now, though mine was an
unadventurous, level, probably commercial, road.

But, rain or no rain, I was looking for an excuse to leave this road at
Upton, the next village, which is by the ninth milestone. The map had
shown me a road, or an almost continuous line of pieces running from
Upton westward to Lockinge Park, and on the east possibly connected
with the roads I had already travelled between Little Stoke and Upton
by way of Lollingdon Farm, Aston, and Blewbury, but traversing land
near Upton which is liable to floods. Either this road or the turnpike
was the Icknield Way, because a more northern road would be too low,
and no more southern one had left any traces.

A hundred yards or so before the road I was on bridged the Didcot,
Newbury, and Southampton Railway I noticed the line of a hedge leaving
on the left at an acute angle, and forming a triangle with the railway
and road for its other sides. As an old road is not likely to form
such triangular fields, except with the help of a new branch, it
occurred to me that this branching hedge marked an earlier or original
line of the same road, or of one coming from Upton village, and there
connected with the field roads from Blewbury and Aston. Across the
railway another hedge and a depression that might once have been a road
continued this line and led naturally into a lane turning out of the
main road on the left beyond the bridge and passing Upton Vicarage.
I supposed that when the railway cutting was made to have left these
crossing roads in their original state would have meant making two
bridges or one very broad one necessary. The courses, therefore, were
slightly altered, so that, instead of a crossing or “four-went way,”
there was a road receiving a branch at one side of the bridge, and
a second branch from an opposite direction, the left, at the other
side. But on referring to the old six-inch Ordnance Map, made before
the railway, I found that I was mistaken. The amended crossing may
have been made when the old road was superseded by the turnpike. This
left-hand road being the likely-looking road on the map, I followed it,
especially as the main road, half a mile beyond, by the “Horse and
Harrow,” at West Hagbourne, took a right-angled turn which suggested
a piecing together of two older roads, an east-and-west one and a
north-and-south one.

My conjectural road began as a hedged lane that formed a short cut into
the road to East Ilsley and Newbury. Crossing that road it was a cart
track--with a disused, parallel course on the right--over Hagbourne
Hill, past Hagbourne Hill Farm, which was derelict, but had sunflowers
in the garden and ricks in the yard. Less than a furlong south of the
farm is a supposed Roman burial-ground. A home-returning carter told
me that the first part of the road as far as the crossing was Baits
or Bates Lane. It was a cart track, or usually a strip of three or
four parallel cart tracks, going parallel with the downs, and almost
straight between one road and the next that came from over the downs
northward to the villages. It could easily make a straight course, like
all the other roads round about, because it was on an almost unbroken
plateau of cornland at the foot of the downs: so level was this piece
of country that in about four miles the altitudes varied only between
three hundred and eighty and four hundred feet. Between me and the
downs there were seldom any trees, except such few as stood by Downs
Farm, its thatched barns, its old and new ricks. On the right a slight
swell in the land often shut out everything but distant Oxfordshire
under a blue, bulging threat of storm. The road was for the most part
without hedges, and not a parish boundary. It was rarely or never
sunken, but in places might have been a little embanked. On one side,
shortly before reaching the Newbury road, there were two old thorns.
Half a mile farther, after crossing Hungerford Lane--a track from
Milton Hill to Farnborough--it had a line of elm trees on its left,
which was part of the enclosure of Arfield Farm, close by. I thought
Arfield--on the new one-inch Ordnance Maps spelt Aldfield--might be the
same as Halvehill. The cottage pronunciation, except that it lacked an
aspirate, was not discouraging. Halvehill barn was said to be on the
Ickleton Street or Meer, but on inquiry I learnt that it was some way
from my road down Hungerford Lane to the north, but on this side of the
main road, which was here about a mile distant. This barn is now called
Horn Down Barn.

Past Arfield Farm the road had hedges until it came to the tussocky
little “Arfield Common,” so called, but perhaps not so in fact. Here
there were several forking cartways. Mine seemed to go westward along
the northern hedge and its traveller’s joy, but at the west side of
the common, where Cow Lane comes in from Hendred, there was a gap of
a hundred yards or so before the old line was taken up by a road from
the south-east, which led me into the road to East Hendred. This was a
little more than three miles from the beginning of the road at Upton.

[Illustration: East Hendred.]

As I had had as much rain as I wanted on my skin, I turned downhill
under a long train of Lombardy poplars and very lanky ash trees into
East Hendred for the night. It was a thatched village built on the
slopes of a little valley, its houses standing snugly or in short rows
high above either side of the steep streets. They stood high because
the streets were very old and worn into deep hollows, and at the
edges of these ran narrow, cobbled paths; but the cottages were still
higher up, and four or five stone steps led up from the paths to their
doors. At the bottom stood the towered church, telling the hours and
the quarters, not with clock-face and hands, but with bells. Rain,
however, drowned that sweet noise in a mightier sweetness, heavy and
straight rain, and no wind except what itself created. For half an hour
everything--trees, mud walls, thatch, old weatherboards, pale-coloured,
timbered cottages, the old chapel at a crossing railed off as a sign of
private possession--everything was embedded in rain. Every sound was
the rain. For example, I thought I heard bacon frying in a room near
by, with a noise almost as loud as the pig made when it was stuck; but
it was the rain pouring steadily off the inn roof. Then in the dripping
quiet afterwards the sunset blazed in little fragments like gorgeous
glass and metal betwixt the black garden foliage.

Before I went to bed an intelligent, unprejudiced man told me that the
field-way I had followed was Ickleton Street or--he said it with some
shyness--Ickleton Meer. I had asked no leading questions, so that his
name seemed certainly the local though perhaps not invariable one. From
his description and map knowledge I felt no doubt that this was the
road mentioned in Wise’s _Antiquities of Berkshire_ (1695) as ploughed
up in Wantage east field, but visible from Lockinge Park, eastward
almost the whole way to Upton, through the parishes of Ardington, East
Hendred, Harwell, and West Hagbourne.

It is strange that that same identification was not made in a book
published in 1905. I mean Miss Eleanor G. Hayden’s _Travels Round our
Villages_. She lived at West Hendred, yet described her village as
lying between two roads known on the map as the “Portway” (the main
road between Wantage and Reading) and Ickleton Street, adding that they
were known “locally as the ‘Turnpike’ and the ‘Ridgeway.’” Evidently
she had not heard the people talk of “Ickleton Street” or “Ickleton
Meer.” Yet her books prove her familiar with country people and country
places as are few writers of country books. Her _Travels_ and her
_Turnpike Travellers_ and _Islands of the Vale_ gave the materials for
an exceptionally full picture of country life. Nothing was beneath her,
and her love was equal to her curiosity. She was exceptionally modest,
and put down everything with no obvious intention except fidelity to
her own eyes and ears. She could be dull, and if you opened the book
at random you might be disappointed; but if you read a whole chapter
you were certain to be delighted. So many books are written by bungalow
countrymen that we have got used to pretty things, surprising things,
pathetic things, country equivalents of the music-halls and museums of
towns. There were plenty of good things in Miss Hayden’s books. She was
not afraid of quoting country talk at some length for its own sake, but
she did not miss such things as the cottager’s “strutty little hen,”
who was “a deal better Christ’n nor many what calls themselves sich,”
and the lonely shepherd’s answer to the question what he and his family
did without a doctor--“We just dies a nat’ral death.” She appeared to
make good books as others darn stockings, because of the abundant
material. She gave a natural monotony and a natural charm. She showed
us a village girl curtseying seven times to the crescent moon; children
playing with the old mill machinery after the cheap loaf had killed it;
labourers at a tug-of-war over a brook; a cavalier and lady of the old
manor-house; a crossing stream, a beautiful garden, a village kitchen,
a recipe for Christmas pudding and one for sloe gin, and many things
from old parish accounts. But nobody bought her books. If she had given
them to some journalist to mince, spice, warm, and dish up, he might
have made a book of the season from them, and by now it would have been
dead. Hers will last somehow or another as long as an old wall.

I lay awake listening to the rain, and at first it was as pleasant
to my ear and my mind as it had long been desired; but before I fell
asleep it had become a majestic and finally a terrible thing, instead
of a sweet sound and symbol. It was accusing and trying me and passing
judgment. Long I lay still under the sentence, listening to the rain,
and then at last listening to words which seemed to be spoken by a
ghostly double beside me. He was muttering: The all-night rain puts out
summer like a torch. In the heavy, black rain falling straight from
invisible, dark sky to invisible, dark earth the heat of summer is
annihilated, the splendour is dead, the summer is gone. The midnight
rain buries it away where it has buried all sound but its own. I am
alone in the dark still night, and my ear listens to the rain piping
in the gutters and roaring softly in the trees of the world. Even so
will the rain fall darkly upon the grass over the grave when my ears
can hear it no more. I have been glad of the sound of rain, and wildly
sad of it in the past; but that is all over as if it had never been;
my eye is dull and my heart beating evenly and quietly; I stir neither
foot nor hand; I shall not be quieter when I lie under the wet grass
and the rain falls, and I of less account than the grass. The summer
is gone, and never can it return. There will never be any summer any
more, and I am weary of everything. I stay because I am too weak to
go. I crawl on because it is easier than to stop. I put my face to the
window. There is nothing out there but the blackness and sound of rain.
Neither when I shut my eyes can I see anything. I am alone. Once I
heard through the rain a bird’s questioning watery cry--once only and
suddenly. It seemed content, and the solitary note brought up against
me the order of nature, all its beauty, exuberance, and everlastingness
like an accusation. I am not a part of nature. I am alone. There is
nothing else in my world but my dead heart and brain within me and the
rain without. Once there was summer, and a great heat and splendour
over the earth terrified me and asked me what I could show that was
worthy of such an earth. It smote and humiliated me, yet I had eyes
to behold it, and I prostrated myself, and by adoration made myself
worthy of the splendour. Was I not once blind to the splendour because
there was something within me equal to itself? What was it? Love ...
a name! ... a word! ... less than the watery question of the bird out
in the rain. The rain has drowned the splendour. Everything is drowned
and dead, all that was once lovely and alive in the world, all that
had once been alive and was memorable though dead is now dung for a
future that is infinitely less than the falling dark rain. For a moment
the mind’s eye and ear pretend to see and hear what the eye and ear
themselves once knew with delight. The rain denies. There is nothing to
be seen or heard, and there never was. Memory, the last chord of the
lute, is broken. The rain has been and will be for ever over the earth.
There never was anything but the dark rain. Beauty and strength are as
nothing to it. Eyes could not flash in it.

I have been lying dreaming until now, and now I have awakened, and
there is still nothing but the rain. I am alone. The unborn is not more
weak or more ignorant, and like the unborn I wait and wait, knowing
neither what has been nor what is to come, because of the rain, which
is, has been, and must be. The house is still and silent, and those
small noises that make me start are only the imagination of the spirit
or they are the rain. There is only the rain for it to feed on and to
crawl in. The rain swallows it up as the sea does its own foam. I will
lie still and stretch out my body and close my eyes. My breath is all
that has been spared by the rain, and that comes softly and at long
intervals, as if it were trying to hide itself from the rain. I feel
that I am so little I have crept away into a corner and been forgotten
by the rain. All else has perished except me and the rain. There is
no room for anything in the world but the rain. It alone is great and
strong. It alone knows joy. It chants monotonous praise of the order of
nature, which I have disobeyed or slipped out of. I have done evilly
and weakly, and I have left undone. Fool! you never were alive. Lie
still. Stretch out yourself like foam on a wave, and think no more of
good or evil. There was no good and no evil. There was life and there
was death, and you chose. Now there is neither life nor death, but only
the rain. Sleep as all things, past, present, and future, lie still
and sleep, except the rain, the heavy, black rain falling straight
through the air that was once a sea of life. That was a dream only.
The truth is that the rain falls for ever and I am melting into it.
Black and monotonously sounding is the midnight and solitude of the
rain. In a little while or in an age--for it is all one--I shall know
the full truth of the words I used to love, I knew not why, in my days
of nature, in the days before the rain: “Blessed are the dead that the
rain rains on.”




CHAPTER XII

TENTH DAY--EAST HENDRED TO WANBOROUGH, BY LOCKINGE PARK, WANTAGE,
ASHBURY, AND BISHOPSTONE


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 Church. The eastern road at
the crossing came from the south-east (out of Hungerford Lane) and was
only for a few hundred yards in the line of Ickleton Street, falling
into it a hundred yards or so west of Aldfield Common, where I had
lost the road. The western road was apparently mine, but it was so
unimportant for _through_ traffic that though the eastern road forked
on entering the northern or Hendred road, neither of the forks ran
exactly into Ickleton Street. Between these forks was a triangular
waste of yellow parsnip, wild carrot, and dock, uneven from digging,
and somewhat above the roads which were sunken by downhill wearing.

Ickleton Street ran for a third of a mile straight westward to a
cross-track at the East and West Hendred boundary. It was hedgeless
as before, and being on a slight depression the horizon was often a
very near one of corn, topped by a distant bright cloud or cloud-shaped
dark clump of beech. At this cross-track I had to turn a few yards
south and then westward along a track of the same kind. Not being
sunk, or raised, or hedged, or banked, or ditched, the road could be
ploughed up easily and its course slightly changed, as here, to serve
a barn. This was Tames Barn, a thatched quadrangle of new ricks and
old barns and sheds built of boards now heavily lichened. Past the
barn it went as before, flat and hard-beaten, with broad ruts, and a
slight dip on the right side--a wall not half as deep as the corn was
high; there were a few blackthorns on this side. On the left sheep were
folded in clover. Ahead the Lockinge Woods showed their tops between
the rounds of Roundabout Hill, which was newly reaped, and Goldbury
Hill, which was part stubble, part aftermath. At the first turning to
West Hendred, which made the road crook a little to the south--and in
this crook--there were two or three rough sarsens, iron-coloured but
blotched with orange and dull silver, lying deep in the grass. A little
way back I had noticed another on the left, and there was another, I
think, east of Arfield Farm, beside the track.

Past the second turning to West Hendred (from East Ginge) the tiny
dip or wall below the right side of the road became a pleasant, high,
green wall with blackthorns and elders on it, and the road was a green
one, flowery with scabious, and had a bank above it, with barley at
the edge. Then the little Ginge brook and its hollow of elms and ash
trees interrupted the road. But a few yards beyond it was clear again
where the hard road went at right angles away from it to Red Barn.
It was now above its green bank, and this was eight or ten feet high
with blackthorns on it. It curved slightly round the southern base
of Roundabout Hill between the stubble, and being joined by a track
from the south it was worn almost grassless. After crossing a track
to Ardington, it was slightly raised above the fields on both sides.
A hard road joined it, and it was hardened itself and had a line of
young beeches and elms on each side. This was to lead up to one of the
gates of Lockinge Park, which it entered and disappeared. It must have
been bent--probably southward--by the swelling land of the park, but
over two centuries of ploughing have left nothing of it visible on the
surface.

I turned sharply southward at the edge of this park and presently back
to the north-west, past a house of great size with some conservatories,
elms, lawns, and water garden--the shadowy and bright grass occupied at
that hour by a lap-dog and many swallows. The road, lined on both sides
by trees and overhung by valerian and rose-of-Sharon, had an unpleasant
sense of privacy meant for others.

The turning eastward out of this road by East Lockinge post office
was in line with Ickleton Street, but signs of an exit from the park
on the opposite side of the road were obliterated by cottages and
gardens. This turning I took, and when it curved decidedly to the right
a footpath on the left, between a hedge and some allotment gardens,
preserved its original line. This path led westward into a road coming
south from Goddard’s Barn. On the right-hand side of the entering of
the path into this road lay the good house of West Lockinge Farm, its
barn and sheds and lodges gathered about it on one side of the road,
and its ricks and elm trees opposite. The road was half farm-yard and
half road and littered with straw and husks, where the fowls were
stalking and pecking with a laziness that seemed perfectly suited to a
Sunday early morning following a blazing harvest Saturday.

[Illustration: Port Way, Wantage.]

I hoped to find a cart track going west from the other side of this
road. For about a quarter of a mile I thought I found it raised a
little in the stubble. It had been sown and reaped like the rest of
the field, but it was a little weedier and grassier. It was making
over the swelling arable for Lark Hill and the south edge of Wantage,
but I could not find it in the clover nor in the barley beyond that. I
therefore turned north into Round Hill, a straight piece of hard road
going west into Wantage, with no hedges but grassy borders between it
and the arable on either side. This may be the Icknield Way or its
successor. It led into the main road at the edge of Wantage, and this
I followed into the town. In the first few yards I noticed the sign
of the “Lord Nelson” on the left. I recognized it as the work of that
venerable artist who designs the faces of guys and turnip-men all
over the country. I could tell that the man upon the signboard was
Nelson because the uniform corresponded to the name painted below. The
face was as much like Nelson as King George III, and it was entirely
different from that on the other side of the board. Nevertheless, the
effort was to be preferred to a more accurate portrait painted by a
builder and decorator’s man from a picture in a history book. It was
an effort to represent an image of a hero. The builder and decorator’s
man would have aimed simply at reproducing something which impressed
him because it was in a printed book: his horses do not represent
what he knows or feels about horses, but what he is able to crib from
a photographer in a book advertising somebody’s food or embrocation;
his “Coach and Horses” is painful to see, because it ought obviously
to be in a book. May it be long before he is allowed to molest the
shape of the horse or dragon carved into the turf of White Horse Hill.
In its present shape it could not be used to advertise horse food or
embrocation: but the horse above Alton Priors could be so used and
doubtless one day will be.

As I was leaving Wantage I heard a blackbird singing in a garden beyond
the church. This was near the middle of August and a full month since
I had last heard one. The heat had dried up the birds’ songs all much
earlier than usual, and now the rain of the last night seemed to be
reviving one. The song was perfect and as strange a thing as last
year’s snow.

Crossing the Letcombe brook I was out again between hedges and in
the company of telegraph posts on the road to Ashbury, Bishopstone,
and Swindon, which is called in the inch Ordnance Map “Roman Way.”
It seemed the only continuation of Ickleton Street, and as there was
no other road with anything like the same course in the valley I had
little doubt that it was the “Icleton-way” of the early eighteenth
century going “all under the hills between them and Childrey, Sparsholt
and Uffington, so under White Horse Hill, leaving Woolston and Compton
on the right, thence to Ashbury and Bishopston.” The foot of the
Downs was about a mile on the left, and between them and the road
the cornland dipped considerably. Looking over the hedge I saw first
a broad land of grass and then a line of telegraph wires making for
Letcombe and dividing the grass from a broad band of ripe corn; beyond
that was a band of very green roots; then a band of newly ploughed
earth; then stubble dappled with dark corn stacks, and above them the
hill.

[Illustration: Under White Horse Hill.]

My road was a narrow one, and at first borderless and worn to some
depth below the neighbouring fields. At the top of its ascent out
of Wantage it had a bank on the right, a fence on the left instead
of hedges. After passing Ickleton House at a right-hand turning, I
reached two cottages on the right at the crossing of a road from
Faringdon to Letcombe. This I entered on the south side to look for a
road between mine and the hills. A parish boundary follows this road,
and also the lane which I turned into on the right almost at once.
The lane was green and ran under some beeches and a natural turf wall
south-westward. It was deep worn and rutted as it descended through
the corn and barley to a cross-track under another turf wall making
from Letcombe Regis Church to Childrey. I went on until my track became
a hard road to Lambourn, and as I had seen no sign of an alternative
to the “Roman Way,” I turned to the right and entered it again at
the crossing for Childrey and Letcombe Bassett. Elms clustered at
the crossing, and the road was deeply worn between grassy banks. It
continued to have hardly any green edge, and as it was usually rising
or falling it was sunk more or less below its original level; in one
place, for example, the left bank was nearly twenty feet high, and I
could see nothing but the clouds all sopped in sunlight. The land was
almost entirely arable on either side, with standing corn or stooks or
stubble. In one place, past the turning on the right to Westcott, which
is between Sparsholt and Kingston Lisle, the road was on a terrace,
having a bank on the left and falling on the right to corn and a
thatched farm under trees: there were elms and beeches on either side,
but no hedge. The trees of Lisle Park gave lines of handsome beeches
to either side of the road, trees of less than a hundred years, all
well-shaped and, in fact, almost uniform, and planted at reasonable
intervals. The ridge of the Downs was not a mile distant, and from it
the grass of a yellowish green colour undulated without a break to the
road, sprinkled with beeches and barred with fir plantations. Past the
Blowingstone Hill and the turning to Kingston Lisle these undulations
are bare and carved by a steep-walled natural cutting. At this point
the top of the Downs was only half a mile away, and thenceforward it
was never more than a mile until beyond Bishopstone. Actually the
nearest point to the ridge was perhaps where the road twisted sharp to
the left to the bottom of a coombe and then sharp back again to get
out of it. As the floor of the coombe sloped upwards into the hill,
these twists gave a road which was bound to cross it at the lowest
possible gradient. The coombe had steep, smooth sides of yellowish
grass and a winding flat floor, and through the big scattered thorns
and elders of it a track went down to Fawler. The road wound again to
round a high bank on the left and again to circumvent a thorny hollow
on the right, and soon the White Horse was coming into view. There were
woods steep above on the left; there had been hedges on both sides
since Blowingstone Hill, often bushy and thick and overscrambled by
climbers, as, for example, near Britchcombe Farm. Here the road had
a green, sunken course divided from the hard one by a thicket. This
farm-house and its thatched, white-stone dependencies, their trees,
their elders and nettles, stood close to the road, but a little back
from it and a little above it, under the almost precipitous ash wood of
the hill; and away from it on the other side of the road sloped another
coombe of thorns, and also of willows and some water.

[Illustration: Dragon Hill.]

A little past Britchcombe Farm the Dragon Hill came in sight above a
slope of oats and yellowed grass. Then the road twisted again, left and
right, to cross another coombe, grown with larch trees on its lower
half and having a pool in it near Woolstone Lodge; but the upper half
bending back under the Dragon Hill, with a few thorns on its steep and
furrowed walls. Rising up out of the coombe, as usual the road was
between steep banks, and on them thorn bushes, scabious, and meadow
crane’s-bill flowers.

At the crossing to Shrivenham and Lambourn I caught sight of the
crest and haggard beech clump of Barbury above the nearer hills. This
crossing was within a quarter of a mile of Compton Beauchamp, the last
of more than half a dozen villages which the road passed by on its
right hand without touching. Ashbury was the first village traversed
by the road since Upton. As I approached Ashbury through corn that now
ran right to the top of the Downs, I had a bank above me on the left
and one below me on the right, and I could see now both Liddington
and Barbury clumps, and to the left of Liddington one high, bare breast
of turf. A lesser road turned down to Odstone Farm, which I was very
glad to see again, not a quarter of a mile on my right--its five plain
windows in a row, two in the roof, and those below not to be counted
because of the garden shrubs. It was a grey, stone house with a steep,
grey roof and a chimney stack at either side; there were elms behind
it, and tiled and thatched sheds all on its right hand; and the road
going straight down to its left side.

[Illustration: Green Terrace, near Ashbury.]

The right-hand hedge gave way to show me the elms and thatched barns
and ricks of Ashbury, its church tower among trees rather apart and
nearer the Downs. The road descended under a steep left-hand bank,
with a green course parallel. It turned right and then left round some
elm trees and past a hollow on the right containing a broad millpond
enclosed in a parallelogram of elms. At Ashbury the road turned to the
right away from the church to the “Rose and Crown,” and the two elm
trees standing in mid-street, and then back again to the left into
its original line. But parallel with the road a footpath ran from the
church on a terrace just wide enough for a waggon. It had a green
wall above and below, grass on the left, sweet-smelling lucerne on
the right. It rose and fell more than the road as it made for Idstone
between the barley. The terrace seemed to be continued across the
deeply worn road from Swinley Down; but the path turned to the right
and into the main road. This terrace road seemed to be a very possible
course for an old, though perhaps only an alternative road.

I stopped for a little time at Ashbury, and asking for tea at a cottage
and shop combined, I was asked into a silent but formidable Sunday
assembly of three incompatible and hostile but respectful generations:
a severe but cheerful grandmother in black and spectacles with one
finger still marking a place in the Bible; a preoccupied, morose
mother, also in black; a depressed but giddy daughter fresh from the
counter of a London shop, and already wondering what she was going
to do at Ashbury. This girl poured out my tea and told me that there
were some very good apples on the tree next door. Neither she nor her
relatives, because it was Sunday, could buy these or in any way procure
them, so she told me, though she had begun to want them very much
after half a day at her native village; if I went--and there seemed
no objection to the damnation of a casual wayfarer--I could probably
get some. The old lady who lived in the cottage next door said, as if
she were stating a well-known fact in the natural history of Ashbury,
that she had no apples, that they were very troublesome to knock down,
that none had fallen from the trees during the day, and that--she
was perfectly certain--there would be none until the morrow. On the
morrow I hoped to be many miles from Ashbury, and so I wished her a
good afternoon in spite of the rigid sabbatarianism of her trees. I
returned to the cottage where I had been drinking tea and told the girl
that no apples would fall until Monday morning, and asked her if she
knew any other kind of apple trees in Ashbury. Perhaps it was as well
that she did not, for I found that Sunday’s tea cost twice as much as
Saturday’s or Monday’s--it being apparently the right of the righteous
to prey upon the damned, even if in so doing they put themselves into
a position apparently as graceless as that of the damned. I thought
of asking a clergyman if this was so, and seeing a man whom I took to
be a clergyman, because his collar was fastened behind instead of in
front, I walked after him. But he suddenly stopped and went into the
very cottage of the old lady whose apples would not fall before Monday
morning, and this looked so like a conspiracy that I hastened away,
glad to have made these discoveries in the natural history of Ashbury.

[Illustration: Coombe at Bishopstone.]

The deeply worn road from Swinley Down cut across my road, south of
the green terrace road, at Idstone, and sent it northwards twenty
yards or so, just as Akeman Street cutting across the Upper and Lower
Icknield Ways near Tring sent each nearly a mile northwards. After this
I could see no trace of the little terrace road, though it was possibly
marked by a bank dividing the next fields to the road from those
beyond, and then by a mere division between crops to a point above or
beyond Bishopstone. Half-way between Idstone and Bishopstone the road
entered Wiltshire without ceremony. At the turning just before reaching
Bishopstone the road was worn very deep, and above it a steep-walled,
bare coombe ran up into the Downs with a track along its edge. More
often than not after leaving Wantage the road had been worn thus deep,
because it traversed a country of numerous and abrupt undulations;
these made fairly steep ascents and descents necessary, and they
invariably mean the hollowing out of any unmetalled, i.e. of any
ancient and not Roman road. The plough could never do any harm to this
road. But the “Port Way” between Wantage and Streatley it could hide
from most eyes in a few seasons. The Ickleton Street between Upton
and Lockinge Park would almost disappear under a single ploughing, and
doubtless often has done so, to reappear in the same or a parallel
course when needed.

At Bishopstone the road twisted right and left almost as at Ashbury.
This was into a coombe with a little stream in it, and there were
some signs that the old way had rather been left and right--that is,
sloping down to the ascending bottom of the coombe and up again--as
in other coombes. But the coombe and the bare Downs about it were
so shaped by nature, by wearing, and apparently by deliberate but
inexplicable cutting, that a mere road could not be traced with
certainty. The coombe branched as it rose up into the Downs and formed
several enormous convexities and concavities of turf. Several of their
converging slopes were cut evenly into three or four, or nearly a
dozen, green terraces like staircases, all of which, had a company of
giants sat there, would have given a view of the spring-head below.

Sheep were strewn over some of these terraces, making arrangements of
white dots of a fascinating irregularity. Unless it has become a trick,
only a great artist could make similar arrangements of equal beauty.
The unknown laws which produce these inevitable accidents are great
managers of the beautiful. The succession of bays in an island coast
and the general form of the island itself--of course, particularly of
islands off our own coast--are beautiful in their way. The shape of
England and Wales, the shape of Ireland, of Man, and of the whole
flock of the Hebrides please me with their unity, fascinate me with
their complexity; a mistaken map of any such known place is as bad
æsthetically as geographically. Children are fond of inventing islands
with marvellous inlets more romantic than anything on the west coast of
Scotland or Scandinavia. But I have never seen one of these invented
islands that I could like apart from its creator, or its names, or its
sites marked “Buried gold,” and so on. They are incredible and raise
no wonder. They are not masters’ work. I do not know if geologists can
support me, but Leonardo’s Cave in “The Virgin of the Rocks” always
makes me uneasy by what seems to me to be its artificial impossibility.
Another great picture which is, I think, faulty in a similar way
reminds me of another beauty--the beauty of the scattering and
gathering of the stars. I never look at Titian’s “Bacchus and Ariadne”
without feeling the constellation in that glorious purple is an unhappy
invention. It may be my poor astronomy, but I should be inclined to say
that stars never could be spread exactly as they are in that picture.
It is not merely that there is (I believe) no such constellation, but
that the form is one which, for some reason, they would avoid, though
by picking a star here and a star there it might be patched up. Birds
always fly and fishing-boats always sail in these just patterns.
Some are so just that, like that of the sheep above Bishopstone, I
should like to have them copied on paper to look at for their mystical
arithmetic.

The village, the mill, and the church were lower down to the right
below the spring, on the modern road and its northward branches. Only
a cottage, with a thatched roof on a level with my feet, lay near the
green coombe track above the water. The road went on again between
corn and roots, westwards now, and gradually farther from the Downs,
until a cross-road from Bourton cut across it and sent it southwards a
quarter-mile by a willowy spring before it turned west again.

This road southward into the Marlborough and Hungerford road may yet
be shown to be part of the Icknield Way. For at Totterdown, a mile
and a half beyond, it curves round and makes a line with the road to
Chisledon under Liddington Hill--the road much resembling the Icknield
Way which is called “Ridgeway” on the maps. It rose now, a hedged and
elmy road, to five hundred feet, and had a deep, grassy hollow and elm
trees below, between it and the cornland of the Downs. It dipped to a
spring and a post office at Hinton Parva; it dipped again and rose to a
view over the northern vale to the dim, watery wall of the Cotswolds.
At this height it crossed Ermine Street just after passing a “Black
Horse.” All four ways at the crossing were deeply worn and made a pit
with bushy banks and tiny green triangles of waste in the midst.

In a quarter-mile past the crossing of Ermine Street I was at
Wanborough. There the road forked at the “Calley Arms.” There is not a
scrap of real or pretended documentary evidence for either road, at
least until the place-names mentioned in the Saxon charter relating to
Wanborough have been identified. The left-hand road had the advantage
of keeping near the hills, instead of going clean away west like the
right-hand one. This right-hand road may at last be connected with one
of those rumoured roads going westwards, under the secondary line of
chalk hills, past Holy Cross at Swindon, past Elcombe and Studley to
St. Anne’s-in-the-Wood at Brislington, in Somerset, or to Devonshire;
and this continuation may at last be shown to be entitled to the name
of Icknield Way. I followed the left-hand road because it seemed
possible to connect it with one, very much like the Icknield Way and in
a similar relation to the Downs, going south-westward through Wroughton
and Broad Hinton, and from there either to Avebury or to Yatesbury, and
so by Juggler’s Lane to Cherhill on its way to Bath.

Liddington clump, the straight ridge and the “castle” rampart upon
it, were clear ahead as I took this turning. Wanborough’s towered and
spired church stood at the top of a slope of grass on my right. It was
a crooked, hedged road, with a grassy edge and a path on the grass; and
the telegraph posts followed it. It passed out of Wanborough parish
at a tiny stream that crossed the road in a deep, narrow cleft with
willows and willow herbs below on the right, and in the widening cleft
a derelict mill, a steep garden plot, and a row of beehives. It rose up
narrow, deep, and steep to the “Bell” at Liddington. There I turned to
the left into the Swindon road, and almost at once to the left again,
leaving the church on my left. This took me past two or three houses
of Medbourne, and sharp to the left and right through the hamlet of
Badbury, where a great elm stands at the first turning above a deep
hollow and a road going northward down it to the right. Then crossing
the Roman road from Mildenhall to Wanborough Nythe, I was at Chisledon
and another cleft in the land. This cleft is often precipitous, and so
narrow that you could almost play cards across it. A streamlet and a
single line of railway wind along the bottom. The church stands at the
edge where it is gentler, and the village is scattered over the slopes
and edges.

I was hungry when I knocked at the door of the first inn at half-past
five. On the opposite side of the road a small, quiet crowd of drinkers
in black coats and hats waited to be let in at six. No one answered
my knock. I knocked louder, and still louder, on the woodwork of the
door. Then I rapped the glass, and rapped louder and many times. But
no one came, and as I was too hungry to want justice I went to the
next inn. Here the door was instantly opened by a little red-faced
landlady with fuzzy hair and a gnomish face. She was swift and clean,
and so light and quick was her step that every time I heard her
approaching I expected a child. She was sorry to say that she had no
bed to spare, but told me of someone that might. I tried in vain, then
called opposite where “refreshments” were advertised. An enormous
woman stood wedged in the doorway; she was black-haired, sullen, and
faintly moustached, and she had her hands hanging down because there
was no room on either side of her to clasp them, and no room in the
doorway for her to rest them upon the fat superincumbent upon her hips.
I said good evening, and she remained silent. I asked her if she had
a bed to spare. She looked me up and down with a movement of head and
eyes, and asked me gradually where I came from. I was so taken aback
that I told her like a child, “From East Hendred”--which was absurd.
She retreated to ask her husband. He appeared alone, and hanging down
his head, shook it, and said that he did not think he could spare me a
bed. Having no gift of speech, I turned very rapidly away from him and
back to the inn. The landlady thought of someone else, made inquiries,
and assured me that the bed would be ready when Mrs. Somebody got
back from church. So I went out and looked at Burderop, Ladder Hill,
and the turning “To the Downs and Rockley.” The woman was back from
church and opened the door to me. She had a background of women taking
off Sunday hats and putting away veils and prayer-books, and said she
was sorry, but a niece had come, and there was no room for me. In the
darkening street I saw an old man at a gate with a genial face and the
mouth of one accustomed to horses. I asked him if he knew of a bed
to spare. “No--oh-oh-oh--no,” he chuckled, with increased geniality.
“You’ve come to the wrong place.... Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho no,” he continued.
“I can’t tell you why; but if you want a bed you have to go to a
town.” He was only a visitor to Chisledon, and I wished him better
treatment than I had got. I set out for Swindon. In about a mile I
came to another inn, where I had always enjoyed the bread and cheese
and ale, and I unwillingly silenced a black-coated company of grave
drinkers standing at the bar. They suspended their glasses while the
landlord said that it was absolutely impossible to get a bed that side
of Swindon. I tried at Coate. The barmaid appealed to Mr. MacFaggart,
who was standing by--“Perhaps Mrs. MacFaggart can spare a bed?” “No.”
This series of refusals was, I am convinced, pure ill-luck. But the
stout woman refused me, almost beyond doubt, because I was a stranger
whom she could not immediately classify. I could not be classed as
a “gentleman,” as a young “gent” or “swell,” or as a plain “young
fellow.” She decided not to risk it. Perhaps she had savings about the
house. Or did she think that underneath less than two days’ beard, that
oldish and not very clean Burberry waterproof, those good but very
baggy trousers, murder was lurking? No, probably she felt not the very
slightest inclination to please me, and as it only meant half a crown,
her one difficulty in refusing was her natural sullenness increased by
the presence of the nondescript and unsympathetic casual stranger on a
Sunday. Country people know a country gentleman, a sporting financier,
a tradesman, a young townsman (clerk or artisan), a working man, and a
real tramp or roadster. Some of them know the artist or distinguished
foreigner, with a foot of hair, broad-brimmed hat, and corduroy or soft
tweeds, a cloak and an ostentatious pipe, tasselled, or of enormous
bulk, or elaborate form or unusual substance. Some know the hairy and
hygienic man in sandals. To be elbowed out at nightfall after a day’s
walking by an unconscious conspiracy of a whole village was enough to
produce either a hate of Chisledon or a belief that the devil or a
distinguished relative was organizing the opposition. But during those
four unexpected miles to Swindon in the volcanic heat of evening,
which produced several pains and a constant struggle between impatient
mind and dull, tired body, I felt chiefly: I suffer; I do not want
to suffer; and only now and then the face of Mrs. Stout, or of Mrs.
Smallbeer, or of the genial old man with the horsy mouth, came into my
head, and turned my depression to fury.

Possibly they were afraid of German spies at Chisledon. Not far from
Maidstone in the summer of 1910 some poor cottage children were telling
me how a German spy wanted to rob them of the lunch they were taking to
school. He was a dark stranger with a beard, and he was waiting about
at a crossing partly overhung by trees; and they were convinced that he
wished to steal their food, and that his reason for doing so was his
position as German spy.

At Swindon I felt what a man feels in a place where he knows one man
instead of knowing scores of children and feeling that every passing
stranger was of the same family, ready at a touch to be changed to
a friend. But I had no difficulty in finding a bed surrounded by the
following decorations: pictures of ships in quiet and in roaring seas;
of roses twining about the words, “The Lord shall be thy everlasting
light”; of a cart-horse going through a ford with three children on his
back; of an Italian boatman and three buxom girls, one clinking glasses
with him; advertisements of an aperient and of cheap cigarettes. The
advertisement of cigarettes dwarfed all the rest. For not only was the
lettering large, but there was also a coloured picture of a swarthy
and hearty woman practically naked to the waist. She was smiling with
her dark eyes, and her lips were parted. I could not imagine what she
had to do with cigarettes of any kind. Was there a kind of suggestion
that these bold, bad, under-dressed foreign beauties--undoubtedly
beauties--were capable of smoking the cigarettes? Or was the picture
meant to be a stimulus to some, a satisfaction to others, of those who
sat at their ease drinking and smoking and thinking of women? In the
taproom of the most rustic public houses two or three of these women
sometimes adorn the walls, along with a picture of a diseased cow and
of its mouth, stomach, and udder. Some are dark, some are fair, and, I
think, certainly meant to be English; but all are incompletely draped
and unashamed. The dark ones are vaunting heathen beauties, the fair
tend to be insipid, with expressions borrowed from the pious virgins
of religious pictures. Sometimes the Bacchante and the pious virgin
are to be seen side by side, the sacred one being supplied by the
village grocer at Christmas. They are equally beautiful, i.e. have
regular features, perfect complexions, and expressionless mouths, and
are doing nothing in particular except posing so that the artist shall
observe their bosoms, or, in the case of sacred pictures, their throats
and the whites of their eyes. I do not think it could be shown that
these pictures spoil the chances of girls with unclassical features
and cross-eyes in the villages. In these matters the moth that desires
the star is likely to end in a candle flame, whether or not he mistook
it for a star. In these new towns I see women looking as if they were
made in the chemists’ shops, which are so numerous and conspicuous
in the streets--thin, pallid, dyspeptic, vampirine beauties, having
nothing but sex in common with the bold, swarthy alien on the cigarette
advertisement....

At Swindon the explorer of the Icknield Way has all the world before
him. He may go through Marlborough into the Pewsey Valley, and either
along under the hills through Lavington to Westbury, or, turning out
of the Pewsey Valley, to Old Sarum, and beyond Westbury or Sarum into
the extreme west; and he will be on a road of the same type as the
Icknield Way for the greater part of the distance. Or he may content
himself with reaching Avebury. Or he may miss Avebury and aim at
Bath. At present documents and traditions keep a perfect silence west
of Wanborough, and among mere possibilities the choice is endless.
The easiest, the pleasantest, and the wrongest thing to do is to
take to the Ridgeway at Wanborough and follow it along the supposed
south-westerly course under Liddington Hill, under Barbury Castle, and
then up on to the ridge to Avebury. But though it is possible that in
the Middle Ages this was done, there is little doubt that the green way
going high up on the ridge past Glory Ann Barn is not coeval with, is
not the same road as, the hill-foot road that has crept persistently
but humbly under the Chilterns and Berkshire Downs. Such a road ran
more risks than the Ridgeway from the plough. Its preservation between
Upton and Lockinge Park is miraculous. It might easily have disappeared
in the ploughland about Chisledon or the rich pastures of Coate. Let
the conjecturer thus skip a few miles in his westerly or south-westerly
course, and he can go rapidly ahead, following under the main ridge
to Avebury, or under the secondary ridge, three or four miles north
of it, towards Calne and Bath. It is a game of skill which deserves a
select reputation--to find an ancient road of the same character as the
Oxfordshire and Berkshire Icknield Way, going west or south-west beyond
Wanborough. The utmost reward of this conjecturing traveller would be
to find himself on the banks of the Towy or beside the tomb of Giraldus
at St. David’s itself.

[Illustration: MAP OF PART OF THE ICKNIELD WAY]




INDEX


  Abbey Farm, 101

  _Abingdon Chronicle_, 72

  Æthelstan, 74

  Æthelwulf, 74

  Alcester, 78

  Aldbury, 70

  Aldworth, 48, 231

  Alfred, King, 16, 21, 22, 36

  Alfred’s Castle, 74, 265

  Alfred’s Tower, 18, 19

  Allechurch, 79

  Alton Priors, 289

  Alvechurch, 79

  Amesbury, 19, 20

  _Ancient Cambridgeshire_, 56

  Andover, 50, 76, 77

  Anglesey, 22, 40

  _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_, 38

  Anthony Hill, 102

  _Arabia Deserta_, 13, 26

  _Archæologia_, 50, 53, 54

  _Archæological Journal_, 46, 67

  -- _Institute: Memoirs_, 54

  Ardington, 278

  Arfield, 276, 284, 285

  Arthur, King, 111

  Arundel, 245

  Ashbury, 49, 72, 74, 253, 289, 294, 296, 297-8, 300

  Ashdown, 265

  Ashwell, 58

  Aston Clinton, 71, 179, 180

  Aston Rowant, 44, 157, 186

  Aston Tirrold and Upthorpe, 52, 73, 214, 217-18, 219, 231, 272, 273,
      274

  Athelney, 16

  Attleborough, 56, 60

  Aubrey, John, 34, 46, 52

  Austin, Mary, 24

  Avebury, 11, 49, 51, 52, 53, 56 84, 268, 309, 310

  Aylesbury, 150, 152, 178, 183


  Babington, C. C., 57

  Babraham, 109

  Badbury, 48, 264

  Bakeleresbury, 76, 77

  Balcombe Hill, 71

  Baldock, 45, 46, 58, 67, 110, 122

  Balsham, 56

  Banbury, 22

  Barbury, 264, 266, 267, 278, 294, 310

  Barley, 45, 46, 47

  Barnes, William, 34

  Barnham, 90;
    New B. Slip, 90

  Barnsley, 22

  Barrow Hill, 91

  Barton Hills, 68

  Basingstoke, 56

  Batchelor’s Barn, 77

  Bath, 23, 83, 309, 310

  Beacon Hills, 70, 136, 143, 147, 157

  Beeke, Hy., 54, 62

  Beldam, 67

  Belinus, 36, 37, 38, 39, 47

  Belloc, Hilaire, 27, 29, 76

  Beloe, 60

  Bennet, John (Bishop of Cloyne), 53, 54, 55, 56, 62, 229

  Benson, 201, 204

  Berkshire, Map of, 49

  _Berkshire, Some Antiquities in_, 49

  Berwick, Cold, 20

  Bevis of Hampton, 12

  Bidford, 78

  Birmingham, 38, 40, 78, 79

  Bishopston, 49, 50, 63

  Bishopstone, 289, 292, 298, 300, 301

  Bishopstone, A. A., 238-47

  Blackbourn, 90

  Blake, William, 18

  Bledlow, 45, 71, 154, 156

  Blewburton Hill, 218, 272

  Blewbury, 49, 55, 73, 214, 218, 219, 220, 222, 223, 273, 274

  Blomefield, 61

  Blowingstone, 254, 263, 265, 266, 267, 268, 292, 294, 296, 303, 310

  Boadicea, 83

  Borrow, George, 28, 106

  Bourne Bridge, 91

  Bourton, 302

  Bourton-on-the-Water, 78

  Bradenstoke, 21

  Bradford, 21

  Bradley, Henry, 31, 80

  Braid, James, 300

  Brandon, 84, 91

  Braybrooke, Lord, 66, 67

  Brent Ditch, 66, 100

  Brettenham, 88

  Bridport, 48

  Brislington, 21, 303

  Bristol, 21

  _Britannia_, _see_ Camden

  Britchcombe Farm, 294

  Britwell, 66, 158, 159, 199, 200

  Brue, River, 15, 17

  Bruton, 9, 15, 16

  Buckenham, 54

  Buckholt Forest, 77, 78

  Buckland, 179, 180

  Buntings, Corn, 104

  Bunyan, John, 5

  Burderop, 305

  Burgh Castle, 47, 54

  Burloes Hill, 66

  Burroughs, John, 24, 28

  Bushton, 21

  Butler’s Cross, 152

  Butser Hill, 9, 230

  Bygrave, 67

  Byron, Lord, 29


  Cadbury Castle, 9, 14

  Caithness, 36, 37, 38, 39

  Calne, 3, 21, 310

  Cam, River, 58, 100

  Cambridge, 82, 98, 102, 105, 113

  _Cambridgeshire, Proceedings of Antiquarian Society_, 58, 60

  Camden, 34, 40, 45, 66

  Camelot, 9

  Canterbury, 65, 77

  Canute, 38

  “Caradoc’s Hunt,” 256-63

  Cardiganshire, 106

  Castle Lane, 59

  _Catalogue of Ancient Deeds_, 68

  Catsbrain Hill, 162

  Cattle, 10, 22, 44

  Cavenham, 55, 92, 94, 95

  Cervantes, 6

  Chalton, 68

  Chance Farm, 231

  Chanctonbury, 9, 266

  Charters, _see under_ Icknield Way

  Chekers Park, 153

  Cherhill, 303

  Chesterfield, 38, 40

  Chesterford, Great, 48, 66

  Chevington, 53

  Childrey, 49, 290

  Chilterns, 9, 33, 42, 43, 47, 60, 136, 155, 156, 178, 184, 185, 199,
      264, 272, 310

  Chinnor, 43, 44, 72, 156, 184, 187

  Chippenham, 21

  Chishall, 105

  Chisledon, 75, 302, 304-6, 307, 310

  Cholsey, 51, 52, 77, 214, 231

  Chrishall Grange, 58

  Church, Mr., 49, 52, 67

  Churchyards, 163, 180, 184, 185, 201-3

  Churn Hill, 231

  Cirencester, 22, 38, 50, 56, 150

  Clamp’s Heath, 94

  Clarke, W. G., 58

  Clay Hill, 113

  Cleeve, 163, 164, 173

  Cley Hill, 9

  Clothall, 46, 67

  Clyffe Pypard, 21

  Coate, 306, 310

  Cobbett, William, 11, 21

  Codrington, F., 58, 78

  Colchester, 67

  Compton, 49, 69, 231

  Coombe Hole, 147

  Cooper King, Col., 62

  Cotswolds, 9, 22, 264

  Cricklade, 23

  Cross Waters, 147

  Crowell, 157

  Crowmarsh, 159, 161, 205

  Cuckhamsley, 53, 82

  Cucklington, 18

  Culford, 94

  Curlew, Stone, 91


  Deacon Hill, 128, 129

  Defoe, 23, 25

  De la Mare, Walter, 163-4

  _De Nugis Curialium_, 37

  Derby, 38, 78

  Deverills, 14;
    Monkton D., 15, 24

  Devil’s Ditch, 105

  Devizes, 53

  Dolittle Mill, 137

  Dorchester (Dorset), 48, 62

  Dorc stream, 74

  Dottrell Hall, 102

  Doughty, Charles M., 13, 25

  Dover, 40

  Doves, Turtle, 95

  Downs, 9, 19, 33, 63, 65, 159, 163, 166, 167, 182, 292, 294, 298, 300

  Downs Farm, 275

  Dragon Hill, 264, 294

  Dray’s Ditches, 68

  Drayton, Michael, 40, 41, 42, 44, 47, 52, 56, 76, 79

  Drovers, 13, 23, 190

  Dugdale, 44, 68

  Duignan, W. H., 73

  Dunstable, 23, 39, 40, 45, 47, 55, 62, 65, 68, 70, 75, 134, 135, 141

  Duxford Grange, 104


  Eaton Bray, 70, 137

  Ebble River, 21

  Edgar, 68

  Edington, 16

  Edlesborough, 45, 70, 136

  Edmund, 38, 68

  Edred, 74

  Edward, 71

  Elcombe, 21, 303

  Ellesborough, 71, 152, 153

  Elmdon, 101

  Elton, C. I., 62

  Elveden Church, 90;
    Gap, 92;
    Hall, 90

  Enham, 76, 78

  _Essays of Elia_, 28

  _Eulogium_, 74

  Ewelme, 44, 159, 187, 199, 200-4

  Exeter, 62


  Fairs, 190

  Faringdon, 290

  Farnborough, 250

  Fawley, 250

  Firebrass Hill, 201

  Fleam Dyke, 66, 98

  _Flock, The_, 24

  Follies (Ashbury Folly, etc.), 253, 254

  Fonthill Gifford, 17

  _Footpath Way, The_, 27

  Fordham, 98

  Four Mile Bottom, 24

  Foxberry Wood, 71, 161

  Fulbourn Valley Farm, 109


  Gale, R., 47, 48, 62, 80

  Galley Hill, 132

  _Gentleman’s Magazine, The_, 28

  Geoffrey of Monmouth, 35, 37, 38, 40, 41, 50, 76

  Gildas, 36

  Ginge Brook, 51

  Ginge, East, 285

  Giraldus, 83

  Glastonbury, 17

  Glebe Farm, 71, 161, 162

  Gloucester, 23, 50, 56, 81, 267

  -- Robert of, 38

  Goddard’s Barn, 287

  Godmanchester, 67, 109

  Goffer’s Knoll, 116

  Gogmagog Hills, 9, 47

  Goldbury Hill, 285

  Goring, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 52, 53, 71, 161, 162, 163

  Gossett, A. L. S., 21

  Gould’s Heath, 44

  Gramp’s Hill, 252, 254, 264

  Grange Farm, 109

  Granges, 104

  Granta, River, 109

  Grantchester, 109

  Great Bramingham Farm, 68

  Grim’s Dyke, 45, 71, 161, 213

  Groveley Woods, 20

  Guest, E., 33, 38, 55, 80, 84

  Gunner’s Hall, 109

  Gypsies, 3

  Gypsies’ Corner, 72, 159, 204, 213

  Gypsy Smith, 123


  Hackpen Hill, 254, 264

  Hagbourne, West, 51, 73, 222, 275, 278

  Halton, 151, 152

  Halvehill, 51

  Hamo’s Port, 36, 37

  Hampstead Norris, 53

  Harwell, 49, 51, 73, 74, 278

  Haverfield, F., 63

  Hayden, Eleanor, 278, 279

  Hay Lane, 21

  Hazlitt, 5, 28

  Hearne, T., 39, 44, 47

  Hebrides, 301

  Helen Luyddawc, 7, 8, 33, 37

  Hendred, East, 51, 73, 248, 276, 277, 284, 285, 305

  Hermitage, 18, 53

  Higden, R., 38, 78

  Hill Barn, 254

  Hill of Health, 94

  Hindon, 20

  Hinton, Broad, 303;
    Parva, 302

  Hinxton, 110

  _History of English Law_, 35

  _History of Hampshire_, 56

  _History of Norfolk_, 61

  _History of the British Kings_, 35

  Hitchin, 29, 58, 68, 127, 129

  Hiz, R., 127, 129

  Hlyd, 74

  Hoare, Colt, 16, 56, 62, 268

  Hodgson, Ralph, 226-7

  Holinshed, 33, 40, 44, 79

  Honeybourne Station, 78

  Horsenden, 154

  Houghton Regis, 47, 53, 55, 68, 70, 132

  Hoveden, R., 35

  Hungerford, 261, 302

  Huntingdon, Henry of, 35, 37, 38, 39, 47


  Icenhild, 33, 80

  Iceni, _see under_ Icknield Way

  Ickleford, 33, 55, 67, 127

  Ickleton, 33, 47, 48, 54, 55, 56, 66, 100-1;
    described, 105;
    I. Granges, 101;
    I. House, 292

  Icklingham, 33, 59, 92

  Icknield Way, or Street, 20, 33, 37, 42-3, 46, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54,
      55, 62, 65, 79

  Icknield Way, authority for, 30 _et seqq._

  -- boundary, used as, 38, 90, 98, 110, 112, 116, 127, 129, 132, 149

  -- character of, 113, 116, 119, 123, 124, 125, 127, 129, 130, 131,
      134, 144, 148, 149, 150, 152, 154, 157, 163, 183, 185, 186,
      199, 201, 268, 275, 284, 285, 289, 292, 302

  -- charters relating to, 55, 56, 61, 67, 70, 71-2, 73-4

  -- conjectures concerning, 48, 50, 54, 56, 58, 59, 60-1, 62-3, 213,
      223, 288, 309, 310

  -- course of, 33, 35, 36, 38, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48, 52, 54,
      61, 62, 223, 249, 274, 289, 298, 303

  -- extent, 76

  -- four royal roads, one of, 34, 35, 37

  -- fragments of, 76-8

  -- Iceni, connection with, 33, 40, 41, 46, 47, 54, 55, 63, 83

  -- inventions connected with, 53, 54

  -- lost portion of, 49, 51

  -- name of, 21, 33-4, 42, 43, 44, 46, 47, 48, 49, 54, 56, 61,
      75, 78, 79, 80, 115, 122, 213, 276, 278, 279, 284, 286,
      289, 300

  -- opinions on, _see under_ Bradley, Babington, Beeke, Beldam,
      Beloe, Bennet, etc.

  -- origin of, 82

  -- remains (coins, etc.) found on or near, 60, 66, 67-8, 68,
      70, 71, 73, 89, 92, 107, 159, 275

  -- termini of, 35, 37, 39, 41, 44, 52, 54, 61-2

  -- tradition relating to, 63

  -- Upper and Lower, 44, 70, 148, 176, 187, 204

  -- Uses of, 21, 23, 81, 83-4

  Icknield Bank Plantation, 159

  Idris, 111

  Idstone, 296, 298

  Ilchester, 14

  Ilsley, East, 24, 190, 231, 232

  Imogen, 83

  Inns, 89, 97, 100, 104, 110, 111, 123, 127, 133, 143, 153,
      155, 163, 173, 180, 182, 184, 185, 190-9, 206, 215, 220,
      273, 275, 278, 288, 302, 303, 304, 308

  _Introduction to Study of Local History and Antiquity_, 84

  Ippollitts, 122

  Ipsden, 45, 64, 72, 161, 272

  _Itinerarium Curiosum_, 48

  _Itinerary_, Leland’s, 39

  Ivinghoe, 23, 45, 148, 176

  Ivinghoe Hills, 147, 149

  Ixworth, 54


  Jack’s Castle, 16

  Jackson, Canon, 22

  Jennet’s Hill, 92

  Jordan, Morris, _see_ _Introduction to Study_, etc.


  Kempe, A. J., 54

  Kennet, 82

  Kennett, River, 59, 105

  Kensworth Common, 70

  “Kent,” names beginning with, 61

  Kentchester, 81

  Kentford, 55, 56, 59, 65, 96, 97, 98

  Keynsham, 21

  Kilmington, 14, 17

  Kilverstone, 83

  Kimble, 47;
    Great K., 71, 153, 183;
    Little K., 153

  Kingsettle Hill, 14, 15

  Kingstanding Hill, 272

  Kingston Blount, 157, 185;
    Lisle, 292

  Knighton Bushes, 264

  Knolls, Long and Little, 9, 17

  Knoyle, East, 17


  Lackford, 55, 59, 60, 90, 96;
    described, 93;
    L. Manor, 94;
    L. Road Heath, 91, 92

  Ladder Hill, 305

  Lambourn, 254, 264, 294

  Lane, Abingdon, 248

  -- Bates, 275

  -- Beggars’ and Gypsies’, 3

  -- Bygrave or Deadman’s, 110

  -- Castle, 59, 88, 89

  -- Clover, 88

  -- Cow, 276

  -- Green, 88, 89

  -- Hickling, 61, 64

  -- Hungerford, 249, 276, 284

  -- Juggler’s, 302

  -- Long, 17, 18

  -- Welsh, 22

  Lark Hall, 96

  Lark, River, 59, 92, 94

  Larks, 107

  Lavington, 309

  _Law, History of English_, 35

  La Werthe, 77

  _Laws and Institutes of Wales_, 37

  Laws, Molmutine, 36, 37, 41, 47

  -- of Edward Confessor, 35, 55, 62

  -- of William Conqueror, 35

  Lavender Hill, 245

  Lea, 68, 133

  Leagrave, 47, 66, 133, 134

  Lechlade, 23

  _Leicestershire, Memorials of Old_, 65

  Leighton Buzzard, 70, 148

  Leonardo, 301

  Leland, 39, 40, 47, 48

  Letchworth, 111, 112, 124, 126

  Letcombe Bassett, 73, 252, 254

  Letcombe Brook, 289

  -- Castle, 251, 265, 266

  -- Regis, 252, 289, 290

  Lethieullier, S., 48

  Lewknor, 44, 71, 157, 188

  Lichfield, 78

  Liddington, 253, 265, 266, 267, 268, 294, 296, 303, 310

  Liebermann, 35

  Lilley Hoo, 131

  Limbury, 68, 133

  Littlebury, 111

  Llandovery, 29

  Llangollen, 29

  Lockinge, 278, 285, 286, 287, 299, 300, 310

  Lockinge Park, 49, 51, 64, 222, 249

  London, 18, 102

  Lollingdon, 215, 217, 273

  Lone Barn, 236-47

  Long Hill, 19

  Lowbury, 265

  Luton, 45, 47, 68, 132, 133, 134

  Lysons, 50, 52


  _Mabinogion_, 7, 35

  _Magdalen College Deeds, MS. Catalogue of_, 76

  _Magna Britannia_, 51, 52, 54

  Maiden Bower, 65, 68

  Maiden Bradley, 9, 14, 17, 18

  Maidstone, 307

  Maitland, _see_ Pollock

  Malory, 6

  Map, Walter, 37

  Maps, 26, 32, 39, 44, 45, 46, 49, 68, 75, 90

  -- Ordnance, 14, 53, 55, 75, 78, 268

  Marlborough, 15, 302

  Marmansgrave Wood, 90

  Marsworth, 45, 178

  Martinsell, 264

  Mason, Dr., 54

  Maulkin’s Hall, 94

  Medbourne, 304

  Melbourn, 58

  Mendips, 9

  Menevia, _see_ St. David’s

  Mere, 19

  Metley Hill, 67

  Mildenhall, 90, 92

  Milestones, 18, 19, 48, 66, 98

  Milford, 83

  _Modern Slavery, A_, 10

  Molmutine, _see under_ Laws

  Money, Walter, 22

  Mongewell, 161, 213

  Montgomery, James, 223-6

  Moor Court, 187

  Morden, Robert, 45, 46, 47, 49, 50, 68, 134

  Morris, William, 21

  Motor-cars, 101-3, 106, 118

  Moulsford, 51, 53, 62, 72, 73, 215, 231, 232, 272

  Mullett, 89

  Munro, Harold, 29


  Names, Place, 3, 32, 61

  Nevinson, H. W., 10

  Newbury, 51, 53, 77, 276

  Newmarket, 29, 47, 54, 55, 56, 58, 59, 64, 65,
      66, 75, 89, 90, 96, 97, 98, 100, 104, 105, 106

  -- Heath, 104

  Newnham Murren, 213

  Nightingale, 90, 98

  Noar Hill, 9

  Noon’s Folly, 58, 104, 105

  _Norfolk, History of_, 61

  Norridge Woods, 16

  Norton Common, 112

  Norwich, 54, 59, 60, 61, 82

  _Nouvelle Heloise, La_, 29

  Nuns’ Bridges, 59, 89


  Odsey, 67, 107, 112, 119, 122, 125

  Offley, 112, 132

  Ogbourne St. George, 50

  Old Willoughby Hedge, 20

  _Origines Celticæ_, 55

  Oughton, R., 128, 129

  Ouse, Little, 59, 60, 85, 89

  Oxford, 233

  _Oxfordshire, Natural History of_, 43


  Pakenham, 93

  Pampisford, 110

  Pancroft Farms, 217

  Peake, Harold, 35, 65, 75

  Pen Hills, 119

  People, 85-7, 93, 103-5, 100, 114-16, 119,
      137-43, 143-4, 146-7, 173-5, 179, 222

  Pewit, 19, 91

  Pewit Castle, 20

  Pewsey, 22, 309

  Pewsham Forest, 21

  Pink Wood, 16

  Pirton, 112

  Pitstone, 148, 149

  Place Farm, 189

  Plot, Robert, 43, 44, 45, 47, 50, 52, 62, 72, 84

  Plymouth, 46

  Pollock and Maitland, 35

  _Polyolbion_, 40, 41

  Poor’s Furze, 232

  Portsdown Hill, 11

  Powell, J. U., 15

  Pulpit Wood, 71


  Quantocks, 9

  Quarley Hill, 264


  Railway, Didcot, Newbury and Southampton, 274

  -- Great Eastern, 96

  -- Great Northern, 110

  -- Old, 109-110

  Rampart Meadow, 92

  Ravenspurgh Castle, 68

  Rectory Farm (Ickleton), 112;
    (Streatley), 229

  Red Barn, 286

  -- Brick House, 165-72

  -- House, 251

  Redland’s Hall, 101

  Redlynch, 15, 18

  Rhys, Sir John, 8

  Ridgeway Bush, 268

  -- Farm, 267

  Ringmore, Battle of, 60

  Risborough, Monks, 66

  -- Princes, 45, 47, 72, 154, 184

  Roads, 1 _et seqq._, 77

  -- making of, 2, 3, 4, 8, 10, 65, 81-2

  -- names of, 80

  -- African, 10

  -- British, 14, 19

  -- eighteenth century, 23

  -- four royal roads, 3, 4, 5, 9, 43, 45, 46, 75, 78

  -- hill-side, 65

  -- pilgrims’, 21, 78

  -- primitive, 3, 4, 8, 10, 13, 19, 22, 26, 33, 50, 75

  -- Roman, 4, 5, 34, 47, 48, 50, 53, 54, 56, 58, 63, 78, 82, 109

  Roads particularly mentioned:
    Akeman Street, 71, 81, 149, 150, 179, 180, 182, 298
    Ashwell Street, 58
    Belinstrete, 38, 79
    Bull Road, 94
    Deneway, 77
    Drove, Ox, 13, 15-21
    Drove, The, 60
    Ermine Street, 32, 35, 36, 38, 39, 40, 67, 80, 81, 105, 267, 268,
      302
    Foss Way, 14, 32, 35, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 78, 81
    Great Reading Road, 49, 72, 270
    Hardway, 15, 16
    Harrow Way, 15, 77, 82, 84
    Laddreway, 76
    Mare Way, 113
    Papist Way, 52, 213, 214, 215, 216
    Peddars’ Way, 60
    Pilgrim’s Path, 92
    Pilgrims’ Way, 30, 46, 65, 76, 82
    Port Way, 49, 75, 77, 279, 299
    Ridgeway (on Downs), 22, 23, 24, 53, 56, 60, 74, 80, 82, 92, 229,
      232, 233, 249, 250, 253, 263, 264, 267, 268, 270, 302, 310;
      (Worcestershire) 78
    Ryknield Street, 34, 38, 40, 41, 42, 46, 75, 78, 79, 80
    Sarn Helen, 32
    Stane Street (Surrey), 42
    -- (Herts), 67
    Traveller’s Hill, 86
    Watling Street, 4, 32, 34, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 55, 75, 79, 135
    Welsh Ways, 22

  Rockley, 305

  Roden Downs, 232

  Rooks, 110

  Roque, 49

  Roudham Heath, 60

  Round Hill, 288

  Roundabout Hill, 285, 286

  Royston, 23, 45, 50, 51, 56, 58, 63, 66, 67, 75, 113, 118

  Rudge, 80


  Saffron Walden, 101

  St. Anne’s Park, 21

  -- Wood, 21

  St. David’s, 36, 37, 38, 39, 42, 46, 78, 310

  St. Edmunds, Bury, 39, 47, 54, 59, 61, 89, 92, 96

  Salisbury, 12, 39, 40, 53, 56, 63

  -- Plain, 20, 91, 268

  Sandon, 46

  Sand Boys, 111

  Sarum, Old, 16, 21, 48, 53, 77, 78, 309

  Scarth, H. M., 62

  Scott, Sir W., 256

  Scott, Walter, 4, 29, 32

  Scutchamer’s Knob, 249

  Sedgehill, 3

  Segsbury Camp, 252

  Selden, 41, 74

  Selwood Beacon, 16

  -- Forest, 16, 17

  Semley, 3

  Shaftesbury, 21

  Shapens, 104

  Sheepcote Lane, 187

  Shelley, 243

  Shepherds, 24

  _Shepherds of Britain_, 22

  Shirburn, 188

  Shrivenham, 294

  Signposts, 179, 305

  Silchester, 62, 267

  Sinodun Hill, 159, 264

  Six Mile Bottom, 97

  Slip End, 67

  Slip Inn Hill, 112

  Smith, Gypsy, 111

  Smit Stream, 75

  _Social England_, 62

  Soham, 91

  Southampton, 34, 37, 38, 46, 48, 50, 76, 77

  Sparsholt, 49, 51, 254, 255, 289, 291

  Speen, 48, 50

  Stadley, 78, 79

  _Staffordshire Place Names, Notes on_, 78

  Stephen, Leslie, 28, 29

  Stevenson, R. L., 106

  Stoke, 72, 77

  -- Holy Cross, 61, 63

  -- Little, 213, 214, 273

  -- N., 161, 214

  -- S., 162, 215, 272

  Stokenchurch, 44, 190

  Stonehenge, 20, 84

  Stone, River, 98

  Stow-in-the-Wold, 78, 81

  Streatley (Berks), 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53,
      64, 72, 76, 77, 163, 229, 265, 266, 267, 270,
      271, 299

  -- (Beds), 45, 46

  Streatley Warren, 229, 230

  Strethall, 46

  Studley, 21, 303

  Stukeley, W., 48, 49, 54, 62

  Stump Cross, 58, 100

  Sweyn, 77

  Swindon, 21, 267, 268, 289, 303, 307-9

  _Swindon Fifty Years Ago_, 21

  Swinley Down, 296, 298

  Swyn Brook, 69

  Swyncombe, 65, 71, 159


  Tacitus, 40

  Tame’s Barn, 285

  Tan Hill, 24, 25

  Tarberry Hill, 9

  Taylor, A., 54, 55, 62, 63

  -- I., 62

  Telegraph Hill, 68, 128, 131, 155, 232

  Thames, R., 159, 204, 270

  Therfield, 46

  Thet, River, 59, 89

  Thetford, 55, 56, 60, 82, 85, 90

  -- described, 88-9

  -- Castle Hill, 88

  Thorpe Salvin, 79

  Thurle Down Woods, 302

  Tingey, J. C., 60-1, 63

  Titian, 301

  Toternhoe, 45, 70, 136

  Totnes, 37, 38, 39, 40

  Totterdown, 50, 266, 268, 302

  Towy, R., 310

  Tring, 67, 81, 149, 150, 177, 298

  Tuddenham Corner, 96

  Tynemouth, 38, 40, 41, 42


  Uffington, 49, 74, 264, 265, 267, 289

  Upton, 49, 51, 52, 72, 214, 222, 273, 274, 276, 300, 310


  _Victoria County History_, 63


  Walker’s Hill, 22

  Walking, 12-13, 21, 27, 28, 29, 106, 120, 137, 146

  Wallingford, 53, 62, 72, 82, 159, 201, 204-6, 213, 229, 231, 271

  Wallington Hills, 46

  Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, 37

  Walworth Cottages, 72

  Wanborough, 50, 51, 69, 74, 80, 268, 302, 303, 304, 310

  Wansdyke, 22

  Wantage, 49, 51, 52, 73, 215, 222, 250, 271, 272, 278, 279, 288, 289,
      299

  -- Road, 234

  Ward, Mrs. Humphry, 227

  Warminster, 20, 24, 268

  Warren Farm, 230, 231

  _Warwickshire, Antiquities of_, 44

  Watlington, 157, 189, 199, 255

  Waulud’s Bank, 68

  Wayland’s Smithy, 56, 74, 234-6, 247, 252, 253, 264

  Weather-vanes, 98

  Well Head, 70, 136, 147

  Wendover, 45, 71, 152

  Westbury, 319

  Westcott, 291

  Westley, Waterless, 56

  Weston Colville, 56, 97

  -- Sub-edge, 78

  -- Turville, 71, 182, 183

  West Ridge, 53

  West Wratting, 57, 107

  Weyhill, 25

  Wheatear, 91

  Whitchurch, 21

  White Horse, 49, 53, 251, 289, 292

  Whiteleaf, 66, 154

  White Sheet Downs, 14, 16, 17, 18

  -- Castle, 18

  Whitman, Walt, 28

  Wicken, 91

  Wight, Isle of, 41

  Wilbury, 58, 67, 127

  Williams, Moray, 83

  Willis, R., 34, 49, 50, 51

  Wilston, 44, 178

  Wiltshire, 106

  _Wiltshire Archæological Magazine_, 22, 25

  Wincanton, 19

  Winchester, 12, 34, 56, 62, 65, 77

  Winkelbury, 20

  Wise, F., 34, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 63, 75, 80, 278

  Woodpigeon, 108

  Woodward and Wilks, 56

  -- Samuel, 54, 55, 56

  Woolstone, 49, 69, 294

  Worcester, 38, 40, 78, 81

  Wordsworth, William, 5, 32

  Wordwell, 86

  Workaway Hill, _see_ Walker’s Hill

  Worsted Lodge, 58, 109

  Wylye, River, 20

  Wymondham, 56


  Yarmouth, 41, 46, 47

  Yarnbury, 20, 24

  Yarnfield, 17

  Yatesbury, 303

  Yew Down, 249

  York, 38

  Yorke, A. C., 58


WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD. PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH




      *      *      *      *      *      *




Transcriber's note:


Duplicate headings have been removed.


The following apparent errors have been corrected:

p. 38 "St.David’s" changed to "St. David’s"

p. 65 "cntury" changed to "century"

p. 158 "Watlington" changed to "Watlington."

p. 160 "Hill" changed to "Hill."

p. 295 "Ashbury" changed to "Ashbury."

p. 312 "Bourton-in-the-Water" changed to "Bourton-on-the-Water"

p. 313 "134 135" changed to "134, 135"

p. 314 "74," changed to "74"

p. 314 "_Iceni_" changed to "Iceni"

p. 315 "Kentchester" changed to "Kentchester,"

p. 316 "Conqueror" changed to "Conqueror, 35"

p. 318 "78," changed to "78"


The following are used inconsistently in the text:

Halvehill and Halve-hill

knapweed and knap-weed

signboard and sign-board

Stow-in-the-Wold and Stow-on-the-Wold





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