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You may see the Icknield Way referred to in some route descriptions on this website and in some walk titles. When I have mentioned the Icknield Way to fellow walkers it quite often causes confusion and in some instances a denial that The Icknield Way passes through Norfolk. To help alleviate the confusion I thought it could be useful to repeat here the following article I originally wrote for a local Dersingham publication - Village Voice - it appeared in the May 2014 edition.
The Icknield Way
Many in Dersingham will have heard of the Peddars Way, the Roman Road which forms the extreme eastern boundary of the parish, but how many are aware that an older trackway passed through the parish and that it is still possible to walk along that route today? It remains unknown to many as, unlike the Peddars Way, it is not show on any current Ordnance Survey maps of this area and, if the name is researched, you are likely to be directed, initially at least, to a completely different region of England. So why is the Icknield Way such a mystery?
To begin with, entering “Icknield Way” into an internet search engine will produce several pages of results almost entirely relating to either a modern 110 mile footpath (Icknield Way Path) or a modern 170 mile trail (Icknield Way Trail), both traversing Southern England on high ground north of London. These modern paths are based upon older routes, sporadically mentioned in such search results, but here there is a vagueness which is unhelpful. In some places it is described as an ancient trackway, without really defining what “ancient” is in this context. Slightly more helpfully, it is referred to as a prehistoric trackway, re-used as a Roman Road and later a medieval droveway. However, its prehistoric origins have been doubted by some academics and it has even been suggested that the Icknield Way never existed and that it is simply a medieval myth.
Clearly the modern paths and trails are not relevant to Norfolk but the route of the older trackways could be. There is a general agreement amongst historians about the route it followed but some are prepared to suggest more detail than others; from a very vague description - that the route ran from Norfolk to Southern England - to the more precise delineation of a line from Norfolk to Wiltshire following the chalk escarpment which runs through the East Anglian Ridge, Chiltern Hills and Berkshire Downs. The historian G.M. Trevelyan in his “History of England”, first published in 1926, goes further, relating it to other chalk upland trackways which existed in Iberian Britain and stating the function of the Icknield Way was “to join up the fenland and agricultural civilization of East Anglia with the great downland civilization gathered round the circles of Avebury and Stonehenge, where man was most thickly congregated”. The southern half of the relevant map from Trevelyan’s History of England illustrates this.
The reference to Iberian Britain raises the question of the age of this route. Trevelyan clearly believes it predates the Celts who arrived in Britain between 600 and 300 B.C., and who replaced the Iberians. Others, while not disagreeing with the above, simply refer to a pre-historic or pre-Roman date which suggests that is was existing in 43 A.D. Documentary evidence of the name is found in Anglo-Saxon Charters from about 900 A.D. and continue through the medieval period, although a variety of locations and different old spellings are often quoted. However, during all these periods, the route would have traversed mainly open countryside, it’s direction and width limited only by naturally wooded areas. It is only with the Enclosures of 1750 to 1850 A.D., that field boundaries were generally established in farmland areas and these defined the droveways which ran between them. It is this more confined route of a droveway that will be observed today in regions such as Norfolk.
But what about the route locally?
I would be extremely sceptical of Trevelyan’s map in this respect, which seems to suggest that it may have provided a direct route from Dersingham to Avebury, although this could form an interesting basis for a historical novel if someone has the inclination! Some would say that it did not actually reach Norfolk, terminating in the vicinity of Bury-St-Edmunds in Suffolk and suggesting Icklingham, Ickworth or Ixworth as destinations. Various destinations in Norfolk have also been proposed including Yarmouth (which did not exist in pre-historic Norfolk!), Caistor St Edmund, site of the Roman settlement of Venta Icenorum, and the north Norfolk coast near Hunstanton. Ordnance Survey did provide some assistance in the middle of the twentieth century, with isolated short stretches of road, track and field in Norfolk marked “Icknield Way” on their maps, but no similar marking was shown before this time or since on their recent maps.
The Norfolk Historic Environment Records (NHER), a comprehensive and definitive record of the historic environment maintained by Norfolk County Council, provides the most up to date and useful resource, identifying many roads and tracks within the county as the Icknield Way and thereby suggesting a route from Thetford to the North Norfolk Coast in the vicinity of Hunstanton and Holme next the Sea. I have plotted the NHER information, 1950’s O.S. information and some of my own interpolations on a Google map to show a probable route from Thetford through Stanford, Cockley Cley, Drymere, Narford, Gayton Thorpe, Hillington (via Eastgate Drove), Shernborne, Sedgeford, Ringstead and on to Holme. The map pin indicates the site of the Bronze Age timber circle found off-shore here, although I would not go so far as to suggest a positive link with the Icknield Way.
Residents in Dersingham may well be familiar with some of the route described above when driving back to the village from Shernborne. The straight road rising from Shernborne is part of this route and, where the road turns sharp right towards Dersingham, the track straight ahead is a continuation of the route. An alternative route closer to the village is also mentioned in The Binham Priory records of about 1250 A.D., where a road described asYkenildestrethe and Ikelynge Street runs from Sandringham through Dersingham and on to Ingoldisthorpe, leaving that village by St Thomas Way (St Thomas’s Lane), but this route bears little relationship to the route from Thetford to Holme.
So what to believe? I would suggest that you treat all you read about the Icknield Way with caution, including all I have set out above. Even the origins of the name are uncertain, some have sought to see a derivation from the Iceni tribe that inhabited Norfolk at the time of the Roman invasion, but this is doubtful. In our own county I believe that there is enough evidence and consensus of opinion to accept that there was an ancient way, probably pre-Roman, running from Thetford to Holme next the Sea and that within the parish of Dersingham it followed the route shown shown on the map above passing through Shernborne. Evidence connecting this route with other ancient ways to Wiltshire seem less certain but is not totally implausible.
But was this The Icknield Way? This question presupposes that there is a single Icknield Way in England and that therefore all documented records must either relate to one continuous route or be rejected as false. I believe this supposition to be wrong. It is probable that the name was originally applied to a specific track somewhere in Anglo-Saxon England but that the location of this original cannot now be identified. The reason being that later historians and antiquaries started to use this name generically to identify any ancient way or track which could not be proved to be Roman. A present day analogy would be to consider how we now generically refer to motorways; if, say, we were in the locality of Cambridge, and spoke of “The Motorway”, most people would know that we meant the M11, were not claiming it was the only motorway in the country or that it was connected to all the other motorways in the country. On this basis I believe it quite reasonable to consider the route marked on the above maps is an Icknield Way and that the alternative local route shown is also an Icknield Way but not forming part of the continuous route from Thetford to Holme.
For my part, I will continue to walk the track that leads south from the corner on the Shernborne road to Ling House Road, enjoy the countryside it runs through and the views it affords, and refer to it, controversially, as The Icknield Way.
Whiffler May 2014
Extract from Sheet 39 of Ordnance Survey Half-Inch Map of Great Britain “Norwich”
Fully Revised 1950-54 - Published 1961 - Price (Cloth) Seven Shillings & Sixpence Net
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