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Updated: May 17, 2025
The Irmin Way, between Cricklade and Gloucester, viâ Cirencester. Acman Street connects Cirencester with Bath. Icknield Street, running to Oxford. The Fossway, extending far into the north of England. This magnificent road may be said to connect Exeter in the south with Lincoln in the north.
T.R.T. Hodgson, is a stuccoed one, with its gable towards the road; it stands near the "New Inn." After a short time he removed to the house at the corner of Newhall Street and Great Charles Street, which was, until recently, occupied by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. He afterwards bought a stone-built house in Icknield Street West.
Along the brow of this long ridge wanders that fascinating old track indifferently termed Ridgeway and Icknield Way, which only leaves the highlands to cross the Thames at Streatley. But we are off our own track now and must return to Avebury, or Abury as the natives have it.
If we accept this track we can conjecture that the vicarage of Streatley, upon the Berkshire bank, stands upon the continuation of the Way, and give the place where the pre-historic road crossed the river with tolerable certitude, though it is, I believe, impossible to recover the half-mile or so which lies between Streatley vicarage and the point where the Wantage Road and the Icknield Way separated upon the hillside above.
There are plenty of Roman remains to be found along the track, and there is no doubt that all such roads, even when the State was not at the expense of hardening or straightening them, were in continual use before, as they were in continual use after, the presence of Roman government in this island; but the Icknield Way does not approach the river in a clear and unmistakable manner as would a Roman or a Romanised road.
About a hundred and fifty years ago, a gentleman, whose name I have not been able to ascertain, owned the premises in Icknield Street West, now known as Monument House, and in his garden, near the house, he built the tall octagonal tower, now known as the Monument, respecting the origin of which so many various legendary stories are current.
These old roads are of capital importance in the story of England, and though historians have always recognised this there are a number of features about them which have not been sufficiently noted as, for instance, that armies until perhaps the twelfth century perpetually used them; for the great English roads, though their general track was laid out in pre-historic times, were generally hardened, straightened, and embanked by the Romans in a manner which permitted them to survive right on into the early Middle Ages; and of these four all were so hardened and strengthened, except the Icknield Way.
The crossing of the Thames by the Icknield Way, unlike the crossing of the Ermine Street at Cricklade, presents a problem. Cricklade, as we have seen, is a perfectly well-established site, and we owe our certitude upon the matter to the fact that the Romans had hardened and straightened what was probably an old British track.
Further to the east, in Icknield Street, near the canal bridge which at that time was an iron one, narrow and very dangerous was another mansion and park, occupied by Mr. John Unett, Jun. This house is now occupied as a bedstead manufactory. Still further was another very large house, where Mr. Barker, the solicitor, lived.
In this wise they passed under a grassy hillside set with trimmed elms, and came to Grange Mill and another portage; and below Grange to Bidford, where there is a bridge of many arches carrying the old Roman road called Icknield Street; and from the bridge and grey little town they struck into a long reach that ran straight into the dazzle of the sun through flat meadows at first, and then, with a turn, under the steep of Marcleeve Hill, that here borders Avon to the south for miles.
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