The Greater Ridgeway - A Walker's Guidebook - Southern England

• Description
• Contents
• Introduction
• Sample Route
• Maps

It’s hard to imagine a world without roads. Not roads with tarmac and speed cameras, but routes; interconnecting tracks or ways that link people with people, or people with places.

Prehistoric roads

There have probably been roads for as long as there have been people. In the earliest times, these would have led to watering places or hunting sites, and may have followed routes of animal migration. Then, perhaps, lines of human migration developed into lines of contact between peoples, maybe for purposes of trade or worship. Neolithic farmers (c.4000 BC) traded stone axes throughout the country, and also dealt in agricultural products, salt, tools, clay for pottery, and pottery itself. These early Britons built barrows, henges and stone circles, evidence of economic wealth and stability as well as considerable organisation and leader­ship. This suggests that there would have been good communi­cation systems and well-defined routes at that time.

The most obvious overland routes were the relatively treeless ridgeways, running above valleys that were said to be impenetrable and home to fierce creatures. The word ‘ridgeway’ is taken from the Anglo-Saxon hrycweg, and by that time a complicated network of these green roads was evident. It seems to have been a popular notion, even then, that these were prehistoric. The basis of the argument is that the ridgeways link places of prehistoric occupation – hillforts, burial mounds and henges. However, several archaeologists have argued that these are only the obvious bits of extant prehistory; most archaeological sites are actually in the valleys. But why should a migration or pilgrimage route pass through every area of occupation? While people may have lived on good farming land, they may well have preferred to travel across ground that was easy and safe. The ridgeways were routes over high chalk uplands where you could see where you were and where you were going, and where the ground was easier to cross. They would have been, quite literally, the highways of their day.

And the Greater Ridgeway, which combines the Icknield Way with the Wessex Ridgeways, is widely thought to be one of the oldest.

The Greater Ridgeway

The Greater Ridgeway (as we’ve called it) is a route along a chalk ridge that spans the entire width of southern England, running south-west to north-east from Lyme Bay to the coast of northern Norfolk. It’s a route that some have called the oldest road. But what evidence is there that this route dates back to prehistory?

The axis of the route is Avebury, and if we start our investigations there things soon fall into place. From the Neolithic into the Iron Age (3000 BC to the Roman invasion of AD 43), Salisbury Plain was densely populated and the centre of cultural and economic life. There was considerable activity at Windmill Hill, near Avebury, long before the stone circle was ever built. Avebury was a site not only of spiritual significance but also, and maybe primarily, a place of political interaction or even power. As part of this (just like London today), it was the focal point of a series of prehistoric ‘motorway’ paths that stretched out to link the far-flung tribal groups around the country. One of those distant parts, and one that was also comparatively well populated, was Norfolk. In the Brecklands around Thetford was a similar centre of Neolithic activity – the ancient equivalent of the industrial north – based on flint mining and working. Connecting the two centres, presumably for purposes of trade and/or movement to religious festivals, was a track stretching for over 320km (nearly 200 miles), linking Wiltshire and Norfolk.

At least we think there was. Certainly there is evidence on the ground. We can positively trace an extant route, or series of routes, running from Avebury via Wanborough (near Swindon) to Streatley, and then to Wendover and Ivinghoe. It then follows a line along what is now the A505 to Great Chesterford and on into the Brecklands. This route follows the chalk scarp for a large part of its length and, given the odd deviation, is almost straight. It makes no particular sense in modern terms, but it joins a series of well-known archaeological sites.

But the historical record is less obvious. Antiquaries have been writing about the Icknield Way/Ridgeway for centuries, and yet their evidence is mostly anecdotal. When the poet Edward Thomas reviewed the documents just before World War I, he concluded that there was no definite evidence, only confusion, originating in part from the fact that a number of routes have similar names. There was, for instance, an Icknield Street (or Way) that ran north to Worcestershire and Warwickshire. Geoffrey of Monmouth says that ‘Hikenilde strere’ ran from St David’s in west Wales to Southampton. And then, of course, there was our route. The evidence for an Icknield Way running south-west to north-east along the course of the A505 is seen in the towns that developed where it crosses those other great roads: Dunstable (on Watling Street) and Royston (on Ermine Street). In Saxon times, this road was called Icenhilde Weg and it is generally assumed that it was to this route that William the Conqueror gave the privilege of the King’s Peace, a form of special protection against highwayman and robbers. It was an ‘honour’ bestowed on just four roads (the others were Ermine Street, Fosse Way and Watling Street) as an indication of their importance to the king.

O.G.S. Crawford surveyed the route for the Ordnance Survey in 1912. He drew a line from King’s Lynn to Dunstable, following what he thought was the most likely course of the Icknield Way (on OS maps his route is shown in Gothic lettering). Crawford thought that the Way was a herepath (a kind of warpath) along which armies were moved. In recorded history, at least, we can deduce that the invading Saxons and the Danes moved along the Way. We can suppose that the early Britons, defending against the Romans, would have done the same, as would the Romanised Britons against the early Saxons. And if the name does derive from the Iceni (the pre-Roman East Anglian tribe famed for being that of Boudicca), Crawford supposed, then Icknield Way could be derived from Icen-Hilde-Weg, ‘the war road of the Iceni’.

Others disagree strongly, and suggest that the name simply indicates a road, perhaps deriving from the British yken, or ychen, meaning oxen. The poet William Barnes said that it might come from a word meaning high or upper (ychen meaning ‘upper’) thus ‘upland’ way or, as Barnes suggests, the ‘upper or eastern road’. Dr Henry Bradley stated categorically that the Icknield Way was named after a woman called Icenhild, but no such name or person is known in legend or record. Richard Willis in 1787 described a way he called the ‘causeway’, from Royston to Ogbourne St George. Despite all this, there appears to be general agreement that there is an ancient route from Avebury to Newmarket. This central portion is that used (with allowances for rights of way and the avoidance of road walking) by the Ridgeway National Trail and the Icknield Way. It’s only beyond these two extremes that the debate really begins.

At the southern end, various authors have suggested that the original course started at Axmouth. Others suggest Weymouth. I’ve even seen references to extensions to Cornwall or south Wales. Richard Willis said that the Icknield Way took its name from the River Itchen, and suggested that it began at Southampton and followed the river as far as Winchester. In fact, there are several mentions of an Ikenildewey or Hykenyldewey in Hampshire. Tom Stephenson’s original suggestion for a long-distance footpath in 1956 ended in Seaton. I’m drawn to a route that bypasses Avebury slightly by going over Overton Hill and south to Alton Barnes where there are various ancient sites. From there, Stonehenge pulls the eager route searcher south. Patrick Crampton takes a flier by suggesting that travellers would have gone down the River Avon to the natural harbour at Christchurch. Certainly Hengistbury Head has evidence of extensive prehistoric activity, and Crampton argues that this would have been a good route for close cultural and trading links with the continent. On even more dangerous ground, he suggests that influences from the civilisations of the Mycenae, Crete and Egypt came this way leading ‘to the conception of Stonehenge in its final form’. John Leland’s Itinerary (1710) agrees with this general direction. His Ykenild Strete runs east–west from Salisbury to Bury St Edmunds via ‘Dunstaple’. In devising a Wessex Ridgeway, the Ramblers Association were guided by good paths, good scenery and access (a particular issue on Salisbury Plain). Their route therefore starts at Lyme Regis and follows as many ridges as can be fitted in between the coast and Avebury. But it is unlikely that this is an ancient line.

At the northern end, there is no obvious route, and some suggest that it didn’t reach the sea at all. As in the south, it’s likely that there was more than one track. It could be that the route didn’t head to Thetford until after the Roman invasion. However, the name Icknield Way has drawn more than one author to suggest a link with the Iron Age tribe of the Iceni. One proposal has the line running via Hickling to the eastern Norfolk coast. Another went via Lincoln to Caistor. The poet Michael Drayton in 1616 had the Icknield Way running from Yarmouth to the Solent via the Chilterns. It was Rainbird Clark who stated positively that the Icknield Way started somewhere near or at Hunstanton. Anthony Bulfield in The Icknield Way in 1972 took a route from Newmarket through Elvedon, Ickburgh, West Acre, East Walton and Sedgesford to Holme-next-the-Sea. We will go roughly that way, but for reasons of ease of access will follow the Peddars Way, which is Roman in origin. Although it also finishes at Holme, its southern end is at Chelmsford. That both routes head to the coast at Holme suggests that this was a significant ‘port’ for the journey across The Wash to Lincolnshire, and perhaps York.

To all this we can add ‘cosmic stuff’. It may be coincidence, but the course of the Greater Ridgeway (or at least the Ridgeway and Icknield Way parts) corresponds, almost exactly, with something called the ‘Michael/Mary Ley Line’. This runs from Land’s End to Great Yarmouth, and is a twisting male and female line of activity that has been mapped by dowsers. Seemingly it’s quite unusual for ley lines to be so densely augmented, and there is speculation, some say certainty, that the Greater Ridgeway runs along this line with all its mystical significance. The Michael/Mary Ley Line is one of just two ‘Global Serpents’ or ‘Driver Dragon Paths’ worldwide. The lines apparently receive the energies from the entire Cosmos, and dispense this via ley lines. Avebury is thought to be the hub of the whole system. In addition it has long been noted that crop circles seem to occur most frequently along the Greater Ridgeway, making the whole area particularly powerful.