Icknield Street - Names

Names

Four Roman roads having the Kings protection are named in the Laws of Edward the Confessor; Watling Street, Ermine Street, the Fosse Way and Hikenild or Icknield Street. Hikenild Strete, is generally supposed to be connected with the country of the Iceni. Various forms of the name, the earliest in Anglo-Saxon charters are Icenhilde Weg or Icenilde Weg, designate roads from the borders of Norfolk through Cambridgeshire, Bucks, Berks, Hants, and Wilts into Dorset. These locations however would identify the route as Icknield Way an Iron Age trackway running from Norfolk to Dorset. The road acquired the name Ryknild Street during the 12th century when it was named by Ranulf Higdon, a monk of Chester writing in 1344 in his Polychronicon. Higdon, gives the name of the fourth road as Rikenild Strete, which, he says, tends from the south-west to the north, and begins at St. David's and continues to the mouth of the Tyne, passing Worcester, Droitwich, Birmingham, Lichfield, Derby, and Chesterfield. It has borne that name, or Rigning, Reenald, or Rignall, from early times. In three of the four MSS. of Higdon, the name is given Rikenilde, Rikenyldes, and in the fourth, which is said to be one of the earliest, Hikenil Street. Trevisa's English translation (1387) calls it Rykeneldes Strete. Harverfield writing in the Victoria County History of Warwickshire doubted whether the road had any real and original right to either name, preferring Ryknild as no less correct, (or no more incorrect) and being able to distinguish it from Icknield Street in Oxfordshire and Berkshire. It is now called Icknield or Ryknild Street to distinguish it from the older Icknield Way. A preserved section of the Roman road can be seen at Sutton Park in Birmingham.