A HISTORY OF WARWICKSHIRE fulfilled the condition of a road from north to south. The views of the antiquaries spread abroad, and two Icknield Streets came into ordinary use as names, one for the Berkshire and Oxfordshire trackway, and the other for our road. Now it is just this intrusion of Icknield into the west that seems responsible for the appearance of Rycknield. That name is a misreading of Icknield, spelt, as often, with a prefixed ' H.' Thus much seems to be proved by the facts of the case. The first name given to the road was Icknield Street, and that name occurs in documents of the thirteenth century. A little later Rycknield emerges, first in the writings of Higden. He, like all other medieval chroniclers, mentions the ' Four Roads,' and he calls them Fosse, Watling Street, Ermine Street, and Rykeneld Street. Here Rykeneld Street usurps precisely the place which is given to Icknield Street by all Higden's predecessors and indeed by many after him, and the simplest and most natural explanation is that we have a misreading. 1 Hence arise two names for our road Icknield and Rycknield. Both occur in charters and deeds, though the former is the commoner and also survives in various local names. It is the earliest, but by no means the only, instance in which the antiquaries have given its current name to an ancient road. The road has however other names. North of Alcester it is occasionally called Headon or Haydon Way, and also Eagle Street perhaps a corruption of Ickle, that is, Icknield Street. South of Alcester, between Bidford and Weston Subedge, it is called Buckle Street, and this is probably its oldest existing appellation. It is the modern form of a name Bucgan or Buggilde Straet, which appears in documents earlier than the Conquest, and which proves that the road was known in very early English days, at least between Bidford and Weston. 8 (b] WATLING STREET, FOSSE AND OTHER ROADS Watling Street is the name in use since Saxon times to describe the Roman road which ran north-west from London past Verulamium (St. Albans) to Viroconium (Wroxeter). Its course in general is certain, and not least in Warwickshire, where most of it is a county boundary and nearly the whole of it is still in use as a high road. It enters the county from the south at Dunsland, 4 miles south-east of Rugby, and from there to Mancetter it divides Warwickshire, first from Northamp- tonshire and then from Leicestershire. Between Mancetter and Fazeley 1 So Thorpe. Guest, Origints Celtic*, ii. 220, tries to defend the antiquity of the word Rycknield, but without meeting the real points of the case. The foundation charter of Hilton or Hulton Abbey in Staffordshire (A.D. 1223) mentions a Richmilde or Rikenilde Street near Stoke-upon- Trent Richmilde according to Dugdale's Mmasticon, v. 715 ; Rikenilde according to a seventeenth century copy in the British Museum, Harleian MS. 2060 : I do not know where the original charter is. This suggests that a street-name somewhat like Rykeneld existed in Staffordshire before Higden, and this may help to explain Higden's statements. But that street near Stoke is far away from the road which is now under discussion.
- On Bucgan, Buggilde, see Napier and Stevenson, Crawford Charter! (Oxford, 1895), p. 56.
The name Buckle Street is still known to the country folk within the limits mentioned in the text. For instance, there are ' Buckle Street housen,' a mile north of Honeybourne railway station. The Ordnance surveyors also insert the name on Broadway Down, but this (so far as I can discover by local inquiries) is doubtful. 242
