Through East Anglia in a Motor Car — Edition Insights

Chesterfield said in his will that it was, "an infamous seminary of iniquity and ill manners." Men may back horses at Newmarket, may gamble, may try every cunning device known to those who have to do with horses--not that some of those who are concerned with motors are much better--but Newmarket, in appearance at least, is free from that worst of all evils, poverty, which is rarely absent from agricultural Arcadia, and, as Dr. Jessopp has shown, very prevalent in East Anglia. Its houses are trim and weatherproof, the paint of doors and gates is clearly renewed often. The whole place has an air of prosperity which disarms curious investigation into the sources of its wealth. The children are rosy and plump, and that, at any rate, is a blessing; and, save perhaps for backing a horse with judgment now and again, which is a great deal less vicious than backing one without knowledge or judgment, I dare be sworn that their morality and their standard of life are much higher than those of the Arcadian peasant.

The weak light was growing quite dim as we passed through Newmarket and out of Cambridgeshire into Suffolk--out of "the Sheers" into East Anglia, in the narrowest sense of the term. Our course for Bury St. Edmunds lay along a road of astonishing straightness, having many fine oaks and other trees on either side; for the matter of levels it was, and of course is, a series of long ups and downs, of no very severe gradients, and the going on the newly-frozen road left nothing to be desired. At Kentford, according to the Ordnance map and the tradition of the antiquaries of yesterday, we crossed the Icknield or Icenhilde Way. Unfortunately, from the point of view of one who would like to conjure up visions of ancient Britons, neatly painted with woad in summer, fur-clad in winter, sweeping down this road with scythe-chariots to meet an invader from the west, or to make a raid into the Midlands themselves, the Icenhilde Way has to be numbered among the pretty traditions which cannot be cherished any longer. It has been called the warpath of the Iceni, or a principal Roman road. Ickleton, in Cambridgeshire, Icklingham, in Suffolk, Ickleford, in Herts, have been imagined to represent points upon its route from Norwich to Berkshire and the west. But probabilities, philology, and charters are separately fatal to the theory, and they are irresistible in combination. Over philology I shall not delay longer than to say, on the best authority, that, according to well-known laws, if the places now known as Icklingham and so on had been called after the Iceni, they would have been written otherwise than they are. Again, if the way had been the warpath of the Iceni, it would certainly be more clearly traceable in the east, which was theirs, than in the west, which was not; whereas the contrary is the case. Charters are even far more deadly to this romance than philology and probability. Referring to the date of the Norman Conquest and to the Icenhilde Way, Mr. Haverfield says: "Not till three centuries later do we find its name applied to roads in Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire, while east of Newmarket we never find it at all." This is conclusive, for it is the considered judgment of a man exceptionally learned and acute upon the subject to which he has devoted most of the leisure of an academical life, and so this avenue of romance and to romance is definitely and permanently closed.