It is when we look closely at this interior church that we note its truly astonishing features. At the first glance it might be taken for an ordinary Norman structure, with its round pillars and round arches; and, in fact, it is usually so described by the few authorities who notice it at all. The rudeness of the capitals, however, and the general aspect of the arcade, does not somehow look like Norman work, but more suggests Saxon architecture. And the very small clerestory lights, mere loopholes, still more lead us to this conclusion. Some archaeologists, therefore, consider this interior church at Ickleton to be a Saxon edifice; and, so far as the clerestory is concerned, it is exceedingly probable that they are right. The piers of the tower arches, however, are unmistakably Norman, as is also the west doorway. But what is the arcade? When we examine the massive circular pillars which support it, we see to our amazement that, instead of being built up in the usual manner, every one of them is a monolith! We are now obliged to confess ourselves in the presence not of Norman or Saxon but of _Roman_ work, for no example of such monolithic construction is known in any later architecture, and was, indeed, sparingly employed even by the Romans. How did these pillars come to be here? They are of Barnack stone from Northamptonshire, and must have been brought at an expense well-nigh prohibitory to the finances of a small country parish. We may dismiss the idea that they were hewn out of the quarry in this specially costly form, and fetched all the way from Barnack by the builders of this little unpretending church. Dismissing this, there remain two other alternatives. A mile distant from Ickleton to the southward stands Chesterford, the site of an important Roman station, commonly identified with the _Icianos_ of the third century "Antonine" Itinerary. The place derived its name, and its importance, from its position at the point where the River Granta is crossed by the Icknield Way, the line of communication along the strip of greensward between the Cambridgeshire fens and the forest topping the East Anglian heights, which gave access to the territory of the Iceni in Norfolk and Suffolk. The Saxon builders of Ickleton Church may have found these pillars amid the ruins of _Icianos_, or of some villa in the neighbourhood, and have brought them that short distance for their edifice. As they were ready made this would be a cheap job.