It seems likely that Icknield, like Watling and Ermine, was a generic name for a road, whether due to its use by cattle, to Professor Bradley’s Lady Icenhild, or to something else. One such road in Worcestershire and the west, and another in the east tending westward, were possibly at one time well known as continuous routes over long stretches of country. The two could be connected. Ermine Street passed through Wanborough Nythe at the west end of the Icknield Way from East Anglia, went north-west to Cirencester, and thence both north-east to Stow-on-the-Wold where it touched the Ricknield Street and the Fosse Way, and north-west to Gloucester, and so to Worcester or to Kentchester and the south-west of Wales. Another ancient road from near Tring, the Akeman Street, would take travellers on the Icknield Way due west to Cirencester, where they could branch as they pleased to Gloucester and Wales or the north. Thus at both ends of Ermine Street and Akeman Street or their continuations there were roads known as Icknield Street; it is even possible that the whole system was officially given the one name of Icknield Street, and such a system might fitly be called a royal road. An eastern extension of the road to a depôt and several ports in Norfolk is practically certain, though it has not yet been discovered or satisfactorily reconstructed. A south-western or western extension beyond Wanborough is almost equally certain. There is no need to look for a road that is all of one type. Without antiquarianism or modern regularity only common and continued travel throughout its course can preserve a road. Even during this extended use of it variants will be discovered from time to time and used as alternatives or substitutes. As soon as this use ceases portions of the road begin to decay, and soon those few having the old need for it will have found another way. Each kind of civilization doubtless has its own special kind of road, and gradually old roads are so transformed or combined as to form such a road. But invaders or newly organized people have to take what roads they find, unless they have Roman will, forethought, and resource to make their own; though by good fortune men suddenly needing a road may find an old one ready as did the pilgrims from the south and west to Canterbury who used the Pilgrims’ Way. Men wishing to travel from east to west, especially in the south of England, would have found many tracks and roads of all types ready to be linked so as to form a connection between important points of trade, government, or religion. When it became possible to traverse England safely, meeting foreign faces and strange tongues but subjects of one king, traders and travellers would piece together according to need the old roads which different ages had confirmed--the high and most ancient roads like the Ridgeway and the Harrow Way, late roads skirting the bases of the hills, pure Roman roads fearing nothing, and Romanized trackways.