Through East Anglia in a Motor CarVincent, James Edmund
General
Through East Anglia in a Motor Car
Vincent, James Edmund
Norfolk (England) -- Description and travel; Suffolk (England) -- Description and travel
At Royston, the gate of East Anglia, we strolled about a little, finding it
to be just a quiet town of the country--there is no sufficient reason to
believe it to be really ancient according to the standard of antiquity in
these islands--and the intersecting point of two great roads, that followed
by us, which went on to the eastward, and the road between Hertford and
Cambridge. Here, according to the antiquaries of yesterday, Icenhilde Way
and Erming Street crossed one another. The antiquaries of to-day question
the Icenhilde Way so far east as this, laugh at the philology which would
make Ickleton evidence of its existence, and make nothing of the authority
of the learned Dr. Guest. Perhaps they would treat with more respect Erming
Street, said to have led from Royston to Huntingdon, and to cross the Ouse
at Arrington, for there appears to be sound evidence that Edgar granted to
the monks of Ely the Earmingaford, or ford of the Earmings, or fenmen.
Walking eastward along the spacious street we found first the turning for
Newmarket, which was of present interest, and, quite by accident, a notice
"To the cave," leading us into a back yard and to a locked gate, and
provoking a little later research. We couldn't get in, of course. The
custodian, if there be one, was at his sacred dinner, as everybody in
Royston seemed to be; but Royston struck us as the kind of place in which
an obsolete notice might hang unmoved so long as the fibre of wood would
support its covering of paint. Investigation in books showed the "cave" to
have been discovered by a fluke in 1472, but the "cave," like a good many
others here and elsewhere, seems to have been merely an ancient boneshaft
or rubbish pit, afterwards excavated sufficiently to be used as a
subterranean chapel. Hence the sketches of saints carved on the chalk walls
which, candidly, I should like to have seen close at hand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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