78: Peddars Way
Peddars Way is popular with ramblers and cyclists. It is part of a national trail of long-distance paths that those who want to leave the modern world of speedy communications behind them for a while enjoy.
But for what was it really built?
A road to nowhere?
Ancient route: Peddars Way.
A route from south to north, ending abruptly at the North Norfolk coast. Bruce Robinson, author of the guide to Peddars Way, described it as a “road with no beginning, no certainty, and no end”. What was the point? The answer lies 2,000 years in the past, with the Roman army. Peddars Way – the name is medieval – is a 46-mile (74km) path from Knettishall Heath in Suffolk’s Brecklands to Holme-next-the-Sea in west Norfolk, linked for modern use to the even more popular Norfolk Coast Path. To unravel the mystery we have to forget our own time, when people walk for health or pleasure, and return to an era when travelling across England was difficult, particularly if you wanted to conquer the country. Lines of communication in the area date back to the Bronze Age thousands of years ago. The ancient Icknield Way links the west country with East Anglia; in places it runs parallel with the later Peddars Way. By the 1st century AD Norfolk was dominated by the Iceni tribe, whose warrior queen Boudica led them in rebellion against the all-conquering Romans in 61AD. After her eventual defeat and mysterious death (a story in itself) the conquerors set themselves the task of ‘pacifying’ Norfolk and Suffolk.
The right to Rome?
The Iceni powerbase was in west Norfolk and Suffolk; it was through this homeland that the Romans built a new road. It was a “text-book Roman road, driven across country without regard to native features”. No doubt they needed a fast, all-weather road for their legions. But why did it finish at Holme? Modern historians have put two and two together, and concluded there was probably a ferry to take them across the Wash, which was then far narrower than it is now. That would give them an alternative route from centres such as London, Chelmsford and Colchester to the north – and their bases at Lincoln and York – to the existing Ermine Street, now the Great North Road.
Perhaps there was another motive. The road cut through Iceni territory and emphasised to the conquered that the legions were here to stay; it would have been an impressive construction. Roman engineering was the wonder of the age. They surveyed their route meticulously, laid a bottom layer of large stones, then covered it with a surface of rammed flint, creating famously straight highways complete with effective drainage. They built at least one bridge, over the River Thet in the south. It is easy to imagine prisoners taken after Boudica’s defeat pressed into building it. Its military character is illustrated by the fact no major habitations developed there, apart from Castle Acre, near modern Swaffham, although there is evidence of a number of Romano-British villas to the west of the road. The Romans developed a site further to the east, near modern Norwich. It was known as Venta Icenorum (market town of the Iceni) and became Norfolk’s county town.
What did the Romans ever do for us?
As we all know, they built roads – and brought peace. After the crushing of Boudica’s revolt and subsequent subjugation of the Iceni, much of southern England settled down to a period of relative harmony and prosperity within the empire. It was not for more than a century that external threats led to coastal forts being built at places like Brancaster, a little east of Holme. Peddars Way, known to the Romans as Limes Icenorum, did not go out of use when the empire fell.
In the 11th century it was the site of a Danish victory when Thorkell beat an English force under Ulfcytell, probably at East Wretham, near Thetford.
During medieval times it gradually became known as the ‘Pedlar’s Way’, meaning a ‘foot’ road. Another possible derivative of the name is that it came from ‘ped’, a wicker basket used for carrying goods. The road’s use fluctuated through centuries of economic rise and fall. After the arrival of the Normans it was on the pilgrim trail to Walsingham, and no doubt got a boost from being used by the devout travellers, many of whom would have stopped off at convenient places such as Castle Acre priory. As late as the 17th century it was still marked on maps as a major route.
The Royalist Le Strange family of Hunstanton, who opposed Oliver Cromwell’s Parliamentarians during the Civil War, stored arms and ammunition at a still-standing store on the road at Sedgeford, south of Holme. At Fring it formed the parish boundary as late as 1901, but the coming of the railways and better roads in the 19th century killed it off.
Until the modern day
The walk was added to a national trail covering much of southern England in 1986, along with the newly-created Norfolk Coast Path, in a ceremony performed by the Prince of Wales at Holme. The Lonely Planet Walking in Britain guide rather sniffily dismisses Peddars Way as “not the most interesting of routes”, but this is surely unfair. The trail begins in the heaths of the Brecks, goes through rolling farmland and hills that belie Norfolk’s flat reputation and ends in the outstanding beauty of the coast. In some sections it feels like you are in a land that time forgot. True, there are some ‘lost’ sections, and part of the route is on lanes used by traffic and you have to cross two major roads, but you get to see much of the variety of the area’s landscape in easy and tranquil walking conditions – as well as imagine you are marching with a Roman legion.
Further reading
The Peddars Way, Bruce Robinson
Website
www.nationaltrail.co.uk/peddarsway