Through East Anglia in a Motor Car

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James Edmund Vincent. Through East Anglia in a Motor Car

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I. WINTER. [OXFORD] TO CAMBRIDGE, NEWMARKET, AND IPSWICH

CHAPTER II. WINTER. IPSWICH TO NORWICH VIÂ WOODBRIDGE, BECCLES, LOWESTOFT, AND YARMOUTH

CHAPTER III. WINTER. NORWICH TO LONDON BY ROMAN ROAD

CHAPTER IV. SPRING. THROUGH THE HEART OF EAST ANGLIA

CHAPTER V. SPRING. [IN NORWICH] AND TO ELY AND CAMBRIDGE

CHAPTER VI. LONDON, FELIXSTOWE—DUNWICH, FELIXSTOWE

CHAPTER VI—(continued) FELIXSTOWE, BAWDSEY, WOODBRIDGE, IPSWICH, DUNMOW AND LONDON

CHAPTER VII. LATE SUMMER. COLCHESTER AND EASTWARDS

CHAPTER VIII. COLCHESTER AND GAINSBOROUGH'S COUNTRY

CHAPTER IX. FROM COLCHESTER WESTWARDS—COGGESHALL, BRAINTREE, WITHAM, INGATESTONE, MARGARETTING, DANBURY HILL, MALDON, TIPTREE, MESSING, AND COLCHESTER

CHAPTER IX—(continued) COLCHESTER TO THE EXTRAORDINARY "DENE-HOLES" AT GRAYS, ESSEX

CHAPTER X. IN SPRING. TROUBLES MADE EASY

CHAPTER XI. GREAT AMBITIONS CHEERFULLY RELINQUISHED. HARLESTON TO CROMER VIÂ BUNGAY, BECCLES, LOWESTOFT, GREAT YARMOUTH, CAISTER-BY-YARMOUTH, AND NORWICH

CHAPTER XII. A PRIORY—GREAT HOUSES AND THE FENS

CHAPTER XIII. FROM KING'S LYNN AS CENTRE

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The year 1905 had almost run out when this volume was finally decided upon, and then a good many things happened, according to expectation and otherwise. Christmas came, surprising the railway companies as usual, but not the public, and the resignation of Mr. Balfour's Government. The resignation of Mr. Balfour, with its corollary of a General Election, involved some unavoidable delay in opening this campaign of pilgrimages in East Anglia. For during that General Election almost everybody who owned a motor-car and could drive it, or thought he could drive it, was stirred to lend his car and his energies to the service of his party by motives of double cogency. He desired, more or less keenly at the outset, but always vehemently, and even passionately after he had tasted the joy of battle, to lend his aid to the political party of his choice; and he knew further that the General Election of 1906 had provided motorists with a priceless opportunity of doing missionary work among the electorate at a critical moment in the history of Automobilism. He felt that the Motor Act of 1903, of limited duration in any event, needed to be supplanted by a measure treating him as a reasoning and responsible being, rather than as a dangerous beast, and, having some hope that the Royal Commission then sitting would report in his favour (as, on the whole, it has reported), he recognized that enlightened self-interest made it desirable to educate public opinion into the frame of mind suitable for the reception of an enabling measure.

For these reasons, and some that are immaterial, it was not convenient to make the first raid into East Anglia until nearly the end of January, 1906, and that was a period calculated to try the reality of man's or woman's sincerity as a devotee of motoring by a somewhat severe test. How that test was applied it shall be my endeavour to tell in a narrative form, and to that form a preference will be given throughout the book, digressions being made, as occasion serves or fancy calls, to mention matters of practical utility or of intelligent interest.

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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.

From Kentford to Bury St. Edmunds was a fine, but cold, switchback run along a very straight road, just before lighting-up time, though it was not dark enough yet to prevent an impression of the landscape from being left on the mind. No very great houses were close to the road on either side, but the trees on the right were of remarkable stature, and on the left were many belts of Scotch firs, evenly planted, almost like shaws in Kent, which seemed, as did many similar belts seen on other tours, to indicate the existence of landowners, past or present, who had prepared the way for the continental method of driving partridges. For the first time, as our car coursed along with the subdued and yet lively melody of the true "Panhard hum," one began to realize how vast an influence has been exercised over the face of nature in Norfolk and Suffolk, how many new features have been grafted on to that face, by men who have made good shooting the principal object of estate management in the part of England better suited to that purpose than to any other. Arthur Young thought, it is true, of the land between Thetford and Bury, and probably of this land also, that it would repay cultivation. It "lies for some miles over a wild heath, overrun with bushes, whins, and fern, the wild luxuriance of whose growth displays evidently enough how greatly it would answer to break it up and convert it into arable farms; for a soil that has strength enough to throw up such vigorously growing weeds would, if cultivated, produce corn in plenty." But Arthur Young, as we shall see in a minute or two, had no eye for the picturesque; he certainly could not have foreseen the present low prices of various grains; and still more certainly he could have had no idea of the length to which game preservation would go, or of the amount of employment to which it would give rise. His advice was followed in a number of cases, but it may be suspected that some of the famous warrens of Norfolk and Suffolk pay better in rabbits for the London market in these days than they would pay under crops.

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