A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE Street,' to the settlement on the Nene which we have above described in connexion with Castor (p. i66). Here it enters Northamptonshire. In this county little of it still remains in use, but its course is certain and has often been described. From the Nene it continues in a straight line its previous north-westerly direction. It passes Sutton Wood and Southorpe (where stone pits for its making or maintenance were found or supposed in the eighteenth century), skirts the west side of Walcot Park and crosses the parish of Barnack, where it is said to have been furnished with a watchtower and to have been very visible two hundred years ago. Entering Burghley Park it deflects somewhat westwards; here its course was partly obliterated in the seventeenth century when part of it was taken to make gravel paths. It then passes near Wothorpe Park, where again it has been damaged : in 1732, as Stukeley records, the overseers of the highways of St. Martin's, Stamford, dug it up 'in sacrilegious manner, to mend their wicked ways withall.' Finally it reaches the Welland at Nun's farm immediately west of Stamford ; thence it runs by Great Casterton and Ancaster to Lincoln and passes outside our scope. ^ Between Castor and Stamford it has sometimes been styled the Forty-foot Way. One branch, and indeed perhaps three branches, diverged from this road near the point where it crosses the Nene. Of these the most important and the most certain runs due north. The exact spot where it leaves the other road is not now visible but can be approximately fixed. Somewhere near the Nene and Normangate field it turned off; it becomes traceable near Upton, and from a point slightly north of that village it is still in use as a road. Here or hereabouts it was once and perhaps is still known as Langdyke and High Street, and it forms for some distance a parish boundary. At the south end of Ashton parish it skirts the eastern side of Hilly Wood, where a noteworthy legionary tile was found some years ago (p. 214). Finally it crosses the Welland near Lolham Bridges and enters Lincolnshire ; hence under the name of King Street it pursues its way to Bourn and, as it seems, to Sleaford and Lin- coln — though the section from Sleaford to Lincoln is not at all well attested.' Thus it appears to provide an alternative route from Castor to Lincoln, east of the above described Ancaster route. The exact rela- tion of the two routes — if two there really were — is not quite clear. Their lengths are almost equal. The western (Ancaster) route follows • Originally perhaps Erning or Earning Street. The oldest occurrences of it are in a charter of A.D. 957, Earninga-straet at Conington, Hunts {Carlularium Saxonicum, iii. 203 ; Proceedings of the Soc. of Antiquaries, %CT. 1, iv. 326); a charter dated a.d. 955 but really of later origin, Earninge Straet, at AKvalton {Cart. Sax. iii. 71) ; and Erningestrete in Henry of Huntingdon, i. 7. It is quite possible that the name really belongs to Huntingdonshire only ; it is now used both north and south of that area. ' Camden, ii. 270 ; Morton, p. 502 ; Arcka-ologin, i. 61 ; Bridges, ii. 490; Stukeley, Letters, ii. 269, and It'weranum Curiosum, p. 84 ; Gough, Add. to Camden, ii. 292 ; Trollope, Associated Archit. Soc. Reports, ix. i 56. 3 Morton, p. 502; Stukeley, Letters, ii. and Carausius, i. 172; Trollope, Associated Archit. Soc. Reports, ix. 156. The Ordnance surveyors insert the name King Street south as well as north of the Welland. 204
