One from the Straits of Dover in the south-east to the north-western centres of the Welsh Marches and of Chester, the Port for Ireland, and so up west of the Pennines.  This came in Saxon times to be called the Watling Street, a name common to other lesser lanes.

Another, the converse to this, proceeded from the metal mines of the south-west to the north-east until it struck and merged into other roads running north and east of the Pennines.  This came to be called (as did other lesser roads) the Fosse Way.

A third went more sharply west from the southern districts, and connected them not with the Dee, but with the lower Severn.  This track ran from the open highlands of Hampshire through Newbury and the Berkshire Hills to Gloucester, and was called (like other lesser tracks) the Ermine Street.

Finally, a fourth went in a great bend from these same highlands up eastward to the coast of the North Sea in East Anglia.  This was called in Saxon times the Icknield Way.

All these can be traced in their general direction throughout and for most of their length minutely.  All were forced to cross the Thames Valley, which so nearly divided the whole of South England from east to west.

Of these four crossings the first in point of interest is that which the Ermine Street makes over the upper Thames at Cricklade.

These old roads are of capital importance in the story of England, and though historians have always recognised this there are a number of features about them which have not been sufficiently noted—­as, for instance, that armies until perhaps the twelfth century perpetually used them; for the great English roads, though their general track was laid out in pre-historic times, were generally hardened, straightened, and embanked by the Romans in a manner which permitted them to survive right on into the early Middle Ages; and of these four all were so hardened and strengthened, except the Icknield Way.  Not one of them is quite complete to-day, but the Ermine Street is perhaps the best preserved.  It is a good modern road all the way from Bayden to Gloucester, with the exception of a very slight gap at this village of Cricklade.

It originally crossed the river half-a-mile below Cricklade Bridge, so that the priory which stood on the left bank lay just to the south of the old road.  How and when the old bridge at Cricklade fell we have no record, but one of the most important records of the Thames in Anglo-Saxon history is connected with this passage of the river.