Ryknild Street
Bourton-on-the-Water to Templeborough
The route
Ryknild Street ran north from a junction with the Fosse Way near Bourton-on-the-Water in Gloucestershire, up through the West Midlands to the fort at Templeborough near Rotherham in South Yorkshire.
It passed Alcester in Warwickshire, crossed Watling Street at Letocetum at Wall in Staffordshire, and continued through Derbyshire past Little Chester near Derby and up the Trent and Rother valleys. The crossing at Wall, where two major roads met at right angles beside a Roman bath house and inn, was one of the important junctions of the province.
The surveyed line
The Itiner-e survey maps Roman roads across this part of the empire, but attributes no segment to Ryknild Street by name, so there is no measured line to draw here. The road is well attested by archaeology and by the modern roads that still follow it.
The road today
The A38 follows the line closely through Staffordshire and Derbyshire. North of Burton-on-Trent the modern road runs nearly straight for a long stretch, the surveying made easy by the broad flat Trent valley. Icknield Street, an alternative spelling of the same road name, appears on street signs in Birmingham.
See also: which modern roads follow Roman lines, and how closely.
Where to see it
Letocetum at Wall, near Lichfield, is the best stop: the excavated bath house and mansio sit at the crossroads of Ryknild Street and Watling Street, National Trust land in English Heritage guardianship.
In Birmingham, Sutton Park preserves a genuinely impressive stretch of the road as a raised agger running through open parkland, one of the few Roman roads anywhere to survive inside a major British city.
Common questions
Is Ryknild Street the same as the Icknield Way?
No, though the names are easily confused and are probably related. The Icknield Way is a prehistoric trackway across the chalk of southern England. Ryknild Street is a Roman road through the Midlands. Medieval writers seem to have borrowed the older name for the newer road.
Is the A38 a Roman road?
Through Staffordshire and Derbyshire, largely yes. The A38 follows Ryknild Street along a good deal of its length, particularly the long straight run north of Burton-on-Trent.