“Three or four centuries ago, before there were any enclosures, sown grasses, field turnips, or field carrots, or hay, all the cattle which had grown fat in summer, and were not killed for winter use, were turned out soon after Michaelmas to shift as they could through the dead months; so that no fresh meat could be had in winter or spring.  Hence the vast stores of salted flesh found in the larder of the elder Spencer in the days of Edward II., even so late in the spring as the 3rd of May.”  A note adds that the store consisted of “Six hundred bacons, eighty carcasses of beef and six hundred muttons.”

It is not difficult to trace the route over which the salt was carried from Droitwich.  Starting thence the track can be approximately identified by the names of places in which the root, sal (salt), occurs, and we find Sale Way, Salding, Sale Green, and, further south, Salford.  Crossing the Worcester-Alcelster road at Radford, and proceeding through Rouse Lench and Church Lench, we reach Harvington, from whence the track takes us across the low-lying meadows to the ferry and ford over the Avon, near the Fish and Anchor Inn mentioned above.

In recent times it has been assumed that the road from Bidford to Weston Subedge, known as Buckle Street, is identical with Ryknield Street, but I should prefer to call Buckle Street a branch of the latter only, for the purpose of joining Ryknield Street and the Foss Way near Burton-on-the-Water.  I consider the real course of Ryknield Street to be as described in Leland’s Itinerary (inserted by Hearne), Edition III., 1768, in which he quotes, from R. Gale’s Essay concerning the Four Great Roman Ways, that “from Bitford on the southern edge of Warwickshire it (Ryknield Street) runs into Worcestershire, and taking its course thro’ South Littleton goes on a little to the east of Evesham, and then by Hinton and west of Sedgebarrow into Gloucestershire, near Aston-under-Hill, and so by Bekford, Ashchurch, and a little east of Tewksbury, thro’ Norton to Gloucester.”

Such a course for Ryknield Street would make it the connection between the north, running through the Roman Alauna (Alcester) to Glevum (Gloucester).  It must be remembered that there was, in Roman times, nothing at Evesham to take the road there, for Evesham did not exist as a town until long after the Romans left.  Leland says that there was “noe towene at Eovesham before the foundation of the Abbey,” which took place about A.D. 701, about 250 years later, and there was no road from Alcester to Gloucester except the one we are following.

Another important road passed the northern extremity of Blackminster and crossed the road just referred to so that the Blackminster area was situated at the junction.  This was the old road from Worcester, passing the present site of Evesham a mile or more to the north, crossing the Avon at Twyford, and the Ryknield Street at Blackminster, and going onwards through Chipping Campden towards London.