It is a fine road that leads from Great Chesterford to Newmarket, partly on the line of the old Icknield Way. Ickleton and Hinxton, two neighbouring villages, are seen down in the distance, on the left hand, as the road climbs steadily over the chalk downs: pleasant villages in the valley of the Cam, with brilliantly whitewashed cottages showing prominently from their setting in green pastures.

This is a no mere track over the downs, but a well-made highway, embanked in the hollow and cut through the rises. Where it has finally left the village of Great Chesterford and has begun the climb, at the several branching roads still known as “Stump Cross”—although that stump of a wayside cross has long since disappeared—you may look, on the left-hand road to Cambridge by way of Sawston, for the Deserted Railway. This is the abandoned line of the Newmarket and Chesterford Railway Company, incorporated in 1846 for the purpose of constructing a railway in double track from the Eastern Counties’ station at Great Chesterford to Newmarket. The undertaking was purchased and opened April 4th, 1848, by the Eastern Counties (now the Great Eastern), but abandoned in 1852, as between Great Chesterford and Six Mile Bottom, on the opening of the existing line from Six Mile Bottom to Cambridge. The result is that the present railway journey between Great Chesterford and Newmarket is necessarily through Cambridge, and describes two sides of a triangle, as you may readily discover by consulting a railway map. The abandoned railway forming the third side of the triangle, would have gone direct, but it was discovered, somewhat late in the day, that there was not sufficient traffic to support both routes, and so the rails of this particular one were torn up and the line abandoned. Twelve miles of deserted track have thus for over half a century borne witness to the otherwise incredible folly of those early railway projectors, who flung away close on £150,000 upon a line that was not wanted.

It begins at Great Chesterford as an embankment, overgrown with brambles and undergrowth, but presently sinks to the level at the crossing of the road to Sawston and Cambridge, and in the fields on either side has been ploughed out of existence. Where the trains once went, turnips and clover now grow; but the embankment rises again in the distance and looks remarkably like another, and an even more gigantic, earthwork of unknown age. It is singular, indeed, that in this district of prehistoric dykes a modern rival should be thus added for the confusion of antiquaries who may even yet, in the remote future, come to speculate learnedly upon it, to discuss by what tribe it was made or whose kingdom it divided. It is quite as impressive as the Devil’s Ditch, even although we know perfectly well that navvies, and not the Devil, made it. Neighbouring the road all the way to Six Mile Bottom, it sometimes drops into deep cuttings, with the bridges still spanning them, and again resumes as a lofty embankment, often shrouded in the fir plantations that in the course of half a century have developed into dense woods. It ends at last on the level at Six Mile Bottom