[NOTE FROM EDITOR
Occasionally Charles Harper came out with bigotted anti-Catholic opinions for which I apologise.
They are not my opinions! ]
Introduction
CHAPTER I vol.I
Cirencester - Source of the Thames - Kemble - Ashton Keynes - Cricklade - St. Augustine's Well
CHAPTER II vol.I
Castle Eaton - Kempsford - By the Thames and Severn Canal to Inglesham Round House
- Lechlade - Fairford - Eaton Hastings Weir - Kelmscott - Radcot Bridge
CHAPTER III vol.I
Great Faringdon - Buckland - Bampton-in-the-Bush - Cote - Shifford
CHAPTER IV vol.I
Harvests of the Thames: Willows, Osiers, Rushes
CHAPTER V vol.I
New Bridge, The Oldest on the Thames - Standlake - Gaunt's House - Northmoor - Stanton Harcourt - Besselsleigh
CHAPTER VI vol.I
Cumnor, and the Tragedy of Amy Robsart
CHAPTER VII vol.I
Wytham - The Old Road - Binsey and the Oratory of St. Frideswide - the Vanished Village of Seacourt - Godstow and "Fair Rosamond"
- Medley - Folly Bridge
CHAPTER VIII vol.I
Iffley, and the Way Thither - Nuneham, in Storm and in Sunshine
CHAPTER IX vol.I
Abingdon
CHAPTER X vol.I
Sutton Courtney - Long Wittenham - Little Wittenham - Clifton Hampden - Day's Lock and Sinodun<
CHAPTER II vol.I
Dorchester - Benson
CHAPTER XII vol.I
Wallingford - Goring
CHAPTER XIII vol.I
Streatley - Basildon - Pangbourne - Mapledurham - Purley
CHAPTER I vol.II
SONNING - HURST, "IN THE COUNTY OF WILTS" - SHOTTESBROOKE - WARGRAVE
CHAPTER II vol.II
Henley - The Bridge And Its Keystone-Masks - Remenham - Hambleden - Medmenham Abbey And The "Hell Fire
Club" - Hurley - Bisham
CHAPTER III vol.II
Great Marlow - Cookham - Cliveden And Its Owners - Maidenhead
CHAPTER IV vol.II
Bray And Its Famous Vicar - Jesus Hospital
CHAPTER V vol.II
Ockwells Manor-House - Dorney Court - Boveney - Burnham Abbey
CHAPTER VI vol.II
Clewer - Windsor - Eton And Its Collegians - Datchet - Langley And The Kederminsters
CHAPTER VII vol.II
Datchet - Runnymede - Wraysbury - Horton And Its Milton Associations - Staines Moor - Stanwell - Laleham And Matthew
Arnold - Littleton - Chertsey - Weybridge - Shepperton
CHAPTER VIII vol.II
Coway Stakes - Walton-On-Thames - The River And The Water Companies - Sunbury - Teddington - Twickenham
CHAPTER IX vol.II
Petersham
CHAPTER X vol.II
Isleworth - Brentford And Cæsar’S Crossing Of The Thames
CHAPTER XI vol.II
Strand-On-The-Green - Kew - Chiswick - Mortlake - Barnes
CHAPTER XII vol.II
Putney - Fulham Bridge - Fulham
With rushes fenced, with swaying osiers crowned,
Old Thames from out the western country hies;
By daisy-dappled meads his course is found,
Bearing upon his breast brave argosies
Of stately lilies. Poets loved to praise
The stream whose tide doth calmly flow along,
And this the echo of their tuneful lays:
"Sweet Themmes, runne softly till I ende my song."
Past town and village, cot and lonely farm,
His silver stream with murm'ring music goes;
Singing glad anthems, full of drowsy charm;
Sweet songs of praise, unheeded not by those
Who know his banks full well, who often love
To roam his course, his marge to pace along,
While Spenser's line re-echoes as we rove:
"Sweet Themmes, runne softly till I ende my song."
The Thames we all know intimately, for the river
was discovered by the holiday-maker in the 'seventies
of the nineteenth century; but we do not all know
the villages of the Thames Valley, and it was partly to
satisfy a long-cherished curiosity on this point, and
partly to make holiday in some of the little-known
nooks yet remaining, that this tour was undertaken.
To one who lives, or exists, or resides - the reader
is invited to choose his own epithet - beside the lower
Thames, there must needs at times come a longing
to know that upper stream whence these mighty
waters originate, to find that fount where "Father
Thames" starts forth in hesitating, infantile fashion;
to seek that spot where the stream, instead of flowing,
merely trickles. To such an one there comes, with
every recurrent spring, the longing to penetrate to
the Beyond, away past where the towns and villages,
the water-works and breweries cluster thickly
beside the river-banks; above the town of Reading,
the Biscuit Town, and town of sauce and seeds;
beyond the fashionable summer scene of Henley
Regatta, and past the city of Oxford, to the Upper
River and its unconventionalised life.
When spring comes and wakes the meadows with
delight, and the osiers and the rushes again feel life
stirring in their dank roots, the old schoolboy feeling
of curiosity, of mystery, of a desire for exploration,
springs anew. You walk down, it may be, to some
slipway or draw-dock by Richmond or Teddington,
or wander along those shores contemplating the high-water-marks
left by the late winter floods, which not
even the elaborate locking of the river seems able
to prevent; and observing the curious line of refuse
of every description brought down by the waters,
and now left, high and dry, a matted mass of broken
rushes, water weeds, twigs, string and the like, marvel
at the wealth of corks that displays itself there. Children
have been known to make expedition towards
the distant hills, seeking that place where the rainbow
touches the ground; for the sly old legend tells
us that on the spot where the glorious bow meets the
earth there lies buried a crock of gold. An equally
speculative quest would be to fare forth and seek the
Place whence the Corks Come. There (not for
children, but for "grown-ups") should be, you
think, the Land of Heart's Desire.
There are, I take it, three chief things that the
world of men most ardently wishes for. An unregenerate
man's first desires are to wealth, to a
woman, and to a drink; or, in the words attributed
to Martin Luther:
Who loves not woman, wine, and song,
He is a fool his whole life long;
and the valley of the Thames, from Oxford to
Richmond, would seem, by the evidence of these
millions of corks of all kinds, to be a place flowing
with champagne, light wines, all kinds of mineral
waters, and bottled beers.
Corks, rubber rings from broken mineral-water
bottles, and big bungs that hint of two-or three-gallon
jars, abound; these last telling in no uncertain
manner of the magnificent thirsts inspired among
anglers who sit in punts all day long, and do nothing
but keep an eye on the float, and maintain the glass
circulating.
A thirsty person wandering by these bestrewn
towing-paths must sigh to think of the exquisite
drinks that have gone before, leaving in this multitude
of corks the only evidence of their evanescent
existence. Shall we not seek it, this land of the
foaming champagne, that comes creaming to the brim
of the generous glass; shall we not hope to locate
those shores, far or near, where the bottled Bass,
poured into the ready tumbler, tantalises the parched
would-be drinker of it in the all-too-slowly-subsiding
mass of froth that lies between him and his expectant
palate? Shall we not, at least if we be of "temperance"
leanings, quaff the cool and refreshing
"stone-bottle" ginger-beer; or, failing that, the
skimpy and deleterious "mineral-water" "lemonade"
that is chiefly compounded of sugar and carbonic-acid
gas, and blows painfully and at high-pressure
through the titivated nostrils? Shall we
not - - but hold there! Waiter, bring me - what
shall it be? - an iced stone-bottle ginger!
That was the brave time, the golden age of the
river, when, rather more than a generation ago, the
discovery of the Thames as a holiday haunt was first
made. The fine rapture of those early tourists, who,
deserting the traditional seaside lounge for a cruise
down along the placid bosom of the Thames, from
Lechlade to Oxford, and from Oxford to Richmond,
were (something after the Ancient Mariner sort) the
first to burst into these hitherto unknown reaches,
can never be recaptured. The bloom has been brushed
from off the peach by the rude hands of crowds of
later visitors. The waterside inns, once so simple
under their heavy beetling eaves of thatch, are now
modish, instead of modest; and Swiss and German
waiters, clothed in deplorable reach-me-down dress-suits
and lamentable English of the Whitechapel-atte-Bowe
variety, have replaced the neat-handed - if
heavy-footed - Phyllises, who were almost in the
likeness of those who waited upon old Izaak Walton,
two centuries and a quarter ago.
To-day, along the margin of the Thames below
Oxford, some expectant mercenary awaits at every
slipway and landing-place the arrival of the frequent
row-boat and the plenteous and easily-earned
tip; and the lawns of riparian villas on either hand
exhibit a monotonous repetition of "No Landing-Place,"
"Private," and "Trespassers Prosecuted"
notices; while side-channels are not infrequently
marked "Private Backwater."
All the villages immediately giving upon the stream
have suffered an equally marked change, and have
become uncharacteristic of their old selves, and converted[5]
into the likeness of no other villages in this
our England, in these our times. There is, for example,
a kind of theatrical prettiness and pettiness
about Whitchurch, over against Pangbourne; and
instead of looking upon it as a real, living three-hundred-and-sixty-five-days-in-the-year
kind of place,
you are apt to think of what a pretty "set" it makes;
and, doing so, to speak of its bearings in other than
the usual geographical terms of east and west, north
and south; and to refer to them, indeed, after the
fashion of the stage, as "P." or "O.P." sides.
But if we find at Whitchurch a meticulous neatness,
a compact and small-scale prettiness eminently
theatrical, what shall we say of its neighbour, Pangbourne,
on the Berkshire bank of the river? That
is of the other modern riverain type: an old village
spoiled by the expansion that comes of being situated
on a beautiful reach of the Thames, and with a railway
station in its very midst. Detestable so-styled
"villas," and that kind of shops you find nowhere
else than in these Thames-side spots, have wrought
Pangbourne into something new and strange; and
motor-cars have put the final touch of sacrilege
upon it.
Perhaps you would like to know of what type the
typical Thames-side village shop may be, nowadays?
Nothing easier than to draw its portrait in few words.
It is, to begin with, inevitably a "Stores," and is
obviously stocked with the first object of supplying
boating-parties and campers with the necessaries of
life, as understood by campers and boating-parties.
As tinned provisions take a prominent place in those
holiday commissariats, it follows that the shop-windows
are almost completely furnished with supplies
of tinned everything, festering in the sun. For
the rest, you have cheap camp-kettles, spirit-stoves,
tin enamelled cups and saucers, and the like utensils,
hammocks and lounge-chairs.
Thus the modern riverside village is unpleasing
to those who like to see places retain their old natural
appearance, and dislike the modern fate that has
given it a spurious activity in a boating-season of
three months, with a deadly-dull off-season of nine
other months every year. We may make shift to
not actively dislike these sophisticated places in
summer, but let us not, if we value our peace of mind,
seek to know them in winter; when the sloppy street
is empty, even of dogs and cats; when rain patters
like small-shot on the roof of the inevitable tin-tabernacle
that supplements the over-restored, and spoiled,
parish church; and when the roar of the swollen weir
fills the air with a thudding reverberance. Pah!
The villas, the "maisonettes," are empty: the
gardens draggle-tailed; the "Nest" is "To Let";
the "Moorings" "To be Sold"; and a general air
of "has been" pervades the place, with a desolating
feeling that "will again be" is impossible.
But let us put these things behind us, and come to
the river itself; to the foaming weir under the lowering
sky, where such a head of water comes hurrying down
that no summer frequenter of the river can ever see.
There is no dead, hopeless season in nature; for
although the trees may be bare, and the groves dismantled,
the wintry woods have their own beauty,
and even in mid-winter give promise of better
times.
But along the uppermost Thames, from Thames
Head to Lechlade and Oxford, the waterside villages
are still very much what they have always been. All
through the year they live their own life. Not there
do the villas rise redundant, nor the old inns masquerade
as hotels, nor chorus-girls inhabit at weekends,
in imitative simplicity. A voyage along the
thirty-two miles of narrow, winding river from Lechlade
to Oxford has no incidents more exciting than
the shooting of a weir, or the watching of a moor-hen
and her brood.
Below Oxford, we have but to adventure some
little way to right or left of the stream, and there,
in the byways (for main roads do not often approach
the higher reaches of the river), the unaltered villages
abound.
The head-spring of the Thames is, in summer, not
so easy a place to find. It rises on the borders of
Wilts and Gloucestershire, and has been marked down
and written about sufficiently often; but the exact
spot is quested for with difficulty, and when the
traveller has found it, he is, after all, not sure of his
find, for the place is supplied, in these latter days, with
no recognisable landmark, and even the road-men and
the infrequent wayfarers along that ancient way, the
Akeman Street, which runs close by, appear uncertain.
That it is "over there, somewhere," is the most
exact information the enquirer is likely, at a venture,
to obtain.
There are excellent reasons for this distressing incertitude.
The winter reason is that Trewsbury Mead,
the great flat meadow in which Thames Head is situated,
is so water-logged that it is often a morass, and
not infrequently a lake. In summer, on the other
hand, the spot is so parched, partly on account of the
season, but much more by reason of the pumping-works
in the immediate neighbourhood, that not only
the Thames Head spring is quite dry, but the bed of
the infant Thames itself is generally dry for the first
two miles of its course.
Thames Head is situated three miles south-west of
Cirencester, that beautiful old stone-built town whose
name we are traditionally told to pronounce "Ciceter,"
just as Shakespeare wrote it. That was the old popular
way, before the folks of the surrounding country
could read or write, and knew no better; but to-day,
when "education" is the birthright of all, though
culture be the acquisition of few, they are the rustic-folk - the
"lower orders" - who say "Cirencester,"
as my lords and gentlemen and ladies were wont to
do; while nowadays the upper circles refer to
"Ciceter." It is a curious reversal. If you say,
in these times, "Cirencester," you, in so doing, proclaim
yourself, socially, an outsider, fit only to feed
out of the same trough as those creatures who pronounce
"Marjoribanks," "Cholmondeley," or "Wemyss"
as spelled. We all know - or ought - that
"Marshbanks," "Chumley," and "Weems" are
your only ways, if you would be socially saved.
These are the last resorts of those who have no other
distinction to mark them out from the common herd:
just a verbal inflection, combined, possibly, with a
method of hand-shaking. To what straits we are
reduced, in these democratic times, to express our
superiority!
There is another way to the pronunciation of
"Cirencester," lately come into favour with provincials
of this neighbourhood. It is a method of
the simplest: merely the adoption of the clipped
way common to the local milestones, which tell the
tale of so many miles to "Ciren."
The noblest thing in Cirencester is the beautiful
old church, which rises in its midst, beside the remarkably
broad High Street, with much of that scale
and stateliness we commonly associate with a cathedral.
It is one of the noblest works of the Perpendicular
period, when architects grew aspiring, but
did not always succeed in building artistically as well
as big. Here the two aims have been achieved. But
a third desideratum, that of building securely, was
not originally included, it would appear, for one of
the most astonishing things about this structure is
the great masonry strut which would be called a
"shore" if it were only in timber, and is so clearly
for utility, and absolutely unbeautiful and unarchitectural,
that to style it a buttress would be to disparage
the exquisite adornments that buttresses at
their best are capable of being. This great crutch
for a noble tower in danger of falling so soon as it
was built, nearly five hundred years ago, is, however,
justified of its existence, for the lofty belfry yet stands
securely. The ingenious way in which the supporting
masonry is built diagonally through the west wall of
the south aisle, down to the ground, compels admiration
for the engineering skill displayed.
CIRENCESTER CHURCH: SHOWING THE GREAT BUTTRESS.
The great three-storeyed porch, by far the largest
porch, and certainly the most singular, in England,
built in advance of the south aisle, and looking proudly
upon the street, would seem to have been built for the
convenience of the many priests who served the large
number of chantries established from time to time
in the church. It is a very late and very beautiful
Perpendicular work. Not long after its completion
the greasy rascals were sent packing, in the life-giving
Reformation that saved the nation. It for long afterwards
served as the Town Hall, but was commonly
known as "the Vice" - a strange survival and corruption
of "parvise."
The interior of the church discloses a nave-arcade
of very lofty and graceful proportions; a work probably
as completely satisfactory as anything in this
country. And there is very much else to study here.
There are monuments, worn and battered, to knights
and dames, wine-merchants, wool-merchants, grocers,
and other old tradesmen of the town. Among them
may be noticed the brass to Reginald Spycer, 1442,
with his four wives - Reginald in the middle, and the
four ladies beside him, two and two. A late example
is that of Philip Marner, 1587, representing him full-length,
robed, with staff in one hand and a flower
in the other. A dog sits beside him. In the upper
left-hand is a pair of shears, indicating that he was
a clothier. The rhymed inscription says: -
In Lent by will a sermon he devised,
And yerely Precher with a noble prised.
Seven Nobles he did geue ye poore for to defend,
and 80 li to xvi men did lend,
In Cicester, Burford, Abington, and Tetburie,
ever to be to them a stocke Yerly.
In a glazed frame is preserved an ancient blue velvet pulpit-cloth, given in 1478 by Ralph Parsons, a priest, whose cope it had been.
The road that runs, white and broad, in a straight[14]
undeviating line, from Cirencester to Thames Head,
and so on at last, after many miles, to Bath - the
"Akemanceaster" that has given the Akeman Street
its name - comes in three miles to a stone bridge
spanning a canal. This is "Thames Head Bridge,"
and the canal is the Thames and Severn Canal, which,
beginning at Inglesham, just above Lechlade, ends at
Stroud. The length of this water-way is thirty miles.
The works were begun in 1783 and completed in 1789.
The object of the Thames and Severn Canal, which
joins the Stroudwater Canal, and reaches the Severn
at Framilode, was to provide a commercial water-way
between the highest point of the navigable
Thames, near Lechlade, and the Bristol Channel.
Its course lies along some very high ground just beyond
Thames Head, going westward, and in all there
are forty-four locks, rising 241 ft. 3 in. There is
also a remarkable piece of engineering in the Sapperton
Tunnel, through which the canal takes its
course. The tunnel is fifteen feet wide, and is driven
through Sapperton Hill at a point 250 feet beneath
its summit.
It follows that of necessity a canal, so elevated
above the surrounding country, must be provided with
water by artificial means, and a supply is provided by
a pumping-station close at hand to Thames Head
Bridge. This raises water to the extent of three
million gallons a day: hence the dried-up character
of the Thames Head spring, except in winter, and
the usual summer phenomenon of the infant Thames
being quite innocent of water for a distance of two
miles from its source. Of late years the Great Western
Railway, which has a station at Kemble, a mile and
a half away, has erected a still larger and more powerful
pumping-station, for the purpose of supplying
water for its own needs at Swindon, fourteen miles
distant.
The Akeman Street here divides Wiltshire and
Gloucestershire. If we descend from the Thames
Head Canal bridge and follow the towing-path in a
westerly direction, into Gloucestershire, for half a
mile, we come, by scrambling down the canal-bank
to the meadow below, to the source of the river, and
at the same time to the destruction of a cherished
imageion. Picturesque old histories of the Thames
have made us familiar with Thames Head, and have
shown us dainty vignettes of that spring. One such
I have before me as I write these words. It shows
a rustic well, overhung by graceful trees, with a little
country-girl in homely pinafore dipping a foot in the
water as it gushes forth. We need expect no such
scene nowadays. The well is buried under fallen
masses of the dull, ochre-coloured earth of Trewsbury
Mead, and all we see is a rough, dry hollow, overhung
by trees which refuse to live up to the grace suggested
by the old imagetrations. We need not wonder any
more why so few people know Thames Head, or why
the spot is unmarked. It is merely a memory, and
Peacock's charming verse has long ceased to be
applicable: -
Let fancy lead from Trewsbury Mead,
With hazel fringed, and copsewood deep;
Where scarcely seen, through brilliant green,
Thy infant waters softly creep.
But although the pumping-stations so greedily suck up all the available moisture in summer, the spring is said often to burst out in winter, three feet high; and at such times it is only necessary to drive a walking-stick anywhere into the turf of this meadow for a little fount to spring up from the hole thus drilled.
The river thus originated is known alternatively
as the "Isis," and in the writings of old pedantic antiquaries
retains that alternative name until Oxford
is passed and Dorchester reached; where, according
to such authorities, in the confluence of the Isis and
the Thame, the "Thame-Isis," becomes the "Tamesis,"
or Thames. To the Oxford boating-man,
however, the streams below and above Oxford are
respectively the Lower and the Upper River, and
"Isis" is reserved for the title of a University magazine,
or the name of a boating-club.
"Isis" is, of course, a Latinised form of "Ouse,"
which in its turn is a modified form of the Celtic
"uisc," for water, and gives us such other river-names
as Usk, Axe, Exe, and Wye; while we find it hidden
again in the names of Kirkby Wiske, in Yorkshire, and
in that of "whisky," deriving from "usquebaugh."
The time when the Upper Thames was first called
"Isis" is uncertain. The name is certainly a Latinised
form of "Ouse"; but the Romans do not
appear to have so styled it. Julius Cæsar, in his
Commentaries, speaks only of "Tamesis"; and the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, A.D. 905, mentions only the
"Thames." We do not, in fact, read of anything
like "Isis" until 1359, when a monk of Chester,
Ranulphus Higden, wrote in his Polychronicon a
passage which, rendered into English from his Latin
original, runs thus: "Tamisa seems to be composed
from the names of two rivers, the Ysa, or Usa, and the
Thama. The Thama, running by Dorchester, falls
into the Ysa; thence the whole river, from its source
to the eastern sea, is called Thamisa." A much later
writer, Leland, I think, says, in that rarefied, detached
way we expect in old writers, "The common people
call it the 'Thames', but scholars call it the 'Isis'."
The name of "Thames" is equally Celtic with that
of the Latinised "Isis," nor is it the only Thames in
the country, for the river Tamar, dividing Devon and
Cornwall; the Teme, in Shropshire and Herefordshire;
and the Tame, in Staffordshire, are each closely
allied in name.
The generally-accepted source of the Thames at Thames Head has by no means gone undisputed, and a rival exists at Seven Springs, three miles south-east of Cheltenham. This spot is the source of the river Churn, which, falling into the Thames at Cricklade, after a course of sixteen or seventeen miles, takes the stream some ten miles farther up-country than that which issues from Thames Head. Thus we have the singular paradox, that the Churn, this first tributary of the Thames, is considerably longer than the parent stream. This is a problem that would have desolated the logical mind of Euclid, and it has worried geographers and writers of books for uncounted years. No matter how diligently we may seek to track this heresy to its lair - to its original propagation - we shall inevitably be foiled; nor indeed (as in the case of rival religious dogmas) shall we ever be able to definitely settle which of the two is the heresy, and which the true faith. If we rely upon the canon that the source of any river is that point which is situated farthest from its mouth, and then refer to the maps, there can be no doubt whatever that the Churn is the true Thames, and that the Seven Springs source is its head-spring. It is an unavoidable conclusion, like it or like it not; and if we take the trouble to visit Seven Springs, we shall discover that some one has been concerned to mark the spot prominently with the same belief, in the inscription set up there on a wall going down into the pool: -
Hic tuus,
O Tamesine Pater,
Septemgeminus fons.
Here flows, O Father Thames,
Thy sevenfold source.
We can only assume, in the difficulty with which we are thus faced, that the original error, of placing Thames Head at Trewsbury Mead, and naming the stream which issues from Seven Springs the "Churn," arose in those very remote times, before even the Romans came to Britain, when surveying and map-making were unknown and relative distances were uncertain. That the river Churn bore its present name even at the period when the Romans descended upon Britain is an assured thing, for the Romans named Corinium - the present "Cirencester" - from its situation on the Churn. The existing form of the place-name is of Saxon origin, and is really "Churnchester" - the "castle on the Churn."
Near Kemble.
Kemble Junction, the railway station that dominates
this neighbourhood, marks where the little
four-mile branch of the Great Western Railway goes off
to Cirencester from the line to Stroud and Gloucester.
There is no likely expectation that Cirencester will
begin to grow and to lose its old-world character while
it remains, as now, at the loose end of this little single-track
branch railway; and the hunting-men of this
Vale of White Horse district remain quite unconcerned
and unafraid of developments. This country, between
Cirencester, Cricklade and Lechlade, is a hunting
country and an agricultural country, and long
centuries ago it lost to Leeds and Bradford, and other
like centres, the clothing industry for which this
Cotswold district was in mediæval times and after
famed. Thus Kemble Junction is by no means a
junction of the Swindon or the Clapham Junction
type, and is rather a peaceful than a bustling place.
The village itself stands on rising ground above this
district of springs. Even though it be more remarkable
for its stone walls than for anything else, it is a
not unpleasing village, for in a neighbourhood such as
this, where laminated stone is easily dug out from a
few feet below the level of the soil, we expect dry stone
walling and stone-built houses; and certainly the
hard stony effect is softened by the plentiful trees of
the place. The Early English church, with tall spire,
120 feet high, has been so thoroughly "restored,"
and swept and garnished, and so plentifully endued
with plaster, that architects with a love of antiquity,
and all antiquaries, looking upon it, can scarce refrain
from tears. Inside the church is a curious
monument -
| who { | Conflicted | } in ye Church { | militant |
| were buried | materiall | ||
| Do reigne | triumphant. |
We shall probably not be wrong in regarding this
as one of the ultra-Puritan families of that Puritan
age.
Just below Kemble, on the way to the hamlet of
Ewen, the course of the Thames is in summer hardly
to be distinguished in the meadows through which
it runs. Grass covers it, in common with the meadows
themselves; only the grass is of a ranker and coarser
kind, and largely admixed with docks. The dry-walling
of one of these meadows shows the winter
direction of the stream clearly enough, in the row of
holes left in building the wall for the water to pass
through.
AT EWEN.
Ewen, standing by the roadside, is remarkable only for its rustic cottages, but they are particularly beautiful in their old unstudied way; heavily thatched, and surrounded with old-fashioned gardens. The Thames begins to flow, or to trickle, regularly at Upper Somerford Mill, whose water-wheel, immense in proportion to the little stream, is picturesquely sheltered under wide-spreading trees. The village of Somerford Keynes lies close at hand.
AT ASHTON KEYNES.
The way between [Ewen] and Ashton Keynes passes over rough common-land, and enters Ashton Keynes romantically, past the great church, and along a fine avenue of elms beside the manor-house, emerging at what, until a few years ago, was Ashton Keynes Mill. The elm avenue of Ashton Keynes is other than we should expect, if we come to the place primed with a knowledge of what the "Keynes" in the place-name signifies. Those elms should be oaks, for "Keynes" derives from the ancient Norman word for an oak-tree; in later French, "chênaie." Hence also the name of Horsted Keynes, in Sussex.
THE OLD MILL HOUSE, ASHTON KEYNES.
Upper Somerford Mill.
All the old mills that once made the Thames additionally
picturesque are disappearing. Some go up
in flame and smoke, like Iffley Mill, below Oxford,
painted and sketched by a thousand artists, and described
by a hundred writers of books and descriptive
articles, to whose lasting sorrow it was destroyed by
fire in 1907. Shiplake Mill met a similar fate a little
earlier, and modern milling conditions forbid their
ever being rebuilt. Ashton Keynes Mill became
disestablished, as a mill, because it could no longer
compete with the modern steam-roller flour-mills, that
nowadays grind flour much more expeditiously and
cheaply than the old water-driven mills. But the
old mill-house stands, little altered. It is built substantially,
of stone, and has old peaked gables and
casemented windows, and so, when its ancient commercial
career came at last to an end, its own picturesqueness,
and its strikingly beautiful setting,
appealed irresistibly to some appreciative person
seeking an old English home; with the result that
it has been converted into a very charming private
residence.
Little need be said about Ashton Keynes church,
for it is of very late Gothic, and plentifully uninteresting;
but the village itself is a delight. It is the
queen of Upper Thames villages, with a picture at
every turn. Here the Thames flows quietly down
one side of the village street, and at the beginning
of that rural, cottage-bordered, tree-shaded highway
is the first bridge across the river; an ancient Gothic
bridge, with a slipway beside it, where the horses
are brought down to wash their legs in summer. Beside
the bridge stand the remains of one of the three
fifteenth-century wayside crosses which once gave
Ashton Keynes a peculiarly sanctified look. The
ruins of all three are still here, - smashed originally
during the seventeenth-century troubles in which
King, Church, Parliament and Puritans contended
violently together; and further damaged by the mischievous
pranks of many generations of village
children.
Ashton Keynes Mill.
There are many little bridges spanning the Thames
at Ashton Keynes, for the stream washes the old stone
garden-walls of a long line of cottages, and the entrance
to each cottage necessitates a bridge of stone, of brick,
or of timber. Stonecrop, candytuft, wallflowers,
arabis, snapdragon, and many other semi-wild plants
grow in the crevices of these old walls, and drape them
all the summer with an unimaginable mantle of
beauty; and where the cottages end, and the highway
becomes a straight flat road, making for Cricklade,
a modern country residence has been built, with the
walls of it going down in the same way into the water,
and the wild flowers encouraged in the like fashion
to inhabit there. A contemplative person might pass
a pleasant time at Ashton Keynes, where there is a
homely inn, but none of those unamusing "amusements"
which serve to render places of holiday resort
unendurable. For those not very numerous persons
who are satisfied with their own company Ashton
Keynes affords decided attractions. No one ever
goes there, for it is on the road to Nowhere in Particular,
and not even the motor-car is a very familiar
sight. Thus the ruminative stranger will have his
privacy respected; unless indeed he happens to be
either an artist or a photographer, when he is certain
to be surrounded by a dense crowd of children, who
seem to become instinctively aware of an open sketch-book
or a camera at hand, and surround the owners
of them in most embarrassing fashion. The artist
is the more fortunate of the two, for it is only an
easily-satisfied curiosity to see what he is doing which
attracts these unwelcome attentions; while the unfortunate
photographer is pestered with requests
to be "took," and worried to extremity of despair
by hordes of fleeting children obscuring his camera's
field of vision, or posing grotesquely and in most
damaging fashion in his choicest foregrounds.
Below Ashton Keynes the Thames is joined by the
little Swillbrook, and crossed at the confluence by
the small, three-arched masonry Oaklade Bridge.
A mile or so below this is Water Hay Bridge, a typical
"county" bridge, whose frame of iron girders and
railings, painted white, ill assorts with the luxuriance
of swaying reeds and thickly-clustered alders that
here enshrouds the stream.
The Infant Thames, Ashton keynes
We read in old accounts of the Thames that it was
navigable for barges as far as this point, and "Water
Hay" may possibly be a corruption of Water Hythe,
indicating a wharf. It is in this connection to be
noted that the Cricklade and Ashton Keynes road
crosses here, and that however unlikely it may now
seem that the stream could ever have been navigable
to this spot for such heavy craft as barges, it must
always be borne in mind that, in the many general
causes that have led to the shrinkage of rivers throughout
the country, and here in especial in the pumping
away of the head-spring of the Thames, the stream
cannot now closely compare with its old self of a
hundred and fifty years ago. We may therefore very
well believe those old writers who speak of the Thames[30]
being navigable to this point, and imagine, readily
enough, a rude wharf where goods were landed, and
left for Ashton Keynes and surrounding villages, in
days when even the few roads of the present time
either did not exist at all, or were so bad that haulage
along them was almost impossible, by reason either
of the mud, or of the water that very often flooded
them.
Between this and the little town of Cricklade the
stream winds continually, but the road goes straight
over Water Hay Bridge and makes direct for the townlet,
three miles distant. The navigation of these
first few miles of the Thames was long ago considered
to be so irretrievably a thing of the past, that it was
permitted the constructors of the North Wilts Canal,
in crossing the stream, one mile above Cricklade, to
build a brick bridge or aqueduct so low-pitched across
it that the crown of the arch scarcely appears above
water, and effectually stops any attempt to get even
a canoe through.
The approach to Cricklade from the west by road is
a noble introduction to the town. It is a small town,
of entirely agricultural character, yet it has been
a place of importance in its day; and although that
day has long passed, its two churches of St. Sampson
and St. Mary prove it to have been once considerable.
Cricklade, indeed, standing on the Ermine
Way, the Roman road that led from Spinæ to Corinium - or
in modern terms, from Speen by Newbury
to Cirencester - could not have been other than important.
The invading Danes, making their way up
the Thames Valley in A.D. 905, and again in 1016,
found it worth while plundering, and it has from very
early times been a market-town.
It prospered in a
quiet way until the opening of the Thames and Severn
Canal, in 1789, for it was, after the ancient wharf at
Water Hay had been abandoned, at the head of the
Thames navigation; but when the canal came past,
outside the northern end of the town, the water-borne
traffic halted here no more, and Cricklade was, in a
minor-tragical way, ruined.
Nor have railways served
ever to redress the injustice. The Great Western comes
no nearer than the small wayside station of Purton,
four miles distant, and although the Midland and
South-Western Junction Railway comes to Cricklade,
and has a station here, the railway management - judging
from the fact of its providing only one train
a day each way, at inconvenient hours - would much
rather you did not use it, you know, if you don't mind.
And the Cricklade people do not use it, and go the
four miles to Purton, instead. We have, therefore,
not the slightest prospect of Cricklade ever growing.
It is quite in keeping with the rural look of the one
long broad street of Cricklade, bordered by houses
that are, for the most part, of cottage-like appearance,
that it has for centuries been known as the "Peasant
Borough": the technical territorial "township" including
no fewer than fifty-one surrounding parishes.
That it should have been, until the passing of an early
Reform Act, also a Parliamentary borough, returning
members to Parliament, does not of itself seem remarkable,
knowing as we do that places like Gatton
and Old Sarum, with no inhabitants at all, shared
the same privilege. Cricklade, however, lost its
representation through long-continued and shameless
bribery.
Here, in the long silent streets of Cricklade, the
stranger is noted curiously in summer, the local season
being in winter; for this is now a hunting-centre of
the divided Vale of White Horse country, and the
hounds are kennelled here.
Cricklade, we are told, is properly "cerriglád":
an ancient British expression signifying a "stony
ford"; but is it not, even more properly, "Cerrig-let,"
i.e. the stony place where the river Churn has its outlet
to the Thames? We have several places in England
in which "cerrig" is hidden under various corruptions:
notably Crick, in Northamptonshire, and
numerous places named Creech, in widely-sundered
districts; while in Wales we find Cerrig-y-Druidion
in the north, and Crickhowell in the south. In Scotland
the word is commonly rendered "Craig."
APPROACH TO CRICKLADE.
But old writers who flourished before the science of place-names had come into existence generally guessed at the meaning of the names of those places of which they wrote; and extremely bad guesses they almost always made. Their way with "Cricklade" is a shocking example of a "reach-me-down" ready-made meaning, supplying a barbarous misfit. Cricklade, if you please, is, according to these seekers after truth who are content to pick up the first obvious lie that rests in their path, or to seize the first absurdity that suggests itself, is "Greeklade," the site of a forgotten Greek university established here even before the coming of the Romans. Forgotten! yes: that university is easily forgotten which had never any existence; but this derivation served its day, and was generally accepted. Thus we find the poet Drayton content to write in his Polyolbion:
Greeklade, whose great name yet vaunts that learned tongue,
Where to Great Britain first the sacred muses sung.
But Drayton erred only where others had erred for some seven or eight hundred years; for indeed the absurd legend derives from the name of "Greek-islade," given to the town in the time of Alfred the Great.
St. Sampson's, the chief church of Cricklade, stands by the road as you enter from the direction of Ashton Keynes; its tall, curiously-panelled tower framed beautifully in the view by a noble group of hedgerow elms. This odd dedication puzzles most people, and in truth St. Sampson, or "Samson," without the "p," is a remote and obscure personage who flourished in the sixth century, and is thought to have died A.D. 560. He appears to have been a Breton who fled his country, and in after-years returned to Brittany and became Bishop of Dôl. Two other churches are dedicated to him: South Hill, by Launceston, and Golant, near Lostwithiel, in Cornwall; while the island of Samson, in the Scilly Isles, owes its name to this source. Milton Abbey, in Dorsetshire, was formerly quadruply dedicated to SS. Mary, Michael, Samson, and Bradwalladr; while there still exists a St. Sampson's church in the City of York. But that owes its name to another fellow - an early Archbishop of York; so early, indeed, that he is not generally included among the primates. He, strangely enough, appears to have been contemporary with, and a friend of, the other Sampson.
ST. SAMPSON, CRICKLADE.
This church of St. Sampson at Cricklade does
the saint especial honour, for it is a much more than
usually fine cruciform building, greatly superior to
the usual parish type. It presents, in general, an
exterior view of Perpendicular character, even though,
on closer examination, the architectural expert may
discover very considerable Early English and Decorated
portions. The central tower is its great feature,
for you not only see it from afar, but on a closer view
it is found to be so strikingly individual that even
those persons unusually well-versed in these things
are puzzled to find anywhere its fellow. The detailed
imagetration of it in this book will render unnecessary
any lengthy description; and will at the same time
reveal the noble quality of its sturdy pinnacles and
the exquisitely effective character of the deep panelling
that covers the upper stage and mounts into the angle-turrets.
It is a finely massive, robust design, to which
the elegant light pierced parapet adds a contrasting
note of airy grace. In the detailed view of this tower
an empty niche will be seen, which probably once held
a statue of the eponymous saint of this church. On
the side of the tower not shown a keen eye may observe
a pair of scissors sculptured at a considerable height
from the ground: an indication, doubtless, that the
tower, rebuilt in its present form, owed its existence
to the benefaction of one of those wealthy clothiers
who in the fifteenth century attained in the Cotswold
and surrounding districts to their highest degree of
prosperity, and gave liberally of their wealth to the
rebuilding of churches, the founding of almshouses,
and other good deeds, and have left numerous records
of their existence in the fine monumental brasses of
Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, ensigned with their
merchants'-marks or the emblems of their trade - the
wool-pack and the shears, in place of the heraldic
achievements of nobler persons.
The interior of this charming church is even more
noble than the impressive exterior bids us expect.
It is at once massive, and well-lighted, and graceful:
the climax of its beauty found beneath the central
tower, where the piers and arches and finely-ribbed
vaulting go soaring up to form a handsome lantern,
set about with many shields, sculptured with the arms
of Edward the Confessor, of the diocese of Salisbury,
and of the Dudleys, Earls of Warwick. Prominent
here among these cognizances we shall find the intertwined
sickles of the extinct, but once wealthy and
powerful, Hungerford family, whose ancient badge
is found plentifully all over Wiltshire, and frequently
in Somerset. It is a Sir Walter Hungerford of the
mid-fifteenth century who is here the subject of
allusion in this shield, for he gave the presentation of
the living of St. Sampson's, together with the manor
of Abington Court, to the Dean and Chapter of Salisbury,
for the express purpose of maintaining the
Hungerford Chantry in Salisbury Cathedral, and to
assist in keeping in repair the Cathedral campanile.
many changes have befallen since then: the Church
has been reformed, and chantries are no longer possible;
but the ancient, beautiful, and interesting
detached campanile of Salisbury Cathedral was in
existence until nearly the close of the eighteenth century,
when it was wantonly destroyed by Wyatt in
the course of the disastrous "restorations" in which
the Dean and Chapter, charged particularly to maintain
the campanile, placidly betrayed their trust, and
calmly saw it levelled with the ground. To-day the
presentation belongs to the Dean and Chapter of
Bristol.
A curious feature of the exterior of St. Sampson's
is the flying angle-buttress to the south-east, supporting
a Perpendicular south-east chapel built very
clumsily on to the already-existing Decorated chancel.
The illustration clearly shows the awkward way
in which the addition abuts upon the older building,
partly blocking up a very fine window. The addition
was obviously not built with good foundations, as
the necessity for further adding the flying buttress,
and the subsidence still evident in the distinctly
out-of-plumb lines of the chapel, still show. The date
of the buttress is still visible, carved on the stonework:
"Anno Domini 1569."
The tall canopied cross now standing in the churchyard
was originally in the street, but was removed
hither to preserve it from the injury it was there likely
to suffer; and in its stead we find an object of a very
different character, and warranted to withstand the
ill-usage of many generations of mischievous children:
nothing less than a Russian, or other, gun. The
school-buildings immediately in the rear of the cross
are the successors of those founded and endowed in
1652 by one Robert Jenner, goldsmith, of London.
STRAINER-BUTTRESS, ST. SAMPSON'S, CRICKLADE.
Another similar cross is to be seen in the little[45]
churchyard of the curious old church of St. Mary at
the other, the northern, extremity of the town, and
immediately looking on to the street. St. Mary's is
altogether different in appearance from the noble,
upstanding church of St. Sampson, but none the less
interesting on that account. It is a huddled-together
old building, with a squat tower, or remains of a tower,
and altogether on a miniature scale. Queer little
dormer windows start out of its broadly-sloping roofs,
and they and the south porch are things of delight
in the picturesque way. The interior is an affair of
very slender Late Perpendicular nave piers and arcade,
contrasting with a stern, sturdy Norman chancel-arch.
Proceeding still northward beyond this point, the
Thames is seen, here reinforced by its confluence with
the river Churn; and if we care further to proceed
a few yards, the Thames and Severn Canal will be
found.
A strange belief exists among the people of Cricklade,
to the effect that any native of the town possesses,
as his or her birthright, the privilege of selling
anything without a licence in the streets, not only
of Cricklade, but of any other town in England and
Wales. This belief, although unsupported by any
evidence, has been handed down from time immemorial.
It would be curious if any native-born
inhabitant of Cricklade were to test this by selling
any articles in (say) the streets of London, without
first providing himself with a hawker's licence, so
that this traditionary right could be proved still
effective, or otherwise. The privilege is said to have
been conferred by some unspecified king, in acknowledgment
of Cricklade having given shelter to his
Queen "when in distress."
In this connection we may profitably turn to the
old farm-house, once a manor-house, in Cricklade,
by the banks of the Thames, called "Abington
Court," once the property, as we have already seen, of
the Dean and Chapter of Salisbury. This is said to
have been formerly a Royal hunting-box, and tradition
further tells us that Charles the Second was the
last monarch to use it. History does not tell us of
any Queen in distress at Cricklade, nor of any Queen
ever here; but kings have ever been accustomed to
maintain many queens (so, without offence, in these
pure pages, to call them) from the time of Solomon and
David, throughout the ages, and until modern times.
It is a kingly privilege, not often allowed to lapse;
and it is quite within the bounds of possibility that
there was at some time one of these uncertificated
consorts at Abington Court, and that here she gave
birth to a child, and that this particular (or shall we
say, this not very particular?) king thereupon celebrated
the occasion by conferring the curious privilege
already discussed.
There is something in this ancient house which
seems to support the theory: a substantial something
in the shape of a large and elaborately-carved old
oaken four-poster bedstead, fine enough to have been
used by such distinguished personages. No one
knows how it came here, but here it remains, and goes
with the property. Tenants may come and go, but
the bedstead, left by the last royal occupant, stays.
An exceptionally interesting spot exists at a distance
of a mile-and-a-half to the north of Cricklade
town, in the neighbourhood of Latton and Down
Ampney. You will not easily discover this interesting
spot, because no map marks it, no guide-book
tells of it, and only very few among the older generation
of the rural agricultural labourers cherish any
recollection of it. The younger folk know nothing
whatever of this historic landmark, which is so insignificant
and elusive a thing that one might readily
be in the same field with it, and yet not see it. It is
the pure and never-failing spring of St. Augustine's
Well, once famed in all the country round about;
either by that name, or by the alternative title of the
"Lertoll Well," or stream. This pure and cooling
fount was long credited with medicinal virtues, less
because of any properties in the water itself than
because it was blessed by Saint Augustine. For it was
to these parts that Augustine came, somewhere about
thirteen hundred and twenty years ago, for his conference
with the dignitaries of the native British
Church. Augustine, accredited by the Pope, Gregory
the Great, to England, on a mission to reconvert the
Anglo-Saxons to Christianity, in addition sought to
reconcile the early British Church, which had continued
to survive in Wales, with the Church of Rome;
and to that end he arranged a conference on or near
this spot, beyond the then boundary of Saxon England,
in the territory of the British clan known as
the Hwiccas. Had Augustine been a different manner
of man, the proposals he had to offer for a fusion of
the Churches would probably have been entertained;
but although long since canonised, he was really very
little of a saint, and by no means the eager missioner
he is generally represented. He came to England,
in the first instance, only because he was sent, very
much against his inclination, by his spiritual head,
whom he dared not disobey; and his haughty, intolerant
temper brought these ideas of unity to naught.
At the place of meeting was an oak-tree, for many
centuries afterwards known as "St. Augustine's Oak,"
but long since utterly decayed and vanished away.
It is said to have been felled about 1825, and the site of
it is supposed to be a small group of farm-buildings,
rebuilt in modern times, known as the "Oak Barn."
The British clergy had heard unfavourably of Augustine's
domineering spirit, and went with suspicion
to meet him. They had agreed, however, when
they proceeded to this oak, which must have been
a notable landmark, that if he received them
standing, they would listen favourably to his proposals;
but if he sat when they presented themselves,
thus receiving them as inferiors, they would refuse
to discuss the question of unity.
Augustine received them sitting, and the conference
broke up. He is said to have performed miracles
here, at this meeting, and to have touched the eyes
of the blind with the water of the Lertoll stream, so
that their sight was restored; but none of these prodigies
availed with those slighted native clergy.
It is remarkable, however, that an obscure tradition
lingers among the peasantry of the neighbourhood to
this day, to the effect that the water of this stream
is "good for the eyes". You will not find this tradition
in books; it is just a belief handed down
from father to son in the course of some forty
generations.
"LERTOLL WELL"
The spring is situated in a meadow to the north of the Cricklade and Maisey Hampton road, and bubbles up and runs unheeded away, in these material, sceptical times; but those days are not far removed when the peasantry of Gloucestershire and Wiltshire resorted to it, for cure of their ailments, and filled bottles with the treasured water, for home use.
A mile or so below Cricklade, the river Ray flows into the Thames, from the direction of Swindon. Opposite, on the left bank, stands Eisey Chapel, on its little knoll amid the meadows. It is the place of worship of the hamlet of Eisey, a little collection of cottages removed out of sight from the river; and is just a small rustic Perpendicular building, with a bell-cote.
Water Eaton, which is not on the water, and Castle Eaton, which does not possess a castle, come next, both deriving the name from ea = "water"; the first named of the two therefore given its name twice over. The "water" of Water Eaton refers perhaps to the old manor-house, rather than the church, the manor-house being in sight of the stream. The prefix to the name must have been added in Saxon times, when the Romanised British were driven out and the descriptive nature of the name "Eaton" forgotten. Although not spelled in the same way as Eton by Windsor, the two mean precisely the same, and have fellows in very many other "Eatons" throughout England.
Water Eaton manor-house, of heavy Georgian architecture and dull red brick, with characteristically prim rows of heavily-sashed windows, is unimaginative but decorous.
Although Castle Eaton has now no castle, and
not even the discoverable site of one, here was formerly
situated a stronghold of the Zouches. It is a very
quiet village, of a purely agricultural type, and generally
littered with straw and fragments of hay.
Here
the Thames was until quite recent years crossed by
a most delightful old bridge, that looked like the ruins
of some very ancient structure whose arches had
been broken down and the remaining piers crossed
by a makeshift affair of white-painted timber.
"Makeshift" is perhaps hardly the word to be properly
used here, for it seems to indicate a temporary
contrivance; and this bridge, if not designed in keeping
with the huge, sturdy, shapeless stone and rubble
piers, was at any rate sufficiently substantial to have
existed for many generations, and to have lasted for
many yet to come.
THE OLD BRIDGE, CASTLE EATON.
Alas that we should have to write of all this in the past tense! But it is so. Twenty years ago, when the present writer paid his first visit to Castle Eaton, the old bridge was all that has just been described - and more; for no pen may write, nor tongue tell, of the beauty of that old, time-worn yet not decrepit, bridge, that carried across the Thames a road of no great traffic, and would have continued still safely to carry it for an indefinite period. It was one of the expected delights of revisiting the Upper Thames, to renew acquaintance with this bridge, sketched years before;
THE IRON GIRDER BRIDGE, CASTLE EATON.
and it was with a bitter but unavailing regret and a futile anger that, coming to the well-remembered spot, it was seen to have been wantonly demolished, and its place taken by a hideous, low-pitched iron girder bridge, worthy only of a railway company; and so little likely to be permanent that it is observed to be already breaking into rusty scales and scabs beneath its hideous red paint. The ancient elms that once formed a gracious background to the old bridge stand as of old beside the river bank; but the old bridge itself lies, a heap of stones that the destroyers were too lazy to remove, close by, on the spot on which they were first flung. No description, it has been said, can hope to convey the beauty of Castle Eaton Bridge, for the old stone piers were hung with wild growths, and spangled and stained with mosses and lichens. A sketch of one end of it may serve; but it once formed the subject of a painting by Ernest Waterlow, and in that medium at least, its hoary charm has been preserved. Let a photograph of its existing successor be here the all-too-shameful evidence of the wicked ways of the Thames Conservancy with this once delightful spot in particular, and with such spots in general. We cannot frame to use language too strong for a crime so heinous against the picturesque.
Let us recapitulate the facts, and draw the indictment more exactly against that sinning body. We shall thus ventilate a righteous indignation, and help to create a healthy public feeling against all such damnable doings, by whomsoever done. We are, of necessity, in this country of change and of an increasing population, faced with a continuous defacement of places ancient, beautiful and historic; and it behoves us to use our utmost efforts to preserve what we have left. What, then, shall we say of such absolutely unnecessary outrages as this? Shall we not revile the whole body responsible, from the Board and the Secretary down to the chief engineer and the staff of underlings who did the deed? The Thames Conservancy, in fact, has been a most diligent destroyer of the beauty of the river; slaving early and late and overtime in that devil's work, but remaining supremely idle where the encroachments of private persons, or the uglifications by waterworks companies, and modern mill-and factory-builders are concerned. It is the Thames Conservancy that has repaired the banks of the river and has reinforced the walls of its weirs and lock-cuts, with hideous bags and barrels of concrete, that retain their bag-and-barrel shape for all time, and so render miles of riverside sordid in the extreme. We simply cannot afford these ways with the river.
CASTLE EATON CHURCH: SHOWING SANCTUS-BELL TURRET.
The church of Castle Eaton is in a modest way a remarkable building. It is a moderate-sized Early English structure, chiefly notable for retaining its original stone sanctus-bell turret on the roof. The interior discloses nave and chancel only, with a shallow elementary north aisle, built out from the original building, and supported upon two wooden pillars on stone bases. This extension - a half-hearted addition - was itself made several centuries ago, apparently for the purpose of affording additional seating accommodation at some period when the population had increased. But it has greatly shrunken since then; and in these times when the towns have superior attractions for all wage-earners, it still continues to shrink.
 OLD WOODWORK, CASTLE EATON. |
A very curious old oak post, some seven feet high, and carved with a spiral pattern, stands at the end of one of the pews, and seems to mark what must have been the old manorial pew; bearing as it does on its ornamental head a shield of arms, dated 1704, probably that of some bygone local family. The whole affair looks remarkably like a part of some old four-poster bedstead, but it may be one of the supports of a former western gallery. A half-length fresco figure of the Virgin - the church being dedicated to St. Mary - is to be seen on one of the walls, and a very large, and apparently fine, brass of a knight was once in the church. But this has been at some time destroyed, and the stone indent itself is now to be found, flung out of the building and used as a paving-stone, outside the west door. |
Road, river, and canal now all make for the village of Kempsford, which does not derive its name from some ancient, prehistoric Kemp, but from "Chenemeresford," said to signify "the ford on the great boundary"; that is to say, the river. And Kempsford is situated in Gloucestershire, here divided from Wiltshire by the Thames, which forms the natural frontier of many counties along its course, from Thames Head to the sea.
THE THAMES AND SEVERN CANAL, NEAR KEMPSFORD.
We shall find the best way from Castle Eaton to Kempsford, little more than a mile distant, to be across the meadows and to the towing-path of the Canal, here and onward to its beginning at Inglesham, a very beautiful stretch of water-way; overhung, as it is, by noble trees in places, and rich in rushes and water-lilies. When the Gloucestershire and other County Councils, together with the local Rural District Councils, procured an Act of Parliament for taking over this neglected waterway, great hopes were entertained of reviving an undertaking which had never been remarkable for its financial success, and it was fondly hoped thereby to break the "monopoly" held by the railway. A trust was formed in 1895 by those public bodies interested, and it was agreed to guarantee £600 annually for thirty years for repairing and working the canal. The Great Western Railway was thus rid of an incubus, and the ratepayers of these various districts find themselves saddled with an utterly unremunerative expenditure that no commercial firm would have had the folly to assume. For not only were the repairs of Sapperton Tunnel exceedingly costly, and the general overhauling of the canal expensive, but no traffic worth the mention has been induced to come this way. Those squanderers of public money were heedless of the facts of modern business, and forgot to consider that in these latter days time is more than ever the essence of the contract in worldly affairs. Less able than ever, therefore, are canals to compete with railways. So once more, after a fugitive period of activity, we see the Thames and Severn Canal returning to its old neglected condition.
NORMAN PORCH, KEMPSFORD.
KEMPSFORD CHURCH.
Kempsford church-tower is prominent across the
meadows, and we find it to be a notable and interesting
church, and the village a place of aristocratic appearance,
where humble cottages are few and the manor-house
imposing. This is as it should be in a place
with its history: the manor having once belonged
to Edward the Confessor, who gave it to Harold.
William the Conqueror conferred it upon one of his
knights, and in the course of the centuries the property
came to Henry, Duke of Lancaster, whose son-in-law,
John o' Gaunt, Shakespeare's "time-honoured
Lancaster," once resided here, greatly favouring this
one of his many manors, of which the number scattered
all over England was so great that it would have
been distressingly hard work for him to visit them
each and all in the course of a year.
The only son of Henry, first Duke of Lancaster,
was drowned here, and his sorrowing father is said
never again to have resided at Kempsford. On the
north door of the church is nailed a horseshoe, in
allusion, it is said, to one cast by his horse on his
departure, and immediately nailed up here by the
inhabitants. It is, indeed, often said to be the original
shoe, but that is an absurdity. A curious other
horseshoe legend and observance is to be noted at
the town of Lancaster, John o' Gaunt's ancient palatine
seat. There, where the two principal thoroughfares
of the town cross, is "Horseshoe Corner," so
named from the horseshoe let into the roadway, and
renewed in every seven years; in memory, says
tradition, of a shoe cast there by his horse.
Kempsford church consists of a long and lofty
aisleless nave, with tall central tower. The nave is
Norman, with Norman doorways and Perpendicular
windows, and very beautiful, gorgeous, and impressive.
The ancient manor-house, frequently styled "the Palace," came at last into the possession of the Hanger family, Earls of Coleraine, one of whom wantonly destroyed it.
The Thames and the Thames and Severn Canal, running almost side by side at Kempsford, now abruptly part company again, and meet only three-and-a-half miles farther on, at Inglesham. The canal is the more easily followed, since the windings of the Thames in those miles add certainly another mile and a half to the distance, and are to be followed only with extreme difficulty by canoe, or afoot through many fields. Hannington Bridge, crossing it nearly a mile and a half below Kempsford, is the first bridge of any importance, and is a solid, stolid modern masonry building, eminently practical and unimaginative, serving to carry the road from Highworth to Fairford across. The remains of an old weir on the way give pause to the exploring canoeist at most seasons; and a small tributary, the river Cole, hailing from Berkshire, is seen on approaching Inglesham.
INGLESHAM CHURCH.
There are no churches in these surroundings more interesting than the humble little building at Inglesham, one mile from Lechlade, in an almost solitary situation. It is quite a rustic church, chiefly in that best period of gothic architecture, Early English, and it is so far removed from restoration, or even adequate care, that it is almost falling to pieces. Damp and neglect have wrought much havoc here, and the zealous concern of the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings, by preventing any large scheme of repair, seems not unlikely to result, at no distant date, in the entire dissolution of the structure.
INGLESHAM ROUND HOUSE.
The meeting of the canal and river at Inglesham
Round House is marked picturesquely by the grey
round tower of the Round House itself, and by a row
of tall poplars. The Round House is nothing but a
glorified lock-keeper's house, situated beside this,
the first lock, where the canal sets forth on its way
toward Stroud and the Severn. A mile farther downstream
lies the town of Lechlade, across the lovely
level meadows, with the tall spire of its church
glinting whitely in the sun. It is an exquisite view,
and so alluring that you are in haste to make acquaintance
with Lechlade itself, that promises so romantically.
But let us not hurry. Rather that distant
view than Lechlade at close quarters; for although
it is in very truth an inoffensive town, it is also sufficiently
true to remark that it is dulness incarnate,
and that this mile-long glimpse will be found the
better part.
At Inglesham Round House there are plentiful
facilities wherewith to refresh the body and to employ
the uncultivated mind; for the lock-keeper's domain
includes a number of apologetic sheds and shanties
devised for the benefit of picnic-parties; and anything
eatable or drinkable likely to be called for by
parties on picnic, or boating, or merely padding the
hoof, is obtainable, together with the mechanical
music of melodeons or other such appliances that will
serve you with pennyworths of minstrelsy, as more
or less appropriate sauce. Here also is a greatly-patronised
camping-ground, generally plentifully occupied
with tents in favourable summers. The river
Coln here also flows into the Thames from Fairford.
It is a pretty spot, with its hunchbacked lock-bridge,
and the not unhandsome modern foot-and
tow-bridge that spans the Thames, helping to compose
a picture. It is the Ultima Thule of the Oxford man's
"Upper River"; the farthest point to which it is
generally navigable for small boats.
Passing Inglesham Round House, and proceeding
over the foot-bridge to the right bank of the Thames,
toward Lechlade, we enter Berkshire; crossing over
the stone single-span Lechlade bridge into the town
and into Gloucestershire.
The town of Lechlade takes its name from the little
river Leach which rises at Northleach, fourteen miles
in a north-westerly direction, and gives its name to
Northleach, East Leach Turville, and East Leach
Martin. Although Lechlade - i.e. "Leach-let," the
outlet of the Leach - thus obtains its name, that
little river flows into the Thames at a considerable
distance away, two and a half miles below the town,
at Kelmscott.
[Actually just below The Trout at St John's Bridge!]
The disastrous persons who derived "Cricklade"
from "Greeklade," and invented a university of
Greek professors there, made "Lechlade" a rival
seat of learning, where Latin was taught, and gave
its original name as "Latinlade." Fuller tells us
how this imaginary university - in which he seems to
have believed - ended by migrating to Oxford. He
is quite poetic about it.
"The muses," he says, "swam down the shores of the river Isis, to be twenty
miles nearer to the rising sun."
Other, and equally weariful, persons made Lechlade,
"Leeches-lake," the home of the College of
Physicians ("leeches") relegated to this obscure
town - which, of course, it never was.
It is now hardly conceivable that once upon a
time there was a considerable traffic in cheese upon the
upper Thames, between Cricklade, Lechlade, Oxford,
and London; but such was the case. This was formerly
a great cheese-producing district, as it might
well be now; and, as roads were bad everywhere
and railways were not yet, the only method was to
load the cheeses on barges, and so float down-stream.
Lechlade is very well on week-days, in the quiet
way of all such decayed townlets, but on Sundays
it is not to be recommended. Dulness stalks its
streets almost visibly, and the only sounds are the
argumentative tones of the preacher in the Wesleyan
chapel (a building with black doors and gilded
mouldings, after the fashion of a jeweller's shop) at
one end of the street, whose raucous voice can be
distinctly heard at the other: not unlike that of a
man quarrelling outside a public-house.
But the fates preserve us from a Sunday at Lechlade!
It is fully sufficient to skim through the place
at such a time, and make for some other that does
not so completely figure the empty life. A village
is not dull, because it has no pretensions to being a
town - and country life is never dull. But at Lechlade
the position is so desperate on Sunday that, for
sheer emptiness of other incident, a large proportion
of the population flock the half-mile that stretches
between the town and the railway-station, and hang,
deeply interested, upon the bridge, to witness the
Sunday evening train depart. It is a curious spectacle,
and one that carries the mind of a reminiscent
reader back to stories of marooned castaways on
desert isles, gazing hopelessly upon the departing
ship that has left them to solitude and despair. That
must needs be a place of an extreme Sabbath emptiness
where the grown-up inhabitants are impelled,
by way of enlivening the weary evening, to walk half
a mile to witness what seems an incident so commonplace
to the inhabitants of places whose pulses beat
more robustly.
LECHLADE.
The "pratie pyramis of stone," as Leland styles the spire of Lechlade church, is almost the only architectural feature of the townlet, if we except a few mildly-pretty stone-built houses of Tudor gables and mullioned windows; among which may be included the "Swan" inn. None of these are included in the accompanying view of the church, which, although graceful without, and promising interest within, has been miserably treated, and swept clear of anything of note. A few curious carvings are to be noted on the lower stage of the tower exterior, including a singular bearded and capped profile head and a hand grasping a scimitar. Although well done, they look like the idle sport of some irresponsible person or persons, and do not appear to have any particular meaning or local application.
ANCIENT CARVING, LECHLADE
The architecture of the building is of no great interest to archæologists, being of somewhat late Perpendicular date, but a charming example of tabernacle-work may be noted on one of the piers of the nave-arcade, adjacent to the font. On the gable of the nave, at the east end, is a figure of St. Lawrence, to whom the church is dedicated. He holds a gridiron, the symbol of his martyrdom, in one hand, and the book in the other.
Fairford is the centre of attraction in this district.
It lies away north-west, four miles distant, at the end
of the little railway from Lechlade, on the river Coln.
The Gloucestershire Coln has its name spelled without
a final "e" (for what reason no man knoweth), and
gives a title of distinction to a group of villages - Coln
St. Denis, Coln Rogers, and Coln St. Aldwin's - that
are famed for their beauty.
But Fairford has superior
claims to notice, chiefly for the celebrated stained-glass
windows of its church.
A STREET IN FAIRFORD.
"Fair-ford" may or may not derive its name
from its picturesque situation, but the beauty of
the ancient ford of the Coln, now and for long
past crossed by a bridge, might well warrant an
assumption that the name arose from an æsthetic
appreciation of the scenery. Exactly what it is like
to-day may be seen by the view shown here, with its
noble church placed finely above the meadows.
Fairford is a village that was once a town, prosperous
in the far-off days when the wool-growers and
the cloth-workers of the Cotswolds made fortunes in
their trades and founded families that came in time to
a dignified haven in the peerage; and at last declined
and died out, or have rejuvenated themselves with
American marriages and the dollars incidental thereto.
This old process of founding families by way of successful
trading we may still see at work, in our own
times, under our own intimate observation, encouraged
by the institutions of primogeniture and a House
of Lords, two most powerful incentives to success.
Fairford nowadays stands aside from all these
activities. Its day is done, and except on those occasions
when the motor-omnibus between Lechlade
and Cirencester plods through, and on the weekly
market-day, there is no stir in the place at all.
Its fine church and the famous windows alone bring
strangers here. The church is due to the munificence
of the Tame family. John Tame, merchant, of
London, purchased the manor in 1498, and died
twenty-seven years later. He must have been a
typical "new man," with plenty yet to spare of the
abounding energy that had made his wealth in London,
for it was he who began, and nearly completed, the
rebuilding of Fairford church. We may well picture
him, in our imagination, hopeful of founding a family,
as many other successful traders of that expansive
age had already done, or were doing. His immediate
descendants, however, failed him, and the name is
extinct. It was his son, John, who completed the
church, and died in 1534. Monumental brasses to
the memory of these Tames, and of the third and last,
Sir Edmund Tame, are seen here, but their greatest
monument is the church itself, a beautiful example
of the last developments of Perpendicular architecture,
in which the coarsened mouldings, here and there
noticeable, the curiously-set pinnacles of the tower,
and the character of the grotesques carved on the
exterior, alone hint of that new leaven in matters
architectural and spiritual, the Renascence, that was
presently to overthrow ancient architecture and
much else.
But the wonderful windows, twenty-eight in all,
the finest and largest set of old stained-glass windows
in England, are our chief concern at Fairford.
The question as to the foreign or English workmanship
of these windows has always been in dispute;
unnecessarily, it would appear to the present writer.
They are, for the most of them, obviously of Flemish
origin; and a late discovery would seem to have at
last settled the point. In the west window of the
south aisle will be observed an executioner with a
sword, on which is a monogram A. An ape also
appears in the window, for no very obvious reason,
except that it affords material for a pun; a form of
humour greatly favoured by the old craftsmen, as all
conversant with ancient churches well know. The
monogram and the ape point to the glass being
the work of Aeps, a Flemish worker in this sort
at the period of the Fairford church-building.
The large figures of the prophets and apostles
which fill the windows of the aisles are so unmistakably
Flemish that there should never have been the least
doubt about them. If there were any room for incertitude,
it would be in respect of the great west
window, the most remarkable of the series, which
appears to disclose no foreign element; but, as it in
all other respects obviously belongs to the general
scheme, it may perhaps be called Flemish, in common
with the others.
FAIRFORD, FROM THE RIVER COLN.
A legend long current, accounting for these windows,
says that John Tame, asked to pilot a vessel
containing them from Nuremberg to Rome, turned his
course to England instead, and in fact stole the windows.
Now, however fantastic this story, it probably
contains this much of truth, that it hands down a
foreign origin; but that this glass was acquired in
any chance way is altogether unlikely, for it bears
every sign of having been designed for this church,
and for the exact position and size of the windows
it occupies. The designs have been ascribed by some
to Albrecht Dü rer, and an old manuscript goes so far
as to relate a visit paid by Vandyck to Fairford, when
he said the drawing was Dü rer's work. This, however,
would seem to be impossible, as Dü rer was but
twenty-three years of age when Fairford church was
in course of building.
The great west window affords the chief interest,
illustrating as it does the Last Judgment. The upper
half, above the dividing transom, displays the company
of the blest, assembled round the central figure
of Christ in majesty, with St. John Baptist on His
right hand, and the Virgin on the left. Three half-circles,
somewhat resembling rainbows, surround
these figures; the first a deep red band, filled with
representations of the seraphim; the second, yellow,
with figures of the apostles; the third, blue, filled
with the cherubim. Angels fill the outer spaces,
quiring before the Throne. These be the glorious
surroundings of the good, the constant, and the
true.
The Doom, occupying the lower portion of the
window, is a striking example of imagination applied
to the subject of retribution for sin. The Devil and
his infernal host and the flames of Hell were evidently
very real to those who pictured these scenes of torment,
and to those who first looked upon them,
and they could certainly never have thought it
possible a time would come when people would either
laugh at these ideas of a real personal Devil with
attendant fiends, or look upon them as curiosities;
certainly without any fear or awe.
Devils
Here, in all the grotesque drawing and vivid colouring
of which that age was capable, we see the rewards
of wickedness. St. Michael the Archangel, in the
centre, is shown, holding the scales of justice, wherein
the souls of the dead are being weighed. On the left[82]
of him is St. Peter, with his key, standing at the
gates of Paradise; while on the right are seen the dead
rising from their graves, and the flames of Hell, a
little subdued by the weathering of the centuries,
awaiting them. In the lower right-hand
corner is a representation of the
Devil himself, with a head like a
cottage loaf, in the very opening of
his own especial region, holding the
red-hot bars, and grinning out between
them. Curious auxiliary devils are
shown, actively engaged in carrying the dead to
torment; among them the remarkable group imagetrated
here. The tall scaly devil on the right,
carrying one of the damned
on his back, is a blue
fiend; the other, displayed
in the act of lashing
a woman just rising from
her grave, is a strawberry-coloured
devil, covered
with pips, and glaring with
eyes of flame.
Other fiends in green,
in red, and in yellow, are
pursuing shrieking souls,
or, having caught them,
are seen flinging them into
pits of fire. Some of these
places of torment are shown neatly enclosed in
masonry, like blast-furnaces. Another fiend, imagetrated
here, regarding a woman clasping her knees,
seems to be rather of an apologetic, gentlemanly
type. It is his business to be a tormentor, but he
looks genuinely sorry for it.
THE GREAT WEST WINDOW, FAIRFORD, DISPLAYING THE "DOOM".
The other windows are of distinctly inferior interest,
displaying as they do mostly
saints, but some of the smaller
lights repay close attention.
In them you see the persecutors
of the Church, set forth with
every horrific detail of innate
malignity; while, hovering
over a representation of the
Crucifixion is seen a batlike
devil, awaiting the last breath
of the impenitent thief, to secure his escaping soul.
These remarkable windows owe their preservation
to the care taken of them by William Oldisworth of
Fairford, during the Puritan upheaval, probably with
the aid of Lady Verney, wife of Sir Thomas Verney,
lord of the manor. She was daughter and heiress of
Sir Edmund, the last of the Tames, and interested, of
course, in seeing that the gifts of her ancestors were
in safe keeping. The glass was, accordingly, carefully
removed and buried in Fairford Park. There
it remained until the restoration of order, when it
was exhumed and replaced. A tall classic column
stands as a monument to this singular history.
MONUMENT IN THE PARK, FAIRFORD, WHERE THE FAMOUS WINDOWS WERE BURIED.
It is not always so easy a matter as you might suppose to hire a boat at Lechlade for the thirty-two miles' voyage to Oxford; which, after all, is not only the best way of seeing the Thames, but the Thames Valley villages also. Unless considerable notice is given, especially if it be the week before Bank Holiday, the boat-proprietor is extremely chary of letting his craft out of sight, and it becomes a matter of favour and delicate negotiation to secure a boat, even though you tender good value in coin of the realm for its hire. The proprietor's point of view is that it is all very well for pleasuring folk to drop easily down to Oxford with the stream in two days, but it remains for him, or one of his men, to get it back against stream; not so easy a matter, even though the stream be gentle. In fact, the demand for boats for the trip is not sufficiently large for special arrangements for cartage back by road to be made; and that familiar summer sight anywhere between Richmond and Oxford, a slowly-progressing van, laden with boats, rolling along the intervening miles of highway, is not visible here. But, although the hiring is, as already said, somewhat difficult, the explorer has at least the satisfaction of finding the Upper River secluded and unspoiled.
Immediately below Lechlade begins that long and ever-increasing series of locks by which the Thames Conservancy has converted the river into an astounding succession of toll-gates; with this result, that you are not long out of sight of one lock before another comes in view; while lock-cuts in addition grow longer, as well as more numerous, and tend to make the river in many places very formal. But, at any rate, the true river-course, leading to the weirs, or often round by what are now backwaters, is by contrast, and by disuse, rendered often a very paradise of wild, untended life.
The first lock of the forty-two locks on the Thames is that of St. John's, which, like Lechlade Bridge, often styled "St. John's Bridge," takes its name from the Priory of St. John the Baptist that once stood hard by. The Priory was a Hospice as well, and was charged with the care of travellers who came this way. As part of their charge the Black Canons who formed the establishment built the original bridge across the Thames here.
St. John's Bridge, like some carefully-restored old dowager, by no means looks its age, but all those who care to know are credibly informed that "This bridge, though often repaired and altered on the upper part, is the original structure of great antiquity, having existed prior to the reign of Henry III." The "Trout" inn, formerly the "St. John Baptist's Head," stands beside a backwater, on the site of the Priory that was disestablished so long ago as 1473.
At St. John's Lock the lock-keeper not only hands you the first of the many threepenny pink tickets that are painfully familiar to those who cruise upon the Thames, but another in addition, for Buscot Lock, one-mile-and-a-quarter onward, where the poor, impoverished (or, perhaps more likely, the mean, parsimonious) Conservancy cannot, or at least does not, maintain a resident lock-keeper; with the result that you have the choice of working your own way through, or of leaving the job to the official hands of the keeper at St. John's, who in the latter event cycles the distance. But in any case you pay your threepence for each lock.
The Thames from this point becomes singularly
lonely. Few roads cross it, and the villages are
small and infrequent, and are rarely to be seen from
a boat. The ideal method of exploration is to take
a bicycle on the boat and to lay it across the bows,
where it is out of the way and yet easily within reach
when wanted. Then, at some convenient point,
where a road or path comes down to the river, and
places likely to be of interest are but a mile, or two
or three miles, distant, it is your easiest method to
have out the machine and explore swiftly and with
ease, among little-visited ways.
Buscot, however, on the Berkshire shore, is so
close at hand that its church may easily be seen from
the boat and visited by the mere effort of pulling
to the bank under the hoary willows, and stepping
into the meadow beside whose buttercup-spangled
grass it stands.
Buscot - formerly Burwardscott, then corrupted
into Burscott, and finally into the present rendering - is
a place of some note, artistically and agriculturally,
for the little parish church has an east window
by Burne-Jones, representing the Good Shepherd,
instead of the usual ecclesiastical-furnishers' impossible
stained-glass saints. We may perhaps, without
offence, congratulate ourselves and all concerned
that those stained-glass freaks are, and must ever
have been, impossibilities. They have the most
unprepossessing countenances, of an impossibly holy
type, and generally the vilest taste in coloured robes;
while of the Burne-Jones saints we can at least say
that, although commonly eight feet high in proportion
to their heads, and generally of a consumptive type,
they are at least recognisably like human beings.
And a saint, you know, was originally, before he or
she was given his or her halo and other extraordinary
attachments, merely a more than usually good person
of just ordinary physical attributes. I don't think
anyone will have the hardihood to deny that. One
other prime curiosity the church of Buscot possesses:
a very highly enriched pulpit of wood, with panels
painted in various religious subjects, by or after
artists of the Italian School. A panel representing
the Annunciation is more remarkable than ever was
intended, for among the attendant Wise Men from
the East is shown a negro with black head and arms
and white legs! "Can the Ethiopian change his
skin?" Partially, it should seem.
Buscot manor-house is as notable for containing
the Burne-Jones "Briar Rose" sequence of paintings
illustrating the ancient legend of the Sleeping Beauty,
as the owner is for his successful shire-horse breeding.
It is not often that the love of art and keen interest
in shire horses are shared equally by one man, as
they are by Sir Alexander Henderson, of Buscot,
who is at once the owner of the finest Burne-Jones
pictures and the breeder of "Buscot Harold," champion
of three successive London Shire Horse Shows.
It is interesting to know that Buscot manor-house,
standing in its park on the ridge above the river,
on the way to Faringdon, was built from the stones
of the demolished palace at Kempsford, even though
we may see only an eighteenth-century solidity and
comfort, rather than any hint of beauty or history
in the re-edified stones.
Hart's Weir, or Eaton Weir, as the Conservancy
elects rather to style it, is but a mile-and-a-quarter
below Buscot, and is one of the few old-fashioned
weirs, fitted with paddles and rymers, of which a few
are removed for the passage of a boat, that now
remain.
Beside it stands the "Anchor" inn, with
not another house in sight, and the little church of
Eaton Hastings - it would be an affectation to speak
of the village, unless a few scattered cottages may so
be named - two miles away, by the riverside, but so
hidden that its existence is not suspected by passing
oarsmen.
It is amusing to observe the blank puzzlement that
overspreads the faces, and governs the actions, of
those occupants of boats from Lechlade who, coming
for the first time to this unfamiliar type of weir and
lock combined, helplessly steer from one side of the
river to the other, in search of the familiar lock-cut
and lock-gates, and, failing to find them (as well they
may, for such things do not exist here), at last landing
and enquiring for them at the inn.
Eaton Weir is
one of the last now left of the old weirs that served
the turn of the river in days of old, and they are
therefore now so uncommon that none need feel
ashamed of coming unexpectedly for the first time
to one, and not comprehending the situation. But
those who are taken by surprise here and cannot
understand why they can find no way through, do,
it is evident by leisured observation, feel a kind of
shame at being so completely "sold."
Eaton Weir,
and others of its kind, are, in fact, complete barriers
across the river, affording a check to all craft until
four or five of the paddles are pulled up.
The construction
is simple, consisting of a sill, generally a
heavy beam of wood, laid across the bed of the river,
with a similar beam crossing immediately over it,
from bank to bank. These form the framework of
the weir, which is completed by a number of stout
supports going perpendicularly down at intervals
from upper beam to lower, and by a continuous row
of "paddles" set between them. The "paddles"
are, roughly speaking, in the shape of shovels, but
much longer in the handle and bigger in the blade.
It is obvious that when all the paddles are down in
their places the head of water must be considerably
raised above the weir, although a volume of water
pours through all the while.
To admit the passage
of a boat, the weir-keeper draws up four paddles or
more, and then, if the craft be going down-stream,
it is guided by the steersman carefully to the weir, and
deftly allowed to be shot through by the force of the
waterfall thus created in the opening. A little mild
excitement generally accompanies this "shooting the
rapids," even though the fall be only about eighteen
inches to two feet when the paddles are first drawn,
and reduced to almost nothing if you wait a few
minutes while the head of accumulated water runs
itself away.
The Thames Conservancy will have its
dues, and whether it be a lock or a weir you pass,
you render threepence for a small boat, and receive a
pink ticket in return.
And so one comes to Kelmscott, which owes its
name to some Saxon thane, just as Buscot derives
from some dim ancient Burward. But of that[94]
Kenelm whose "cot" this was, history says no more
than it does of Burward. If we adventure into the
hinterland at the back of Bampton - whose full name
is Bampton-in-the-Bush - we shall find two other
"cots," or "cotts," Alvescott, and Kencot - and
there is Cote (which is merely "cot" spelled in
another way, and unappropriated to any personal
name) further down-stream behind Shifford.
At Kelmscott the river Leach comes really to its
"lade," or outflow; its "let," or outlet: a similar
word being used at Oaklade ("uisk-lade," or water
outlet), where the Swillbrook joins the Thames, and
at Cricklade, where the Churn falls in.
[Not on modern maps it doesn't! There is a stream marked "drain" joining from that direction
- but its tiny compared with the much larger river that joins at St Johns]
In the words of the presiding genius of the place, the late William
Morris, Socialist, poet, decorative-artist, demagogue,
literary man, and master-printer, this is
"a reach of the river where on the side of the towing-path is
a highish bank with a thick whispering bed of reeds
before it, and on the other side a higher bank, clothed
with willows that dip into the stream, and crowned
by ancient elm-trees."
Very true. It is also a
beautiful and sequestered spot; and although now,
since the death of William Morris in 1896, become a
much-talked-of new literary shrine, few are those who
trouble its ancient peace.
The village lies near the banks of the Thames, with
a rough, unkempt piece of common opposite the old
Elizabethan, stone, gabled manor-house that was for
some years the home of Morris and of Dante Gabriel
Rossetti. Nothing but the upper windows of the
old house can be glimpsed from the road, for a very
high wall effectually guards its seclusion.
KELMSCOTT MANOR.
Morris loved the place with an intense love,
and brought back to the house much of its old
ways, with much else of his own, in artistic "Morris
tapestries" and other hangings, such as were designed
by him and Burne-Jones, made at Merton
by Wimbledon, and sold at the establishment of
Morris & Co. in Oxford Street. We do not
commonly look upon Socialists as anything but
discontented artisans and weekly wage-earners in
general; but Morris performed his share of street-corner
spouting with such, and yet dreamed golden
dreams of the World Beautiful, and did much to
make it so. But, at the same time, his lovely wares
in wall-papers, in hangings and carpets, in furniture
and stained-glass, were of the most expensive kind
that none of those "have nots" could by any means
possess. The famous Morris books, too, produced
at the Kelmscott Press, Hammersmith, were of
those prices that only plutocrats could afford, and
were produced strictly after the individualistic and
anti-Socialistic theory of "limited edition."
The only new house in Kelmscott village is one
built to preserve the memory of this man who wrought
such beautiful things and preached doctrines so impossible;
and on the front of it is a very ornate tablet,
bearing a portrait-medallion. The work is, however,
in such low relief and so elaborated that it is difficult
to be clearly distinguished.
Away through the scattered village, and out at the
other end, stands the little decayed parish church of
St. George: decrepit and surrounded in most melancholy
fashion by spindly overhanging lime-trees.
The place oppresses the stranger, even on summer
days, with gloom, which is increased as he walks up
the dank little pathway to the south porch, among
the serried graves of a numerous local family, each
one within his concrete bed. The quite plain headstone
to William Morris is close by.
There is no feeling of this melancholy in the account
written by Morris, in his 'News from Nowhere', of a
village church; but which was evidently a description
of this:
"We went into the church, which was a simple little building with one aisle divided from the nave by three round arches, a chancel, and a rather roomy transept for so small a building, the windows mostly of the graceful Oxfordshire fourteenth-century type. There was no modern architectural decoration on it; it looked indeed as if none had been attempted since the Puritans whitewashed the mediaeval saints and histories on the wall."
KELMSCOTT CHURCH.
The building is chiefly of Early English date, consisting of nave, chancel, rudimentary north aisle of a makeshift character, and north and south transepts and clerestory. There is a rough tub-font. Some traces of ancient colouring are found on the round-headed arches of the nave-arcade; while the accompanying illustration will show that the sculptured capitals of the columns are of great, if simple beauty, and doubtless studied in the long ago from the water-plants of the Thames.
Nothing can equal the calm delights of those still, hushed hot days of early summer on these reaches of the upper Thames, when the tall sweet grasses of the meadows by which we float are ripening to the scythes of the reapers, and before the birds have quite finished their wild torrent of springtime mating song. Here, with the boat drawn up beside some tall sheaf of growing rushes, we may listen to the twittering distant song of the skylark, flying, an almost invisible speck, high up in the intensely blue sky; and may see the water-rat swimming across the stream. Cows gaze with a mild curiosity from the banks, under the welcome shade of the willows, or recline, with a certain lumpish dignity, among the buttercups and daisies. The fragrance of spring is yet in the land, and that man who, lazing here, lights a cigarette, and so imports an alien fragrance, offends against his environment.
FARINGDON CLUMP.
So we shall come, after many intervals and halts
by reedy shores where the waterlilies grow, to Radcot
Bridge; the meads spreading wide on either hand,
and the great imposing landmark of Faringdon
Clump for always prominent in the view on the right:
now, with the continued extravagant loopings of the
river, far ahead, now abreast of us, and again in the
rear; so that it becomes difficult to believe this
elusive landmark really one and the same hill.
Beneath Faringdon Clump lies the little town of
Great Faringdon, great only in its quietude, somewhat
broken, it is true, in these latter days by
motor-cars, that, rushing along the ridgeway road on
which it is situated, indecently disturb its slumbrous
dignity.
Faringdon Clump is emphatically the landmark of
this district, even as Wittenham Clumps are the
geographical pointers of a wide district between
Oxford and Wallingford. Many people know it as
"Faringdon Folly." The height of Faringdon Hill
itself, on which the clump of Scotch firs called "the
Folly" is situated, is about 500 feet, and Faringdon
town, although beneath it, is not itself by any
means in the levels, as those who, cycling to it
from the Thames at Radcot Bridge, shall easily
find, as they come laboriously up the ascending
gradients.
But, before we reach Radcot Bridge, the newly-built Grafton Lock has to be passed through. It is situated in a grassy solitude, and takes its name from an insignificant hamlet quite remote from the river. At Grafton Lock, indeed, the lock-keeper's wife and daughter, who between them take our threepence and work the lock-gates, are pleased to see the infrequent stranger, and to exchange the news, and receive well-earned compliments on the beauty of the lock-garden.
RADCOT BRIDGE.
Now comes Radcot Bridge, neighboured and overhung
by a wealth of trees; tall, slim, spiring poplars,
and others that spread boldly out. Radcot Bridge
is your only possible halting-place hereabouts for
the night; for here is the waterside "Swan" inn,
with its lawn sloping down to the river, its landing-steps
and boathouse: and Faringdon and its inns are
three miles distant. Thither, however, you must
needs fare, if so be the "Swan" is full.
The single-span, round-arched bridge through
which one comes in these times is not the real original
bridge, nor is the present course of the Thames at
this point the real original river. This is a new cut,
made in 1787, to improve the navigation, then still considered
to be of considerable commercial importance.
The old course of the river flows sluggishly to the
right-hand, and is not now practicable for boats.
Here still stands the ancient gothic bridge, with its
three pointed arches and the base and socket of what
was once a cross on the eastern parapet. This bridge
and the causeway built to it, across the meadows,
once formed a more important means of communication
than now, for the road across the Thames from
Faringdon led northwards to Burford, and so by
degrees into the Midlands. Its strategic value has
been at least twice imagetrated. The bridge itself
dates from about 1300, and was on December 20th,
1387, the scene of a sharp action in which Henry,
Earl of Derby, met and defeated Robert de Vere, the
Earl of Oxford, favourite of Richard the Second.
Many of de Vere's men were drowned here on that
December day, and their commander himself narrowly
escaped, by swimming across the river, half clad in his
armour. His force seems to have been taken completely
by surprise. The "Henry, Earl of Derby"
of this affair was he who twelve years later, 1399,
at last succeeded in deposing Richard, and reigning
in his stead, as Henry the Fourth.
The second occasion of Radcot's figuring in martial
annals was a skirmish in the long course of the Great
Rebellion, when Faringdon House, up yonder, three
miles away in the town, was held for the King, and
the bridge was occupied as an outpost. Cromwell's
men appear to have driven the outpost in, with some
loss.
But, before an end is made with Radcot Bridge,
let us note the little-known fact that it was hence,
in those seventeenth-century times, when roads were
little better than muddy tracks across the fields are
now, that much of the stone employed by Wren in
the rebuilding of St. Paul's Cathedral was brought
to London. The old quarries whence this stone
came have been closed now for two hundred years,
but the site of them is still to be found at a spot to
this day known as "Kit's Quarries," near Burford,
eight miles north of Radcot Bridge. I have written
about Christopher Kempster - the "Kit" of those
quarries - in another place,
(See "The Oxford, Gloucester, and Milford Haven Road", vol. i., pp. 263, 266-269)
and have shown that he
was firstly clerk of works and master-mason in the
employment of Sir Christopher Wren for many years,
not only in the rebuilding of St. Paul's Cathedral,
but also in the general rebuilding of the City of
London churches. Retiring from those positions, he
bought the quarries, and thenceforward dealt largely
in the stone with which he had once built.
The stone was conveyed from near Burford, along
eight miles of bad roads, and here at Radcot Bridge,
on the old course of the river, before the new channel
was cut, was loaded, into barges, and so found its
way to London.
It will be well to explore into the level Oxfordshire
hinterland behind Radcot Bridge. There we shall,
in the course of two miles, find the untidy village of
Clanfield, which straggles lengthily
on either side of the grassy edges
of a stream three parts dry in
summer, and thus revealing to the
disgusted wayfarer rich and varied
deposits of unconsidered village refuse - in
the way of battered tins
and old boots embedded in the ooze.
Thistles, nettles, and scrubby weeds
bedevil the grass that might so
easily be made beautiful.
But there are evidences that
Clanfield is awakening to better
things. A "Village Institute" has
arisen amid these rank undesirables,
and tentative clippings, sweepings,
and garnishings may be noticed. The church and
churchyard are, fittingly enough, in the forefront of
these improvements.
ST. STEPHEN. CLANFIELD CHURCH.
It is a charming village church of moderate size, built in the Perpendicular period, and dedicated to St. Stephen, as those well versed in saintly symbols may readily perceive on approaching, by a glance at the curious figure of the saint himself, boldly sculptured on the tower. He bears in his right hand a little heap of what look like apples, but are intended to represent stones, in allusion to the manner of his martyrdom, by being stoned to death. On the west side of the tower is a tablet to the memory of James Joy and Robert Cross, killed by lightning when at work side by side in the fields, August 9th, 1845. Over the south door is an ancient sundial, cut into the masonry, and screened from casual observation by the porch, which is thus seen to be a later addition.
Great Faringdon, on the right, or Berkshire, side
of the river, is well worth visiting. Technically a
town, its inhabitants would probably feel injured by
any one styling it a village; but there are towns and
towns; and Faringdon, although it perhaps may
not be styled "decayed," is at any rate unprogressive.
There be those among us who are so constituted that
they mislike the word "progress," and are repelled
by any place they hear to be "progressive." This is
entirely due to the recent connotation of "progress."
Modern men have seen so much of the futile striving
and competition, the shameless advertising, and the
sordid things that stand for "progress" in these
days, that they look with yearning upon those spots
that are said to be "unprogressive," and ardently
wish their lives might be lived therein, instead of
being merely existed where the struggle for survival
is waged with ever-increasing severity.
Great Faringdon - how humorously that epithet
sounds to a Londoner! - is unprogressive in the best
of these senses. You do not find, on approaching it,
the ragged slummy selvedges that fringe the towns
where commerce thrives so abundantly, where the
rich grow daily richer, and the poor daily more abjectly
and helplessly impoverished. No matter from what
direction you approach Faringdon, along none of the
five entrances to the town do you see mean suburbs
spreading grimly into the shamed fields, nor plentiful
notice-boards declaring "This eligible land" to be
"ripe for building". Faringdon's expansive days are
done, and no man can see the likelihood of their
return, for, although the town is situated on such a
network of highways that travellers by road can
scarce get about the neighbourhood without going
through it, the great days of the road are passed, and
the motor-car is not going to bring them back in that
old sense. The last blow was delivered at the chances
of Faringdon's expansion when the main line of the
Great Western Railway was carried four miles to the
south, past Uffington, whence a small branch line
comes, to serve the town, and stops here.
Faringdon is an historic place, but its history ceased to be a living thing at so remote a period that it seems, to many who do not trouble to come to close quarters with it, to be a very dryasdust history indeed. It is largely the history of the Saxon kings, to many of whom Faringdon was a favourite place of residence. But of all these times, and of later royal visits, no tangible record is left; and the Faringdon of to-day is just an ancient market-town that contrives to live quietly on the needs of the surrounding agricultural population. In a rapidly-changing England, this town is one of a few that, made to stand aside from the ways of modern trade, remain very much what they have been during the last two centuries. The last incidents that ever stirred the pulses here were election contests, and the last issues in the larger sort that disturbed town and district were fought out so long ago as the middle of the seventeenth century, in the attack and defence of Faringdon in the Great Rebellion. Then the Royalists held the town and Faringdon House, the seat of the Pye family, behind the church. The Pyes had been in possession of the property only some twenty-three years when the troubles broke out, having purchased it in 1622. They were then on the popular side, Sir Robert Pye, indeed, having married the sister of John Hampden, the patriot, who lost his life at Chalgrove Field. Greatly to his mortification, the Royalists had seized and garrisoned his mansion, and it fell to his lot to besiege it. The elder of the two sons of this Sir Robert was that Hampden Pye, born in 1647, who is the subject of the Ingoldsby Legend of "Hamilton Tighe," "a sobriquet interfering neither with rhyme nor rhythm," as the author justly claims. The legend of Hampden Pye, which Barham thus versified, was one once current in Faringdon and Uffington, and the surrounding district; and told how he, the eldest son, heir to the family estates, contracted what his family regarded as an undesirable marriage, and how he was hounded on to join the naval expedition to Vigo, under the command of Sir George Rooke, in 1702. His own mother is said to have been chiefly instrumental in this, and to have been among those who secured his being placed prominently in the post of danger, so that he might be got rid of. One of the earliest shots in action carried off the head of Hampden Pye, who was by no means the reckless youngster we might at first suppose, for a comparison of dates shows him to have been fifty-five years of age at the time.
It was believed in Faringdon that always afterwards, when his mother went out in her carriage, the spectre of her son stood at the door with his head under his arm, handed her in, and took his seat opposite. He grew even more troublesome after her death, but was at last "laid" for a hundred years in a small pond near the house by an eminent divine skilled in dealing with refractory ghosts. "The period," continues Barham, writing in 1832, "lapsed a few years ago, and the people are now very shy of passing the said pond after dark." And now the best part of another century has fled; but in the meanwhile the ghost of Hampden Pye appears to have been quiescent.
But the most famous of the Pyes was that Henry
James Pye, born here in 1745, who was descended
from Edmund, the younger brother of the unfortunate
Hampden, and was not only a typical county gentleman,
and sometime a member of Parliament, but
became also, in 1790, Poet Laureate. The appointment
was one of Pitt's political jobs, and given as a
reward for support in Parliament. Pye effected a
change in the old-time payment of poets-laureate in
kind by the annual gift of a tierce of Canary wine,
and accepted an annual £27 instead.
He was, in addition, a police magistrate at
Westminster; and was as excellent on the bench
as he was execrable in verse. When the office of
Poet Laureate comes under discussion, Pye in the
eighteenth century, and Alfred Austin in the present
era, are inevitably bracketed together, for the purpose
of showing to what depths of inanity a Poet Laureate
can descend. But both these laurelled bards have
been unjustly handled. To deliberately select the
inferior versifier of the age and to make him Laureate
is of itself a doubtful official service to a man; and
then for critics to maliciously pick out his most feeble
efforts by which to judge him and hold him up to
contempt is cruel. It is something as though we
were to appraise Tennyson by the Skipping Rope
(which is worse than any of Pye's futilities) and to
leave Maud altogether out of account. Pye's idea of
poetry was at any rate a part of the habit of thought
current at the time, and of the same order of flowery
compliment as that of Thomson, who wrote The
Seasons: although infinitely inferior in execution.
Topographical description, interlarded with generous
praise of his country-gentlemen neighbours, whose
seats dotted the country he described: that was
largely Pye's idea of poetry; and not a vicious, if on
the other hand not an inspired, view.
Pye was not a man favoured by fortune. When his
father died, he found himself heir indeed to the family
estates, but they were encumbered with debts to the
amount of £50,000; and soon afterwards the house
was burned down. He sold the estates about 1785,
from sheer inability to make head against his financial
embarrassments; and Faringdon knew the Pyes no
more.
But Faringdon Clump, already mentioned, was planted by him before the family connection was thus severed, and still flourishes; while his poetry lies dead and forgotten by the world at large. His other chief work was the pulling down of that Faringdon House which had been besieged by his ancestor, and replacing it by a new residence.
The large parish church, with curiously squat
central tower, suffered greatly during those warlike
operations of 1645-6. The spire, with which the
tower was at that time surmounted, was destroyed,
as also was the south transept; since rebuilt.
Numerous monuments and brasses are to be found
in this extensive Early English, Decorated, and Perpendicular
building. Prominent among these monuments
is the fine alabaster altar-tomb of Sir Henry
Unton, 1596, in the Unton Chapel. It was placed
here by his widow, Dame Dorothy Unton, whose
own effigy, in a kneeling attitude, was at the feet of
that of her husband, until tactless "restorers"
effected a very injudicious separation, and not only
took her away from her husband, but out of the
Unton Chapel, and placed her in that of the Pyes.
Sir Henry Unton was both a warrior and a diplomat.
He had earned his knighthood at the siege of Zutphen,
where his kinsman, Sir Philip Sidney, met his death.
Afterwards he became Ambassador to France. It
was while in Paris that he sent to the young Duke of
Guise, who had spoken slightingly of Queen Elizabeth,
a bitter challenge to a duel: -
"Forasmuch as in the lodging of Lord Dumayne,
and in public elsewhere, impudently and indiscreetly
and overboldly, you spoke badly of that Sovereign
whose sacred person I in this country represent: to
maintain both by word and weapon - her honour
(which never was called in question among people of
honour and virtue) - I say you have most wickedly
lied; and you shall do nothing else than lie whensoever
you shall dare to taxe her honour. Moreover,
that her sacred person (being one of the most complete
and virtuous Princesses that lives in the world)
ought not to be evil spoken of by the tongue of such
a perfidious Traytor to her Law and Country as you
are; and hereupon I do defy and challenge your
person to mine with such manner of arms as you shall
like or choose, be it on horseback or on foot. Nor
would I have you think that there is any inequality
between us, I being issued of as great a race and
noble house in all respects as yourself. So ... I will
maintain my words, and the lie which I have given,
and which you should not endure if you have any
courage at all in you. If you consent not to meet me
hereupon, I will hold you, and cause you to be held,
for the errantest coward and most slanderous slave
that exists in France. I expect your answer."
The Duc de Guise did not accept this offensive challenge,
although thrice repeated.
Built into the exterior east wall of the chancel is an unconventional monument. This is a cannon-ball, underneath which we read that it is "Sacred to the memory of John Buckley, formerly surgeon in His Majesty's Navy, who in an engagement with the French squadron off the coast of Portugal, Aug. 17, 1759, had his leg shot off by the above ball."
In the middle of Faringdon's steeply-descending street, here suddenly growing very narrow, is the old town-hall and market-house, supported on stone pillars, after a pattern familiar throughout Berkshire and other counties, and formerly open on the ground floor. A modern Fire Station now, however, fully occupies one end, and an old-fashioned lock-up, with barred and bolt-studded door, part of the other. On the stone pillar beside that prison door there is still to be seen a fragment of the hand-pillory, or iron wristlet, by which petty offenders were formerly secured until they had purged their offending.
FARINGDON MARKET HOUSE.
Returning now to Radcot Bridge, and the boat which is waiting all this while to convey us on our downward voyage, we pass on to Radcot Lock, a mile down, and under "Old Man's Bridge"; or rather the successor of an old wooden bridge that went by that name, and is now replaced by a smarter, white-painted bridge of like material, of which type there are several others between this and Oxford.
WOODEN BRIDGE ACROSS THE UPPER THAMES.
The landscape is here very open: the Berkshire hills situated at some considerable distance off, on the right, while the flat Oxfordshire plain, on the left, is lost in infinity. Here, on the way to Rushey Lock, are many backwaters, so screened by the tall growths of midsummer rushes and by the drooping branches of the willows, now made heavy by fully-grown foliage, and further masked by dense masses of water-lilies, that their existence is scarcely suspected.
And thus we come to Tadpole Bridge, of which the
very best to be said is that it is an eminently useful,
and quite inoffensive stone structure of one arch,
perhaps nearly a century old. We shall find, proceeding
down the Thames, that all too often it is
difficult to award even such negative praise as this
to the bridges that cross the river.
Here Tadpole Bridge carries an excellent road
across to Buckland, two miles on the right, in Berkshire;
and two miles to the left, to Bampton, in
Oxfordshire.
We will first see what Buckland may
be like. It is soon obvious that it occupies a site on the
ridge of hills running between Oxford and Faringdon;
for its square church-tower presently becomes
prominent on the skyline.
Buckland was for many generations, and until
the present time of writing, in possession of the
Throckmorton family, but now the extravagances of
bygone baroneted Throckmortons, and the mortgage-charges
they recklessly heaped up, have overtaken
the present generation, and Buckland has at last
been sold into other hands.
The great church of Buckland, largely Norman
and Early English, is neighboured by a modern
Roman Catholic church. The old church contains
some monuments of these long-descended Throckmortons,
and others to their predecessors, the Yate
family, among them that of a seventeenth-century
baronet and his lady, Sir Edward Yate and Lady
Katherine, who would appear, between them, according
to their epitaph, to have held all the virtues in
fee-simple:
In this black marble that each sex may finde
White and faire presidents to guide the minde,
Men, Women, know, remember
Both liv'd lively examples of conjugal,
Paternal, maternal, and religious vertue.
The Baronet particularly honoured for
Morall, economical and prudential merit.
The ladie reverenced for
Sanctimonious zeal, humble and constant patience,
Abundant charitie, and admirable justice.
Their daughter Elizabeth (who died a mayde,
her parents lyving)
Belovede, admired for
Devoute, chaste, modest and discrete
demeanour and fervent Charitie.
Reader! Depart! Imitate!
1648.
So the ancient tradition of the "bad Baronet"
has its exception here, at any rate. But what shall
we say of the lady whose "sanctimonious zeal" is the
subject of such confident allusion? Only this: that
there are two different meanings to "sanctimonious",
and that we must give her the benefit of the best
of them. Referring to dictionaries we find that to
be sanctimonious is either to be holy, or to be
"hypocritically pious or devout", like Shakespeare's
"sanctimonious pirate". Unfortunately for the posthumous
fame of the doubtless altogether estimable
lady, there is but one connotation of that expression
nowadays, and it is not the flattering one.
The stately stone eighteenth-century mansion of
the Throckmortons, with widespreading wings, ending
in pavilions looking more than a thought too airy for
this cold climate of ours, was the work of the Woods,
to whom much of the architectural dignity of the
city of Bath is due.
There are (or we must now say there were) curious
relics in this grand house of the Roman Catholic
Throckmortons. They included a chemise of that
precious "martyr," Mary, Queen of Scots, whom we
know from the pages of history to have been one of the
most wicked women that ever lived, and who was
justly - but belatedly - beheaded; and a gold medal
of Charles the First, another "martyr."
Here, too, is, or was, the famous coat made for Sir
John Throckmorton in 1811. Curious prints of the
making of this celebrated article of attire, brought
into being as the subject of a wager, are still sometimes
to be met with. The fashioning of it was a hey-presto!
kind of business. From the shearing of the
sheep, all through the many processes of treating the
wool, weaving the cloth, and making the coat, to the
wearing of that coat for dinner at Newbury, the total
time occupied was but thirteen hours and twenty
minutes!
The way to Bampton from Tadpole Bridge is
uneventful and unfrequented. This district was
long notorious for its entire lack of roads, and we may
read in old histories, "There was no stoned road of
any kind leading from Bampton to the neighbouring
towns and villages, and travellers were in the habit
of striking across the common and finding their way
to Witney, Burford, Oxford, or any other place as
best they could."
From these circumstances Bampton was known
as "Bampton-in-the-Bush," and appears of speculative
interest; but Bampton-in-the-Bush has long
since lost the greater part of its name; and now that
the roads in these parts of Oxfordshire are no better
and no worse than those to be found elsewhere in this
county, and now the scrub-woods and widespreading
common-lands that once overspread the locality have
given place to flat and uninteresting fields, it is
"Bampton" only; and a very dull place at that.
Its church is the principal feature - and a very
beautiful and unusual feature - of Bampton. The
tall stone spire is visible for miles across the level
landscape. It is largely a Transitional-Norman and
Early English church, and cruciform, with central
tower and north and south transepts. The broach-spire
is supported at the angles by graceful flying
buttresses, from which rise shafts, each of these four
shafts bearing the stone effigy of an apostle. The
effect of these figures, standing out boldly against the
sky, is very striking and unusual.
In the porch the otherwise unremarkable tablet to
Thomas Euston, who died in 1685, proceeds to record
the death of "Mary, his only wife," in 1699. No
polygamist he, at any rate!
The exceptional size and beauty of Bampton
church are greatly due to the peculiar ecclesiastical
history of Bampton, which until 1845 rejoiced, or
ought to have rejoiced, in the possession of no fewer
than three vicars for this one church; and, what is
more extraordinary still, these three clergymen had
each a vicarage, standing respectively north, south,
and east of the church. To complete this holy fence,
so to speak around it, on the west side was situated the
Deanery, now a farmhouse, where the Deans of Exeter
once resided when taking their summer holidays.
The origin of this remarkable arrangement is due to
Leofric, first Bishop of Exeter, a native of Bampton,
who, having endowed the church, presented the living
to the Dean and Chapter of Exeter; with the stipulation
that all vicars presented must have already
served in the diocese of Exeter. The three vicars
were styled "Portionists," each taking four months'
duty in the year. This curious arrangement came
to an end in 1845, when the parish was divided into
Bampton, Bampton Aston, and Bampton Lew, each
with its vicar, and either of the two newly-constituted
parishes, it may be added, with its fearsome would-be
Gothic church of that not sufficiently instructed
period.
BAMPTON CHURCH.
No one ever reads architectural descriptions, and so let it suffice to say that the interior of Bampton church is very well worth seeing; notably for its fine Saxon and Transitional-Norman chancel-arch. The monuments include one with a mutilated stone effigy of George Tompson, dated 1603. It could never have been a good example of the sculptor's art; and time and unsympathetic hands have conspired to reduce it to something the appearance of an almost shapeless log, but the rhymed epitaph, cast in characteristic early seventeenth-century form, has a certain prettiness of imagination:
Heavne hath my sovle in happiest ioye and blisse;
Earthe hath my earthe, whear bodie tomed is.
Poore have my store, for ever to their vse;
Frendes have my name, to keepe withovt abvse.
Heaven, earth, poore, frendes, of me have had their parte,
And this in lief was chefest ioye of harte."
A THAMES-SIDE FARM.
GATEWAY, COTE HOUSE.
There stands in the flat country between Bampton and Northmoor, amid the level meadows, washed, and not infrequently severely flooded, by the Charney Brook, by the Windrush, and by many mazy rills, the picturesque old mansion, now a farmhouse of a superior residential type, of Cote. It was built in the reign of James the First, between the years 1608 and 1612, by one Thomas Horde, and was originally surrounded by a moat. Alterations, apparently undertaken in 1704, the date of the fine wrought ironwork of the old gates secluding it from the road, abolished the moat; but a squat tower at one end of the grey, many-gabled mansion still discloses the old ideas of defence. It was at one time some twenty feet higher. At that period, when Thomas Horde built his house at Cote, times were, in fact, still unsettled, and one never knew into what dangers one might be drawn. The very year when he began building was the year of the Gunpowder Plot; and when such things could be, a man did well to stand upon the defensive.
Beyond Cote, towards the river, lies Shifford,
secluded and rarely visited. The old church of
Shifford fell down in 1772, and a new building took
its place. This was removed in 1863.
Shifford is traditionally the scene of a Parliament,
or Witanagemot, held here by Alfred the Great about
A.D. 890:
"There sate at Shifford many thanes,
many bishops, and many learned men, wise earls,
and awful knights: there was Earl Elfrick, very
learned in the law; and Alfred, England's herdsman,
England's darling; he was king of England; he
taught them that could hear him how they should
live."
There still remain, in the meadows by Shifford,
traces of earthworks and the stump of an ancient
cross, sufficiently proving that this was indeed
anciently a place of considerable importance. But
commerce with the world of affairs no longer stirs
the pulses of Shifford, or the neighbourhood of it, and
the Thames steals softly along, between tall palisades,
as it were, of rushes, and past the sentinel willows,
with only an occasional farmstead in sight; farms
where one might almost suppose the farmers to
consume their own produce, so remote from all
methods of conveying it away do they seem to be.
The willows, pollarded or left to their natural growth, that form, as it were, a continuous guard of honour along many miles of the upper course of the Thames, and overhang with a wild luxuriance its mazy backwaters, are indeed a guard to those banks in more than fanciful phrase. Their tangled roots clutch them in many-fingered embrace and support them in times of flood, and their gnarled and fantastic trunks serve the useful office at such times (when the meadows are under water and resemble inland lakes) of exactly delimiting the course of the stream, where the current runs deep and strong, and dangerous. Willows we always associate with a watery situation, and their habit is indeed better suited to low-lying meadows and to river-courses than to places high and dry. The great demands the willow makes upon water place it in the forefront as a drainer of marshy soil: and thus not only beside the Thames, but along rivers in general, and in the fens and on Sedgemoor, where the energies of hundreds of years past have been directed towards expelling the water, it is a familiar feature of the landscape. We also inevitably associate the willow, and especially that drooping variety, of the pendant boughs and leaves, known as the "weeping willow," with melancholy, and, from Shakespeare to W. S. Gilbert, it is associated with unrequited love. The spot where Ophelia met her death is thus described in Shakespeare:
There is a willow grows ascaunt the brook,
That shows his hoar leaves on the glassy stream."
The expression "hoar leaves" refers to the under side of the willow-leaf, of a whitish or silvery hue, not unlike hoar-frost; prominently seen when a strong wind ruffles the branches.
A THAMES-SIDE FARM.
The love-lorn among the characters in the operas
written by Sir W. S. Gilbert plentifully carry on the
old tradition, and from Archibald Grosvenor ("The
All-Right") and Patience, in the duet "Hey, Willow-waly
O!" to Teresa, in The Mountebanks, who sings,
"Willow, willow, where's my love?" they frequently
apostrophise this tearful tree. Nay, even in the
Bab Ballads we read of a troubadour whose refrain
was "Willow, willow, o'er the lea," and who maintained
it with such pertinacity that it is at last rightly
described as "his aggravating willow."
No one can pretend that a freshly-pollarded willow
is a beautiful object, as it stands up, naked, by the
riverside, shorn of all its branches, and resembling
nothing but some rude gigantic club with fist-like,
knuckly head, whence those branches have been
ruthlessly cut away. Even after two or three seasons,
when those branches have been allowed to grow again
and to present a more or less mop-like head of foliage,
the pollarded willows look whimsically like so many
Shockheaded Peters, after the style of the familiar
Struwelpeter German toy-book. Not beautiful, and
not perhaps ugly, they are the grotesque comedians
of the riverside scenery.
The willow is what scientists and arboriculturists
might - and possibly do - style an "economic" tree;
that is to say, it has commercially useful features.
Its bark is an excellent medicine for ague, and useful
for tanning, although oak-bark is better. The ancient
Britons wove their light boats, their "coracles," from
willow-wands, and cricket-bats are now made from
its wood. Thus descriptive writers upon cricket-matches,
thinking to be picturesque, are frequently
found using the vicious phrase "wielders of the
willow," when in fact they mean batsmen. Many
varieties of coarse baskets are now manufactured
from willow branches. Hence the assiduous pollarding
of the willow about once every seventh
year, in the middle of winter.
Even the familiar osiers of the Thames have some
of these economic uses, and the osiers themselves are
a variety of willow.
"By the rushy fringéd bank,
Where grows the willow and the osier dank,"
says Milton, illustrating, in his Comus, the almost inevitable companionship of these leafy cousins.
If we wished most strikingly and picturesquely to describe the difference between an osier and a willow, we should say that an osier was a willow without a trunk. The osiers grow in beds, as a dense array of upright rods, and, to the uninitiated, there is but one kind of osier, but experts are said to be able to distinguish three hundred varieties. Experts are wondrous folk. Strange to say, although we associate osiers with watery flats and soggy patches of ground, the "hams," or "holts," as the osier-beds are generally styled, must, if it is desired to grow a good crop, by no means be saturated with water. To successfully form an osier-plantation, the land must be well trenched or otherwise drained of all stagnant or surplus water. Basket-willows refuse to thrive in land that is awash, and they require the sustenance of good manure. Weeds, too, hinder their growth, and they are susceptible to attacks from fly.
All these particulars doubtless come as surprising information to those whose life on the Thames consists merely of rowing, sailing, or camping. If they notice the numerous osier-beds at all, it is only to wonder idly at the dense thickets of tall straight rods they form; and it is but rarely suspected, either that they are carefully planted and tended, or that the crop of rods is both valuable and precarious.
An osier-bed is formed by planting cuttings of
some six inches in length. Like cuttings from its
big brother, the willow, they strike easily, and soon
form vigorous plants. Indeed, in the case of green
poles and posts made of willow, many worthy housewives
have frequently been astonished at finding the
posts they use for hanging out the domestic washing
budding lustily and becoming healthy trees.
An osier-rod of one year's growth is ripe for cutting,
and cutting proceeds every year, from the established
stool: the season's growth being, according to the
variety, and to circumstances, anything from ten
to fifteen feet.
Osier-growing is a considerable industry, and,
with due care and ordinary good fortune, very profitable;
for there is not at present a sufficiency grown
in England to satisfy the demand, and we thus
import largely from France, Belgium, and Holland.
But, as shown already, the osier requires to be properly
tended, and has its enemies. Prominent among
these is the water-rat, whose destructive habits, in
gnawing through the base of half-grown rods, are
very costly to growers.
The rods are cut in autumn or winter, and are then
sorted into four sizes, known as "Luke," "Threepenny,"
"Middleborough," and "Great." Of these,
"Luke" is the smallest. They are done up for sale
in "bolts," i.e. bundles, forty inches round.
To prepare osier-rods for basket-weaving, they
are stacked upright in shallow trenches filled with
water, their butt-ends immersed from six to eight
inches; and thus they are left until spring, when,
with the rising of the sap, they begin to throw out
buds. When April at last is merging into May, the
rods have already burst into leaf and begun forming
roots. Then is the opening of the rod-strippers'
season; for at this juncture the bark is most easily
separated from the rods. Rod-stripping is one of
the few surviving primitive rustic industries, carried
on, according to the mildness, or otherwise, of the
spring, in the open air, or in rustic sheds. This is
pre-eminently an occupation for women and children,
and generally forms a picturesque scene, not remotely
unlike a gipsy encampment. The immemorial instrument
used in peeling or stripping the rods is a "break,"
formed of two pieces of iron or steel mounted side
by side on a wooden post, about waist-high, somewhat
resembling an exaggerated tuning-fork, or a "Jew's
harp." The rods are drawn through the springy
embraces of this contrivance, which thus cleanly
strips away the bark, and leaves the rod a pure white
wand. For the protection of more than usually
delicate rods from being bruised, the breaks are
occasionally faced with india-rubber.
The whereabouts of a busy group of osier-peelers
are readily discovered from some little distance, for
the operation of drawing the rods through the breaks
is accompanied by a sharp metallic "ping"; a
chorus of these sounds in several keys carrying a
long way across the still meadows. And if not by
sound, certainly by sense of smell is the group of
busy workers to be located, for the stripped osiers,
or rather, the peelings from them, give forth a strongly
aromatic and pungent odour.
The peeled rods are then carefully dried and
stored away. They form the material for white
baskets, or for baskets that are to be dyed. The
rods from which yellow or brown baskets are to
be made are treated differently, being peeled in
hot water, or in steam; this method - known as
"peeling buff" - bringing out the juices of the rods
and staining the surface, according to the variety of
osier, buff, brown, or yellow.
The ancient method of keeping count of the
number of bolts stripped by each worker was identical
with that employed in the hop-gardens, and is still
frequently used. This is by "tally." Computation
by tally is one of the most ancient - perhaps the most
ancient - means of reckoning known, and preceded
the use of arithmetic. It consists of taking a short
stick of some soft wood, splitting it into equal halves,
and cutting notches along it. This method of keeping
count is simplicity itself, and absolutely beyond
possibility of fraud or error. The method employed
was, and is, to give each worker half of the split tally
stick; the other half being kept by the foreman.
In osier-stripping, upon a bolt, or bundle, of rods
being finished, the foreman takes the worker's half
of the tally, and, fitting it to the half he carries, cuts
a notch; and so on with each successive bolt. The
point is that the notches of these two halves must
of necessity agree, or "tally."
The tally system of accounts lasted until a very
late period in those most conservative of institutions,
Government offices, and it was the accidental flare-up
of a great mass of old Exchequer tallies that destroyed
the old Houses of Parliament at Westminster, in 1834.
The rushes, too, that grow so luxuriantly beside
the waters of the upper Thames have some economic
value, and form a very bulky harvest. The usual
frequenters of the Thames, who see nothing of the
river in spring, autumn, or winter, think of the rushes
only as those tall sword-like blades of living green
that keep guard along so many miles of meadows;
but the Thames in April shows a very different
complexion of affairs. Then the rush has merely
begun to show its sword-point above the water; and
does not attain its full height until June. It is in
flower during July and August; and in that last
month comes the harvest. It is perhaps rather
risky harvesting, and is accomplished from a punt.
The rush-cutter comes to his work armed with a
reaping-hook fixed to the end of a long pole, so that
he is enabled to reach deep down below the surface
of the water, where the rushes spring from their
roots.
The cut rushes are spread out in the meadows, to
dry, for two or three weeks; and, being so largely
charged with water, diminish remarkably in the
process of drying; a freshly-cut shock of sixty-eight
inches' girth shrinking to a bolt of forty inches. A
bolt of this size is generally sold for one shilling.
Dried rushes are used for making light baskets, and
often for thatching; but in olden times one of the
principal uses for them was the strewing of floors in
the home, for those were the days before the introduction
of carpets. The peculiarly sweet scent of the
dried rush made it especially welcome for this purpose,
and a fresh supply of rushes was thought the right
of every new guest. But the rush-strewn floors of
those ancient domestic interiors had their own peculiar
dangers and nastinesses, if the sweeping and the
renewing were not frequent; for the dogs of the
household generally lived and slept in the house, and
it was the usual practice for guests at table to fling
them bones and unappetising pieces of fat, which
therefore often lurked unsuspected for the unwary
heel among the rushes; often enough only belatedly
revealing their presence to the nose.
The Oxfordshire side of the river continues as flat as ever, to New Bridge, which, rising greyly from amid the sedges, commands extensive views, less by reason of its own height, which is nothing to speak of, than by the lowness of these level lands. New Bridge, which carries the Abingdon and Witney road across - it is not a greatly-frequented road - is the oldest bridge existing on the river. The traveller who has spent much time in exploring in the highways and byways of England is not surprised at this paradox, and has indeed met with so many Newtowns and Newports, Newmarkets, New Inns, New Colleges, and the like that are demonstrably of a hoary antiquity, and older than most other towns, markets, inns, and colleges, that he really expects a New Bridge to be at least five centuries gone in newness. And this bridge was built c. 1260, by the monks of a neighbouring monastery, which itself has wholly disappeared, while their old pont remains as sturdy as ever.
NEW BRIDGE: THE OLDEST BRIDGE ACROSS THE THAMES. The Maybush, and the Rose (Revived)
It is a queer, seven-arched building, just as Leland
wrote of it in the time of Henry the Eighth,
"lying in low meadows, often overflowed with rage of rain."
At the Berkshire end is the "Maybush" inn, and on
the Oxfordshire side is the "Rose", in friendly
rivalry; but where the trade comes from, in this
lonely situation, to keep them both going, is a mystery.
The customers can be but few, but what magnificent
thirsts they must possess!
At New Bridge the river Windrush falls into the Thames, from its source in the Cotswolds, thirty miles away, after passing through Witney, and by some very beautiful scenes. It is the "nitrous Windrush" of Drayton's verse: those supposed nitric qualities of its waters having originally led to the establishment of Witney's blanket-making industry.
That the flat, low-lying lands here were in former times under water seems sufficiently evident in the name of Standlake, a village a mile-and-a-half distant from New Bridge. A British village, discovered in 1857, near by, may have been one of those lake-villages in which, for security, our remote ancestors dwelt. The church of Standlake has a quaint semi-detached octangular tower, crowned with a spire.
[ North of Standlake Road between Standlake & Northmoor]
There are some curious and interesting places to be found in these flat, unfrequented lands. Proceeding towards Northmoor, ever and again crossing tributary rills of the Windrush, the moated manor-house, now a farm, of "Gaunt's House" lies secluded amid meadows. It takes its name from one John Gaunt, who originally built it about 1440, but there is nothing nearly so old here to-day. The place has its own little niche in history, for in the seventeenth century, at the outbreak of the Civil War, it was the property of that Dr. Samuel Fell, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, who was the subject of the famous undergraduate rhyme -
The reason why I cannot tell,
I do not like thee, Doctor Fell.
The Doctor was a Royalist, and his moated house
here was held for that side in 1644. After a stubborn
defence by its garrison of fifty men, who kept a
besieging force of eight hundred at bay for three
days, it surrendered on May 31, 1645. The house,
greatly injured in this warlike passage, was rebuilt in
1669 by Dr. John Fell, who also was Dean of Christ
Church. It is not a picturesque house, and seems
to have been greatly modernised about the beginning
of the nineteenth century. The woodwork of one of
the doors is, however, curiously pierced, as though
for musketry defence.
But, although the house itself is commonplace,
the broad moat, brimming full of water, is beautiful,
and in summer-time is so covered with waterlilies
that the water itself is not to be seen. Let those
who think this the language of exaggeration go and
see for themselves.
An old bridge, replacing a former drawbridge,
gives access to the house, through two tall gateposts
surmounted by worn stone heraldic effigies, blunted
by time out of all recognisable likeness; not only to
anything in nature, but even to anything in heraldry.
Here, serving to keep the wooden gateway open, is
an iron cannon-ball found in the moat, which, according
to an inscription on the wall, was cleared in
1883.
NORTHMOOR: CHURCH AND DOVECOTE.
Northmoor village, near at hand, has an interesting
church of the Early English period, and a charming
and unspoiled Jacobean mansion adjoining, which
has the appearance of never having been altered
since the first building of it.
Oddly placed by the road between mansion and
church, is a delightful old timbered pigeon-house,
which seems to be contemporary with the old residence.
At the west end of the church a quaintly balustered
bell-loft bears the following inscription, obviously
considered (by those who inscribed it) to be poetry:
Richard Lydall: Gave a new Bell,
And Built This Bell Loft Free:
And Then He Said: Before He Dyed,
Let Ringers Pray For Me. 1701.
Which was very wrong of him, a Protestant, living under the reformed religion.
The inner sides of the aisle-window splays here at Northmoor exhibit that peculiarity already noticed in several churches of the upper Thames Valley: a more or less decorative treatment of the inner arch. Here the special treatment is confined to a corbelling-out of the archway; but this is effected in a quaint manner: the corbel on one side being provided with a kind of vaulting-shaft. Here, as elsewhere along, or near, the course of the Thames, the strong influence of the river upon the imagination and work of the old architectural sculptors is distinctly to be noted: the capitals of the shafts being carved with representations of aquatic plants.
But the chief attraction, in all these parts adjacent,
is of course the village of Stanton Harcourt, and
that it is so, you who penetrate to it, along the level
roads, cannot fail easily to perceive, if not by evidence
of many sightseers making for it, then, at any rate,
in the numerous notices displayed offering accommodation
for tea-parties. Stanton Harcourt is beautiful,
alike in its old-world rustic village of thatched, unpretending
cottages, screened by noble elms from
rude blasts, and in the romantic and unusual group
formed by the ancient church-tower and the towers
of the old manor-house. Approaching, it is as
though the church had two towers, for the chief one
of the manor-house is very like its ecclesiastical
neighbour.
Stanton Harcourt must have derived the first
part of its name from some stone road, but the road
is obscure, and an absurd local legend, almost too
childishly-ridiculous to be repeated, tells us that it
arose from the brave deeds of a former Harcourt, who,
in that conveniently vague period, "ages ago," was
fighting desperately in some unnamed battle, and
was enjoined by his chief to fight on.
"Stand to un, Harcourt," he exclaimed;
and Harcourt feats of arms in "standing to un" accordingly won the day.
A curious thing may be noted: that the stones called
the "Devil's Quoits," near the village, are themselves
thought to be relics of a battle fought in A.D. 614,
between the Saxons and the British; long before
there were any Harcourts in the land.
STANTON HARCOURT: MANOR HOUSE AND CHURCH.
The Harcourts first came into possession of
Stanton over seven hundred years ago. It was in
1125 that the second Queen of Henry the First gave
the property to one Millicent de Camville, whose
daughter married Richard de Harcourt, thus the
first of a long line of that family, which really ended
with the mother of Edward Vernon, who assumed
his mother's maiden name, and died in 1847, as Archbishop
of York. The later and present Harcourts
are therefore really Vernons.
The ancient and beautiful manor-house of Stanton
Harcourt, a group of buildings forming a quadrangle,
was built about the middle of the fifteenth century,
with a rebuilt gatehouse tower of a century later,
the work of a Simon Harcourt of that period. The
house was occupied until 1688; and then, with the
death of Sir Philip Harcourt, it fell upon evil times,
for his widow deserted the place. Nuneham
Courtney, which, in the course of these pages, we
shall visit, below Oxford, had been purchased in 1710
by a later Simon Harcourt, and to it the family seat
was removed, and the manor-house at Stanton allowed
still further to fall into decay. Seventy years later
the buildings, by that time mostly ruinous, were
demolished, with the exception of the gatehouse, one
of the towers of the mansion, and the curious and
interesting ancient kitchen, which has only one
fellow to it in England: the well-known and remarkable
Abbot's Kitchen at Glastonbury.
This Stanton Harcourt kitchen, standing now
beside quiet lawns, and overgrown with creepers and
ivy, has long lost any association with cookery, and
looks particularly ecclesiastical, except perhaps for
the rampant griffin, holding a vane, which crowns the
tall pyramidal tiled roof, and wears rather a devilish
expression. He is a formidable griffin, too, measuring
eight feet high.
THE KITCHEN, STANTON HARCOURT.
To properly impress the reader, or the beholder,
with this kitchen, it is necessary to give its dimensions.
It has a total height of seventy-two feet, made up of
thirty-nine feet of the wall, twenty-five feet roof, and
the eight feet, as aforesaid, of that banner-bearing
monster.
There are no chimneys. The fires were made
against the walls, which are three feet thick; the
smoke from them escaping through wooden louvres,
or shutters, above. According to the direction from
which the wind blew, these louvres were shut to on
one or other of the four sides. The mechanical
ingenuity of the age was at a low level, and was not
able to contrive means by which these ventilators
could be opened or shut from within; so we find
a turret staircase leading up to the roof, around which
runs an open-air passage for access to the louvres.
Alexander Pope, residing in the neighbouring old
tower during three summers, "translating" Horace,
and writing fantastic letters in the meanwhile to his
friend, the Duke of Buckingham, exercised his fancy
on this kitchen, and found it to resemble the forge
of Vulcan, the cave of Polyphemus, and the Temple
of Moloch:
"The horror of it has made such an
impression upon the country people that they believe
the witches keep their Sabbath here, and that once
a year the Devil treats them with infernal venison,
viz. a toasted tiger, stuffed with tenpenny nails."
But all, according to him, was decrepit at Stanton
Harcourt: -
"Its very rats are grey. I pray the roof may not
fall upon them, as they are too infirm to seek other
lodgings."
It is the nature of rats to be grey; but we need
not seek to deprive Pope of his point. The place was
haunted, too, by the ghost of one "Lady Frances,"
and we hear
"some prying maids of the family report
that they have seen a lady in a fardingale through
the keyhole; but the matter is hushed up, and the
servants are forbidden to talk of it."
"Pope's Tower" is in three floors. On the
ground-floor is the domestic chapel, roofed in fan-vaulting.
You enter it by an ante-chapel with a
wooden ceiling in blue, spangled with gilt stars: a
gorgeous, but tarnished firmament. The upper room,
known as "Pope's Study," was occupied by him
during two hard-working summers, and he celebrated
the completion of his task by inscribing on a pane of
red glass in one of the windows, "In the year 1718
Alexander Pope finished here the fifth volume of
Homer." The glass has been removed, and is now
at Nuneham.
I have already placed the word "translating" in
quotation-marks, to indicate the fact that Pope's
claim to have rendered Homer's Iliad from the Greek
into English verse was a mere pretence. He was
no Greek scholar, and fobbed off upon his publisher
and upon confiding subscribers his metrical version of
translations by more scholarly persons. He grew
rich upon the fraud, and still enjoys a reputation
among the uncritical for a classical learning he did
not possess.
The church, standing close at hand, has a central
tower, of which the lower stage is clearly seen to be
Early English. On this an upper stage has been
reared. The junction of the two is prominently
marked by the upper stage being boldly set back;
producing a striking sense of massiveness.
EARLY ENGLISH SCREEN (UNRESTORED), STANTON HARCOURT.
The chancel-screen, west of the crossing of north
and south transepts, is of exceptional interest, as
perhaps the earliest such screen remaining in this
country unaltered. The hinges and the lock and
bolt of the door are in perfect order, and as good as
ever they were, although now nearly seven hundred
years old. The screen is of the Early English period,
simple and pure in its every detail. A little more
care for this relic would have resulted in the organ
and the choristers' seats being placed at less close
quarters. The lock of the door is original, and so
are the several curiously-patterned holes pierced
through the lower part of the screen.
The altar-tomb in the north wall of the chancel,
said to be that of Isabel de Camville, is very short,
and its architectural details are of a hundred years'
later date than her death, leading to the supposition
that this is rather an Easter sepulchre than a tomb.
The sculptured emblems of the Passion support this
view. On the south side is the tomb, with effigy,
of Maud, daughter of Lord Grey, of Rotherfield Greys.
She died, wife of Sir Thomas Harcourt, 1394. In
the Harcourt Chapel, locked, and the key kept at
Nuneham, many of that family lie; prominent among
them Sir Robert Harcourt, and Margaret his wife,
1471; both effigies wearing the order of the Garter,
the lady represented with it above the elbow of her
left arm. She is one of the three dames known to be
so decorated in monumental effigy: the others being
the Duchess of Suffolk, at Ewelme, and Margaret
Camoys, at Trotton, Sussex. There were some sixty
ladies admitted to the Order between 1376 and 1488:
the last of them the Lady Margaret Tudor, mother of
Henry the Seventh. Since that time, the only
women Companions have been reigning Sovereigns
or Queens-consort.
Here, among the Harcourts, is an altar-tomb to
that Archbishop of York who was not, as already
shown, really a Harcourt, but a Vernon; and a life-sized
marble effigy of William, third Earl Harcourt,
Field-Marshal, and G.C.B., who died 1830.
On the south side of the church an unassuming tablet records the tragic fate which befel
John Hewet and Sarah Drew,
an industrious young man and
virtuous maiden of this parish,
contracted in marriage,
who, being with many others at harvest,
were both in one moment killed
by lightning, on the last day of July,
1718.
Beneath are some lines written by Pope:
Think not by rigorous judgment seized,
A pair so faithful could expire;
Victims so pure Heaven saw, well-pleas'd,
And snatch'd them in celestial fire.
Live well, and fear no sudden fate;
When God calls virtue to the grave,
Alike, 'tis justice, soon or late,
Mercy alike to kill or save.
Virtue unmov'd can hear the call,
And face the flash that melts the ball."
[ See https://thames.me.uk/s01960.htm ]
The Berkshire side of the river, from New Bridge downwards, now demands some notice. There, instead of the unbroken flatness that continues through Oxfordshire as far as the city of Oxford itself, you have a lofty ridge more or less closely continuing to follow the course of the stream. A fine highway runs along the ridge, with pleasant and interesting villages upon, or near it. There may be found Longworth, and Appleton; and there, too, Besselsleigh.
BESSELSLEIGH: CHURCH AND FRAGMENT OF MANOR HOUSE.
We can scarcely call Besselsleigh retired, for it
stands directly upon this fine, broad, and well-frequented
road that leads out of Oxford, on to Faringdon
and only students of maps know what many
towns further west. The motors come swishing
along it at some very fine turns of speed, for there
is none to say them nay. Such travellers never
notice Besselsleigh, for the modern mansion stands
well hidden within its park, and of the old house
that once almost fronted the high road there is absolutely
nothing left but two of the stone entrance
gateposts, and those in a more or less wrecked condition.
Those travellers may indeed notice the
church, but even that is doubtful, for it is a very
little and a very humble church, and although its
little churchyard gives upon the road, it is so enshrouded
by large trees and small trees that its very
existence may not be suspected by quick-moving
traffic.
The trees here are indeed noble, and form a
splendid aisle of living green: elms, oaks, and Scotch
pines intermingled. The church, rather barn-like,
has an Early English double bell-cote at its west end.
Of the Besils who gave this place its name in 1350
history has but a moderate amount to say. They
married the estate, so to speak, with an heiress, last
of the family that had hitherto held it; and in the
course of time it passed from them in like manner:
the heiress-general of the Besils marrying a Fettiplace.
And nowadays for even a Fettiplace one may
seek in vain, for that family, once so numerously
spread over Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Gloucestershire,
is itself extinct. But Besselsleigh did not
pass from them in that accustomed manner, for they
sold it to the Lenthalls in 1634, and it is still held
by the same race.
"At this Legh," says Leland, "be very fayre
pastures and woodes; the Blessels hathe been lords
of it syns the time of Edward the First. The Blessels
cam out of Provence in Fraunce, and were men of
activitye in feates of armes, as it appearith in the
monuments at Legh; how he faught in lystes with
a strange knyghte that challengd hym, at the whiche
deade the kynge and quene at that tyme of England
were present. The Blessels were countyed to have
pocessyons of four hundred marks by the yere."
Sir Peter Besils seems to have been the worthiest
member of this family, for he not only gave freely of
stone to the building of Burford Bridge at Abingdon,
and of Culham Bridge, close by, but left £600 by his
will of 1424 for the purpose of making amends for
any wrong he or his ancestors may have done any
man. If his executors did not spend that sum in
this manner, presumably because they could find no
aggrieved persons, then they were to construct roads
with it.
Mr. Speaker Lenthall, to whom Besselsleigh was
sold in 1630, repaired the little church, and here later
members of that family are buried. But none of
them have attained to the fame of Mr. Speaker, who
died in 1662, and lies buried in Burford church. He
was a long-headed and tactful man, and, as such,
one well calculated to hold his own in troubled and
uncertain times, by care not to give offence to
either of the contending parties. He was member of
Parliament for Woodstock, and was elected Speaker
in the Long Parliament.
King Charles, at that critical moment in parliamentary
history when his Majesty went down to the
House in person, for the purpose of arresting the five
members who had courageously withstood his will,
asked Lenthall if he saw any of these five present,
and he replied, with marvellous resourcefulness at
so strained a juncture: "May it please your Majesty,
I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this
place but as this House is pleased to direct me, whose
servant I am here; and humbly beg your Majesty's
pardon that I cannot give any other answer than
this to what your Majesty is pleased to demand of
me." Lenthall was one of the few prominent men
of that time who were able to enrich themselves.
While most were ruined in those long-drawn troubles,
he snatched profits out of them, became extensively
rich, and died owner of many manors. These are
the goodly rewards of a moderator; but history
gives no favourable verdict upon such.
One comes more readily to Cumnor by road, but
more picturesquely by river, from Bablockhythe,
whence a byway leads steeply up to that famous
place. Cumnor is indeed of such fame that, although
one must needs allow it to be a hill-top - certainly
not a valley - village, yet to omit it from these pages
would surely be unpardonable. At Bablockhythe
remains the last of the old river ferries, capable of
taking a wheeled conveyance across; and capable,
too, of giving an unwary oarsman or punter a very
nasty check with its rope, permanently stretched
athwart the stream.
There is some very noble, still, quiet scenery at,
and just above and below, Bablockhythe, where the
water runs with a deep and silent stealthiness, and
the bushy poplars and pendant weeping willows are
reflected with such startling faithfulness that the
reflection in the water beneath looks more solid - much
more real - than the foliage above. It is an
imageion of the weirdest kind.
In one or other of the quiet backwaters between
this and Oxford there may be found, by those who
care to seek, the curious aquatic plant known as the
"water-soldier." Botanists of course know it by
another, and a horrific, name: to them it is "stratiotes
aloides." But to those few rustic folk who know
at all of its existence - and it is not a common affair - it
is the "water-soldier." It does not, however,
convey any military impression to the ordinary
beholder, being just a plumed bunch of leaves which
in summer-time is found floating on the surface;
coming up from its autumn, winter, and spring home
below, in the river-mud, and growing long suckers,
resembling strawberry runners, each of them with
a youthful "soldier" - or recruit, shall we say - at
its end. These form leaves, and each one produces
a white flower. When these flowers fade the "water-soldier"
and its outposts of young sink again to the
river-bed, and there rest until summer comes again,
when the process is repeated.
But what of Cumnor? It looks boldly down upon the Thames Valley from a conspicuous wooded ridge. It is a village picturesque alike in itself and in its romantic history, traditions, and legends. Figure to yourself a place of scattered rustic cottages, not yet touched to commonplace by that shrinkage of distances caused by the rapidity and frequency of modern methods of travel which have brought expansions, rebuilding, and general modernisings in their train; with an ancient and stately church rustically overhung with trees quite in the old Birket Foster and first-half-of-the-nineteenth-century convention. That is Cumnor to-day.
CUMNOR CHURCH.
In Domesday Book the place appears as "Comenore,"
but we hear of it in Anglo-Saxon times as
"Colmonora"; and it is supposed to have obtained
the first part of its name from one St. Colman, or
Cuman, a seventh-century Gaelic saint. The termination,
"ora," doubtless refers to the shores of
the Thames; not, however, nearer than a mile and
a half, and at a considerably lower level.
Cumnor had, apparently, an early church, replaced
by the existing fine Transitional Norman and
Early English cruciform building, not yet ravaged
by the "restorer." Cumnor Place, built about 1350,
as a sanatorium for Abingdon monastery, after the
fearful experiences of the "Black Death" pestilence,
stood very closely adjoining the picturesque churchyard,
on its south side, and, after several changes of
owners, and at last sunk to the condition of a roofless
ruin, was finally demolished in 1811, and its stones
used in the rebuilding of the church at Wytham.
There is much of interest belonging to Cumnor
church, from the battered old altar-tomb in the
churchyard, with barely legible inscription, to Lieutenant
William Godfrey, "who faithfully served
King Charles ye I. from Edgehill Fight to ye end of
ye unhappy wars," down to the curious epitaph on
the exterior east wall, upon "Christian, the wife of
Henry Hutt":
Could exemplary Worth, or Virtue Save
One happier Woman had escap'd the Grave.
From every Vice, and female Error free,
She was in fact, what Woman ought to be.
Envy'd no Queens, but pitied all their Cares,
Expecting Crowns less troublesome than theirs.
This paragon of virtue, worth, and contentment with her station in life died in 1740, aged 31.
A real startler awaits the stranger who enters unsuspectingly into Cumnor church. This is none other than a singularly vivid likeness of Queen Elizabeth, done in stone and standing on a pedestal in the north aisle. The pale effigy, standing there in the subdued light of the church, is calculated to stir the nerves of the most stolid. The statue, a singularly fine one, represents the Queen in the costume of the period, made familiar in many statues and paintings. She is standing, and holds the orb and sceptre, symbols of sovereignty. This work of art has a history of some curious interest. It was originally set up in the grounds of Cumnor Place by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, in honour of his great patroness. Perhaps it is due to this origin that the statue represents the Queen so pleasingly. Zucchero, in his painting of her, and the many other sculptors who plied their chisels on this inspiring theme, never produced anything to vie with this in combined charm and dignity. Elsewhere you perceive "great Eliza" - in spite of courtly efforts to idealise her - rendered not a little uncouthly. Majesty, with more than a dash of vinegar, and plain evidences of the termagant, are characteristics of the most of Queen Elizabeth's portraits in marble, stone, and paint; but here she is rendered in terms of grace.
STATUE OF QUEEN ELIZABETH, CUMNOR CHURCH.
Upon the decay of Cumnor Place the statue was
removed to Dean Court, and thence to a height above
the village of Ferry Hinksey, in 1779. From that
solitude it was taken to Wytham Abbey, and eventually
forgotten; being found, broken to pieces, in
an out-house. It was finally removed, restored, and
placed here, in Cumnor Church, in 1888, on a pedestal
detailing these circumstances.
An unusual, and welcome, feature of this church
is the series of engravings, reproductions of seventeenth-century
correspondence, and notes upon the
history of the village, for the information of the
cultured visitor. Here you may read something
of the grim associations of the vanished Cumnor
Place, and learn, in a chronological table drawn up
by the vicar, to what tune the centuries have jogged
along in this rural parish. That chronology ends with
this remarkable thought, this astonishing intellectual
effort:
"1893. The Future is not yet!"
It never is.
Brasses, now placed upon the walls, commemorate
the virtues and the benefactions of various persons,
including "Katherin, sometyme the wyffe of Henry
Staverton, who dyed a good Christian the xxvth day
of December in ye yere of our lorde God, 1557." It
is perhaps even more important to have lived a good
Christian; but, apart from such counsel of perfection,
the inscription is a significant change from those
piteous pre-Reformation invocations for mercy, and
appeals for prayers, that were the commonplaces of
all monumental inscriptions only a few years earlier.
James Welsh, who died in 1612, and Margery,
who departed three years later, each leaving £5 in
charity, are celebrated in verse, beginning:
"The body of James Welsh lyeth buryed here,
Who left this mortall life at fourscore yeare."
In the south transept, dedicated to St. Thomas
of Canterbury, lie two Abbots of Abingdon, one of
them probably William de Comenore, who died in
1333. Latest of all the monuments here is that of
Sir William Wilson Hunter, an Indian official, who
died in 1900, aged 59.
But the chief interest centres in the fine canopied
tomb of grey marble, on the north side of the chancel,
to Anthony Forster and his wife: Forster, that
"Tony Fire-the-Faggot" of Sir Walter Scott's unhistorical
"historical" romance of Kenilworth, in
which he is held up to execration as a villain of the
most varied villanies; a time-server and hypocrite:
"Here you, Tony Fire-the-Faggot, papist, puritan,
hypocrite, miser, profligate, devil, compounded of all
men's sins, bow down and reverence him who has
brought into thy house the very mammon thou
worshippest."
This horrid portraiture of the man is an overdrawn
picture. No need to paint the devil blacker
than he really is; and although the evidence available
tends to attach the stigma of "murderer" to
him, it does not by any means follow that he practised
all the meannesses and petty vices with which
he is charged.
On the other hand, those whitewashers of smirched
reputations who have long been so actively and unprofitably
employed in cleansing historical characters
under a cloud, have overstepped the mark
in loudly declaring their belief in his innocence of all
charges brought against him.
The name of Anthony Forster, in fiction and in
fact, is closely connected with the famous tragedy
of Cumnor Place and Amy Robsart, which still, after
three hundred and fifty years, exercises the minds
of historians, and arouses controversies; and seems
likely ever to do so.
We have already referred to the house as a grange
belonging to the Abbots of Abingdon. It came into
the private possession of Thomas Pentecost, alias
Rowland, the last of them, by deed of gift from Henry
the Eighth in 1538. The Abbot, in consideration of
his having peaceably and willingly surrendered the
Abbey and all its belongings to the King, was given
Cumnor Place for his life; but as he died the following
year, he derived little benefit from the compact.
Seven years later, October 8th, 1546, the King conferred
Cumnor Place, with the manor of Cumnor,
and greater tithes, upon his physician, George Owen,
in consideration of some lands at Oxford, including
the site of Rewley Abbey; and a cash payment of
£310 12s. 9d. William Owen, son of this George,
married in 1558 one of the Fettiplace family, his
father then settling upon him the Cumnor property.
William Owen, however, elected to live elsewhere,
and let Cumnor Place to Anthony Forster.
Who, then, was this Anthony Forster? He was
the friend and factor of a very great man in those
times: a man by no means great from force of character,
but from sheer opportunism, good luck, and
the favour of a comely person: none other, indeed,
than Lord Robert Dudley, later to become, by the
ennobling hands of Queen Elizabeth, Earl of Leicester.
Around the reputation of Dudley there lurk too many
sinister stories for us to lightly dismiss any charge
brought against him or his agents. He was suspected
of having put many persons away by the means of
poison: a method very fashionable in that age of
the Renaissance and widespread neo-pagan culture;
and that he was an ambitious man to whose ambition
no bounds of prudence or conscience were set is generally
acknowledged by historians. He was by no
means alone in this, but was typical of his age, an
age great in refinements, culture, and wealth; great
in arms, and no less notable in its tortuous policies,
national and domestic; and in its lies and manifold
duplicities.
TOMB OF ANTHONY FORSTER, CUMNOR.
The early prospects of Lord Robert Dudley, as
third son of the Duke of Northumberland, were perhaps
not particularly brilliant, and as a young man
of eighteen or nineteen years he had in 1550 married
Amy, daughter and heiress of Sir John Robsart, of
Stanfield Hall, Norfolk. That was in the reign of
Edward the Sixth, the young King himself being
present at the wedding. There is no reason against
the assumption that this was a love-match; but
there is every reason to assume that in after-years,
when his ambitions were kindled, it was bitterly regretted
by Dudley, who, in the changes that had
befallen with the successive deaths of Edward the
Sixth and of Queen Mary, and with the accession of
Queen Elizabeth, had become not only a courtier,
but a royal favourite, looked upon with amorous
glances by that great Queen herself, whose subtle
character has defied the analysis of historians. Queen
Elizabeth's lovers, looked upon with favour, were
not few, but Dudley was pre-eminent among them,
and presumed, and was allowed to presume, more
than any others. The Queen continually enriched
him with grants of land and with the monopoly of
the export of wool and other commodities, until he
became extraordinarily wealthy, and able to maintain
a magnificence remarkable even for that period.
The loves of Dudley and his Queen afforded gossip
for not only the Court, but for the nation at large,
and a forthcoming marriage was looked upon as so
sure a thing that the Spanish Ambassador found it
possible to write home to his sovereign, referring to
Dudley as "the King that is to be." And all this
while, we are to bear in mind, Dudley's wife, Lady
Robert Dudley (the "Amy Robsart" of the looming
tragedy) was alive! What was that meek woman
doing while such well-founded gossip was heard in
every corner of the land? She was travelling and
visiting in many different parts of the country, and
doing so in considerable state.
Among the relics of her to be seen, framed on the
walls of Cumnor Church, is the facsimile of a letter
from her to her husband, dated 1557, displaying
nothing but perfect confidence and trust, which she
might do, well enough, and yet find her trust misplaced.
Or, possibly, those letters were cast in a
conventional form, and hid a breaking heart.
But, although Dudley and his wife had for some
years lived apart, and although he was notoriously
a false and faithless man, whose varied gallantries
were the talk of the time, there was not yet, in 1557,
any question of getting rid of her, and no great and
dazzling ambition made him or his agents contemplate
a crime. Queen Mary yet ruled and it was
not until the following year that she died, and was
succeeded by her sister, Elizabeth. No sooner, however,
did Elizabeth become Queen than Dudley
appeared as the most favoured courtier. That he
was to become King-Consort none doubted, and it is
singular to consider that, in all the records of that
time, the fact of his being already married appeared
to offer no bar to that contemplated union. Continuously,
from the Queen's accession, these circumstantial
rumours spread, and it is beyond the bounds
of credibility that Lady Dudley should not have been
made perfectly well acquainted with them in the
course of the two years in which they were current.
Lady Dudley - why historians and others continue
to write of her after her marriage by her maiden
name of Amy Robsart is not clear - had been accustomed
to visit a Mr. Hyde, a kinsman of Dudley's,
at Denchworth, near Abingdon; and it does not,
therefore, appear extraordinary that when Anthony
Forster, her husband's steward, took Cumnor Place
on lease, in 1559, she should elect to visit there:
the more especially so if there were any truth in the
rumour that she was ill at that time, for Cumnor,
as we have already seen, was supposed to be a particularly
healthy spot.
But it is by no means so sure that she was at all
unwell. It is one of the most damning evidences
of foul play in this famous case that rumours were
current for some time before the murder, or the
accident, whichever it was, to the effect that she was
suffering from cancer and was sure to die shortly,
and that this gossip was contradicted at the time.
Among those who gave the lie to it was the Spanish
Ambassador, writing to the Duchess of Parma.
"They," he said, "are thinking of destroying Lord
Robert's wife." Who "they" were we can only
conjecture. "They have given out that she is ill;
but she is not ill at all; she is very well, and is
taking care not to be poisoned."
Is it at all reconcilable with the theory of accident
that a person whose continued existence stood
in the way of so ambitious a man as Dudley, and of
whom it was so freely said that she was dying, when
she was known to be well, and whose life was said
to be in danger from violence or poison, should in
fact meet her end so immediately and mysteriously?
No modern coroner's jury would return a verdict
of accidental death under such suspicious circumstances.
What are the known facts? Lady Dudley was
residing at Cumnor Place in September 1560, and
the extraordinary cloud of suggestions, innuendoes,
and suspicions current everywhere must have reached
her ears. She must have been superhuman not to
have been miserably affected by these doings of her
husband, who, at the time when the tragedy happened,
was with the Queen at Windsor; and she
was, as we have seen suggested, probably in fear of
being secretly poisoned. On Sunday, September 8th,
the day of Abingdon Fair, her servants all went to
Abingdon, by her express desire, according to one
account. But, at any rate, they did all go, leaving
in the house alone, it would seem, Lady Dudley,
Mrs. Hyde, and Mrs. Odingsell, Mr. Hyde's sister.
The three ladies were that evening playing a game
popular at that time, known as "tables," when
suddenly Lady Dudley arose and left the room, being
almost immediately afterwards found dead at the
foot of a staircase by the servants returning from
the Fair; having apparently fallen and broken her
neck.
Where was Forster at this time? The records
are silent, and do not tell of any man about the place.
The views of Dudley himself and his dependents
were that the affair was purely an accident. Alternatively,
it was suggested by some that it was suicide.
But Dudley's conduct on receipt of vague news
of tragedy at Cumnor was suspicious. It would be
supposed that the first act of an innocent man would
be to hurry off from Windsor to the scene of this
happening, to learn at first hand what had befallen
his wife; but Dudley was content to send Sir Thomas
Blount, a confidential gentleman in his train, to ride
over and make inquiries. On the way Blount met
a messenger from Cumnor, proceeding to Windsor
with the detailed news. Next day, at Cumnor,
Blount, examining the lady's maid, extracted from
her the admission that Lady Dudley had been frequently
heard to pray for delivery from desperation.
He eagerly seized upon this as indicating suicide,
but the maid immediately checked him with, "No,
good Mr. Blount, do not so judge of my words. If
you should so gather, I should be sorry I said so
much."
What "desperation" might mean is uncertain:
it is a strange choice of a word; but it has been
thought that the unhappy woman, knowing she was
in danger of being murdered, thus prayed to be protected
from the desperate resolves against her life.
Blount, writing to Dudley, acquainted him with
the feelings of the neighbourhood about the affair,
by which it is sufficiently evident that this happening
was already regarded as a serious thing for Dudley.
To this Dudley replied, directing that the strictest
inquiry should be made; that an inquest should be
held immediately, and "the discreetest and most
substantial men should be chosen for the jury." But
surely, the question of an inquest and the choice of
a jury were the affairs of others than himself, and
an inquest would have been held in any case, whether
he liked it or not; and so his directions to that end
are mere unmeaning words. He further begged of
Blount "as he loved him and desired his quietness,
to use all devices and means for learning of the truth
without respect to living persons"; and especially
desired him not to dissemble, but to tell him, faithfully,
"whether it happened by evil chance, or villainy."
He was evidently seriously alarmed for himself;
but we look in vain for any expression of sorrow at
his wife's lamentable end. All he was concerned
with was "the talk which the wicked world will
use": talk for which his own conduct for long past
had given the fullest occasion.
Blount had halted at Abingdon on his journey,
and only reached Cumnor on September 11th.
Already, as might have been supposed, the coroner
had summoned his jury. They were, in Blount's
opinion, "as wise and able men, being but countrymen,
as ever I saw." They deliberated long and
searchingly, and Blount wrote again, on the 13th,
that they were very active; "whether equity is
the cause, or malice [i.e. suspicion, let us note] against
Forster, I know not." He further said that they were
very secret, but he could not hear that they had found
any presumption of evil. He thought, however, they
would be sorry (these wise and able men - for countrymen)
if they failed. Obviously Blount had been
trying to pump the jury as to their finding. Dudley
himself, writing to Blount, said the foreman of the
jury had communicated with him to the effect that
although the inquiry was not yet concluded, for
anything they could learn to the contrary, it was a
very misfortune. So Dudley himself had been
trafficking with the jury, a thing that would in
modern times afford very strong presumption of
guilt.
If we put faith in Dudley's own protestations,
we must, however, find him innocent. Yet is it
possible to have this faith?
After hearing to that effect from the foreman
he wrote to Blount, saying that after the jury had
rendered their verdict, he could only wish there
would be a second inquiry. He wished Arthur
Robsart, the dead woman's brother, and Appleyard,
her half-brother, to be present. Never at any time,
in all these scenes, was Dudley himself present. It
is uncertain whether a second jury was summoned,
or whether the sittings of the first were extended;
but it is certain that an inquiry was still in progress
on September 27th, and that this resulted at last in
a verdict of accidental death.
But the affair cast an indelible stain upon Dudley's
reputation, and although the question of his marrying
the Queen was not dropped, and was ardently
debated from time to time, his wife, being dead,
proved a more insuperable obstacle than she had
been while living. The dark suspicions, if not of
his actual complicity, at least of Forster's having
contrived the tragedy in his master's supposed interest,
would not be allayed. Everywhere mutterings
were heard, and the Queen did not dare marry
one under such a cloud.
Lady Dudley was buried in great state in the
church of St. Mary, Oxford, and even there the
grisly accusation of assassination came up, in Dr.
Babington, the preacher, chaplain to Dudley himself,
thrice making a slip of the tongue; desiring
the prayers of the congregation for the lady "so
pitifully murdered," instead of "slain." This incident
serves sufficiently to show what was in men's
minds.
In 1566, seven years after the tragedy, Appleyard
was brought before the Privy Council for having
declared that he had not been satisfied with the jury's
verdict, but for Dudley's sake had covered the murder
of his sister. He was intimidated, and fully apologised,
for Dudley had become all-powerful; and he
was made to explain his words as "malice," and to
beg pardon for them; but an apology extracted by
such means does not carry great weight. Years
afterwards Cecil could find it possible to say that
Dudley was "infamed by his wife's death," and so
infamed he still remains, whether we find it by
direct participation or by the deeds of his too-subservient
agents.
We must here come to the conclusion that Dudley
was not himself guilty; but that Forster certainly
was. That conclusion can, indeed, hardly be avoided.
The country side thought so, and it is not sufficient
for apologists to point to his gentility and his culture,
and to exclaim that such an one would be incapable
of such a crime. Whenever did honourable descent
or cultivated tastes prevent a man from bearing a
villain's part? The view that because Forster was
a gentleman, and interested in the arts, he was incapable
of crime is the conventional view of people
who are not satisfied that a villain is a villain unless
he wears a scowl and other distinguishing signs.
It has been remarked that Forster would not in
after-years have been chosen Member of Parliament
for Abingdon and would not have been given University
and other honours if he had been what suspicion
made him. But would he not? Dudley
could have procured all these things, and more, for
his faithful man, even as he was in a position to
secure most things for himself.
The year following the tragedy of Cumnor Place,
Forster purchased the freehold of it; Owen probably
being unwilling any longer to hold a house with such
dark associations. And here he lived the remainder
of his life, dying in 1572. In those twelve years he
almost wholly rebuilt Cumnor Place, which he left
by will to Dudley, who had, in the meanwhile, become
Earl of Leicester. If the Earl accepted this
gift, he was to pay £1,200 to Forster's heirs.
The Earl did accept, but sold the property
soon after. It is not to be supposed that he would
care to be any longer associated with the ill-omened
place. By this sale Cumnor passed to the Norris
family, ancestors of the Earls of Abingdon, who still
own it.
The entry of Forster's funeral at Cumnor is to
the effect that "A. F., gentleman," was buried on
November 10th; and it has been thought curious
that the word "gentleman" takes the place of some
other word first written and then erased: whether
the first was uncomplimentary, or merely the Latin
word miles, as sometimes suggested, is now of course
beyond the wit of man to discover.
Those who visit Cumnor with this pitiful story
in their recollection, and are disappointed at finding
Cumnor Place no longer in existence, will find in the
Purbeck marble monument to Forster an interesting
relic, bringing them into touch with these long-vanished
personages; but they will find no support
of the charges brought against him. Nor could
such support be in any way expected; but in the
long Latin eulogistic verses engraved in brass under
the brass effigies of himself, his wife, and their three
children, we find him credited with an astonishing
variety of virtues and accomplishments. He was,
it seems, distinguished for his skill in music, languages,
and horticulture, and was charitable, benevolent,
and full of religious faith. The brass portraiture,[184]
too (which, after all, is not necessarily a
portrait), represents him as a man of singularly open
countenance.
Apart from the personal association, the tomb
is interesting as combining late Gothic and Renaissance
decoration.
It has already been said that Cumnor Place is a
mansion of the past, and that it was finally demolished
by a former Earl of Abingdon in 1811. An amusing
story is told, to the effect that when the popularity
of Scott's Kenilworth aroused a keen interest in
Cumnor, the Earl undertook to drive some guests
over to see the house, forgetting that he had, several
years earlier, given orders for it to be demolished.
The disappointment of himself and his friends on
arriving at Cumnor was very keen.
Cumnor Place was never more than a modest
country residence, and bore no resemblance to Scott's
description; nor had it the imposing towers described
in Mickle's ballad, which concludes with -
Full many a traveller oft hath sigh'd,
And pensive wept the Countess' fall,
As wand'ring onward they've espied
The haunted towers of Cumnor Hall."
It stood to the south of the church, and was in
its last years a ruinous malthouse, finally converted
into labourers' cottages. The stones of it were removed
chiefly for the building of Wytham church;
and there, at the entrance to the churchyard, an
archway remains to this day, bearing the inscription
by the pietistic Forster:
"Verbum Domini Janva vitae."
It only remains to once more remark that Scott's
novel, Kenilworth, enshrining many of these things,
is full of the grossest perversions of known facts, and
not for one moment to be relied upon, historically.
Raleigh figures in it, and in its pages is knighted by
Queen Elizabeth, in 1560; but he was only eight
years of age at the time. Lady Dudley is represented
as the Countess of Leicester; but she met her
tragic end three years before Dudley was created
Earl. She is also made to figure in the grand festivities
at Kenilworth, although she had been dead
fifteen years when these great doings took place.
There was no "Black Bear" inn at Cumnor at that
time; nor could there reasonably have been such
a sign, for Dudley, whose device it was, did not then
own property at Cumnor, and was not directly associated
with the village. The Richard Varney, co-villain
with Forster in the story, was derived by Scott
from Ashmole's gossipy Antiquities of Berkshire, and
is not to be readily identified.
The river makes a great semicircular bend, as between New Bridge and Oxford, so that although but six miles between the two, measured in a straight line on the map, it is fifteen miles by water. Cumnor stands roughly in the middle of the projecting part of Berkshire enclosed within this bend, and Wytham almost at the farthest northward fling of it, just below where Eynsham Bridge (otherwise styled Swinford Bridge) carries the great highway from Oxford across the Thames towards Witney and Gloucester. Eynsham, a quaint old village, is one mile distant.
EYNSHAM.
Wytham, amid the deep woodlands, on its bold hill-top in the bight of the river, is a sequestered place, the site of the mansion called Wytham Abbey, seat of the Earls of Abingdon. "Abbey" is a fanciful term, as applied here, for no religious house ever stood upon the site, and the existing buildings arose in the sixteenth century, at the bidding of one of the Harcourts, who then owned the property. How it eventually came through several hands and at last by marriage into the Bertie family, Earls of Abingdon, is not, I imagine, a matter of general interest. Wytham village, lying beneath that lordly seat, is one of the most charming villages in Berkshire, which is saying a good deal in the commendatory sort. It is, and has long been, famed for its strawberry-growing, and was once even recommended by the faculty to invalids for a "strawberry cure." I cannot imagine the ailment for which the eating of strawberries is a likely remedy, but a pleasanter "cure" could hardly be invented.
Wytham woods crest Beacon Hill, and in them
the pheasants are plentiful. This is the equivalent
of saying that there is no right of way. But anciently
the road from Oxford to Eynsham, and on to Witney
and Gloucester, ran across this hill: a plaguey bad
road, a very beast of a road. The track of it may
still be followed (by permission sought and obtained
from Lord Abingdon, let me hasten to add) steeply
and roughly up through these sylvan surroundings,
and as roughly and as steeply down again, to Eynsham
Bridge, which was built in 1799 by a former
Earl, to replace the ford by which all wayfarers up
to that time were obliged to cross the river. It is
still a toll-bridge for vehicles, levying the modest
sum of one halfpenny for cycles, and sixpence for
motor-cars. The arduous road from Oxford across
the hill was abandoned about the same time,
when the existing so-called "Seven Bridges Road,"
leading along the levels to Eynsham Bridge, was
reconstructed.
There is a great deal of interest wrapped up in
that old road. It left Oxford on much the same line
as now, but was neither drained nor embanked, and
proceeded for some distance from the city along
swampy ground, so that travellers upon it from
Oxford to Eynsham were made to feed full of varied
discomforts. Proceeding through Botley, often at
the peril of their lives from floods, they then bore
away to the right, for Wytham, passing through
the village of Seacourt on the way. From Wytham,
mounting and descending the hazardous track over
Beacon Hill, at the imminent danger of their necks,
they then came to the peril of the ford; and having
haply passed over this in safety, felt that risks from
natural causes were over. There remained only the
bandits of an early period, and the highwaymen of
a later to give them pause.
As for Binsey, it is
merely an insignificant hamlet situated at a very
dead-end of traffic. You shall find it readily enough
by proceeding from the "Perch" inn, beside the
river, just above Medley Weir; but it is quite other
guesswork seeking it from Wytham, for no way
exists where formerly an ancient path ran, and a
channel cut from the Thames winds a prohibitive
course through the flat meadows.
Binsey, indeed, stands on an island in olden times
called Thorney, where St. Frideswide, that celebrated
Oxford saint, first built her oratory, the
name of the isle being then, we are told, changed
to "Binsey": absurdly said to signify the "isle
of prayer." Here she also founded the well of St.
Margaret, miraculously springing forth in answer to
her prayer, as springs were wont to do in the eighth
century. They have long since refused to do the
like. It is perhaps not remarkable that Binsey and
this famous well in after-years became, and long
remained, the objects of pilgrimage. The halt and
the lame, the epileptic and the otherwise afflicted,
flocked to Binsey and were cured, hanging up their
crutches in the oratory and festooning it with their
discarded bandages: and incidentally leaving solid
gifts of money behind, greatly to the gain of the
monastery of St. Frideswide, in Oxford, to which
Binsey belonged from 1132 until the end of such
things, four hundred years later.
The crowds of pilgrims who came out of Oxford,
making for the oratory and well of St. Frideswide,
turned off at the vanished village of Seacourt.
Few places have perished so utterly as this long-lost
habitation of men, styled at various times "Sekecourt,"
"Seuecurde," and "Sechworth"; for all
we shall now discover of it is a farm so named. But
Seacourt was for many centuries a considerable place.
Not only did it lie directly upon the then highway
to the west, but it was the pilgrims' lodging-place,
and for the accommodation of such it is recorded
to have possessed no fewer than twenty-four inns.
With the successive blows of the dissolution of the
monasteries, when pilgrimages ceased out of the
land, and then when the road itself was diverted,
Seacourt's doom befel. It subsided into ruin, and
became the abode of foxes and wild-fowl; and
presently the very stones of it were carted away.
The self-satisfied attitude of Binsey folk in
summer, and the woe-begone, dreary, flooded-out
experiences of the same people in winter are amusingly
contrasted in traditional sayings, current in these
parts. Thus, in summer, a villager, asked where he
lives, is supposed to say, "Binsey; where d'ye think?"
but in winter he will reply, disconsolately, "Binsey,
Lord help us!" And it needs only a week or so of
rain in one of our tearful summers for the low-lying
meadows to be flooded, completely islanding the
place in the midst of something resembling an inland
sea.
BINSEY CHURCH.
In modern times the holy well has been found at the west end of Binsey church and restored, as the inscription records: "St. Margaret's spring, granted, as it is told us, to the prayers of St. Frideswide, long polluted and choked up, was restored to use by T. J. Prout, student of Christ Church, the vicar, in the year of redemption, 1874." The well may be holy, but the water again in these days looks provocative of typhoid.
Between Wytham and Binsey, and directly upon
the river, is a very much better known place than
either; to wit, Godstow. "Fair Rosamond" and
Godstow have employed the morbidly-sentimental
pens of uncounted scribblers. It is easy to be either
sentimental or morbid, and of the easiest to be morbidly-sentimental
over unworthy subjects: hence
the exploitation in this wise of "Fair Rosamond."
Godstow Nunnery, it seems, was founded by
Edith, an ex-chère amie of Henry the First, and wife
of the second Robert D'Oilgi, or D'Oyley, lord of
Oxford. The buildings were consecrated with great
state by the Bishop of Lincoln in 1138. There is
little need here to dwell upon the history of the
nunnery, which in general is sufficiently dull; and
Godstow is, in fact, interesting only on account of
that highly improper person known in romantic
history as "Fair Rosamond," who was educated
here. The name of Rosamond, if we may believe
Dryden, who, as a poet, is perhaps not to be altogether
relied upon as an authority, was really Jane.
It might have been worse. However:
Jane Clifford was her name, as books aver,
Fair Rosamond was but her nom de guerre."
That she was daughter of Walter, Baron Clifford,
of Hay, in Wales, is historically certain; but much
else relating to her is merely picturesque legend.
She appears to have been born about 1150, and was
educated in this then newly-built nunnery. Here,
in some unexplained way, she attracted the attention
of the King, Henry the Second, and became his
mistress, greatly to the jealous rage of his Queen,
Eleanor of Poitou, the divorced consort of the King
of France, who by many was held to be no better.
This association of the King and of Rosamond seems
to have lasted about four years.
Legends tell variously how Queen Eleanor burst
in upon a secret bower in which the King had hidden
her at Woodstock, and gave her the choice of death
by dagger or poison, and how she chose the bowl
rather than the steel, drank of it and so died; but
these are unhistorical. All that seems fairly certain
is that a break in her relations with Henry occurred,
and that she retired to Godstow and died there, some
four years later, about 1176.
A great mass of legend has accumulated around
these bare outlines of her story, and poets have
freely employed their imagination upon her. With
remarkable unanimity, they assume Rosamond to
have been a blonde:
Her locks of curléd hair
Outshone the golden ore;
Her skin with whiteness may compare
With the fine lily-flower;
Her breasts are lovely to behold,
Like to the driven snow.
That she had two children seems to be established,
but that they were, as often stated, William Longsword,
Earl of Salisbury, and Geoffrey, Archbishop
of York, has been disputed.
Rosamond, we are told, was for sake of her wit
and beauty received back by the nuns of Godstow
with alacrity. Doubtless she told them many strange
tales of the wicked world, for who better qualified to
know? Her body was buried before the high altar.
King John, according to Lambarde, raised a gorgeous
monument to her, inscribed,
Hic jacet in tumba, Rosa Mundi, non Rosa Munda,
Non redolet, sed olet, quae redolere solet.
Speed paraphrased this as follows:
This tomb doth here enclose the world's most beauteous Rose,
Rose, passing sweet erewhile, now nought but odour vile.
A few years later, Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln, paying
a round of pastoral visits in his diocese, in which
Oxford was then included, coming to Godstow, saw
this gorgeous monument and asked what great and
good person it was, then, who lay here. It was, said
the nuns, the tomb of Rosamond, sometime mistress
of Henry the Second, who for love of her had done
much good to that church. Thereupon the saintly
and scandalised Bishop declared that the "hearse of a
harlot was not a fit spectacle for a quire of virgins to
contemplate, nor was the front of God's altar a proper
station for it"; and he directed that she should be
removed and buried outside, "lest Christian religion
should grow in contempt."
Leland, diligent antiquary, tells us that in after-years
Rosamond's tomb was here, inscribed "Tumba
Rosamundæ," and that her bones had been found,
enclosed in lead, "and within that closed in leather;
when it was opened there was a very swete smell
came out of it." Time thus gave the lie to that
fearful old epitaph of King John's day.
The nunnery of Godstow when dissolved in the[196]
reign of Henry the Eighth contained eighteen nuns,
and its annual income was £274; a considerable sum
as prices then ruled. The property was granted to
that Dr. Owen who at the same time secured Cumnor,
and the domestic buildings became a secular residence.
This was held during the Civil War by Colonel Walter,
and was taken by Fairfax in May 1646, and burned.
All we see nowadays of Godstow nunnery is a
small building, ruined and roofless, apparently of no
very great antiquity, for besides the Perpendicular
window there are no other evidences of Gothic architecture,
the two other windows being merely flat-headed
Elizabethan insertions.
Efforts have been made from time to time to
discover the remains of Rosamond. Two stone
coffins were dug up about 1800, and in one of them
were the bones of a young woman. On the supposition
that this was the sarcophagus of Rosamond, a
once well-known antiquary and citizen of Oxford,
Alderman Fletcher, appropriated it, and conceived
the eccentric idea of being buried therein; and when
his time came, in 1826, he was accordingly laid in it,
in the church of Yarnton, a few miles distant.
An uncommon plant, said to have been introduced
from foreign parts by the nuns, still grows freely in
these meadows by the grey ruins. It is known to
botanists as Aristolochia clematitis, but to ordinary
country folk as "birthwort" and was used in confinement
cases. You may identify it by its heart-shaped
leaf and bold yellow flower.
The charm of the river fades away after passing
Medley Lock and nearing Oxford, and suffers a change
into the commercial ragged edges and untidy squalid
purlieus of a great city.
We may read in old dry-as-dust authors how
"Medley" derives from "Middleway" - this being
midway between Godstow and Oxford - but we need
not (indeed, we had better not) put any faith in that
derivation. Also, according to those same authorities,
it was a scene of great resort for "divers pleasures."
Of what those diversified pleasures chiefly consisted
we must judge rather from the verses of George
Withers than from the grudging phrase of Dryasdust,
who, forgetful of his own youth, gives us no details.
But let George Withers himself inform us:
In summer-time to Medley
My love and I would goe,
The boatmen there stood ready
My love and I to rowe;
For creame there would we call,
For cakes, for pruines too;
But now, alas! sh'as left me,
Falero, lero, loo.
Let nothing be said of the river between Medley and Folly Bridge. What should one say of gas-works in these pages, or of other evidences that we are not living in ancient times, and that the city of Oxford is a populous place, and up-to-date in all respects except that of its University?
Folly Bridge serves to mark the limits of the
Upper and the Lower river, as well as its prime purpose
of carrying the road to Abingdon across the
stream; and it stands in the minds of many for the
enterprising and industrious Salter, whose steamboats
and whose row-boats are centred thereby.
The real original name of Folly Bridge, dating
back to Norman times, is "Grand Pont," that is to
say, Great Bridge; great according to the ideas of
those times. Even so lately as 1844, when the first
Great Western railway-station was opened near this
point, the bridge was still well known by its old name,
in addition to the other, for the station was called
after it, "Grandpont"; but, in the years that have
passed since then, the name of "Folly Bridge" alone
has survived, and you might expend the whole of a
day asking for it by its original style, and not find
any one who knows it.
In the middle of the old bridge stood an ancient
tower known traditionally as "Friar Bacon's Study,"
where that learned man had been accustomed to take
astronomical observations. It straddled across the
roadway and formed, in fact, one of the gateways of
the city. A strange saying was current of this tower,
to the effect that when a man of greater learning than
Bacon passed under it, the tower would fall. It
never did fall, but was pulled down by the city corporation,
as an obstruction to the road, in 1779.
Years before that date, it had been let to a person
named Welcome, who not only repaired it, but built
another storey. The citizens of Oxford then called
it "Welcome's Folly."
The bridge was rebuilt between the years 1825 and
1827; but, although Welcome is forgotten, his supposed
folly still, as we perceive, gives the place a name.
There can be no doubt that, to many uninquiring
people, the name of the bridge seems to be a satire
on the pleasure-seeking life of those so-called scholars,
the University men, to whom boating and the
"bumping" races are more than all the wisdom of
the schools.
Below Folly Bridge begins that long line of glorified
house-boats, headquarters of the various college
boating-clubs, known as the "University Barges,"
stationary along the left bank of the river, by Christ
Church meadows. The ethics of bumping or being
bumped, and the sporting politics of the Torpids or
the Eights are subjects by themselves, and not to be
discussed here.
What, strangers ask, are Torpids? The name
suggests a boa-constrictor dined to repletion, and
reduced to a state of torpidity; it is, however, merely
the survival of an old Oxford nickname for the less
active among boating men, who, roused by it, and
adopting it, took to racing among themselves, as a
separate class. The extinct "sloggers" on the river
Cam at Cambridge, derived similarly, from the taunt
of "slow-goer."
The racecourse of these clubs is between Folly
Bridge and Iffley: scenically a dull stretch of river,
however exciting it may be from the aquatic sportsmen's
point of view. And if the river between
Oxford and Iffley be dull, what shall we say of the
road thither?
The way from Oxford by road to Iffley is a terrible two miles of "residential" suburbia. So soon as the pilgrim has come out of Oxford, over Magdalen Bridge, and, taking the right-hand fork of roads, has passed St. Clements, he has entered upon the villa-lined Iffley road, in which the houses are numbered to over nine hundred. I hope I am neither a Prig nor a Superior Person, but I fully confess I should not like to live - or to "reside," if you will have it so - in a house numbered well on into the hundreds. I do not, broadly speaking, envy our grandfathers of sixty or seventy years ago, for they are dead and we are among the living, but they had at least this advantage, among, of course, many serious disadvantages that we fortunately do not experience - that their towns (always excepting London) had no suburbs. Our ancestors of not so very long ago stepped out of their ancient streets and found themselves at once in the country. We have, commonly, at the threshold of every town, miles of undistinguished modern streets, commonplace, unhistorical, depressing. But, at any rate, there are no tramways, electric or other, along the Iffley road, and that is something to be thankful for, viewed from the æsthetic standpoint, although it may leave something to be desired on the score of convenience.
IFFLEY CHURCH: NORTH SIDE.
The best way to reach Iffley is undoubtedly by water. The Thames, from Folly Bridge to Iffley Lock, is not, it is true, at its best, but it, at any rate, retains something of the genius of locality, which a suburban road does not, and anything should be preferable to that road.
But, alas! Iffley Mill, once the glory of the river at this point, is at the moment of writing, a blackened heap of ruins, and it is not expected that it will be rebuilt. Even if it be, that will not be the Iffley Mill beloved of artists these many generations past. Thus ends the old manorial mill that has existed, in one form or another, on this spot, since the Norman conquest, and probably earlier still, for the place is mentioned in Anglo-Saxon charters dated 945 A.D., in which it is styled "Giftelei." It is said that "Iffley" has been spelled in eighty different ways, and Iffley Mill has probably been sketched, painted, and photographed as many thousand times; and, that being so, we will leave the mill, for once, unillustrated.
IFFLEY CHURCH: NORTH SIDE.
Enthusiastic local writers have often claimed for Iffley church that it is the finest Norman country parish church in England. It is not really quite that, but it is certainly among the finest. It is a large building, of late Norman architecture, built about 1170, when the gaunt, grim early Norman style had developed into something which, although not less massive, was more ornate and decorative. It is a church without aisles. The West front is imposing, and particularly rich, exhibiting a deeply-recessed door, with circular window above, and three windows above that. The circular window is a restoration, of some fifty years ago, of the original, destroyed in the eighteenth century and replaced by a larger, with the object, sufficiently laudable in itself, but archæologically lamentable, of admitting more light. The highly-enriched doorway, with characteristic beak, cable, and chevron devices, is protected by a bold hood-mould, finely sculptured with the signs of the zodiac. The low, square central tower is unaltered, but most of the windows in the body of the church have been remodelled at different periods in the long history of Gothic architecture. The chancel, originally apsidal, was lengthened about 1270, in the Early English style. The chancel-arch is curiously carved, and the roof is massively groined in stone. The ancient black marble font is as old as the building itself, and may be compared with a somewhat similar, but more elaborate, series in Winchester Cathedral, East Meon church, and St. Michael's, Southampton. On the north side of Iffley church is an enormous, widespreading yew, probably as old as the church itself, and still healthy. Beside it stands a restored churchyard cross.
WEST DOOR, IFFLEY CHURCH.
Among the deprived ministers at the time of the Commonwealth was Charles Forbench, vicar of Iffley, who was imprisoned for persisting in reading the Book of Common Prayer when its use was forbidden by the Parliament. "If," said he, "I must not read it, I am resolved I will say it by heart, in spite of all the rogues in England." This was a very fine spirit of resistance against tyranny, and we must all resist tyranny, from whatsoever quarter it proceeds; but it may otherwise be doubted if the Book of Common Prayer is, or ever was, worth fighting for, or whether prayers said by rote - which is really what Forbench meant when he said "by heart" - are the kind of supplications that win to the Throne of Grace. For my own part, had I been one of those Parliamentary Commissioners, I suspect I would have made Forbench take a meal off the Book of Common Prayer, as he was so fond of it; but it would not be a very nourishing meal, physically, or spiritually I take leave to say./p>
Nuneham - every one knows Nuneham; for, by favour of the Harcourts, who own the place, it has for many years past been a popular spot for rustic teas. I raise my hat, or cap, as the case may be, to the Harcourts, past and present - to the memory of Sir William, that doughty political protagonist, and voluminous letter-writer to The Times over the signature of "Historicus," who, although quite capable of leading a party, chose to be merely the trusty lieutenant of the windiest political wind-bag of any and every age; and to the present Mr. Lewis Harcourt, for the access they have permitted, and still extend, to their lovely domain. Every one, I say, knows Nuneham, for does not Salter, who runs his comfortable steamboats between Oxford and Richmond, drop passengers here, on the banks, and does he not call and pick them up again at the close of the day, conveying them from Oxford and back at the cost of one shilling? Yea; thousands have made that trip; and, given a fine day, there is, experto crede, not any trip more delightful. But if the day turn tearful, then Nuneham is the very last place to which any one who is not a fish or a duck would wish to go. Do I not know the misery of it at such times: the landing on the wet, clayey bank, under the trees of the glorious woods, which shed great spattering drops of rain on one; the half-mile walk, or rather, butter-slide, by the woodland track, to that picturesque thatched cottage in the lovely backwater, where the cottagers in fine weather supply open-air teas to these pilgrims, and in wet weather do the like; refusing, much to the said pilgrims' disgust, to give them the much-needed shelter in their own dry and comfortable quarters; with the result that those unhappy persons grow cold and shivery and develop colds in their heads, and entertain savage thoughts of Nuneham? Truly, no more miserable experience is possible than that of sitting in one of the picturesquely-thatched arbours by the waterside, and dallying over a lukewarm tea, awaiting the hour for the up-river steamer's arrival, while the moisture-laden wind comes searchingly in at the open front. And it does not make matters better to know that those disobliging cottagers are, all the while, crouching over their own roaring wood-log fires.
THE BRIDGE, NUNEHAM COURTNEY.
But let us dwell no longer upon these harrowing
experiences. It does not always rain at Nuneham - but
only when we want to go there. Then it rains
all day. But when the sun shines, Nuneham is the
ideal place for an idle day, and those draughty
arbours the most exquisite of nooks. From them you
look out upon a river scene that closely resembles
some stage "set." The trees, right and left, or, to
speak in stage conventional language - on Prompt and
Off-prompt sides - hang in that almost impossibly
picturesque way we expect in the first act of a melodrama
of the old Adelphi or Drury Lane type. You
know the kind of thing; or, if you do not, go to
Nuneham and see it. Anyway, take my word for it
that this is sheerly competitive with the stage. Beneath
these trees, whose other side, you are quite
convinced, is merely canvas and framework, are the
usual conventional rocks, on one of which the villain
will presently sit and gloat over the impending fall
of the hero. And swans come lazily paddling up
to the rush-fringed margin of the river; and, really,
all you miss is the limelight.
But if this scene seems to have been bodily taken
from the stage, the queer timber bridge that here
crosses the backwater gives quite another aspect
to the place. Looking upon it for the first time,
it appears in the likeness of some old friend whom,
for the moment, you cannot exactly place; and
then at last you have it. It closely resembles that
bridge on the time-honoured Willow-pattern Plate,
with which Oriental china has long familiarised us.
If only we had the pagoda to one side, and the queer
little figures, carrying their yet more queer little
bundles, crossing it, the scene would be conventionally
complete. To emphasise and properly accentuate
these remarks, I include a view, taken by
that amiable photographic friend and companion
to whom the most of the pictures in this book are
due. I have not dared to publish a view of the
bridge looking upstream, for that and Iffley Mill
are absolutely the two most hackneyed views of
the river in existence. Instead, therefore, we are
here looking downstream.
Nuneham is a curious combination of the ugly
and the beautiful. The great mansion, ugliness
incarnate, is surrounded by lovely and stately
gardens, created about 1765 by the masterful Earl
Harcourt, typical among the great landowners of
that age. There is something not a little awesome
about the megalomaniacal methods of those great
ones of that period, who had such autocratic wills,
so much money, and such unquestioned power.
Earl Harcourt, in common with many others of
his class and of his period, could not endure that
the village and the church of Nuneham should be
within sight of his windows, and so he abolished
both, causing a new village to arise fringing the
London road, and a new church, which stands as
an indictment of the then prevailing want of taste,
being in the likeness of a Greek temple, to be built
in the woods at the back of the mansion. It is
dated 1764. Here lies Sir William Harcourt, who
died in 1904.
CARFAX CONDUIT, NUNEHAM COURTNEY.
I will not be so gross as to attempt a description of the loveliness of the natural beauties of Nuneham, or of the views from it: only let it be said that the view from the grassy knoll on which stands the old Carfax conduit, brought from Oxford, is exquisite, commanding, as it does, distant peeps of Oxford in one direction, and of Abingdon in another, with lovely stretches of meadowlands, woods, and water, in between. There is, it may well be supposed, no more beautiful fountain in England than this old conduit from the four cross-roads in the centre of Oxford; but the expansion of population and the increase of traffic have ever banished the beautiful, and thus this fine Renascence building, given to the city of Oxford by Otho Nicholson in 1610, was, so early as 1787, removed as an inscription upon it states, "to enlarge the High Street." The University, the inscription goes on to state, then presented it to George Simon, Earl Harcourt. If it were worth accepting, it certainly was also worth keeping, and that the University could thus give it away reflects no credit upon that body. The repetitive "O. N." observed upon the conduit stands for the initials of Otho Nicholson.
Abingdon, some three miles distant, now claims
attention; and a good deal of leisured attention is
its due. That pleasant and quietly-prosperous old
town is one of those fortunate places that have
achieved the happy middle course between growth
and decay, and thus are not ringed about with
squalid, unhistorical, modern additions. Its population
remains at about 6,500, and therefore it is not,
although possessing from of old a Mayor and Corporation,
a town at all in the modern sense. Thus
shall I shift to excuse myself for including it in these
pages. In these days of great populations we can
scarce begin to think of a place of fewer than ten
thousand inhabitants, as a "town" at all.
The origin of Abingdon, whose very name is said
to mean "the Abbey town," was purely ecclesiastical,
for it came into existence as a dependency of the
great Abbey founded here in the seventh century.
Legends, indeed, tell us of an earlier Abingdon,
called "Leavechesham," in early British times,
and make it even then an important religious centre
and a favourite residence of the kings of Wessex,
but they - the legends and the kings alike - are of
the vaguest.
ABINGDON.
Leland, in the time of Henry the Eighth, wrote
of the town: "It standeth by clothing," and it did
so in more than one sense, for it not only made cloth,
but a great deal of traffic between London and
Gloucester, Stroud, Cirencester, and other great
West of England clothing centres, came this way,
and had done so ever since the building of Abingdon
(or Burford, i.e. Boroughford) bridge and the bridge
at Culham Hithe in 1416, had opened a convenient
route this way. The town owed little to the Abbey,
for the proud mitred abbots, who here ruled one of
the wealthiest religious houses in England, and sat
in Parliament in respect of it, were not concerned
with such common people as tradesfolk, and did
not by any means encourage settlers. They trafficked
only with the great, and aimed at keeping Abingdon
select. From quite early times they had adopted
this attitude: perhaps ever since William the Conqueror
had entrusted to the monastery the education
of his son Henry, afterwards Henry the First - an
education so superior that, by reason of it, Henry
the First lives in history as "Beauclerc."
It was a highly-prosperous Abbey, and smelt
to heaven with pride, and had a very bad reputation
for tyrannical dealings with those who had managed
to settle here. The Abbot refused to allow the
people to establish a market, and in 1327 the enmity
thus caused broke out into riot. From Oxford
there came the Mayor and a number of scholars,
to help the people of Abingdon in their quarrel,
and part of the Abbey was burnt, its archives destroyed,
and the monks driven out. But this was
a sorry, and merely a temporary, victory; for the
Abbot procured powerful assistance and regained
his place, and twelve of the rioters were hanged.
The scandalous arrogance and state of the Abbots
of Abingdon aroused the wrath of Langland, a monk
himself, but one of liberal views, who some few years
later wrote that prophetic work, The Vision of Piers
Plowman, in which the downfall of this great Abbey
is directly and specifically foretold:
Eke ther shal come a kyng,
And confesse yow religiouses,
And bete you as the Bible telleth
For brekynge of your rule.
...
And thanne shal the abbot of Abyngdone,
And al his issue for evere,
Have a knok of a kyng,
And incurable the wounde.
When the Abbey was suppressed in 1538, its annual income was £1,876 10s. 9d., equal to about £34,000, present [1910] value.
With the disappearance of the Abbey, the town of Abingdon grew, and continued to prosper by clothing and by agriculture until the opening of the railway era. When the Great Western Railway was originally planned, in 1833, it was intended to take it through Abingdon, instead of six miles south, as at present, and to make this, instead of Didcot, the junction for Oxford. But Abingdon was strongly opposed to the project, and procured the diversion of the line, and so it remains to this day an exceedingly awkward place to reach or to leave, by a small branch railway. It has thus lost, commercially, to an incalculable degree, but in other ways - in the preservation of beauty and antiquity - has gained, equally beyond compute.
CHRIST'S HOSPITAL, ABINGDON.
An architect might find some stimulating ideas
communicated to him by the quaint and refined
detail observable in many of the old houses. There
is, among other curious houses near the Market
House, the "King's Head and Bell," in an odd classic
convention.
Of the great Abbey church nothing is left. The
townsfolk had such long-standing and bitter grievances
against the Abbey that they must have rejoiced
exceedingly when the fat and lazy monks were at
last cast out upon the world; and they seem to
have revelled in destruction. The Abbey precincts
are now largely built over; but, such as they are
to-day, they may be found by proceeding out of
the Market Place, past St. Nicholas' church, and
through the Abbey gateway, now used as part of
the Town Hall, and restored, but once serving as a
debtors' prison.
Here a mutilated and greatly time-worn Early
English building will be found, with a vaulted crypt,
and two rooms above. To this has been given the
(probably erroneous) name of the "Prior's House."
Its curiously stout Early English chimney, with
lancet-headed openings, under queer little gables,
is a landmark not easily missed. The successor of
the original Abbey Mill is itself very picturesque.
Adjoining is the long, two-storeyed building often
styled the "Infirmary," and sometimes the "Guest
House"; perhaps having partaken of both uses.
It can only have been used for humble guests, or
patients, for it is merely a rough-and-ready wooden
building, rather barn-like, divided into dormitories.
THE TOWN HALL, ABINGDON.
The charming little Norman and Perpendicular
church of St. Nicholas has been very severely dealt
with by "restoring" hands, but its quaintness
and charm appear indestructible.
An especially
peculiar feature of the altogether unconventional
West front is seen in the curious little flat-headed
window under a gable roof to the north side of the
tower, giving a curiously semi-domestic appearance
to the church. The windows light a staircase turret,
which is perhaps the remaining part of some priest's
residence formerly attached to the church.
ST. NICHOLAS, ABINGDON.
But, far or near, the chief feature of Abingdon
is St. Helen's church, whose tall and graceful spire
has the peculiar feature of being built in two quite
distinctly different angles: the lower stage much
less acute than the upper. It is what architects
call an "entasis." A band of ornament marks
the junction of the two stages. This spire is
of the Perpendicular period, built upon an Early
English tower. The rest of this exceptionally large
and beautiful church, which has the peculiarity of
being provided with a nave and four aisles, is Perpendicular.
It should be noted that what are now
the two extra aisles were originally built by the
town guilds, as chapels. The five aisles form a noble
vista, looking across the church. They are named,
from north to south, Jesus Aisle, Our Lady's, St.
Helen's, St. Catharine's, and Holy Cross. The
great breadth of the church originated a local saying,
by which either of alternative courses of any action,
supposed to have little to choose between them,
may often be heard referred to as "That's as broad
as it's long, like St. Helen's church."
Brasses and monuments of Abingdon's old merchants
and benefactors are numerous: among them
this curious inscription to Richard Curtaine, 1643:
Our curtaine in this lower press
Rests folded up in Natur's dress;
His dust perfumes this urn, and he
This towne with liberalitie."
Here, too, is the tomb of John Roysse, citizen of London, and mercer, who founded here "Roysse's Free School," and died in 1571. The slab covering his tomb came from his London garden.
ST. HELEN'S, ABINGDON.
The town is singularly rich in old and interesting
almshouses, the churchyard being enclosed on three
sides by various charitable foundations of this kind.
Of these the oldest and most remarkable is the
almshouse founded about 1442 by the Guild of
Holy Cross, and refounded after the Reformation,
in 1553, as Christ's Hospital, by Sir John Mason, an
Abingdon worthy who rose from the humblest
beginnings to be Ambassador to the French Court,
and Chancellor of the University of Oxford. The
chief feature of Christ's Hospital, as regards its
front, is the long half-timber cloister, with no fewer
than one hundred and sixty little openings in the
woodwork, looking out to the churchyard. A picturesque
porch projects midway, and from the
steep roof rises a quaint lantern, crowned with
cupola and vane. Old black-letter and other texts
and paintings cover the walls of the cloister. Under
the lantern is the hall, or council-chamber, an old-world
room with a noble stone-mullioned bay window
looking out upon the almshouse gardens in the rear.
In this window are set forth the arms of benefactors
towards the institution, and their portraits further
adorn the walls, together with a curious contemporary
account of the buildings of Abingdon and Culham
Hithe bridges. As the value of endowments increased,
so the buildings of Christ's Hospital have
been from time to time added to; and in addition
there are Twitty's and Tomkins's almshouses. A
gable-end of Christ's Hospital abuts upon St. Helen's
Quay, on the river-side, with inscriptions curiously
painted under protecting canopies:
God openeth His hand and filleth all things living with plenteousness;
be we therefore followers of God as dear
children. 1674
and
If one of thy Brethren among you be poore within any of thy Gates in thy
land which the Lord God giveth thee, thou shalt
not harden thy heart, nor shut thine hand from thy
poor Brother. 1674.
Abingdon is full of noble old buildings, both of
a public and a private character, and prominent
among them must be reckoned the imposing Market
House. There is nothing else quite like it, in style
or in dignity, in England, and it is not too much to
say that it would, by itself, ennoble any town. It
was built 1678-84, and followed in plan the old
conventional lines of such buildings: i.e. an open,
arcaded ground floor, supporting an upper storey;
but in design it is one of the purest examples of
revived classic architecture in the land. The upper
storey in this case was intended for use as a sessions-house.
OLD HOUSES, STEVENTON CAUSEWAY.
The design has been variously attributed to Inigo Jones, to Webb, his successor in business, or to Sir Christopher Wren, without any other evidence than that it partakes of the known style of all these. But Inigo Jones died in 1652, and Webb in 1674, and so they are both out of the question. There are at the present time in private possession at Abingdon a few old documents, preserved by merest chance, which abundantly prove who built the Market House, if not precisely who designed it. They detail payments made to Christopher Kempster, whom we have met earlier in these pages. He was, or at this time had been, clerk-of-works and master-mason to Wren, in his rebuilding of St. Paul's Cathedral and the City churches, and afterwards retired to Burford, where he owned quarries. He would have been forty-eight years of age at the time when this Market House was begun. Unless we are prepared to assume him a transcendental clerk-of-works and a very Phœbus of a master-mason, it seems scarce likely that he designed, as well as built, this exceptionally fine structure; and the inference therefore to be drawn is that he induced Wren to sketch out the design and built to it, either with or without the supervision of that great architect.
THE "KING'S HEAD AND BELL," ABINGDON.
A group of rustic villages nestles undisturbed by
any press of traffic on the right, or Berkshire, bank
of the river: Drayton, Sutton Courtney, and Appleford;
with Steventon and Milton away back in the
hinterland, all very charming, and wholly unaltered.
At Steventon are to be found the most delightful
old cottages. There are no better in Berkshire.
This is a sweeping statement, but true. The proof
of it lies partly in visiting that coy spot: coy, because
the said cottages lie off the high road along the
by-lane known as Steventon Causeway.
One might say much about Sutton Courtney,
the "south town" of the Courtneys, who owned it
in the long ago, with Nuneham Courtney, to the
north of it. Here is an "Abbey," but it is in private
occupation as a residence, and is not a show-house;
and very much the same may be added of the old
manor-house and its "Court House," adjoining the
church. The "Abbey" was really a place to which
the brethren of the Abbey of Abingdon might occasionally
retire for rest and for health's sake.
SUTTON COURTNEY CHURCH.
The manor of Sutton Courtney finally passed[237]
from the family in the sixteenth century, when
Henry Courtenay, Marquis of Exeter, was attainted
and his property seized. The old manor-house,
built around a courtyard, still retains its ancient
hall, with minstrels' gallery. The so-called "Court
House," in the grounds, is a late Norman building,
with lancet windows, and is thought by competent
authorities to be the hall of justice of the original
manor-house.
There is much quiet charm in Sutton Courtney,
and much interest: the charm and interest of long
existence, with changes only brought about by slow
effluxion of time. I suppose there is little new about
Sutton Courtney except the young chestnut-trees
that line the grassy way to the church; always
excepting the last few puling infants that have been
carried that way to be christened. The church
itself is an example of gradual change, yet of the
continuity that marks this dear ancestral God's
own country of Old England, in which we are unworthy
co-partners. It is of all periods, from Norman
to Perpendicular; its last development seen in the
south porch, rendered in red brick, in strong contrast
with the stone of the rest of the building. The
porch is by courtesy Perpendicular, but is rather in
the domestic Gothic style than of ecclesiastical
type, and looks remarkably as though some one had
found a small house and brought it to the church
and left it to be called for. There is a particularly
charming little late Norman belfry window, with
interlacing arches, well worth notice, and a row of
grotesquely-sculptured corbels of the same period,
with an odd variety of sick and sorry expressions.
On the same face of the tower is a prettily-decorated
sun-dial.
The pulpit, with quaint sounding-board above
and the fine Transitional Norman arch next it,
form a charming picture. It is easily obvious that
this enriched arch, now forming that of the easternmost
bay of the south
aisle, was formerly the
chancel arch, before
the church was rebuilt
on a larger scale than
the original structure;
for although the arch
itself has found a new
situation, the columns
on either side of it
have been used again
to support the newer
and broader chancel-opening.
SUTTON COURTNEY CHURCH, NORMAN BELFRY-WINDOW INTERIOR
Two curious black-and-white frescoes, at the west end of the north and south aisles respectively, are worth notice. They represent the administration of the Andrews Charity, by which six poor widows, and as many men, were given clothes, a penny loaf each on Sundays, and on three certain days yearly, money to buy meat. They were, unhappily, obliged to listen to a sermon preached on Corpus Christi day, on the goodness of Andrews and the humility and thankfulness proper to bedesmen and receivers of doles. The frescoes represent the old men and the old women receiving the clothes, which they appear to be doing in a somewhat tentative and timorous, not to say condescending, manner, at the hands of one who looks like a ferocious beadle, or suchlike functionary.
There is a bridge at Sutton Courtney where toll is still demanded. It is variously "Sutton" bridge or "Culham" bridge: this last name productive of some confusion with the bridge at Culham ford (or Culham Hithe) between Dorchester and Abingdon.
From Culham and Sutton Courtney one comes by river in a mile under the ugly Great Western Railway bridge at Appleford,
and then in another
mile to the lovely winding backwater on which
Long Wittenham is situated. Although now a
backwater, it is the real original course of the river,
and the straight waterway on the left, through
which all the traffic passes on to Clifton Lock, is a
formal cut, made for convenience, and for shortening
the distance. Long Wittenham, by reason of this
circumstance, is nowadays not only on a river backwater,
but also, owing to the main roads passing it
at a considerable distance away, on a backwater
of life as well; and those who seek to reach it by
road will find that the way is not only long, but
circuitous and puzzling; while to those who may
essay to leave it by a specious short-cut for Appleford,
the only advice to be offered, if they ride
bicycles, is "don't!" especially as no reasonable
person, having once seen Appleford, which consists
of a railway crossing and a few cottages, and a
rebuilt church, ever wants to go there again.
The picturesque and interesting church of Long
Wittenham, partaking of all periods of Gothic architecture,
has two especial claims to notice. The
first is in the Early English leaden font, one of the
twenty-nine leaden fonts known to exist in England.
The lower part of it is arcaded, the arches filled with
effigies of bishops; the upper part decorated at
irregular intervals with curious whorl devices. The
Jacobean wooden carved font-cover also is not
without interest.
The second of these special features is a curious
piscina in the shallow south transept of early fourteenth-century
date, combining with the purpose of
a holy-water stoup that of a monument to the founder
of the church. This takes the form of a miniature
recumbent effigy, two feet in length, of an armed
knight, cross-legged, and with drawn sword in
hand and shield on arm. Two angels, sculptured in
low relief, crown the arch. A third claim that Long
Wittenham church may well make upon the lovers
of things venerable and beautiful is the very fine old
timber porch, romantically weathered. The accompanying
illustration displays this to excellent advantage,
and also emphatically discloses the massive
character of the timbering, seen especially in the
verge-or barge-boards, consisting of but two separate
pieces, of great thickness. It is a truly worshipful
piece of craftsmanship.
LITTLE WITTENHAM.
ANCIENT TIMBER PORCH, LONG WITTENHAM (UNRESTORED).
Long Wittenham may well be called long. From the ancient cross at one end of it, past the church, it goes on and on in a single street, and finally loses itself indeterminately between making on the one hand for Clifton Hampden, and on the other for the vast hedgeless fields across which lies the way to Little Wittenham, one mile distant. Those widespreading fields of this district are a distinct and remarkable feature of this countryside. Whether they be pasture, or corn, or turnip fields, they give a sense of largeness and strangeness to the traveller in these parts, accustomed only to the little five- or six-acre enclosures of other neighbourhoods. Here vast fifty-acre expanses of wheat or swedes go in swooping undulations over the hillsides, and you rarely see the boundaries of them. These peculiarities of Berkshire agricultural conditions certainly make for economical farming, with less space wasted upon unproductive hedges; and they certainly also make for picturesqueness here, where the great double hill of Sinodun rises boldly in roughly pyramidal shape from the lower levels.
There are
huge prehistoric earthworks on the summit of Sinodun:
vast concentric circumvallations and fosses
reared by long-forgotten folk, the vastness of whose
defensible works gives, almost like an arithmetical
exercise, the measure of their fears. Who were
those who slaved so strenuously at this fortification,
and who those others against whose expected onslaught
they made such preparations? Archæologists
have their theories, indeed, but no one
knows. Really, from all available evidence, it would
appear that Sinodun was fortified from the very
earliest times, and that each conquering race which
settled in Britain, and in turn decayed in manhood
and the arts of war, and so gave opportunity for a
newer conquest at the hands of uncultured but virile
barbarians, in turn occupied this hill-top and were
attacked and slain in it, in those pitiless battles of
extermination that were the usual features of the
world's youth.
Sinodun and its fellow-hill are in these times
crested with plantations of trees, known far and
near as "Wittenham Clumps"; and there is a
third clump, a minimus infant brother, or poor relation,
kind of clump, on a lesser eminence, not unremotely
reminiscent of Landseer's picture, "Dignity
and Impudence."
The traveller across Didcot downs, the boating-man
on the Thames - all, in fact, who come within
view of them - are obsessed by Wittenham Clumps,
which dominate all views, and from the river, at
any rate, are always appearing in the most unexpected
quarters. Even the traveller by railway remarks
them. Such an one, journeying along the Great
Western main-line and gazing from the carriage-windows,
sees those black blotches of trees on the
hill-tops come whirling into view, and thinks of
them in relation to his journey, with the mental
note, "Now we are near Didcot."
DAY'S LOCK, AND SINODUN HILL.
Sinodun and the clumps look nowhere more impressive
than along the road between Culham and
Wallingford, where they form not so much the
boldly-isolated hills and tufts they appear to be
from the river, as the culmination of the gradually-rising
downlands. In the lap of the downs, just
before they rise to these crests, are situated some
ranges of farm-buildings in the open, hedgeless
fields, and there you see the cattle-byres and the
ricks looking small against the huge scale of their
surroundings in this shivery setting. It is Anglo-Saxon
Berkshire you see here, in all essentials,
not the twentieth-century Berkshire typified by
Reading; and more of a piece with White Horse
Hill than with that bustling and thriving and
increasing town.
The stranger who comes to Long Wittenham
thinks, on first seeing its retired aspect, that if ever
he wished to seclude himself from the world, it is to
Long Wittenham he would go; but he has only
to proceed to Little Wittenham for him at once to
look upon Long Wittenham as, by force of contrast,
a metropolitan centre. As the larger place is with
a peculiar fitness styled "long," so yet in a more
appropriate manner is the smaller called "little."
It appears to consist solely of a church, a vicarage,
and a farm.
Little, or Abbot's, Wittenham, the manor having
once belonged to Abingdon Abbey, is not merely
little. It is also remote. Not a remoteness of
great mileage, but the quite equal detachment of
being situated on a road that leads to anywhere
at all only by rustic and winding ways. It sits
peacefully and slumberously at the very foot of
Sinodun, enfolded amid delightful hedgerow elms,
"the world forgetting, and by the world forgot."
Not always was Little Wittenham so retired from
all rumours of the outer world, for here was situated,
from the sixteenth century until 1800, when it was
demolished, the manor-house of the Dunch family,
who moved not obscurely in the society of their time.
The Dunches finally died out in 1719, and now all
that is left of them are some musty pedigrees in
county histories, the mounds and trenches to the
north of the church, where their mansion stood,
and some tombs and brasses in the church itself,
which was rebuilt, except the tower, in 1863. It is
a tall, slim tower, picturesquely weatherworn, but
not exceptionally remarkable, unless we take note
of its small turret-window in the shape of an ace of
spades (not an ace of clubs, as my late friend, Mr.
J. E. Vincent, says in his Highways and Byways in
Berkshire). Local legend tells us that this represents
the ace with which the builder of the tower
won a fortune; but it is really nothing more than
a cross-slit window, mutilated in its upper half into
that shape.
WITTENHAM CLUMPS.
Clifton Hampden, lying between the Wittenhams,
is on the Oxfordshire side of the river. If there
were ever a competition as to which is the prettiest
village on the Thames below Oxford, surely Clifton
Hampden would be bracketed with Sonning for
first place. There is this chief difference between
the two; that Sonning is a considerable village and
Clifton a small one. They are alike in that they
both possess a bridge, but different again in the fact
that while Sonning bridge is of the eighteenth century,
and with only its quaintness to recommend it, the
bridge at Clifton is a beautiful building of the nineteenth,
in the mediæval style, one of the most successful
on the river, and only lacking the element of
age. There is, sooth to say, no village at Clifton
Hampden; just a bridge, a church, the lovely old
thatched Barley Mow Inn, and a few scattered
cottages, generally, in the summer months, with
an artist in front of each, rendering it in the medium
of water or of oil, upon paper or canvas. And the
grassy banks come down to the river delightfully,
and over on the Oxfordshire side rises the charming
little Transitional Norman and Decorated church
upon the abrupt sandstone bluff or cliff that gives
Clifton its name. One may linger away contented
afternoons here, perhaps with a book, perhaps
watching from the bridge the minnows or the dace,
or with amusement noting the evolutions of the
flotillas of ducks and ducklings that come and go
in company, like miniature navies. To see a duck
dip down and stand on its head in the water is to
watch a humorous feat: possibly, according to the
observations of some naturalists, to witness a tragedy,
for it would seem that the ferocious pike have not
infrequently been known to seize by the head a
duck so gymnastically exercising, and thus to make
an end of it.
The quality of Clifton Hampden church is shown,
as to its exterior, by the accompanying illustration;
which also discloses the steep steps leading up to
it, and the elaborate churchyard cross - all works
of 1907. The Hampdens, who once owned the
manor, have no memorials here, and the greatly-restored
condition of the church is due to the Hucks-Gibbs
family. The Transitional Norman south nave-arcade,
with round-headed arches, simply sculptured
capitals, and enormous bases to the columns, is entirely
delightful: the plain painted north arcade,
without capitals, poor and mean by comparison.
In the church was once an ancient leaden font, of
the Dorchester and Long Wittenham type, but this
was sold for old metal by a vicar who thought it
ugly!
CLIFTON HAMPDEN.
Sinodun Hill, whose aspects and history have
already been remarked upon, groups grandly as
one drops down river to Day's Lock, as perhaps
the illustration may serve to indicate. The original
Day who, ages ago, conferred his name upon the
lock is forgotten, but at any rate the proprietary
style of the lock's name and of those of one or two
others reminds people who know anything about
the history of the river of those times before the
coming of the Thames Conservancy, when the stream
and the towing-paths along it were regarded very
much as the private property of the landowners
whose fields ran down to their water-course. We
read much of the mediæval robber-barons of the
Rhine, and their fellows in this country were those
riparian property-owners, who made up for the
lack of ferocity which characterised their continental
counterparts by a cunning assumption of legality,
very much more difficult to dispose of than sheer
brute force. Much of the history of the Thames is
concerned with actions in courts of law to assert or
to contest these rights, real or assumed. So early as
1624 an Act of Parliament providing for the better
navigation of the Thames referred incidentally to
the "Exactions of the Occupiers of Locks and Weirs
upon the River of Thames Westward," and set out
to do away with them; but that was a long business,
and for many a year afterwards Day, of Day's Lock,
and Boulter, of Boulter's Lock, and their brethren,
owned, or rented from landowners, the locks still
named after them, and charged just what they
pleased for traffic passing through.
Beyond Day's Lock comes Dorchester, i.e. Dwr
chester, the fortress on the water. Plenty of water
here, at any rate, to give point to the place-name,
for at this spot the Thame, meandering along through
oozy meadows, joins the Thames. It cannot be
said, by any exactness of imagery, to "fall" into it;
to use that well-worn expression beloved by the
writers of geography primers.
DORCHESTER.
Dorchester, Oxon, has not the slightest resemblance
to Dorchester, Dorset: the two have little
in common save their name, which might well have
been much more than duplicated, seeing how many
must have been the camps and fortresses upon
various waters. Fortunately, with the result of
saving us from the confusion of dozens of Dorchesters,
our very remote ancestors were possessed
of sufficient resourcefulness to enable them to fit
distinctive names to those places.
The great days of Dorchester are done, and the
place is so quiet and slumberous, although on a
high road, that the first part of the place-name might
almost be held to derive from the French verb
dormer, to sleep. The one street, long and somewhat
picturesque, the fine stone open-balustraded bridge
across the Thame, and the church: in that inventory
you have an outline of Dorchester.
DORCHESTER ABBEY.
The great parish church that was once an Abbey church, the successor of an early Cathedral, although an architectural and archæological feature of great interest, does not form so striking a picture as it should; for the building is long and low, with level, unbroken roof-line, and an ineffective tower at the west end; and it displays its inordinate length prominently to the road.
SEDILIA, DORCHESTER ABBEY.
The cathedral that once stood here was that of
the great bishopric of Dorchester, founded in A.D. 635
by Birinus, who had been sent by the Pope, Honorius,
the year before, to preach Christianity to the Saxons.
The see of Dorchester lasted, with some intermissions,
until 1086, and comprised the greater
part of England, including what are now the
bishoprics of Winchester, Salisbury, Exeter, Bath
and Wells, Lichfield, Hereford, Worcester, and
Oxford.
A few traces remain of that abandoned Saxon
cathedral, but they are such that only expert archæologists
can point them out; and of the Early
English Abbey church begun by the Augustine
monks to whom it had then been granted, in 1140,
the nave alone is left. The nave in an ordinary
building would be an important item, but the Abbey
church of Dorchester is an extraordinary structure,
and of such a plan that the architectural features of
its nave cannot well be very striking. The building
was originally without aisles. It adjoined the Abbey
cloisters, which were situated on the north side,
and consequently the north wall of the nave has
few openings. The choir was rebuilt grandly, in the
Decorated style, about 1330; and at a slightly earlier
date a north aisle had been added to it, circa 1280.
In 1300 a south-choir aisle was built, and twenty
years later, a south-nave aisle. To this was added
the Perpendicular porch. The tower was constructed
about 1680, in a debased manner.
Thus the northern wall, from end to end, is
largely blank, and the architectural graces of the
building are reserved chiefly for the south aspect.
The remarkable east end is built upon ground
abruptly sloping to the east, and is, moreover,
closely set about with trees.
The choir is the most notable portion, containing
finely-carved stone sedilia, with small spherical
triangular windows at the back, filled with twelfth-
and fourteenth-century stained glass, setting forth
the story of St. Birinus. The arrangement of these
sedilia and the shape and design of these windows,
profusely decorated with the "ball-flower" ornament,
form probably an unique architectural composition.
The great east window, for beauty easily
in the front rank among elaborately-designed windows,
is as remarkable as it is beautiful, being intricately
traceried in its entire length, instead of,
in the usual way, plainly mullioned for two-thirds
of its height, with the enrichment confined to the
head. The surpassing beauty of this design is perhaps
even thrown into more prominent relief by
the stark ugliness of the bare stone pillar dividing
it in half. It seems probable that in olden times
this was filled with a Crucifixion. The presence of
this undesirable feature is a structural necessity.
It is, in fact, a buttress, necessitated by the
sharp fall in the ground outside. There is no
excuse, however, for the stupidity which has
caused some hangings to be erected at the back
of the altar, by which a portion of the window is
obscured.
THE EAST WINDOW, DORCHESTER ABBEY.
But certainly the most extraordinary and interesting
of windows is that on the north side of
the choir, immediately adjoining the east window.
It is the famous "Jesse Window," of which the
centre mullion represents the genealogical tree of
Jesse, whose figure, in a reclining posture, is seen
below. From the centre mullion spring branches
at regular intervals on either side, worked decoratively
in stone. Twenty-seven little figures, also carved
in stone, represent the various personages of the
House of David, and sixteen others are in stained
glass. The exterior of this remarkable window is
extraordinarily mean and thin, and gives no hint
of the beauty of the interior.
Some altar-tombs and brasses remain, sadly
mutilated, and the west end of the church is more
or less of a stone-heap, where many fragments
of the building are preserved. The chapel at the
east end of the south choir-aisle was rebuilt by Sir
Gilbert Scott. The work was largely a conjectural
reconstruction, a type of undertaking Scott above
all things delighted to engage upon, generally with
results far from satisfactory; but in this case it
is an unquestioned artistic success. It may, however,
be observed that the constructional part of it is
poor, for it is bodily subsiding into the deep gully
that runs past the east end; and must soon be underpinned,
or heavily buttressed, if it is not to fall
into ruin.
The Norman font is of lead; a very fine example,
exhibiting, within arcading, seated figures of the
twelve apostles, in high relief. Another leaden
font, greatly resembling that at Wittenham, is at
Warborough, two miles distant.
THE JESSE WINDOW (ON THE LEFT), DORCHESTER ABBEY.
Between Dorchester and Wallingford, whether we proceed by the Oxfordshire side of the river or the Berkshire, we are in a level district of many springs, to which the place-names of the villages numerously bear witness. Thus in Berkshire there are the two conjoined delightful villages of Brightwell and Sotwell, where a little rill goes rippling by, until early summer dries it up. The name "Brightwell" thus speaks for itself. Sotwell, I presume, means "sweet well." And in Oxfordshire, beyond the scope of these pages, is another Brightwell, with the family name of "Salome" added to it; while the name of Ewelme, a beautiful and historic village near by, means simply "wells." Just beyond Wallingford, too, is Mongewell. The river runs between, with the beautiful stone bridge of Shillingford, and the water-side village of Benson on the way: Benson, by common consent lopped of much of its name, being really "Bensington." So unanimously has the locality agreed upon the shorter form, and for such a length of time, that even map-makers have adopted it. Of the clan of Bensings, whose chief settlement this was, we can know nothing; and the later conflicts between the Saxon kingdoms of Wessex and Mercia, in which Bensington changed hands with great frequency, until Mercia at length assimilated it, are such far-off, remote doings that it is perhaps a little difficult to take even a languid interest in them. Even the old coaching days seem remote, although large and imposing specimens of English coaching hostelries stand in the crooked street of Benson, a little dazed by motor-cars and the noise and the stink of them, wondering whither have gone the mails and the stages of yore.
And so we come, past the pretty Oxfordshire hamlet
of Preston Crowmarsh, into the good old Berkshire
town of Wallingford.
Wallingford town has been thrust aside by
modern circumstances and altogether deposed from
its ancient importance. If we look at large maps,
and thereby see how several great roads here converge
and cross the Thames, the reason of this former
importance will be at once manifest, and likewise
the existence of the great castle of Wallingford will
be explained. Wallingford derives its name from
"Wealinga-ford," a Saxon term by which the ford
of the Wealings - that is to say the British, or the
Welsh, whom the Saxons were gradually displacing - was
meant.
How they held the fort here in those dim times
before the Norman came and built his great stone
castle - and before even the Saxon came - we may
perhaps see in the remarkable earthworks that still
form three sides of a square enclosure: the river
itself forming the natural defence of the fourth
side. No stranger whose eye lights upon those
ancient dykes in the Kine Croft can fail to notice
them, nor help speculating for what purpose they
were made. No facts are, or will ever be, available;
but it does not require much penetration to reconstruct
the needs of that primeval community
protected within these earthworks, not in themselves
a sufficient protection, but easily defensible in that
age when they formed - as they doubtless did - the
foundation for a wooden stockade.
At that time, when William the Conqueror had
descended upon England and fought the battle of
Hastings, there lived and ruled in Wallingford a
Saxon thane, by name Wygod, who, noting the
caution which forbade the Conqueror to advance
directly upon London and caused him to make a
circuitous march, invited him to cross the Thames
here, which he accordingly did, at this place receiving
the homage of the chief Saxon notables. Was
Wygod, then, a traitor, or was he merely a level-headed
opportunist who saw that all was lost, and
sought to moderate strife by wise action? We are
not in full possession of the facts, and therefore
cannot tell whether to praise or blame him. But
the results show that he did well: did, perhaps,
better than he knew at the time of doing; for he
thus - and also in giving his daughter Edith in
marriage to Robert D'Oyley, one of the Conqueror's
knights - helped in the great work of bringing about
the settlement of the realm and the eventual merging
of the Norman and the Anglo-Saxon races. And
by so much those who fell at Hastings, fighting for
their country, had died in vain.
It was not very long before the great castle of
Wallingford was put to proof as a fortress, for it
played an important part in the wars between the
Empress Maud and King Stephen. The Empress,
sorely beset in the castle of Oxford, escaped thence
through the snow of one December night, covered
with a sheet; and by favour of that covering entirely
escaped observation, and came safely to Wallingford,
whither she was followed after an interval
by Stephen, who built a castle at Crowmarsh, on the
Oxfordshire side of the river, to keep her in check.
She then escaped to Gloucester, while her trusty
partisan, Brian Fitzcount, held out for years: until,
indeed, Stephen was wearied, with the result that
the long civil war was at last concluded by the
treaty of Wallingford, effecting the compromise
by which Stephen was to reign for his life, and Henry,
son of the Empress Maud, was to succeed him:
which, in the fulness of time, he accordingly did;
and reigned, and misgoverned sometimes, and at
others governed well, as Henry the Second, in a truly
Norman way, for thirty-five years.
WALLINGFORD.
Wallingford was in after-centuries frequently a
royal residence; chiefly, it is true, for royal widows
and other such extinct volcanoes, Have Beens, and
back-numbers; but by the sixteenth century the
castle appears to have become dilapidated. Leland,
for example, declared it in his time "sore yn ruine";
but Camden, coming after him, said its size and
magnificence were amazing to him, as a young man.
"My fer-ends, what is ter-ewth?" as Chadband
despairingly asked. Perhaps Leland's capacity for
amazement was less than that owned by Camden.
After Leland's time, it must surely have been repaired;
or how else could the sixty-five days'
siege have been withstood by the gallant Royalist
governor, Blagge, in 1646? I pause for a reply,
without, however, in the least expecting one. Six
years later, the cautious Parliament caused this
stronghold to be blown up, and now all we can see
are some rude fragments of walls in the large and
beautiful grounds of a private residence, courteously
opened on summer afternoons.
Its curious privileges also mark the antiquity of
Wallingford. Among them is the nine o'clock curfew,
instead of at eight o'clock: said to have been granted
as a special favour by William the Conqueror, in
recognition of his friendly reception here. The
curfew-bell still sounds from the tower of St. Mary-le-More
every evening at nine o'clock.
The native-born burghers of Wallingford had
the immemorial right (perhaps they have it now,
for what it may be worth) of claiming, when tried
for a first offence against the criminal law, that,
instead of being put to death, they should have
their eyes put out and be otherwise mutilated.
Those lenient, soft-hearted, sentimental ways of
dealing with crime have ever been the curse of the
country! At Wallingford, Thomas Tusser, author
of Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, who
was born about 1524 and died 1580, began his career
as a chorister in the castle chapel, and appears to
have had a sorry time of it here, according to his
reminiscent verses:
What robes, how bare, what college fare!
What bread, how stale, what penny ale!
Then, Wallingford, how wert thou abhor'd
Of seely boys!"
Reason sufficient, it would seem, by those eloquent lines!
There were of old fourteen churches in Wallingford; but the town suffered so greatly in the plague of 1343, and then from the Black Death, that the population dwindled away to almost nothing, and most of the churches fell into ruin, so that three only remain: St. Mary-the-More, St. Leonard, and St. Peter's; and even those were greatly battered during the siege. The last named is that whose fantastic white masonry steeple is prominently seen from the river. It was built, together with the body of the church, in 1769. In its churchyard lies Sir William Blackstone (died 1780), Lord Chief Justice, and author of the most famous Commentaries since Julius Caesar. But Blackstone's work is of quite another kind than that of the "noblest Roman of them all." It is, of course, a work of legal erudition.
WALLINGFORD: TOWN HALL, AND CHURCH OF ST. MARY-THE-MORE.
St. Mary-the-More, whose name carries with it
allusion to another St. Mary's - St. Mary-the-Less,
united with St. Peter, so long ago as 1374, is in the
market-place, grouping finely with the curious seventeenth-century
Town Hall that stands supported
on an open arcade, affording space for the market.
It is so fine and so entirely satisfactory a Town
Hall, and so imbued with architectural grace and
distinction, that no one will be in the least surprised
to see it some day improved off the face of the earth,
in the usual manner of provincial authorities with
such. The prominent gallery above was, and is,
used for proclaiming public events, from the accession
of a Sovereign down to the result of a municipal
election.
For the rest, Wallingford is a quiet town, with a
workhouse and the gasworks as the chief architectural
features of one end; and a very fine stone
bridge of fourteen arches, rebuilt in 1809, at the
other. Some solid, comfortable-looking seventeenth-
and eighteenth-century residences somewhat ennoble
the quiet streets, and the George Inn is picturesque.
Crowmarsh Gifford is a little village on the Oxfordshire side of the river.
Newnham Murren stands beside a steep and exquisitely-wooded road that leads on past Mongewell, where it loses that lovely woodland character and goes undulating over chalky switchbacks to come eventually to North Stoke, South Stoke, and Goring.
Mongewell church stands in a beautifully-wooded park, on a lawn-like expanse close to the river bank. It has, unfortunately, been entirely rebuilt. Shute Barrington, Bishop-Palatine of Durham, who possessed a country residence here, and died in London in 1826, aged ninety-three, is buried in the building.
North Stoke is just the matter of a few farms and a rustic church, but South Stoke is a considerable village, lying between the river and the Great Western Railway on its way from Goring to Cholsey. It is, perhaps, a thought too much obsessed by the railway, for the embankment of it, not at all masked by trees, looks starkly down upon village street and church. Here, too, the church has been restored and rendered uninteresting, except for its old wrought-iron hour-glass stand.
And so we come into Goring, and to its strangely-named inn, the "Miller of Mansfield"; its sign, painted by Marcus Stone, R.A., with a scene from the old legend, and a quotation from it; "Here," quoth the Miller, "goode fellowe, I drink to thee." The sign is strangely out of its geographical setting, for the neighbourhood of Mansfield, in Nottinghamshire, is a far cry from Goring. The legend tells how Henry the Second, lost while hunting in Sherwood Forest, sought shelter of the miller, who gave him half a bed with his son Richard, and fed him well on venison; "only," said he, "you must not let the King know I poach it." The King (always according to the legend) gave the miller a pension of a thousand marks yearly, for life. His name, it appears, was Job Cockle, and the King created him "Sir John," and made him ranger of the forest; and perhaps, on the well-proved principle of "set a thief to catch a thief," he served well to preserve the royal game.
GORING CHURCH.
HOUR-GLASS STAND, SOUTH STOKE.
Goring ("Garinges" in Domesday), whose name
means "the meadow on the edge," or margin - i.e.
on the shores of the Thames - is a Thames-side
village improved utterly out of its olden country
style. It is still a village, just as one may truly
say that a commoner created a peer is still a man;
but it is a village almost wholly composed of stylish
up-river residences; and those few shops, a hotel
or two, and a scanty sprinkling of cottages that
exist here, do so only by way of ministering to the
villa-residents. It is extremely difficult to come to
the river banks here, except at the picturesque bridge
that joins Goring with Streatley, on the opposite
shore, for every piece of land and every access are
jealously guarded, and there are not a few rights-of-way
that may be observed by the observant to
be artfully masked with hedges and screened by
gates, or even decorated with lying "Private Road,"
and "Trespassers will be Prosecuted" notices. The
stranger who desires to wander at will is well-advised
to disregard all such. The same new tale is told
from the river, for boating-parties nowadays proceed
up-stream or down between endless notices displayed
on inviting riverside lawns and at seductive side-channels,
to the effect that this, that, and the other
are "Private"; "No Landing," or "Private Backwater,"
and the like.
Amid all these modern developments, the ancient
Norman parish church of St. Thomas à Becket
stands, not so greatly altered. Even tyros in the
understanding of architecture can tell at a glance
that its tower is of that period, and some heavy
cylindrical columns within proclaim the same age;
but the "Norman" semicircular apse is a modern
rebuilding of the original, destroyed long ago.
The evident ancient importance, ecclesiastically,
of Goring is due to the existence of an Augustinian
convent here, from the time of Henry the Second;
but its secular importance was of far remoter date,
for this was the place where that immemorial British
track, the Icknield Way, crossed the Thames, on
its course from Icklingham, the capital of the Iceni,
out of Suffolk and through Essex, Buckinghamshire,
and Oxfordshire, to climb the Berkshire downs, and
so continuing into the West of England. The
Romans found Goring as useful a strategic point as
did those early British peoples; and must, if the
evidences of coins, and foundations of buildings,
and mosaic pavements discovered here are worth
anything, have made it almost as favourite a residence
in the more settled years of their occupation of
Britain as it is in our own era. Streatley, on the
Berkshire bank, in its name, the "street meadow,"
alludes to the passing through it of this ancient
street, or road.
There are a few unimportant brasses and other
memorials to the Whistler and other families in
Goring church. Among these is a Latin inscription
to "Helinor and Margaret Whistler," which is
rendered into English thus:
"This Helinor Whistler, a pious, beautiful, and
modest virgin, lies with her sister Margaret in the
tomb. These, whom love and one spirit united,
are enshrined together in bronze by their only brother.
She was wont to weep ever, seldom to smile; for a
season, vows, prayers, and tears were her meat and
drink. She seemed to outlive her two sisters in
actual existence, yet to them it was as if she were
dead, though living; and after they were ashes she,
fed by the fear of God, did not touch bread and drink
for seven years. The vows and prayers of the poor
of Goring and the neighbourhood and the muse of
Oxford forbid her to die; and, being dead, she
still lives."
Fortunately for the gaiety of nations, we may
say with conviction that this remarkable person is
exceptional.
Goring was the scene of a sad happening in 1674, by which "about" sixty persons were drowned. This is related in a scarce pamphlet of the time, called:
Sad and Deplorable News
from
OXford-sheir & BArk-sheir
being a lamentable and true
RELATION
of the drowning of about sixty persons,
Men, Women, and Children,
in the lock near Goring in Oxfordsheir
as they were passing by water
from Goring-Feast to Stately in Barksheir.
Readers, this story is both strange and true,
And for your good presented unto you.
Be careful of your life all sin to fly,
Lest you by death be taken suddenly.
When he is sent on you arrest to make
No fees, nor Bail, can purchase your escape.
London: Printed for R. Vaughan in the Little Old Bailey. 1674.
a punctual account of a most true and unparalleled Disaster
which happened at Goring Lock, going to Stately on Monday
the 6th of this instant July 1674 about 7 aclock at night, where
about 50 or 60 persons, of Men, Women, and Children, with one
Mare crossing the water together in a boat from Oxfordsheir
to Barksheir by the watermen's imprudently rowing too neer
the shore of the Lock they were by the force of the water drawn
down the Lock, where their boat being presently overwhelmed
they were all turned into the Pool except fourteen or fifteen
(who had been all there at the Feast at Goring) were all unfortunately
drowned, and to show how vain all human aid is
when Destiny interposes, this happened in the view of hundreds
of people, then met at the same feast, near this fatal Lock, who
found the exercise of their pastime disturbed, and their Jollity
dashed by this mournful Disaster, of which they were helpless - but
I hope not fruitless - spectators.
This calamity so impressed the pamphleteer
that he drew from it the conclusion the end of the
world was at hand; but he appears to have been
quite as eager to sell his pamphlet as though the
world were good enough to last all his time. That
is over two hundred and thirty years ago, and the
old globe still spins in space.
The white-painted wooden toll-bridge that carries
the road across the river to Streatley gives the wayfarer
the best views. From it you see to greatest
advantage the foaming weir, the green backwaters,
and the mill. Let us cross this bridge to Streatley,
avoiding the fearful hill that leads past the hamlet
of Gathampton, circuitously up to Goring Heath,
and then alarmingly down to Whitchurch.
Streatley
we shall find much smaller and simpler than Goring.
There, to one side of the bridge, is the mill, with
the neatest of lawns, decorated with brilliant flowers,
giving upon the water; while on the other is the
waterside Swan inn, greatly resembling some
ancient private residence, also with its lawns and
with a full supply of the easiest chairs, wherein to
do that most difficult of things - nothing.
Beside the long rustic street of Streatley is the
restored - nay, the rebuilt - church, with a new
font and almost everything else new. The old font
has been walled into the masonry at the junction
of nave and chancel.
The street goes mounting towards the broad
high road that runs closely neighbouring the river
on this Berkshire side, between Wallingford and
Reading. Between this and Wallingford we have
only the two villages of Moulsford and Cholsey, and
they lack interest. Cholsey is the "Celsea" of
Domesday. Boating-men know Moulsford only as
that place where the old waterside inn, the Beetle
and Wedge, is situated. The queer sign has puzzled
many town dwellers, but it presents no difficulties
to country folk, for a "beetle" is well known to
them as a heavy wooden mallet, used in splitting
timber, and the "wedge" is the iron wedge inserted
in the timber and struck by the "beetle." The
inn has, like most other Thames-side inns, been
largely added to and altered; but old frequenters
of the river have ardent memories of it and their
morning "rum-and-milk."
Does any one in these latter days take that old
traditional Thames-side morning drink, "rum-and-milk,"
that once most favoured of all up-river restoratives?
Have we not, in "those dear dead days
beyond recall," as we lay in our more or less lavender-scented
beds in some old-world waterside hostelry,
been awakened by the clink of a trayful of glasses
and heard a knock at the door, with the call, "Your
rum-and-milk, sir"?
We had not ordered rum-and-milk at that untimeous
hour, but as this was obviously the proper
thing to be done, the custom of the country, so
to say, we drank that strange drink - rather a
heady and heavy drink, without question - and were
promptly sent off to sleep again by it.
The charms of Streatley and of Streatley Hill
have been sung by Mr. Ashby-Sterry, who is a kind
of picnic and banjo poet-laureate of the Thames
as it was in those famous riverside years, the 'eighties,
when the charms of the river had not long since
been discovered, and commercialism had not yet
begun its reign: the years when Molloy and Cotsford
Dick, and Marzials had just entered upon their
song-writing and composing. Mr. Ashby-Sterry is
not a Tennyson, but one cherishes an endearing
picture of him, clothed in boating-flannels and a
"blazer," laurelled - if one may express it so - with
bulrushes, and discovered seated in company with
some cooling tipple, gently but firmly declining to
perform any physical exertion: least of all that
involved in climbing Streatley Hill, which is
indeed a "breather." Perhaps he is not even a little bit like that, really; but his writings are
responsible for such a mental picture:
I'm told that you
Should mount the Hill and see the view;
And gaze and wonder, if you'd do
Its merits most completely:
The air is clear, the day is fine,
The prospect is, I know, divine -
But most distinctly I decline
To climb the Hill at Streatley!"
But to have done with all this, and to make our
way to Basildon, which, although it is divided into
Upper and Lower, is in the total of those parts
but a small place. I do not know (nor apparently
does any one else) from what Basil or Basileus - what
leader of men - Basildon takes its name. That,
like so much else, is lost among unrecorded things,
but the world knows a something else more immediately
to the point; and that is the fact that Charles
Morrison of Basildon Park died in the early part of
1909, worth about six millions and three-quarters
sterling. The estate was later sworn for probate
at the remarkable figure of £6,666,666; an extraordinary
array of numerals, almost exactly the
Number of the Beast, "six hundred threescore
and six," mentioned in the thirteenth chapter of
Revelation, multiplied by ten thousand.
The ornate gates of the noble demesne of Basildon
Park look upon the road, and are very florid, with
stone gate-piers surmounted by urns filled to overflowing
with stony representations of most of the
kindly fruits of the earth, and upheld by cupids.
Basildon church, with a farm or two and the parsonage,
lies down near the river in a tongue of
meadow-land so cut off by the river on its north
side and the railway on the south that it is, in effect,
much more remote than many places hundreds of
miles away. The high-road, like the railway, cuts
across the base of this piece of land; and as only a
narrow lane runs through it and simply ends at
the church, there is no inducement for the ordinary
wayfarer to venture this way. Strangers are rare
down by that nook where Basildon church stands,
almost hidden by trees, and I should not be surprised
to learn that the few people who live there mark
those days as special, and keep them in memory,
when they chance to see a strange face. There are
many remote corners along the shores of the winding
Thames, but none more secluded than this of Basildon.
BASILDON CHURCH.
It is a small church that serves for the place, and the body of it appears to have been wholly rebuilt of late years. The tower, an eighteenth-century red-brick affair, is an almost exact counterpart, on a smaller scale, of the tower of Pangbourne church. Beside the massive polished granite tomb of the Morrisons stands a sculptured group of two boys represented as bathers standing on a rushy river-bank. This is the pathetic memorial of Ernest and Edward Deverell, aged sixteen and fifteen, who were drowned while bathing in the Thames, June 26, 1886.
The road on to Pangbourne gradually nears the
river again, and touches it at what was until some
twenty years since one of the loveliest reaches of
the Thames, for here the stream is bordered by a
long ridge of chalk hill, broken here and there into
cliffs that used to shine whitely into the water.
Keeley Halswelle painted an exquisite picture of
this scene, and it was hung in the Royal Academy;
and that is now the only thing left of it, for Shooter's
Hill - the name of this ridge - has been purchased
by a highly-successful trader in what is satirically
known as the "rag trade" (why is it that the drapery
trade is so greatly affected by Welshmen?) who
has not only set up for something in the way of a
country gentleman here, with his ornate house and
picture-gallery, and his gardens and hot-houses, but
has, in addition, quite in the way of the businessman,
made the purchase an investment by scooping
out nine or ten sites from those wild riverside chalk-cliffs,
and building on them a series of villas, described
in the guide-books as "bijou residences."
So the quiet, ancient beauty of Pangbourne Reach
is now a thing of the past, and instead of the white
cliffs, the stream reflects red-brick.
PANGBOURNE CHURCH.
Something has already been said, in the opening pages of this book, respecting the recent spoiling of Pangbourne village by the overbuilding in it: all brought about by the convenience of a main-line railway-station in the very midst of the place; and therefore nothing more may be written. The same remarks apply in degree to Whitchurch, at the other end of the long bridge that here joins the two banks.
WHITCHURCH.
There is a dull high road out of Pangbourne, and there is a delightful towing-path, crossing the mouth of the little Pang bourne, and going with a fine view across river to Hardwicke House, amid its beautiful lawns on the Oxfordshire side, and presently to Mapledurham Lock. Hardwicke House has associations with the troubles of Charles the First, and was greatly injured during the fighting about Reading.
Although there is no public ferry at Mapledurham
Lock, boats there afford an opportunity of crossing
the river; greatly, no doubt, to the chagrin of the
Blounts, who own Mapledurham, and have not
only distinguished themselves in modern times by
seeking the aid of the law-courts to forbid fishing in
the river at this point, but have so arranged that
there is no inn at Mapledurham, and have placed
every conceivable obstacle in the way of any one
save themselves enjoying the scene. Notice-boards
informing the stranger that this, that, and the other
are "Private" start out at unexpected corners;
and there is only wanting one touch to make this
attitude thorough. The suggestion is hereby offered
that, for thoroughly scaring away those insistent
persons who do not entirely believe in such notices,
there should be added to them, more Americano!
"This means YOU."
But there is reason in most things, and the
reason for this uncompromising attitude is found,
according to rumour, in the nearness of Mapledurham
to Reading, which sends out numerous boating-parties
at holiday times; and such parties, we all know,
are not always discreet, either in word or deed.
MAPLEDURHAM MILL.
The old mill of Mapledurham is, now that Iffley
Mill has become a thing of the past, the most picturesque
on the Thames. Near by it stands the
humble little church, amid tall elms, with monuments
of the Blounts and others, secluded from lesser folk
in a side chapel. A curious small mural monument,
with the representation of a dropped curtain, is to
be seen here, to the memory of Captain Adrian
Rose, born 1878, died 1908. He served in the Boer
War.
The beautiful late Tudor mansion of the exclusive
Blounts, built by Sir Michael Blount, Lieutenant of
the Tower in 1581, stands a little way back from
the river, and turns its front away from it. Like
so many Elizabethan manor-houses, its plan is that
of an elongated capital letter E, the upper and lower
projecting limbs formed by the wings; the middle
being the entrance. The view of it at some little
distance down the mile-long avenue of stately elms
is delightful, whether you see it under the mid-day
sun, or by the mellow romantic afterglow of a summer
evening. At either time the richness in colour of
its old red-brick front, patterned in lozenge shapes
by vitrified bricks of a darker hue, is evident. It is
a house of some romance. Legends tell that on the
death of a Blount, or prophetically before such an
event - it is not quite clear which - an elm of the
long avenue falls; by which it would seem that the
owner of this avenue of many trees, a large proportion
of them past their prime and prone (as elms
especially are) to fall suddenly and without apparent
cause, must sometimes receive a shock to his nerves,
especially if he be superstitious; and as the Blounts
have ever been Roman Catholics, it seems safe enough
to deduce superstition in many of them.
[as editor I feeled compelled to point out a certain bias in the author that I do not share!]
The family have been seated here some four
hundred years, and are kin of that Sir Walter Blount
who was slain at Shrewsbury fight, in 1403; cut
down by Douglas, who mistook him for King Henry.
"A gallant knight he was," says Hotspur, pointing
out to Douglas his mistake, "his name was Blunt,
semblably furnished like the King himself."
As popish recusants, and as Royalists in the
civil war, the Blounts have suffered sequestration,
and have seen hostile soldiers quartered in their
old house, and the Sir Charles Blount of that time
was slain in the service of the King at Oxford in 1644.
A literary association illuminates their annals
at a later period, the spinster Martha Blount, having
been Pope's "Stella" or "Patty," a constant
friend and correspondent, and the recipient at the
poet's death of his books, his plate, and £1,000.
That Pope was not in sympathy with the rural
surroundings of Mapledurham seems evident from
his lines upon Miss Martha on one occasion returning
hither
To plain work, to purling brooks,
Old-fashioned halls, dull aunts, and croaking rooks.
But then, that was the approved eighteenth-century way!
MAPLEDURHAM HOUSE.
A long three miles leads direct from Mapledurham to Reading - a lovely road through woodlands, by way of Caversham; but Caversham spoils it all, at the end: Caversham, the cross-river suburb of Reading, where the new streets impinge upon the fair face of the country, and where the gasworks and the destructors, and suchlike evidences of civilisation abound, and crying children and angry mothers cry and spank. If I were a Blount and owned Mapledurham, I would not journey from it by way of Caversham, that is quite certain! The best way is undoubtedly by river, past delightful Purley; or by the road along the Berkshire bank, through Upper Purley, and past Tilehurst railway station.
Purley might well be thought to lie outside the
strife of the wicked world. The "lea" down in
which the village lies is so secluded that none others
than those who live here, or have business in the
place, ever come into it - unless they be stalwart
or inquisitive explorers of the calibre - shall it be
said? - of the present writer. The "village," of a
few rustic cottages, lies down below the high road,
between the tall embankment of the Great Western
Railway and the river. You may hear the trains
numerously rushing by, swishing with a curious
sound past the dense trees that fill this little nook
and flourish upon the embankment itself, but
you cannot well see them: only the arm of a tall
signal-post wagging continually between the signal
to proceed or to stop. The trains tell the villagers,
plainly enough, that there is a busy world; and
they can see it, plainly enough, when they go for
their weekly marketing to Reading; but the business
of it all passes by, out of sight, in the manner typified
by those swiftly-moving trains.
There should be no ill in this place; but since they
are human beings that live here, and not angels,
there has been of late a good deal of trouble, well-known
to local people in what was styled by the
Berkshire newspapers of 1907-8 "The Purley Scandal."
There need have been no scandal, so far as the
outer world was concerned, had it not been for the
action of the rector of the parish.
But let a summary of the case, extracted from
one of the newspapers, here be given:
A Mrs. Moule had been head mistress of the
Purley Church of England school for twelve years,
and had conducted it during that time efficiently,
with nothing to be urged either against her abilities
or her character. But Mrs. Moule had a daughter
who loved not wisely but too well. The result was
that the girl had to get married hastily. She left
the village until the child was born; then she went
to stay with her mother for a few days. The rector
of the parish - one of those nice, charitable Christian
gentlemen with whom our readers are by this time
well acquainted - demanded that Mrs. Moule should
turn her daughter out of doors for at least six months.
The mother refused, her 'conduct' was brought
to the notice of the school managers by the holy
man aforesaid, and she was dismissed her employment.
The Education Committee of the Berks
County Council supported the parson and the managers
in their monstrous act of injustice, and tried to
burke discussion. The whole question was then
raised at a special meeting of the Council, when the
decision arrived at was 'that this Council expresses
a wish that the Education Committee will, should
opportunity offer, sanction Mrs. Moule's appointment
to a similar post to that which she recently
held.'
Here we see in working that truly British love of
compromise, which has been aptly defined as a
middle course by which neither party is satisfied.
The church of Purley lies quite remote, at the
end of the scattered cottages, and through a woodland
path. The body of it has been rebuilt, but
the red-brick seventeenth-century tower remains,
with a sculptured heraldic shield of the Bolingbrokes
on its south face.
As Reading can by no means be styled a village, seeing that its population numbers over 72,000, the fact of its not being treated of in these pages will perhaps be excused. You cannot rusticate at Reading: the electric tramways, the great commercial premises, and the crowded state of its streets forbid; but Reading, taken frankly as a town and a manufacturing town at that, is not at all a place for censure. The Kennet, however, that flows through it, has here become a very different Kennet from that which sparkles in the Berkshire meads between Hungerford and Kintbury, and has a very dubious and deterrent look where it is received into the Thames.
The flat, open shores at Reading presently give
place to the wooded banks approaching Sonning,
where the fine trees of Holme Park are reflected in
the waters of the lock - the lock that was tended
for many years, until his death, about 1889, by a
lock-keeper who also kept bees, made beehives,
and wrote poetry. Sonning, and its Thames-side
"Parade," certainly invite to poetry.
To say there is no Thames-side village prettier,
or in any way more delightful, than Sonning is
vague praise and also in some ways understates its
peculiar attractiveness, which, strange to say, seems
to increase, rather than decrease, with the years.
It might have been expected that a village but three
miles from the great and increasing town of Reading
would suffer many indignities from that proximity,
and would be infested with such flagrant nuisances
as wayside advertisement-hoardings and street-loafers,
but these manifestations of the zeitgeist
are, happily, entirely absent.
Let us, however, halt for a moment to give a testimonial of character to Reading itself, which is far above the average of great towns in these and many other matters. Loafers and street-hoardings are found there, without doubt - and can we find the modern town of its size where they are not? - but they do not obtrude; and, in short, Reading is, with all its bustle of business, a likeable place.
There are reasons for Sonning remaining unspoiled.
They are not altogether sufficient reasons,
for they obtain in other once delightful villages
similarly situated, which have unhappily been ravaged
by modern progress; but here they have by chance
sufficed. They are found chiefly in the happy
circumstances that Sonning lies three-quarters of a
mile off the main-road - off that Bath road, oh!
my brethren, that was once so delightful, with its
memories of a bypast coaching-age; and is now
little better than a race-track for motor-cars, and,
by reason of their steel-studded tyres, cursed with
a bumpy surface full of pot-holes. Time was when
the surface of the Bath road was perfection. Nowadays,
no ingenuity of mortal road-surveyors can
keep it in repair, for the suction of air caused by
pneumatic tyres travelling at great speed tears out
the binding material and leaves only loose grit and
stones. The Bath road on a fine summer's day has
become unendurable by reason of the dust raised
in this manner. If you stand a distance away, in
the fields, out of sight of the actual road, its course
can yet be distinctly traced for a long way by the
billows of dust, rising like smoke from it.
Happily, motor-cars do but rarely come into
Sonning, although at the turning out of the high
road a prominent advertisement of the Bull, the
White Hart, or the French Horn - the three hostelries
that Sonning can boast - invites them hither.
The other prominent reason for this village being
allowed to remain quiet is found in the fact of Twyford,
the nearest railway station, being two miles
distant.
There are many branching streams of the Thames here, and the hamlet of Sonning Eye, on the Oxfordshire side, takes its name either from this abundance of water, or from the eyots, or islands, formed by these several channels, crossed by various bridges.
SONNING BRIDGE.
Sonning Bridge par excellence is a severely unornamented structure of red brick, obviously built by the very least imaginative of architects, in the eighteenth century. If it were new it would be an offence, but there is now a mellowness of colour in that old red brick, embroidered richly as it is in green and gold by the lichens of nearly two centuries, that gives the old bridge a charm by no means inherent in its originator's design.
Trees, great, noble, upstanding woodland trees, lovingly enclasp Sonning village and form a background for its ancient cottages and fine old mansions, and against the dark green background of them you see on summer afternoons the blue smoke curling up lazily from rustic chimneys. In midst of this the embattled church-tower rises unobtrusively; and indeed the church is so hidden, although it is a large church, that strangers are generally directed to find it by way of the Bull Inn: a rambling old hostelry occupying two sides of a square, and covered in summer with a mantle of roses and creepers. And it must, by the way, not be forgotten that Sonning in general displays a very wealth of flowers for the delight of the stranger.
I would it were possible to be enthusiastic upon
the church, but thorough "restoration," and a
marvellously hideous monument to Thomas Rich,
Alderman of Gloucester, 1613, and his son, Sir
Thomas Rich, Bart., 1667, forbid. There are brasses
on the floor of the nave, to Laurence Fyton, 1434,
steward of the manor of Sonning, and to William
Barber, 1549, bailiff of the same manor; with others.
Here, too, is a monument of Canon Pearson,
vicar for over forty years, and reverently spoken of - or
is it the monument that is reverenced? - by the
caretaker. I have sought greatly to discover something
by which the Canon's career may be illustrated
in these pages, but, upon my soul, the most notable
things available are precisely that he held this excellent
living for that long period, and that he sometimes
preached before Queen Victoria. These things
do not in themselves form a title to reverence.
Something of the distinct stateliness of Sonning
is due to the fact that anciently the Bishops of
Salisbury were owners of the manor, and before
them the Bishops of the Saxon diocese of Dorchester.
Their manor-house was in the time of Leland "a
fair old house of stone by the Tamise ripe"; but of
this desirable residence nothing remains. The Deanery,
too, has disappeared, but the fine old stone
and brick enclosing-walls of its grounds remain, and
there a picturesque modern residence has been built.
Those walls, of an immense thickness and solidity,
are indeed a sight to see, for the saxifrage and many
beautiful flowering plants growing in and upon them.
Sonning itself, being a place so delightful, invites
those to whom locality has interest to explore into
the country that lies in the rear of it. In a work
styled Thames Valley Villages we may go very
much where we please, and here the valley broadens
out considerably, for it includes, and insensibly
merges with, that of the river Loddon, which flows
down quite a long way, even from the heights of
northern Hampshire. The Loddon, the loveliest
tributary of the Thames, flows into it by three
mouths, from one mile to two miles and a half below
Sonning, and its various loops and channels make
the four-mile stretch of country in the rear a particularly
moist and water-logged district. Here, crossing
the dusty Bath road at Twyford, which takes its
name from the ancient double ford of the Loddon at
this point, the secluded village of Hurst may be found.
HOUR-GLASS AND WROUGHT-IRON STAND, HURST.
Its name of "Hurst," i.e. a woodland, indicates its situation in what was once the widespreading Windsor Forest. The village lies along gravelly roads, scattered about fragments of village green and a large pond; its church, hidden three-quarters of a mile away, forming, with a country inn and some old almshouses, a curiously isolated group. To see the interesting Norman and Early English church, with red-brick tower, dated 1612, crowned with quaint cupola, is worth some effort; for it contains a very handsome chancel-screen, probably placed here circa 1500. The repainting of it in 1876, under the direction of J. D. Sedding, the architect who then restored the church, is, if indeed in accordance with the traces of the original decoration then found, certainly more curious than beautiful; but it should be seen, if only to show that our ancestors were, after all, not a little barbaric in their schemes of decoration. The hour-glass, with beautiful wrought-iron bracket dated 1636, should be noticed. Behind it, on the wall, is painted "As this Glasse runneth, so Man's Life passeth." A queer memorial brass to Alse Harison, representing the lady in a four-poster bed, is on the north wall. A large grey-and-white marble monument to others of the Harison family includes an epitaph on Philip Harison, who died in 1683. The sorrowing author of it ends ingeniously:
A double dissolution there appears,
He into dust dissolves; she into tears.
Surely a mind capable of such ingenious imagery
on such a subject cannot have been wholly downcast.
The old almshouses by the church were founded,
as appears on a tablet over the entrance, by one
William Barker:
This Hospitall for the
Maintenance of eight poor persons,
Each at 6d. pr diem for euer, was
Erected and Founded in ye year 1664
At the Sole Charge of
William Barker
of Hurst, in the County of
Wilts, Esq.
Who dyed ye 25th of March, 1685
And lies buried in the South
Chancell of this Parish.
Note you that, gentle reader, "the county of
Wilts," we being in the midst of Berkshire? A
considerable tract of surrounding country is in fact
(or was until comparatively recent years) a detached
portion of Wiltshire, and was invariably shown so
on old maps. Examples of such isolated portions
of counties, and even of detached fragments of
parishes, are by no means rare: Worcestershire in
England and Cromartyshire in Scotland, forming
the most notable examples; but the reasons for
these things are obscure, and all attempts at explaining
them amount to little more than the unsatisfying
conclusion that they are thus because - well,
because they are, you know! That is the net
result of repeated discussions upon the subject in
Notes and Queries, in which publication of wholly
honorary and unpaid contributions the majority of
noters, querists, and writers of replies have during
the space of some sixty years past been engaged in
chasing their own tails, like so many puppies. The
process is amusing enough, but as you end where
you began, the net result is no great catch.
Apart from legends and traditions, it would
seem that the explanation of the Berkshire districts
of Hurst, Twyford, Ruscombe, Whistley Green, and
a portion of Wokingham having been accounted in
Wiltshire, may be found in the fact, already remarked,
that Sonning was a manor of the Bishops
of Salisbury. The question appears to have been
largely an ecclesiastical affair. The anomaly of a
portion of Wiltshire being islanded in Berkshire
was, however, ended by Acts of Parliament during
the reigns of William the Fourth and Queen Victoria,
by which the area concerned was annexed to Berkshire.
Returning from Hurst to Twyford, expeditions to Ruscombe, St. Lawrence Waltham, and Shottesbrooke will amply repay the explorer in these wilds - for wilds they are in the matter of perplexing roads. They are good roads, in so far that they are level, but they would seem to have come into existence on no plan; or, if plan there ever were, a malicious plan, intended to utterly confound and mislead the stranger. But this is no unpleasant district in which to wander awhile.
ST. LAWRENCE WALTHAM.
Ruscombe is notable as the place where William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, died, in 1718. Its church stands solitary in the meadows - a red-brick, eighteenth-century building, as ruddy as a typical beef-eating and port-drinking farmer of Georgian days. The neighbouring St. Lawrence Waltham is entirely delightful. The fine church tower of St. Lawrence, the ancient brick and plaster and timbered Bell Inn, and the old village pound, with an aged elm at each corner of it, composing a rarely-beautiful picture.
The stone spire of Shottesbrooke church is seen, not far off, peering up from among the trees of Shottesbrooke Park, in which it is situated. When we see a stone church spire in Berkshire, where we do not commonly find ancient spires, we are apt to suspect at once a modern church, and our suspicions are generally well-founded; but here is a remarkably fine Decorated building of the mid-fourteenth century (it was built 1337). It stands finely in a noble park for many years belonging to the Vansittart family, and has been well described as "a cathedral in miniature." Its origin appears by tradition to have been due to the unexpected recovery of Sir William Trussell, the then owner of the estate, who had been brought to the verge of death by a long-continued course of drunkenness. He built it by way of thankoffering, and as he would seem to have been intemperate in all he did, he not only built this very large and noble church, but founded a college for five priests. This establishment went the way of all such things, hundreds of years ago, and the great building, standing solitary in the park, except for the vicarage and the manor-house, now astonishes the stranger at its loneliness. He wonders where the village is, and may well continue to wonder, for village there is none.
SHOTTESBROOKE CHURCH.
A versifier in the Ingoldsby manner narrates the building of it by Trussell:
An oath he sware
To his lady fair,
'By the cross on my shield,
A church I'll build,
And therefore the deuce a form
Is so fit as a cruciform;
And the patron saint that I find the aptest
Is that holiest water-saint - John the Baptist.'"
A legend of the building of the spire tells how the
architect, completing it by fixing the weathercock,
called for wine to drink a health to the King, and,
drinking, fell to the ground and was dashed to pieces.
The only sound he uttered, says the legend, was
"O! O!" and that exclamation was the sole inscription
carved upon his tomb, erected upon the
spot where he fell. Many have been those pilgrims
drawn to Shottesbrooke by this picturesque story,
seeking that tomb. Tombstones of any kind are
few in Shottesbrooke churchyard, and the only
one that can possibly mark the architect's grave is
a coped stone on which an expectant and confiding
person may indeed faintly trace "O, O"; but as
the stone is probably not so old as the fourteenth
century, and as it is extremely likely that an expectant
person will, if in any way possible, find that which
he expects, it would not be well to declare for the
genuineness of it. But it is at any rate a very old
and cracked and moss-grown stone.
Of a bygone Vansittart, who filled this family
living for forty-four years, we read some highly
eulogistic things upon a monument near by. Born
1779, he died 1847, "the faithful pastor of an attached
flock. Meek, mild, benevolent. In domestic life
tender, kind, considerate. In all relations revered,
respected, beloved." One is tempted to repeat the
unfortunate architect's exclamation, "O! O!"
The church, serving no village, and standing in
a park close by the noble country seat of the Vansittarts,
is for all practical purposes
a manorial chapel. That
it has long been used as such is
very evident from the many
tablets to Vansittarts which line
its walls. The remains of the
founder's tomb are seen in the
north transept, in a long stretch
of delicate arcading along the
north wall, beautifully wrought
in chalk.
EAST WINDOW, SHOTTESBROOKE.
A singular effigy to William Throckmorton,
Doctor of Laws, "warden of this church," who died
in 1535, is on the north side of the chancel. It is
of diminutive size, and is what archæologists call
an "interrupted effigy," showing only head and
breast and feet, the middle being occupied by a
brass with Latin inscription.
There are several brasses in the church: the
finest of them, a fourteenth-century example in the
chancel, very deeply and beautifully cut, representing
two men; one with forked beard, a long gown
and a sword; the other an ecclesiastic. They stand
side by side, and are reputed to represent the founder
and his brother, but the inscription has been torn
away, together with most of the canopy.
A brass in the north transept to Richard Gill,
Sergeant of the "Backhouse" - i.e. the Bakehouse - to
Henry the Seventh and Henry the Eighth, describes
him as "Bailey of the Seaven Hundreds of
Cookeham and Bray in the Forest Division." Near
by is a brass to "Thomas Noke, who for his great
Age and vertuous Lyfe was reverenced of all Men,
and was commonly called Father Noke, created
Esquire by King Henry the Eight. He was of
Stature high and comly; and for his excellency in
Artilery made Yeoman of the Crowne of England
which had in his Lyfe three Wives, and by every
of them some Fruit and Off-spring, and deceased
the 21 of August 1567 in the Yeare of his Age 87,
leaving behind him Julyan his last Wife, two of
his Brethren, one Sister, one only Son, and two
Daughters living."
Thomas Noke is represented with his three wives,
while six daughters and four sons are grouped beneath.
Returning through Twyford to Sonning, the outlet of the Loddon,
The Loddon slow, with verdant alders crowned,
is found in that exquisite backwater, the Patrick Stream, where a picture of surpassing beauty is seen at every turn. By a long, winding course, fringed richly with rushes, and overhung with lovely trees, the Patrick Stream wanders through meadow lands and finally emerges into the Thames again, just below Shiplake Lock. By dint of making this long but delightful détour, and thus avoiding Shiplake Lock, it is possible to do the Thames Conservancy out of one of those many threepences for which it has so insatiable an appetite.
Shiplake, on the Oxfordshire bank, is the place where Tennyson was married, but the church has been largely rebuilt since then. The windows are mostly filled with ancient glass brought from the abbey of St. Bertin, at St. Omer. Shiplake Mill, once a picturesque feature, is now, at this time of writing, a squalid heap of ruins.
Wargrave, on the Berkshire side, is said to have once been a market-town, and it is now growing again so rapidly that a town it will soon be once more. Its houses crowd together on the banks, where the George and Dragon Inn stands, giving upon the slipway to the water: all looking out upon the spacious Oxfordshire meadows. The sign of the George and Dragon Inn - a double-sided one - painted by G. D. Leslie, R.A., and J. E. Hodgson, R.A., in 1874, shows St. George on one side, as we are accustomed to see him on the reverse of coins, engaged in slaying the dragon; and on the other, the monster duly slain, the saint is refreshing himself with a noble tankard of ale.
WARGRAVE CHURCH.
Wargrave church has been restored extensively,
and its tower is of red brick, and not ancient; but
it forms, for all that, a very charming picture. Here
we may see a tablet to the memory of that remarkable
prig, Thomas Day, the author of that egregious
work for the manufacture of other prigs, Sandford
and Merton. He was born about 1748, and died[21]
1789. Of his good and highly moral life there
can be no doubt; but moral philosophers are rarely
personæ gratæ in a naughty and frivolous world.
We fight shy of them, and of all instructive and
improving persons, and make light of their works;
and if nowadays we read Sandford and Merton at
all, it is for the purpose of extracting some satirical
amusement from the pompous verbiage of the
Reverend Mr. Barlow, and from the respective
"wickedness" and goodness of Tommy and the
exemplary Harry.
Among Thomas Day's peculiar views was that
by a proper method of education (i.e. a method
invented by himself) there was scarcely anything
that could not be accomplished. He certainly began
courageously, about the age of twenty-one, by
choosing two girls, each about twelve years of age,
whom he proposed to educate after his formula, and
then to marry the most suitable of them. He,
however, did not carry this plan so far as the marrying
of either. It is not clear whom we should congratulate:
the girls or their eccentric guardian, who at
last met his death from the kick of a horse which
resented the entirely novel philosophical principles
on which he was training it.
In the churchyard is the grave of Madame Tussaud,
of the famous waxworks, and here lies Sir Morell
Mackenzie, the surgeon who attended the Emperor
Frederick. He died in 1892. Near by is a quite
new columbarium for containing the ashes of
cremated persons.
A singular bequest left to Wargrave by one[22]
Mrs. Sarah Hill is that by which, every year at
Easter, the sum of £1 is to be equally divided, in
new crown pieces, between two boys and two girls,
who qualify for this reward by conduct that must
needs meet with the approval of all. The five-shilling
pieces are not forthcoming unless the candidates
are known never to have been undutiful to
their parents, never to swear, never to tell untruths,
or steal, break windows, or do "any kind of mischief."
The good lady would appear either to have
been bent upon finding the Perfectly Good Child,
or to have been a saturnine humorist, with a cynical
disbelief in these annual distributions ever being
made. But they are made; and we can only suppose
that the vicar and churchwardens allow themselves
just a little charitable latitude in the annual judging.
And, you know, after all, is it worth while being
so monumentally good for the poor reward of five
shillings a year? Consider how much delightful
mischief you forgo.
Hennerton backwater, below Wargrave, is another of the delightful side-streams that are plentiful here, and is now, after a good deal of litigation, pronounced free.
UNDER THE WILLOWS: A BACKWATER NEAR WARGRAVE.
ARCH CARRYING THE ROAD, PARK PLACE.
The wooded road between Wargrave and Henley skirts it, and is carried over a lovely valley in the grounds of Park Place by a very fine arch of forty-three feet span, built of gigantic rough stones.
Passing Marsh Lock, the town of Henley comes
into view, heralded by its tall church tower, with
four equal-sized battlemented turrets; a quite unmistakable
church tower. The noble five-arched
stone bridge here crossing the Thames, built in 1789,
at a cost of £10,000, is one of the most completely
satisfactory along the whole course of the river.
The keystone-masks of the central arch show sculptured
faces representing Isis and Thames. Isis
appropriately faces up-river, and Thames looks
down-stream. These conventionalised heads of a
river-god and goddess are really admirable examples
of the sculptor's art. They adorn the title-pages
of the present volumes, which display Isis with a
woman's head, and Father Thames, bearded, with
little fishes peeping out of the matted hair, and bulrushes
decoratively disposed about his temples.
These masks were the work of that very accomplished
lady, the Honourable Mrs. Anne Seymour Damer,
who at the time when Henley bridge was a-building
resided at Park Place. She was cousin to Horace
Walpole, for whom she carved an eagle so exquisitely
that he wrote under it - enthusiastic cousin as he
was - Non Praxiteles sed Anna Damer me fecit. One
terrible thing, however, stamps the lady irrevocably
as a gifted amateur: she gave her work to the bridge
authorities. Most reprehensible! The recipients
were duly grateful, as witness the Bridge Minutes.
True, they do but acknowledge one mask: "May 6,
1785. Ordered that the thanks of the Commissioners
be given to the Honourable Mrs. Damer for the
very elegant head of the River Thames which she
has cut and presented to them for the Keystone of
the centre arch of the bridge."
This conventional head of Father Thames is
that made familiar by the eighteenth-century poets,
who personified everything possible. It is that
Father Thames who
From his oozy bed
... advanced his rev'rend head;
His tresses dropped with dews, and o'er the stream
His shining horns diffused a golden gleam."
Only, as we see, bulrushes here take the place of
his "shining horns."
The head of Isis was a portrait of Miss Freeman of Fawley Court.
Henley is, of course, famed, above all else, for its Regatta, established as an annual event since 1839, following upon an Oxford and Cambridge boat-race here in 1837. It is now pre-eminently the function of the river season, whether we consider it from the point of view of sport or fashion. Here every June the best oarsmanship in the world is displayed over this course of one-and-a-quarter miles: indisputably the best for anything up to that distance, for the regatta is now attended by the best oarsmen of the New World as well as of the Old. The regatta is, from a social and hospitable point of view, very much what the Derby is among horseraces; and the house-boat parties and riverside house-parties for the Henley Week dispense much hospitality and champagne. There is yet another side to the regatta: it is, almost equally with Ascot and Goodwood, recognised as an opportunity for the display of fine dresses. The Oxfordshire bank is at such times the most exclusive, and to the Berkshire shores are principally relegated the pushing, struggling crowds of humbler sportsmen and sightseers. But here, where every point is legally open to all, except where private lawns reach down to the river, the real exclusiveness of Goodwood or Ascot is, of course, impossible. Henley town is at such times anything but exclusive, and is thronged to excess. In these later times of motor-cars it is also apt to be a great deal more dusty than ever it used to be. To see Henley in Regatta Week, and again Henley in any other week, affords an astonishing contrast; for at all other times it is, as a town, among the dullest of the dull, and its broad High Street a synonym for emptiness.
HENLEY-ON-THAMES.
I do not propose in this place to enlarge further upon Henley, but to mention Henley at all and not its famous old coaching-inn by the bridge, the Red Lion, has never yet been done; and shall I be the first to make the omission? No! It is a famous old inn, and of enormous size. Every one knows it as the hostelry where Shenstone the poet, about 1750, scratched with a diamond upon a window the celebrated stanza about "the warmest welcome at an inn," but that window-pane has long been lost; and it is really doubtful if the inscription was not rather at another Henley: i.e. Henley-in-Arden. I have fully discussed that question elsewhere, and so will not repeat it in this place.
Mr. Ashby-Sterry is quite right in his description of the Red Lion, standing red-brickily by the bridge:
'Tis a finely-toned, picturesque, sunshiny place,
Recalling a dozen old stories;
With a rare British, good-natured, ruddy-hued face,
Suggesting old wines and old Tories."
REMENHAM CHURCH.
Remenham, a mile or so along the Berkshire shore, is typically Berkshire, but with a church still looking starkly new, as the result of "thorough restoration" in 1870. Its semicircular apse, really ancient, does not look it. The tower is of the Henley type, though smaller. Henley church tower, in fact, seems to have set a local fashion in such, for that of Hambleden conforms to the same design.
REGATTA ISLAND.
Regatta Island, with its effective temple, marks the old starting-point of the races.
Hambleden is on the Buckinghamshire side; a
pretty village situated about one mile distant from
the river along the lovely and retired valley of
the Hamble. From it the widow of W. H. Smith,
of the newspaper and library and bookstall business
of W. H. Smith & Son, and of Greenlands, near
Henley, takes her title of Viscountess Hambleden.
Liberal, Radical, and Separatist journals were never
tired of satirically referring to W. H. Smith, when
a member of a Unionist Government, as "Old
Morality," deriving that term from the stand he
took in the House of Commons upon his "duty to
Queen and country." His idea of his duty in those
respects was exactly that of an average responsible
business man. He had no axe to grind, no job to
perpetrate[sic a malapropism for "perpetuate"!];
and that being so, the nickname of
"Old Morality" was in effect a great deal more
honourable than those satirists ever suspected. They,
indeed, conferred upon him a brevet of which any one
might well be proud, and incidentally covered themselves
with shame, as men to whom a sense of rightness
and of duty towards one's sovereign and one's
native land was a subject for mirth. But of course
these quips and cranks derived from the party
notoriously friends of every country save their own.
[Once more cause for an editor to point out bias!]
In the very much restored church of Hambleden, among various tombs, is one in the chancel to Henry, son of the second Lord Sandys, with a quaint inscription, owning some nobility of thought:
Nature cryeth on me so sore,
I cannot, Christ, be too fervent,
Sith he is gone, I have no more,
And yt, O God, I am content.
I believe in the Resurection of Life
To see you again at the last day,
And now, farewell, Elizabeth my wife,
Teach mye children God to obey
But now let us rejoyce in heart
To trymphe never cease
Sith in this life wee only part
To joyce agen in heavenly peace.
Parted to God's mercy, 1540."
The elaborate oak screen under the tower, carved with Renascence designs, is said to have once been part of Cardinal Wolsey's bedstead. It bears the arms of Christ Church and of Corpus Christi, Oxford; and those of Castile, with the rose badge of York.
MEDMENHAM ABBEY.
At some little distance downstream is Medmenham
Abbey. The building, that looks so entirely
reverend and worshipful from the opposite shore,
is really, in the existing buildings, little enough
of the original Abbey that was founded towards
the close of the twelfth century by one Hugh de
Bolebec. It was never very much of a place, and
seems to have been something of a dependency of
Bisham Abbey. Just prior to its suppression, Henry
the Eighth's commissioners reported that it had
merely two monks, with no servants, and little
property, but no debts; but, on the other hand, no
goods worth more than £1 3s. 8d., "and the house
wholly ruinous."
Nothing remains of whatever church there may
have been, and the only ancient portions are some
fragments of the Abbot's lodgings. The "ruined"
tower, the cloisters, and much else are the work of
those blasphemous "Franciscans" of the Hell Fire
Club who, under the presidency of Francis Dashwood,
Lord le Despencer, established themselves here
about 1758. There were twelve of these reckless
"monks," who, having built the "cloisters," reared
the now ivy-mantled tower, and painted their licentious
motto, "Fay ce que voudras," over one of
the doors, sat down to a series of orgies and
debaucheries whose excesses have been perhaps exaggerated
by the mystery with which these "monks
of Medmenham" chose to veil their doings. Among
them were Bubb Dodington, Lord Melcombe, Sir
John Dashwood King, John Wilkes, the poet Churchill,
and Sir William Stanhope. Paul Whitehead was
"secretary" to this precious gang of debauchees.
Devil-worship was said to have been among the
impious rites celebrated here; and one of the party
seems to have played a particularly horrifying
practical joke upon his fellows during the progress
of these celebrations. He procured an exceptionally
large and hideous monkey and, dressing it in character,
let it down the chimney into the room among
his friends, who fled in terror, and were for long
afterwards convinced that their patron had really
come for them. This incident is said to have broken
up the fraternity.
The explorer by Thames-side could, until quite
recent years, do very much as he liked at Medmenham,
and the more or less authentic ruins were
open to him; but now they are enclosed within the
grounds of a private residence, and a hotel stands
beside the ferry.
MEDMENHAM.
The very small village at the back is to be noted for the highly picturesque grouping of some ancient gabled houses (restored of late) with the little church and a remarkable hill crested by an old red-brick and flint house that looks as though it owned, or ought to own, some romantic story. The hilltop is said to be encircled with the remains of a prehistoric encampment. It is with sorrow that here also one notes the builder's prejudicial activities. Directly in front of the church, and entirely blocking out the view of it, there has been built a recent red-brick villa, with the result that the effective composition illustrated here is almost wholly destroyed.
The lovely grass-lands over against Medmenham are glorious in June, before the hay-harvest. One may walk by them, beside the river, all the way to Hurley. On the left, or Buckinghamshire, bank, the ground rises into chalk-cliffs, surmounted by the great unoccupied house of Danesfield, staringly white, popularly said to contain as many windows as there are days in the year. This is the handiwork of Mr. R. W. Hudson, of "Hudson's Soap."
Hurley, to which we now come, is a historic spot.
Here, by the waterside, was founded in 1087, by
Geoffrey de Mandeville, the Benedictine Priory of
Our Lady of Hurley, which remained until 1535,
when, in common with other religious houses, it
was suppressed by Henry the Eighth. To the Lovelace
family came the lands and buildings of this
establishment, and here, on the site of it, Sir Richard
Lovelace built, with "money gotten with Francis
Drake," a splendid mansion which he called Lady
Place. His descendant, Richard, Lord Lovelace,
was in 1688 one of the somewhat timorous nobles
who met secretly to plot the deposition of James
the Second. They had not the courage, these pusillanimous
wretches, to take the field in arms, as Monmouth
and his brave peasants had done, three years
earlier, and must needs find cellars to grope in, and
then invite over that cold, disliked Dutchman,
William of Orange, to do for them what they dared
not do for themselves. Macaulay, in his richly-picturesque
language, refers to these meetings, but
it will be observed that he calls those who met
here "daring." They were anything but that.
"This mansion," he says, "built by his ancestors
out of the spoils of Spanish galleons from the Indies,
rose on the ruins of a house of our Lady in this
beautiful valley, through which the Thames, not
yet defiled by the precincts of a great capital, rolls
under woods of beech, and round the gentle hills
of Berks. Beneath the stately saloon, adorned by
Italian pencils, was a subterranean vault, in which
the bones of ancient monks had sometimes been
found. In this dark chamber some zealous and
daring opponents of the Government held many
midnight conferences during that anxious time when
England was impatiently expecting the Protestant
wind."
This Lady Place no longer exists, for the great
house was demolished in 1836, and the house so-called
is of modern build. But the old-time gardens
remain, and the refectory; and here is the old circular
pigeon-house, with the initials on it, "C.R.,"
and the date, 1642.
A curious story tells how one of the last occupants
of Lady Place was a brother of Admiral Kempenfelt,
and that he and the Admiral planted two thorn-trees
in the garden, in which he took great pride.
One day, returning home, he found that the tree
planted by the Admiral had withered away, and he
exclaimed: "I feel sure this is an omen that my
brother is dead." That evening, August 29, 1782,
he received news of the loss of the Royal George.
Hurley church is a long, low building, of nave without aisles, of Norman, or some say earlier, origin. "It was probably ravaged by the Danes towards the close of the ninth century," say the guide-books. This may have been so, but it could hardly have been worse ravaged by them than it was by those who "restored" it in 1852 "at a cost of £1,500," and incidentally also at the cost of all its real interest.
THE BELL INN, HURLEY.
The village of Hurley straggles a long way back from the river, in one scattered, disjointed line of cottages, past the picturesque old Bell Inn, apparently of fifteenth-century date, heavily framed with stout oaken timbers.
Below Hurley, leaving behind the ancient red-brick
piers of the old-world gardens of Lady Place,
the river opens out to Marlow reach, with Bisham
on the right hand, and the tall crocketed spire of
Marlow church closing the distant view.
"Bisham" is said to have been originally "Bustleham,"
but the present form will be preferred by
every one. Strangers call it "Bish-am," but for
the natives and the people of Marlow the only way
is by the elision of the letter h - "Bis-am"; and
thus shall you, being duly informed of this shibboleth,
infallibly detect the stranger in these parts.
Bisham village is quite invisible from the river,
nor need we trouble to seek it, unless it be for climbing
up into the lovely and precipitous Quarry Woods,
in the rear. To those who knew Bisham when
Fred Walker painted his delightful pictures, and
among them, some studies of this village street,
there comes, when they think of the Bisham that
was and the Bisham that is, a fierce but impotent
anger. The humble old red-brick cottages remain,
it is true, and their gardens bloom as of yore, but
what was once the sweet-smelling gravelly street
is now a tarred abomination, smelling evilly, and
wearing a squalid and disreputable look. This is
the result of the coming of the motor-car, for Bisham
is on the well-travelled road between High Wycombe,
Great Marlow, Twyford, and Reading, and
the village has now the unwelcome choice of two
evils: to be half-choked with billows of dust, or
to coat its roads with tar compositions.
Of what was originally a Preceptory of the Knights
Templars, and then an Augustine Priory, and finally
a Benedictine Abbey, nothing is left but the Prior's
lodgings, now the mansion of the Vansittart-Neales,
called "the Abbey."
The parish church stands
finely by the waterside, encircled by the trees of
the park, and there remains a monastic barn. Such
are the few relics of the proud home of monks and
priors, enriched during hundreds of years by the
benefactions of the wicked, endeavouring by means
of such gifts to atone sufficiently for their evil lives,
and so escape the damnation that surely awaited
them.[!]
Such complete destruction is melancholy indeed,
when we consider the great historic personages who
were buried here: among them the great Nevill,
"Warwick the Kingmaker," slain at last in the
course of his tortuous ambitions, in the Battle of
Barnet, fought on Easter Day, 1471, and laid at
Bisham, hard by his own manor of Marlow.
When the Abbey was finally dissolved, it was
granted by Henry the Eighth to Anne of Cleves,
his divorced fourth wife, who exchanged it with
the Hoby family for a property of theirs in Kent.
Here the Princess Elizabeth was resident for three
years, during the reign of her half-sister, Mary,
really under surveillance; and to that period the
greater part of the "Abbey," as we see it now, is
to be referred.
BISHAM ABBEY.
Bisham Abbey is, of course, famed above all
other things for the story of the wicked Lady Hoby,
who so thrashed her son for spoiling his copy-books
with blots that he died. A portrait of her, in the
dress of a widow, is still in the house, and her ghost
is yet said to haunt the place. She was wife of
Sir Thomas Hoby, Ambassador to France, who
died in 1566, aged 36. The elaborate altar-tomb
in Bisham church to him, and to his half-brother,
Sir Philip, with effigies of the two knights, is worth
seeing; and the rhymed epitaph written by her
worth reading. The early death of the Ambassador,
in Paris, was not without suspicion of poison. The
sculptured figures of hawks at the feet of the brothers
are "hobby"-hawks, a punning allusion to the
family name.
Lady Hoby was a grief-stricken widow, and
supplicated Heaven, rather quaintly, to "give me
back my husband, Thomas," or that being beyond
possibility, to "give me another like Thomas."
She captured another, eight years later, when
she married John, Lord Russell; but whether
Heaven had thus given her one up to sample we
are only left idly to conjecture. At any rate she
outlived him too, by many years, and elected to be
buried beside her Thomas. An elaborate monument
to this fearsome lady discloses her in a wonderful
coif, surmounted by a coronet. Before and behind
her kneeling figure are the praying effigies of her
children. It is recorded that she was particularly
interested in mortuary observances, and that she
even found it possible to be absorbed, as she lay
dying, at the age of 81, in her own funeral rites;
corresponding with Sir William Dethick as to precisely
the number of mourners and heralds that
were her due.
A little monument to two children in Bisham
church is the subject of a very old legend to the
effect that Queen Elizabeth was their mother!
More scandal about Queen Elizabeth!
Bisham passed from the Hobys in 1768 to a family
of Mills, who assumed the name; but in 1780 it
again changed hands and was sold to the Vansittarts,
of whom Sir H. J. Vansittart-Neale is the present
representative. The old belief in disaster befalling
families who hold property taken from the Church
has been curiously warranted here from time to
time, in the untimely death of eldest sons or direct
heirs, and here indeed, upon entering Bisham church,
the stranger is startled by the white marble life-size
effigy confronting him of a kneeling boy, in a Norfolk
jacket-suit; an inscription declaring it to represent
George Kenneth Vansittart-Neale, who died in 1904,
aged fourteen.
A THAMES REGATTA.
Marlow town is well within sight from Bisham. It
is very much more picturesque at a distance than
it is found to be when arrived near at hand; and
the graceful stone spire of its church is found to be
really a portion of a very clumsy would-be Gothic
building erected in the Batty-Langley style, about
1835. A fine old Norman and later building was
destroyed to make way for this; and now the present
church is in course of being replaced, in sections,
by another, as the funds to that end come in. An
interesting monument in the draughty lobby of the
present building commemorates Sir Myles Hobart,
of Harleyford, who, when Member of Parliament
for Marlow, in 1628, distinguished himself by his
sturdy opposition to the King's illegal demands;
and with his own hands, on a memorable occasion,
locked the door of the House of Commons, to secure
the debate on tonnage and poundage from interruption.
For this he suffered three years' imprisonment.
The monument, shamefully "skied" on the
wall of this lobby, was removed from the old church.
Hobart met his death in 1652 by accident, the four
horses in his carriage running away down Holborn
Hill, and upsetting it. A curious little sculpture
on the lower part of the monument represents this
happening, and shows one of the wheels broken.
The monument is further interesting as having been
erected by Parliament; the first to be voted of
any of a now lengthy series.
FROM THE MONUMENT TO SIR MYLES HOBART, GREAT MARLOW.
In the vestry, leading out of this lobby, among a number of old prints hung round the walls, is an old painting of a naked boy, with bow and arrow, his skin spotted all over, leopard-like, with brown spots. This represents the once-famous "Spotted Negro Boy," a supposed native of the Caribbean Islands, who formed a very attractive feature of Richardson's Show in the first decade of the nineteenth century. We shall probably not be far wrong in suspecting Mr. William Richardson of a Barnum-like piece of showman humbug in putting this child forward as a "Negro Boy." The boy, one cannot help thinking, was sufficiently English, but was a freak, suffering from that dreadful skin disease, ichthyosis serpentina. He lies buried in the churchyard.
"TOP O' THE TOWN," GREAT MARLOW.
There are a few literary associations in Marlow
town, and by journeying from the riverside and
along the lengthy High Street, to where that curious
building, the old Crown Hotel, stands, facing
down the long thoroughfare, you may come presently
to the houses that enshrine them. Turning here
to the left you are in West Street, otherwise the
Henley road, and passing the oddly named "Quoiting
Square," there in the quaintly pretty old Albion
House next door to the old Grammar School, lived
Shelley in 1817. A tablet on the coping, like a
tombstone, records the fact. He divided his time
between writing the Revolt of Islam, and in
visiting the then degraded, poverty-stricken lower
orders of the town and talking nonsense to them.
As no report of his conversations survives, we can
only wonder if they were as bad as the turgid nonsense
of that poem. Does any one nowadays ever
read the Revolt of Islam, or know why Islam
did it, or if, in so doing, it succeeded? In short,
it will take a great deal of argument to convince
the world that Shelley was not the Complete Prig
of his age, and in truth the house is much
more delightful and interesting for itself than for
this association. In Shelley's time it was very
much larger than now, and comprised the two or
three other small houses which have been divided
from it.
At "Beechwood" lived Smedley, author of
Frank Fairleigh and Valentine Vox, and on the
Oxford road resided G. P. R. James, romantic
novelist, whose romances were said, by the satirists
of his methods, generally to commence with some
such formula as -
"As the shades of evening were falling upon
Deadman's Heath, three horsemen might have been
observed," etc.
Marlow Weir is, to oarsmen not intimately
acquainted with this stretch of the river, the most
dangerous on the Thames, so it behoves all to give
the weir-stream a wide berth in setting out again
from Marlow Bridge;
that suspension-bridge, built
in 1831, which, like the neighbouring church, looks
its best at a considerable distance.
River-gossipers
will never let die that old satirical query, "Who ate
puppy-pie under Marlow Bridge?" the taunt being
directed, according to tradition, against the bargees
of long ago, who, accustomed to raid the larder of
a waterside hotel at Marlow, were punished admirably
by the landlord, who, having drowned a
litter of puppies, caused them to be baked in a
large pie, and the pie to be placed where it could not
fail to attract the attention of the raiders, who
stole it, and consumed it with much satisfaction,
under the bridge.
Two miles below Marlow, past Spade Oak ferry, is Bourne End, on the Buckinghamshire side; a modern collection of villas clustered around a delightful backwater known as Abbotsbrook, and by the outlet of the river Wye - the "bourne" which ends here and gives rise to the place-name. It comes down from Wycombe, to which also it gives a name, and Loudwater.
Cookham now comes into view, on the Berkshire shore. Here the village is grouped around a village green; rather a sophisticated green in these days, and combed down and brushed up smartly since those times when Fred Walker began his career. Then the geese and ducks roamed about that open space, and in the unspoiled village; and old gaffers in smock-frocks and wonderful beaver-hats with naps on them as thick as Turkey carpets sat about on benches in front of old inns, and smoked extravagantly long churchwarden-pipes. The old gaffers have long since gone, and the Bel and the Dragon Inn has become a hotel, and Walker is dead and already an Old Master. You may see his grave in the churchyard, and read there how he died, aged thirty-five, in 1875. There is, in addition, a portrait-medallion within the church itself, which gives him a half-drunken, half-idiotic expression that one hopes did not really belong to him.
COOKHAM CHURCH.
Behind the organ a curious mural monument to Sir Isaac Pocock, Bart., dated 1810, represents the baronet "suddenly called from this world to a better state, whilst on the Thames near his own house." He is seen in a punt, being caught while falling by a personage intended to represent an angel, in tempestuous petticoats, while a puntsman engaged in poling the craft looks on, in very natural surprise.
COOKHAM WEIR.
From Cookham, where the lock is set amid wooded scenery, the transition to Cliveden is easy.
COOKHAM LOCK.
Clieveden, Cliefden, Cliveden - you may suit individual taste and fancy in the manner of spelling - looks grandly from the Buckinghamshire heights down on to the Berkshire levels of Cookham and Ray Mead. Perhaps the most beautiful view of all is from Cookham Lock.
Ray Mead, that was until twenty years ago just a mead - a beautiful stretch of grass-meadows - is now the name of a long line of villas with pretty frontages and gardens, but deplorable names - "Frou-Frou," "Sans Souci," and the like - and inhabited, often enough, as one might suppose by the Frou-frous of musical comedy and their admirers.
Cliveden, sometime "bower of wanton Shrewsbury
and of love," and now residence of the highly
respectable and remarkably wealthy Mr. William
Waldorf Astor, looks in lordly fashion upon such.
With the proceeds of his New York rent-roll that
Europeanised American in 1890 purchased the historic
place from the first Duke of Westminster, and
has resided here and at other of his English seats
ever since. Those who are conversant with American
newspapers are familiar with the scream every now
and again raised against this and other examples
of American money being taken and spent abroad.
The spectacle of that bird of prey raging because
of the dollars riven from it is amusing, but the
situation may become internationally serious yet,
for when some great financial crisis arises in the
United States and money is scarce, it is quite to
be expected that the question of the absentee landlords
will become acute, and talk of super-taxing
and expropriation be heard. I believe this particular
Astor is now a naturalised Englishman, and
I don't suppose him to be the only one. Suppose,
then, that the Government of the United States
at some future time seized the property of such,
how would the international situation shape?
Cliveden, when it was thus sold, had not been
long in the hands of the Grosvenor family; having
been, a generation earlier, the property of the Duke
of Sutherland, for whom the present Italianate mansion
was built by Sir Charles Barry in 1851, following
upon a fire which had destroyed the older house,
for the second time in the history of the place. The
original fire was in 1795. In the mansion then
destroyed the air of "Rule, Britannia," had first been
played in 1740, as an incidental song in Thomson's
masque of Alfred, the music composed by Dr. Arne.
Boulter's Lock, the water-approach to Maidenhead,
is the busiest lock on the Thames, and now
busier on Sundays than on any other day. How
astonishingly times have changed on the river may
be judged from an experience of the late Mr. Albert
Ricardo, who died at the close of 1908, aged eighty-eight.
He lived at Ray Mead all his long life, and
was ever keen on boating. When he was a comparatively
young man, he brought his skiff round
to the lock one Sunday. His was the only boat
there, and he was addressed in no measured terms
by a man who indignantly asked him if he knew
what day it was, and telling him, in very plain
language, his opinion of a person who used the
river on Sunday. Since then a wave of High Churchism
and irreligion (the two things are really the
same)
[Editor notes bias ...]
has submerged the observance of the Sabbath,
and aforetime respectable persons play golf on the
Lord's Day.
A quaint incident, one, doubtless, of many,
comes to me here, in considering Boulter's Lock,
out of the dim recesses of bygone reading.
Says Mr. G. D. Leslie, R.A., in his entertaining
book, Our River:
"I came through the lock
once simultaneously with H.R.H. the Duke of Cambridge.
He was steering the boat he was in, and
I am sorry to say I incurred his displeasure by
accidentally touching his rudder with my punt's
nose."
Oh dear!
He does not tell us what H.R.H. said on this
historic occasion; but a knowledge of the Royal
Duke's fiery temper and of his ready and picturesque
way of expressing it leads the present writer to
imagine that his remarks were of a nature likely to
have been hurtful to the self-respect of the Royal
Academician. But it is something - is it not? - to
be able to record, thus delicately, by implication,
that one has been vigorously cursed by a Royal
Duke. Not to all of us has come such an honour!
And now we come to Maidenhead town, a town
of 12,980 persons, and yet a place that was, not
so very long ago, merely in the parishes of Cookham
and Bray. (It was created a separate civil parish
only in 1894.) Its growth, originally due to its
situation on that old coaching highway, the Bath
road (which is here carried across the river by that
fine stone structure, Maidenhead Bridge, built in
1772, to replace an ancient building of timber), has
been further brought about by the modern vogue
of the river, and by the convenience of a railway
station close at hand.
"Maidenhead" is, according to some views,
the "mydden hythe," the "middle wharf" between
Windsor and Marlow. Camden assures us that
the name derived from "St. Ursula," one of the
eleven thousand virgins murdered at Cologne. But
St. Ursula and the eleven thousand maiden martyrs,
who are said to have been shot to death with arrows,
are as entirely mythical as Sarah Gamp's "Mrs. Harris."
But there is plenty choice in the origin of this
place-name. There are those who plump for "magh-dun-hythe,"
the wharf under the great hill (of Cliveden).
The place is found under quite another
name in Domesday Book. There it is "Elenstone,"
or "Ellington." It is first styled "Maydehuth"
in 1248; and it has been thought that the name
is equivalent to "new wharf"; the wharf, or its
successor, mentioned by Leland in 1538 as the
"grete warfeage of tymbre and fierwood."
We need not, perhaps, expend further space
upon the town of Maidenhead, for it is almost entirely
modern. Its fine stone bridge has already been
mentioned, and another, and a very different, type
of bridge, a quarter of a mile below it, now demands
attention.
Maidenhead Railway Bridge, completed in 1839, one of those greatly daring works for which the Great Western Railway's original engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, was famous, is the astonishment of all who behold it. Crossing the river in two spans, each of 128 feet, the great elliptical brick arches are the largest brickwork arches in the world, and of such flatness that it seems scarcely possible they can sustain their own weight, even without the heavy burden of trains running across. Maidenhead Railway Bridge astonishes me infinitely more than the great bridge across the Forth, or any other engineering feats. Yet sixty years have passed, and the bridge not only stands as firmly as ever, but nowadays sustains the weight of trains and engines more than twice as heavy as those originally in vogue. Moreover, in the doubling of the line, found necessary in 1892, the confidence of the Company was shown by their building an exact replica of Brunel's existing bridge, side by side with it. Yet the original contractor had been so alarmed that he earnestly begged Brunel to allow him to relinquish the contract, and although the engineer proved to him, scientifically, that it must stand, he went in fear that when the wooden centreing was removed the arches would collapse. A great storm actually blew down the centreing before it was proposed to remove it, but the bridge stood, and has stood ever since, quite safely. It cost, in 1839, £37,000 to build.
Beyond this astonishing achievement comes the delightful village of Bray, whose name is thought to be a corruption of Bibracte, an obscure Roman station. Bray is scenically associated with the eight - or are they ten? - tall poplars that stand in a formal row, all of one size, and each equidistant from the other, and form a prominent feature in the view as you approach, upstream or down; and with the weird shapes of the eel-bucks that occupy a position by the Berkshire bank. Composing a pretty view with them comes the square, embattled church-tower, together with some feathery waterside trees - and always those stark sentinel poplars in the background. You see them from almost every quarter, a long way off; and even from the railway, as the Great Western trains sweep onwards, towards Maidenhead Bridge, they come rushing into sight, and you say - and you observe that the glances of other passengers say also - "There's Bray!"
BRAY CHURCH.
Bray is, of course traditionally, the home of
that famous accommodating vicar who, reproached
with his readiness to change his principles, replied:
"Not so; my principle is unaltered: to live and
die Vicar of Bray."
Every one knows the rollicking song that sets
forth, with a musical economy of some five notes,
the determination of that notorious person, despite
all changes and chances, to keep his comfortable
living, but not every one knows the facts about him
and that familiar ballad.
Fuller says: "He had seen some martyrs burnt
(two miles off) at Windsor, and found this fire too
hot for his tender temper"; and further says,
respecting his guiding principle in life - to remain
Vicar of Bray - "Such are many nowadays, who,
though they cannot turn the wind, will turn their
mills and set them so that wheresoever it bloweth,
their grist shall certainly be grinded."
The reputation of being that vicar has been
flung upon Simon Alleyn, or Aleyn, which were,
no doubt, the contemporary ways of trying to spell
"Allen," who appears to have derived from a family
settled at Stevenage, Hertfordshire, and, graduating
at Oxford in 1539, to have been instituted to the
living of Bray in 1551, upon the death of William
Staverton, vicar before him. Two years later he
became also vicar of Cookham. In 1559 he was
made Canon of Windsor, and held all three offices
until his death in June 1565.
LYCHGATE, BRAY.
If we inquire into the history of Church and
State between 1551 and 1565, we shall not find
that the period covered by those fifteen years was
remarkable for so many great religious changes.
The changes were great, indeed, but not numerous.
Edward the Sixth was living, and the Reformed
Church established, when Aleyn first became vicar,
who, when the young King died and the reactionary
reign of Mary began, doubtless "became a Roman";
but there is no doubt that many others did the like
at that time.
When Queen Mary died, in 1558, Aleyn naturally
conformed to the Protestant religion, then re-established:
and, as we see, died comparatively early
in the reign of Elizabeth, while that religion was
yet undisputed. There was thus, supposing him
to have been originally instituted as a Protestant,
only one violation of conscience necessary to his
retaining his post: a small matter! As he could
scarcely have been more than about twenty years of
age when he graduated, it is seen at once that when
he died, in 1565, he was comparatively young - some
forty-six years of age. By his will, he directed
that he should be buried in St. George's Chapel,
Windsor; and as there is no reason to suppose
that his wishes in that respect were wantonly disregarded,
it follows that the small monumental
brass, now without an inscription, here, in the church
of Bray, cannot mark his resting-place. It has,
indeed, been identified as to the memory of Thomas
Little, his successor, who died so soon afterwards as
1567.
The injustice, therefore, done to Simon Aleyn by identifying him with the song, the "Vicar of Bray," is obvious; for there were very many men, born at an earlier date than he, and living to a much greater age, who certainly did change their official beliefs, for professional purposes, several times, between 1534, when the Reformation was accomplished, and the reign of Elizabeth. There would have been more scope for such a tergiversating person in the reigns of Charles the Second, James the Second, William the Third, Queen Anne, and George the First - in all of which it would have been easily possible for a not very long-lived clergyman to flourish - than in Aleyn's time; and the ballad in its present form distinctly specifies that period, long after Aleyn was dead. But the ascription to Bray at all can clearly be proved a late one, for the original words, traced back to 1712, when one Edward Ward published a collection of miscellaneous works in prose and verse, make no mention of any particular place. The verses, eighteen in number, are there entitled, "The Religious Turncoat; or, the Trimming Parson." Among them we find a reference to the troubles under Charles the First, by which it appears that the trimmer's constitutional, as well as religious, opinions were moderated according to circumstances:
"I lov'd no King in Forty-one,
When Prelacy went down,
A cloak and band I then put on
And preached against the Crown.
When Charles returned into the land,
The English Crown's supporter,
I shifted off my cloak and band,
And then became a courtier.
When Royal James began his reign,
And Mass was used in common,
I shifted off my Faith again,
And then became a Roman.
To teach my flock I never missed,
Kings were by God appointed.
And they are damned who dare resist.
Or touch the Lord's anointed..
The familiar refrain was, of course, added later:
"And this is law, I will maintain,
Until my dying day, sir,
That, whatsoever King shall reign,
I'll be the Vicar of Bray, sir..
The air to which the song is set is equally old,
but originally belonged to quite another set of
verses, called "The Country Garden." It was,
later, used with the words of a ballad known as
"The Neglected Tar"; but it certainly appeared
set to the words of "The Vicar of Bray" in 1778,
when it was published in The Vocal Magazine.
Who, then, was he who first associated Bray
with the song, and with what warrant? and by
what evidence did Fuller advance his statement
that Aleyn was the man? The question may well
be asked, but no reply need be expected.
It may be worth while in this place to give
another, and perhaps an even better, version of the
famous ballad, which gives the Vicar a run from
the time of Charles the Second to that of George
the First; thirty years, at least:
In good King Charles's golden days,
When loyalty had no harm in't,
A zealous High Churchman I was,
And so I got preferment.
To teach my flock I never miss'd,
Kings were by God appointed,
And they are damned who dare resist,
Or touch the Lord's anointed.
When Royal James obtained the throne,
And Popery grew in fashion,
The penal laws I hooted down,
And read the Declaration.
The Church of Rome I found would fit.
Full well my constitution,
And I had been a Jesuit,
But for the Revolution.
When William, our deliverer, came.
To heal the nation's grievance,
Then I turned cat-in-pan again,
And swore to him allegiance.
Old principles I did revoke,
Set conscience at a distance.
Passive resistance was a joke,
A jest was non-resistance.
When glorious Anne became our Queen,
The Church of England's glory,
Another face of things was seen,
And I became a Tory.
Occasional conformists' case -.
I damned such moderation,
And thought the Church in danger was.
By such prevarication.
When George in pudding-time came o'er,
And moderate men looked big, sir,
My principles I changed once more,
And so became a Whig, sir,
And thus preferment I procure.
From our Faith's great Defender,
And almost every day abjure.
The Pope and the Pretender.
The illustrious House of Hanover,
And Protestant Succession,
By these I lustily will swear,
While they can keep possession,
For in my faith and loyalty.
I never once will falter,
But George my King shall ever be -.
Until the times do alter..
Another vicar of Bray distinguished himself
in rather a sorry fashion, according to legend, in
the time of James the First. He was dining with
his curate at the Greyhound, or, by another
account, the Bear, at Maidenhead, when there
burst in upon them a hungry sportsman, who expressed
a wish to join them at table. The vicar
agreed, but with a bad grace, but the curate made
him welcome, and entertained him well in conversation.
When the time came to pay, the vicar let it
be seen that, so far as he was concerned, the stranger
should settle for his share, but the curate declared
he could permit no such thing, and paid the sportsman's
score out of his own scanty pocket. Presently,
as they stood taking the air at the window, other
sportsmen came cantering along the street, and
seeing the first, halted, and one, dismounting, dropped
upon one knee, and uncovered. It was the King.
The vicar, too late, apologised, but the King,
turning to him, said: "Have no fear. You shall
always be vicar of Bray, but your curate I will
set over you, and make him Canon of Windsor."
One of the queerest and quaintest of entrances conducts to the church, beneath a picturesque old timbered house: charming on both fronts, each greatly differing from the other. There are as many as eight brasses in the church, a fine Early English and Decorated building, somewhat overscraped and renewed in restoration. An early seventeenth-century brass has some delightful lines:
"When Oxford gave thee two degrees in Art,
And Love possessed thee, Master of my Heart,
Thy Colledge Fellowshipp thow leftst for mine,
And novght but death covld seprate me frô thine..
This is without a name, but has been identified
as to the memory of Little, Aleyn's successor.
Not so delightful are the self-sufficing lines upon
William Goddard, founder of the neighbouring almshouses.
Let us hope that, although couched in the
first person, he did not write them himself:
f what I was, thov seekst to know.
Theis lynes my character shal showe,
These benifitts that God me lent.
With thanks I tooke and freely spent.
I scorned what playnesse covld not gett,
And next to treason hated debt.
I lovd not those that stird vp strif.
Trve to my freinde, and to my wife.
The latter here by me I have.
We had one Bed and have one grave.
My honesty was such that I.
When death came, feared not to dye..
JESUS HOSPITAL, BRAY.
In the churchyard lies John Payne Collier, the
Shakespearean critic, who died in 1883. His funeral
was the occasion of a curious mistake in The Standard,
of September 21. The newspaper correspondent
had written:
"The remains of the late Mr. John Payne Collier
were interred yesterday in Bray churchyard, near
Maidenhead, in the presence of a large number of
spectators."
This became, at the hands of the sub-editor, who
had never heard of Collier,
"The Bray Colliery Disaster. The remains of the late John Payne, collier," etc.
Jesus Hospital, founded in the seventeenth century
by William Goddard, of the City of London, fishmonger,
and Joyce, his wife, for the housing and
maintenance of forty poor persons, faces the road
outside the village, on the way to Windsor. Fred
Walker, in his most famous picture, The Harbour of
Refuge, exhibited at the Royal Academy, 1872, took
the beautiful courtyard of the Hospital for his
subject, but those who are familiar with that lovely
painting, now in the National Gallery, will feel a
keen disappointment when they find here the original,
for the artist added a noble group of statuary to
the courtyard which does not, in fact, exist here,
and has generally added details which make an
already beautiful place still more lovely than it is.
The courtyard is, indeed, in summer a mass of
beautiful homely flowers, and all the year round
the noble frontage that looks upon the dusty highroad
is inspiring. From an alcove over the entrance
the statue of William Goddard, in cloak and ruff,
looks down gravely upon wayfarers.
THE HALL, OCKWELLS.
In a remote situation, two miles from Bray Wick, and not to be found marked on many maps, is situated the ancient manor-house of Ockwells. The hills and dales on the way to it are of a Devonshire richness of wooded beauty. The manor was, in fact, originally that of "Ockholt," that is to say, "Oak Wood," and oaks are still plenteously represented. Ockholt, as it was then, was granted in 1267 to one Richard de Norreys, styled in the grant "cook" in the household of Eleanor of Provence, Queen of Henry the Third. In respect of his manor, Richard de Norreys paid forty shillings per annum, quit rent; but there is nothing to show what his house was like, the existing range of buildings dating from the time of John Norreys, first Usher of the Chamber to Henry the Sixth, Squire of the Body, Master of the Wardrobe, and otherwise a man of many important offices, eventually knighted for his services. He died in 1467. His grandson was that Sir Henry Norreys who was, with others, executed in 1536, on what appears to have been a false charge of unduly familiar relations with Anne Boleyn. His body rests in the Tower of London, where he met his untimely end, but his head was claimed by his relatives, and buried in the private chapel of Ockwells. The chapel has long since disappeared. The son of this unfortunate man became Baron Norreys of Rycote, and the family thence rose to further honours and riches and left Ockwells for even finer seats. It then came into the hands of the Fettiplaces, and thence changed ownership many times, exactly as old Fuller says of other lands in this county: "The lands of Berkshire are skittish, and apt to cast their owners." The old mansion finally came down to the condition of a farmhouse, and so remained until some fifty years ago, when it was restored and made once more a residence. Since then it has again been carefully overhauled, and is now a wonderfully well-preserved example of a brick-and timber-framed manor-house of the fifteenth century. Oak framing enters largely into the construction, for this was pre-eminently a timber district; and massive doors, much panelling, and even window mullions in oak testify alike to the abundance of that building-material, and to its lasting qualities, far superior, strange though it may seem to say so, to stone. Even such exceptionally exposed woodwork as the highly enriched barge-boards to the gables is still in excellent preservation. With age they have taken on a lovely silver-grey tone, not unlike that of weathered stone itself. In the Great Hall the heraldic glass yet remains, almost perfect, its colours rich and jewel-like, with the oft-repeated Norreys motto, "Faythfully serve."
It is somewhat singular that another exceptionally interesting old manor-house of like type with that of Ockwells should be found within three miles. This is the beautiful residence of Dorney Court, on the opposite side of the river, in Buckinghamshire. The village of Dorney lies in a very out-of-the-way situation, and in fact, although the distance from Ockwells is so inconsiderable, the route by which you get to it makes it appear more than twice that length. The readiest way is through Maidenhead, and over the bridge to Taplow railway station, and thence along the Bath road in the direction of London for over a mile, when a sign-post will be noticed directing to Dorney on the right hand.
DORNEY CHURCH: THE MINSTREL-GALLERY.
The village is small and scattered, consisting of the Palmer Arms, some cottages and farmsteads; and the little parish church stands in an obscure byway, divided from Dorney Court only by a narrow lane leading nowhither. The church has ever been, and may still be considered, a mere appendage of the Court, as a manorial chapel. Its red-brick tower, apparently of early seventeenth-century date, is added to the west end of a quite humble building, the greatly altered survival of an early Norman structure, whose former existence may easily be deduced from the remains of a small, very plain window built up in the south wall of the chancel with later work in chalk. Entering by a brick archway in the south porch, you find yourself in one of those little rural churches of small pretensions which in their humble way capture the affections much more surely than do many buildings of more aspiring kind. It is a church merely of aisleless nave and chancel, with a chapel - the Garrard Chapel - thrown out on the north side. A great deal of remodelling appears to have taken place in the early part of the seventeenth century, for not only is there the western tower of that period, and the south porch, but the interior was evidently plastered and refitted with pews at the same time. A very quaint and charming western gallery in oak would seem to fix the exact date of these works, for it bears the inscription in fine, boldly cut letters and figures, "Henry Felo, 1634." That date marked a new era at Dorney, for the Garrards, who had for some time past owned the Manor, ended with the death of Sir William Garrard in 1607. His monument and that of his wife and their fifteen children is in the north chapel, and is a strikingly good example of the taste of that period in monumental art, with kneeling effigies of Sir William and his wife facing one another, and the fifteen children beneath, in two rows - the boys on one side, the girls on the other. The mortality among this family would seem to have been very great, for about 1620 Sir James Palmer, afterwards Chancellor of the Garter, married Martha, the sole survivor and heiress, and thus brought Dorney into the Palmer family, in whose hands it still remains. The Palmers themselves were of Wingham, in Kent, and of Angmering and Parham, Sussex, and have numbered many distinguished and remarkable men. Tradition declares them to be of Danish or Viking origin, while a very curious and interesting old illuminated genealogy preserved at Dorney declares that the family name originated in the ancient days of pilgrimage, when the original Palmer "went a-palmering." If that were indeed the case, the old heraldic coat of the house might be expected to exhibit an allusive scallop-shell. But we find no badge of the pilgrim's way-wending on their heraldic shield, which bears instead two fesses charged with three trefoils; a greyhound courant in chief. The crest is a demi-panther argent, generally represented "regardant" spotted azure, with fire issuant from mouth and ears. This terrific beast is shown holding a holly-branch. An odd, but scarcely convincing attempt to account for the greyhound declares it to be "in remembrance, perchance, of their pilgrimage, a dog, that faithful and familiar creature, being a pilgrim's usual companion."
A remarkably large and interesting sampler, worked probably about 1625, has recently come to Dorney under rather curious circumstances. It appears to have been sold so long ago that its very existence was unknown, and it only came to the knowledge of the present representative of the Palmers through a photographic reproduction published in an illustrated paper, illustrating the stock of a dealer in antiques. It was readily identified as an old family possession by reason of the many Palmer shields of arms worked into it. On inquiry being made, a disappointment was experienced. It was found that the sampler had been sold; but in the end the purchaser, seeing that its proper place was in its old home, with much good feeling resold it to Major Palmer.
THE PALMER SAMPLER WORKED ABOUT 1620.
This beautiful piece of needlework, done in coloured
silks, has the unusual feature of presenting,
as it were, a kind of Palmer portrait-gallery of that
period. In the midst is a shield of the Palmer arms
impaling those of Shurley of Isfield, Sussex. This
identifies that particular Palmer as Sir Thomas, of
Wingham, the second Baronet, who married Elizabeth,
daughter and heiress of Sir John Shurley, and succeeded
his grandfather in the title 1625. That
baronetcy became extinct in 1838
There are eight needlework portraits of men in
this sampler, obviously Palmers, since each holds a
shield of the family arms; and evidently portraits,
because each one is clearly distinguished from the
others in age, costume, and features, and the first
is easily to be identified by the wounded right arm
he bears in a sling. Among those other quaintly
attired men, who yet are made to seem so very real to
us, one notices a figure with a tilting-lance, another,
in the lower range, holding a weapon probably intended
to represent the axe carried by the honourable
corps of gentlemen pensioners in attendance
upon the Sovereign; while the last carries a bunch
of keys, in allusion to some official position. The
sampler appears to have been carried out of the Palmer
family by the marriages in the eighteenth century
of the two daughters and heiresses of a Sir Thomas
Palmer with an Earl of Winchilsea and his brother.
But to revert to the figure with the wounded
arm. This personage was Sir Henry Palmer, Knight,
second of the famous triplet sons of Sir Edward
Palmer, of the Angmering family, who were born in
1487, according to tradition, on three successive
Sundays. This remarkable parturition is still
famous at Angmering, where the rustics readily point
out the identical house, now divided into cottages,
near the Decoy. It was this Henry who established
the Wingham line that ascended from knighthood
to a baronetcy and became extinct in 1838, having
in the meanwhile thrown off a branch now represented
at Dorney. Let us take the triplet brothers in their
proper sequence. John, the eldest, who inherited
Angmering, came to a bad end. He was much at
the dangerous Court of Henry the Eighth, and was
particularly intimate with that monarch, not only
playing cards continually with him, but always
winning. A careful courtier in those times did well
to lose occasionally. It was not well to be always
winning from the Eighth Henry, and that fierce
Tudor did in fact hang him on some pretext.
Henry Palmer, the second brother, was a distinguished
soldier, and Master of the Ordnance.
He received a shot-wound in the arm at Guisnes,
of which he eventually died, at Wingham, in 1559.
The sampler clearly shows this wounded soldier,
with his arm bound up, and supporting himself
with a stick. The third brother, Thomas, died on
Tower Hill, by the headsman's axe, as an adherent
of the Lady Jane Grey. He suffered with the Duke
of Northumberland and Sir John Gates, and chroniclers
tell how the unhappy trio quarrelled to the
last as to whose was the responsibility for the
failure of that rising. But Palmer made the boldest
exit of all, declaring with his last breath on the scaffold
that he died a Protestant.
DORNEY COURT.
Sir James Palmer, Chancellor of the Garter, who married the heiress of Sir William Garrard, and thus founded the Palmer family of Dorney, was a younger son of the Wingham Palmers. He died in 1657, and was succeeded by his son, Sir Roger, created Earl of Castlemaine, who died 1705, without acknowledged children, and left the property to his nephew, Charles, from whom the present family are descended.
Dorney Court is a picturesque mansion, chiefly
of the period of Henry the Seventh. It was once
much larger, as appears from old drawings preserved
in the house, in which it is shown as groups of buildings
surrounding two large courts and one smaller.
The construction is largely of oak framing filled with
brick nogging, disposed sometimes in herring-bone
fashion, and in other places in ordinary courses.
There are no elaborate and beautiful verge-boards
to the gables, such as those extremely fine examples
seen at Ockwells, but, if a distinction may be drawn
between the two houses, Dorney Court is especially
attractive in the fine pictures it gives from almost
every point of view. It forms a strikingly picturesque
composition seen from the north-east, a grouping
in which the great gable of the entrance-front
and its two remarkable flaunting chimneys come
well with the three equal-sized gables of the north
front, the church-tower rising in its proper association
in the background, emphasising the ancient
manorial connection.
A good deal of work has recently been undertaken,
in the direction of correcting the tasteless
alterations made at some time in the eighteenth
century, when sashed windows here and there replaced
the original leaded lights. The plan adopted
has been that of acquiring such old oak timbering
as could be picked up from houses demolished in
neighbourhoods near and far, and of setting it up in
the reconstructed doors and windows. If it may be
permitted to speak of the interior, it can at any rate
be well said that it does by no means belie the exterior
view. The panelled and raftered rooms are in
thorough keeping, and the hall, neglected for generations,
has been brought back to something of its
ancient appearance. From those walls the panelling
had disappeared, but it has now been replaced with
some genuine old work of the same period, acquired
by fortunate chance at Faversham in Kent, from
an old mansion in course of demolition. The hall
greatly resembles that of Ockwells; but whatever
heraldic glass may have been here has long vanished,
leaving no trace. Here, among the many family
portraits, hangs a fine example of a helmet brought
from the church, an unusually good piece of funeral
armour, removed from the church to prevent its rusting
away. The family portraits include some Lelys,
Knellers, and Jamesons, and a number of early-eighteenth-century
pastel portraits, many of them
displaying a facial characteristic of the Palmers,
constant through the successive generations: that
of a somewhat unusually long nose.
DORNEY COURT: THE GREAT HALL, SHOWING THE MODEL PINE-APPLE.
The seventeenth-century sampler hangs on the panelling.
It is one of the greatest charms of our long-settled
English social order, that we have in this
England of ours a not inconsiderable number of
ancient homes that have been "home" to one
family throughout the changes and chances of centuries,
and in Dorney Court we see such a house.
Here, on the old woodwork, are painted the heraldic
shields of the Palmers, with their greyhound courant
conspicuous, and the devices of the families with
whom they have intermarried.
An interesting incident in fruit-growing history
belonging to Dorney Court is alluded to in the model
on a gigantic scale of a pineapple, shown in the hall.
It recalls the fact that the first pineapple grown in
England was produced here in the reign of Charles
the Second by the Dorney Court gardener. A panel-picture
at Ham House, the seat of the Earl of Dysart,
near Richmond, illustrates this first English-grown
pineapple being presented to the King in the gardens
of either Ham or Hampton Court, by Rose, the royal
gardener. The rendering of the architecture in the
picture makes it uncertain which of the two places is
intended. It will be observed by the illustration
that there has been a great improvement in the art
of growing hot-house pineapples since that time, for
it is a very small specimen that is being offered to
the King.
Foremost among the thirty or more portraits at
Dorney are the two large Lelys hanging in the hall,
representing Roger Palmer, Baron Limerick, and
Earl of Castlemaine, and his wife Barbara, the beautiful
and notorious Barbara Villiers. They are half-lengths.
She is curiously shown, holding what looks
like the model of a church-steeple in her left hand.
Lely intended it for a castle, and thus is seen to be
guilty of painting an Anglo-French pun; "Castlemain."
The beautiful Barbara is better known in
history as "Barbara Villiers," her maiden name,
and by the title of Duchess of Cleveland. Born in
1641, she married Palmer in 1659. He was shortly
afterwards raised to the peerage. There were no
children of this marriage, for it was very shortly afterwards
that Lady Castlemaine began that extraordinary
career of vice which has made her name
eminent among even the notorious beauties of
Charles the Second's scandalous Court. The first
of her seven children was a daughter, Anne, born in
May 1661, and at first acknowledged by Palmer,
although Lady Castlemaine had undoubtedly been
mistress of Charles the Second since May 1660. There
are three portraits of Anne Palmer, or Anne Palmer
Fitzroy, as she was afterwards known, at Dorney,
the earliest of them exhibiting a romantic hilly
landscape for background, with a beacon or fire-cresset
along the winding road, such as were placed
on the more obscure ways in those times for the
guidance of travellers. She married in 1675 Thomas
Lennard, Lord Dacre and Earl of Sussex.
PRESENTATION TO CHARLES THE SECOND
OF THE FIRST PINE-APPLE GROWN IN ENGLAND.
From the painting at Ham House.
Castlemaine, shortly after the birth of this putative
daughter, became a pervert[sic] to the Roman Catholic religion,
[Editorial conscience does not allow that! Please read "convert"]
and his wife, seizing upon this as a pretext,
finally left him and lived openly as the King's mistress.
Several of her children were acknowledged by Charles,
and two of them were created dukes, her second
son, Henry Fitzroy, becoming Duke of Grafton, her
third, George, Duke of Northumberland. She was,
with an astounding display of cynical humour, in
1670 created Baroness Nonsuch, "in consideration
of her own personal virtues," and Duchess of Cleveland;
and as Duke of Cleveland her eldest son succeeded
her. Thus, with Barbara, with Nell Gwynne,
and others, Charles the Second abundantly recruited
the ducal order and other ranks of the peerage; thus
giving point to the Duke of Buckingham's joke. The
King had been addressed at Court as the "father of
his people."
"Of a good many of them", observed Buckingham
behind his hand.
The Earl of Castlemaine lived to see a good many
changes. It was not necessary in those times to
live to a great age to witness many revolutions and
counter-revolutions. He was committed to the
Tower shortly after the accession of William the
Third, and remained a prisoner there from February
1689 until February 10, 1690. He died in 1705.
BURNHAM ABBEY.
A little to the north of Dorney, between it and the Bath road, are the remains of Burnham Abbey, a house for Benedictine nuns founded in 1265 by Richard, Earl of Cornwall, and titular King of the Romans, brother of Edward the Third. There were an abbess and nine nuns when the establishment was surrendered to Henry the Eighth's Commissioners. The ruins are now amid the rickyards and agricultural setting of the Abbey Farm, and although the church has wholly disappeared, the remains of the chapter-house and the domestic buildings form an exquisite picture, untouched by any busybodying "tidying-up" activities. The seeker after the picturesque, who finds historical evidences destroyed by well-meaning "restorers"; the artist, who generally discovers the artistic negligence of his foregrounds abolished in favour of neatly kept flower-beds and gravel paths and the feeling of ruin and decay thus utterly disregarded, will be rejoiced here, and will find the ruins still put to farming uses, just as Girtin and Turner and the other roaming artists of a hundred years ago were accustomed to find the castles and abbeys of their day. There is more pure æsthetic delight in such scenes as this, left in their natural decay and put to the uses to which they in the logical order of things descended, than in the same place swept and garnished to be made a show. The Lady Chapel and the refectory are stables, where the cart-horses shelter and form a picture so exactly like Morland's stable interiors that the place might well have been a model for him. Every detail is complete in the Morland way, even to the old stable-lantern hanging on a post. Much of the ruined buildings is of the Early English period, and the horses come and go through pointed doorways. Gracious trees richly surround and overhang the scene.
AN ENGLISH FARMYARD: BURNHAM ABBEY FARM.
BOVENEY.
Between Dorney and Eton stretches an out-of-the-way corner of land devoted chiefly to potato-fields and allotments bordering the river. Here stands Boveney church, or "Buvveney," as it is locally styled, a small building so altered at different periods as to be quite without interest. The river glides past, between the alders, that dark, strong current the subject of allusion by Praed in his "School and Schoolfellows":
Kind Mater smiles again to me,
As bright as when we parted.
I seem again the frank, the free,
Stout-limbed and simple-hearted.
Pursuing every idle dream,
And shunning every warning.
With no hard work but Boveney stream,
No chill except Long Morning..
A circle of tall elms closely surrounding the church casts a perpetual shade upon the building; Windsor Castle looking down from the opposite shore in feudal majesty upon it and the humble activities of these level fields.
That majestic pile indeed overlooks some remarkably
mean surroundings which on close acquaintance
derogate strangely from its dignity. Thus, resuming
the road on the Berkshire side, from Bray to Windsor,
the long, straight, uninteresting miles lead directly
to Clewer, a village of disreputable appearance, now,
to all intents, a Windsor slum; and what was a rustic
churchyard has become something more in the likeness
of a cemetery. In the roads, strewn with rubbish
and broken glass, dirty children play.
Besides an inscription to "ye vertuous Mrs.
Lucie Hobson, 1657," who was, we learn, "a treu
lover of a Godly and a Powerful ministry" - i.e. probably
of a preacher who could bang the pulpit and
punish the cushions - there is little of interest in
Clewer church, with the one exception of a curious
little brass plate, inscribed,
He that liethe vnder this ston.
Shott with a hvndred men him selfe alone.
This is trew that I doe say.
The matche was shott in ovld felde at Bray.
I will tell yov before yov go henc.
That his name was Martine Expence..
Local history tells us nothing of this hero, who apparently did not really shoot himself, as the inscription states, but seems at some period to have won a particularly hard archery contest, which was ever after his title to fame in this locality.
From Clewer the pilgrim of the roads mounts into Windsor by way of grim and grimy slums, and therefore those who would come to Windsor had by far the better do so by water, from which the slums look picturesque.
The view of Windsor, indeed, from the windings of the Thames (Windsor is the Saxon "Windlesora," the winding shore) is one of the half-dozen most supremely grand and beautiful views in England.
Of Windsor, in Berkshire, and Eton, in Bucks, joined by a bridge that here spans the Thames, I here propose to say little or nothing. To treat of them at all would, within the scope of this book, be inadequate, and to deal with them according to their importance would demand a separate volume. Moreover, to write of them with an airy assurance requires not a little expert local knowledge of the kind to be expected only of those who have made them places of long residence or study.
There was once a man who falsely claimed to have been educated at Eton, and was stumped first ball. They asked him if he knew the Cobbler. "Yes," he said, "I know the old fellow very well." Is it an unconscious invention of my very own, or did he further proceed to say that he had often helped the old fellow when he was in low water? At any rate, 'twill serve; and will doubtless divert those who know the "old fellow" in question, whom no one could aid under those circumstances, except perhaps the Clerk of the Weather and the lock-keepers above and below, who, between them, might serve him sufficiently well. Not to further mystify readers overseas, who know not Eton, let it at once be said that the "Cobbler" is an island; and that the famous person who claimed to have known him must be placed in association with the pretended traveller who knew the Dardanelles intimately, had dined with them often, and had found them jolly good fellows.
[ The editor repeats he is not responsible for bigotted opinions! ]
Eton has for centuries been the public school of
all others, where the sons of landed and of moneyed
men have been educated into the belief that they
and theirs stand for England, whereas, if it were not
for the great optimistic, cheerfully hard-working
middle-class folk, who found businesses, and employ
the lower orders on the one hand, while on the other
they pay rents to the landowning and governing classes,
there would not be any England for them to misgovern,
you know.
Eton is now so crowded with the sons of wealthy
foreigners and German and other [----], learning
to be Englishmen (if that be in any way possible), that
it is now something of a distinction not to have
been educated there, nor to have learned the "Eton
slouch," nor the charming Eton belief that the
alumni brought up under "her Henry's holy shade"
are thus fitted by Heaven and opportunity, working
in unison, to rule the nation. It is a belief somewhat
rudely treated in this, our day, when the world is
no longer necessarily the oyster of the eldest sons
of peers and landowners. And in these times,
when it is said that Eton boys funk one another and
fights under the wall are more or less "low," it is no
longer possible that Etonians shall have the leadership
in future stricken fields - leadership in finance,
possibly, seeing how [-------] this once purely English
foundation is becoming; but in leadership when the
giving and receiving of hard knocks is toward; no!
I would, however, this were the worst that is said
of Eton College in these degenerate times. That
it is not, The Eton College Chronicle itself bears
witness. Attention is there called to a custom of
"ragging" shops, now become prevalent among
the young gentlemen. This, we learn, is carried to
such an extent that they will pocket articles found
lying about and walk off with them, "for fun."
One of the most "humorous" of these incidents
was the disappearance of cricket balls to the value
of nearly £1. The assistants at the shop where this
mysterious disappearance occurred had to make
good the loss; so it will readily be perceived how
completely humorous the incident must have been
from the point of view of those who had to replace
the goods. Were these practices prevalent in such
low-class educational establishments as Board
Schools, a worse term than "ragging," it may be
suspected, would be given them.
Two miles in the rear of Datchet is Langley, a
small and very scattered village which, although
unimportant in itself, has a station on the Great
Western Railway. The full name of it, rarely used,
is Langley Marish, which is variously said to mean
"Marshy Langley," "Langley Mary's," from the
dedication of the church to the Virgin Mary, or to
derive from the Manor having been held for a short
period in the reign of Edward the First by one Christiana
de Mariscis.
Few would give a second glance to the humble
little church, with its red-brick tower of typically
seventeenth-century type, and with other portions
of the exterior quite horribly stuccoed; but to
pass it by would be to miss a great deal, for it contains
a most curious family pew and parish library.
THE KEDERMINSTER PEW: INTERIOR.
This library, originally containing between 500 and
600 volumes, was given by Sir John Kedermister, or
Kederminster, under his will of 1631, to "the town"
of Langley Marish. The worthy knight was also
builder of one of the two groups of almshouses for
four inmates, who were appointed joint custodians
of the books. An ancient deed, reciting the gift,
says: "The said Sir John Kedermister prepared a
convenient place for a library, adjoining to the west
end of the said chapel, and intended to furnish the
same with books of divinity, as well for the perpetual
benefit of the vicar and curate of the parish of Langley
as for all other ministers and preachers of God's
Word that would resort thither to make use of the
books therein."
The Kederminsters first settled at Langley in
the middle of the sixteenth century, when one John
Kederminster, who appears to have been a kinsman
of Richard Kydermynster, Abbot of Winchcombe,
became ranger of the then royal park of Langley
and "master of the games" to Henry the Eighth.
He died at the comparatively early age of thirty-eight,
in 1558, leaving two sons and three daughters.
His son Edmund was father of the John Kederminster
who founded the library and initiated other works
here. He also was ranger of Langley Park, and was
knighted by James the First in 1609, who also conferred
upon him the Manor of Langley.
THE KEDERMINSTER PEW: EXTERIOR.
This was a short-lived family, and Sir John died
in 1634, a deeply pious but much stricken man, who
had lived to see his children, except one daughter,
predecease him, and his hopes thus disappointed of
the Kederminster name being continued.
As lord of the manor of Langley, and a knight,
Sir John Kederminster obviously felt it behoved
him to establish himself in considerable state, in the
church as well as at his mansion. He therefore
secured a faculty granting him the right to construct
an "Ile or Chappell"; otherwise, as we may see to
this day, a private family pew, in the south aisle,
and a parish library to the west of it.
This family pew is perhaps the most curious remaining
in England, alike for its construction and
for the instructive light it throws upon the lofty
social heights from which a lord of a manor looked
upon lesser mortals. We have royal pews in St.
George's Chapel at Windsor and elsewhere; but
their exclusiveness is not greater than this of the
Kederminsters, which is singularly like that of the
latticed casements familiar to all who have visited
Cairo and other Oriental towns. Yet it is obvious
that there was a vein of humility running through
Sir John Kederminster's apparent arrogance;
though a rather thin vein, perhaps. Thus he wrote,
for the stone closing the family vault under his
pew: "A true Man to God, his King, and Friends,
prayeth all future Ages to suffer these obscure
Memorials of his Wife, Children and Kindred to
remain in this Place undisturbed."
The pew remains in its original condition, looking
into the church from the south aisle through very
closely-latticed wooden screen-work, elaborately
painted, and crested with an open-work finial bearing
the arms of the Kederminsters and their connections.
The worshippers within were quite invisible to the
congregation, but could themselves see and hear
everything. Within the pew, the wall-decoration,
in Renascence designs, includes many panels painted
with the all-seeing eye of God, with the words "Deus
videt" inscribed on the pupil. This scheme of
decoration is continued over the ceiling.
A passage leads out of this singular pew to the
library, on the western side. This is an entirely
charming square room, constructed in what was
formerly the west porch. It is lined throughout
with bookcases with closed cupboard doors, all
richly painted in characteristic Jacobean Renascence
cartouche and strapwork designs, with the exception
of those next the ceiling, which are landscapes of
Windsor and its neighbourhood. The inner side
of one of the cupboard doors has a portrait of the
pious donor: the corresponding door once displayed
a likeness of his wife, but it has been obliterated. An
elaborate fireplace has a fine overmantel with large
central cartouche, semée with the Kederminster arms:
two chevronels between three bezants, marshalled
with those of their allied families. The original
Jacobean table still stands in the centre of the room,
with the old tall-backed chairs, too decrepit now
for use.
THE KEDERMINSTER LIBRARY.
Kederminster strictly enjoined the most careful
precautions for the due care of the books, of which
an old catalogue dated 1638, engrossed on vellum,
and framed, still hangs on the wall. One, at least,
of his four bedesmen (who are now women) was to
be present when they were in use:
"The said four poor persons should have a key
of the said library, which they should for ever keep
locked up in the iron chest under all their four keys,
unless when any minister or preacher of God's Word,
or other known person, should desire to use the said
library, or to study, or to make use of any books in
the same, and then the said four poor people, or one
of them at the least, should from time to time - unless
the heirs of Sir John Kedermister, being then and there
present, should otherwise direct - attend within the
door of the said library, and not depart from thence
during all the time that any person should remain
therein, and should all that while keep the key of
the said door fastened with a chain unto one of their
girdles, and should also take special care that no
books be lent or purloined out of the said library,
but that every book be duly placed in their room,
and that the room should be kept clean; and that
if at any time any money or reward be given to the
said poor people for their attendance in the library
as aforesaid, the same should be to the only use
of such of those poor people as should at that time
then and there attend."
Clearly, this care has not been always exercised,
for the books are now reduced to some three hundred,
and those that are left have suffered greatly from damp
and rough handling. The books are chiefly cumbrous
tomes, heavy in more than one sense, and mostly
works on seventeenth-century religious controversies.
Although this library has for long past been either
forgotten or regarded merely as a curiosity, there
was once a time when the books in it were well used,
as would appear from the notes made on the end-papers
of a Hebrew and Latin Bible, printed at the
office of Christopher Plantin, in Antwerp, 1584. It
was one J. C. Werndly, vicar of Wraysbury from
1690 to 1724, who made these notes, and he seems
to have been indeed a diligent reader. Thus he
wrote:
1701/2 Jan. the 17. I began again the Reading of this
Hebrew Bible (w? is the sixth time of reading it) may the Spirit
of Holiness help me and graciously Enable me to peruse it again
to the Glory of God, and to the sanctification of my sinful and
im'ortal soul. Amen, Lord Jesus, Amen.
The last record of his reading appears thus:
1701. xxxiii. 8??? the 3rd. I finished the ?alms again by the
mercy of my Sav?.
The numerals for "thirty-three" appear to indicate
his thirty-third reading.
The almshouses on the north side of the churchyard, their front facing the sun, are pleasant with old-fashioned gardens. They were built by Henry Seymour, who in 1669 purchased the Kederminster estates from the son of Sir John Kederminster's daughter and heiress, who had married Sir John Parsons, sometime Lord Mayor of London. Thus, in less than forty years the Kederminster hopes faded away and the property passed into the hands of strangers.
THE ALMSHOUSES, LANGLEY.
By Datchet meads and the continuously flat shores
of Runnymede, the river runs somewhat tamely,
after the scenic climax of Windsor.
The Datchet of Shakespearean fame it is, of course, hopeless to find.
There is nothing Shakespearean in the prettily rebuilt
village with suburban villas and railway level-crossing;
and the ditch that used to be identified
with that into which Falstaff was flung,
"glowing
hot, like a horseshoe, hissing hot",
has been covered over.
At Old Windsor, the site of Edward the
Confessor's original palace, the little churchyard
contains the tomb of Perdita Robinson, one of
George the Fourth's fair and foolish friends;
and down by the riverside stands the old rustic inn, the
Bells of Ouseley, whose sign puzzles ninety-nine
of every hundred who behold it. Writers of books
upon the Thames either carefully avoid doing more
than mentioning the sign, or else frankly add that
they do not understand what it means, or where
Ouseley is - and small blame to them, for there is
not any place so-called. What is meant is "Oseney,"
the vanished abbey of that name outside Oxford,
whose bells were of a peculiar fame in that day.
Runnymede is, of course, an exceptionally interesting
stretch of meadow-land, for it was here, "in
prato quod vocatur Runnymede inter Windelsorum
et Stanes," that at last the barons brought King John
to book, and it was on what is now called "Magna
Charta Island," on the Bucks side, that the King
signed the Great Charter, June 15, 1215.
There are many disputed etymologies of "Runnymede,"
including "running-mead," a scene of horseraces;
and "rune-mead," the meadow of council;
but the name doubtless really derived from "rhine"
a Saxon word that did duty for anything from a
great river to a ditch. Compare the river Rhine
and the dykes or drains of Sedgemoor, still known
as "rhines." The meadows on either side of the
Thames here have always been low-lying, water-logged,
and full of rills.
The army of the Barons had encamped, five days
before the signing of this great palladium of liberty,
on one side of the river, and the numerically smaller
supporters of the King on the other, the island being
selected as neutral ground.
The island is occupied by a modern picturesque
cottage in a Gothic convention, standing amid trim
lawns and weeping willows, near the camp-shedded
shore, its gracefulness entirely out of key with those
rude times. A little cottage contains a large stone
with an inscription bidding it to be remembered
that here that epoch-making document was executed,
and further, that George Simon Harcourt, Esq., lord
of the manor, erected this building in memory of
the great event. It is an excellent example of a
small modern person seeking to wring a modicum of
recognition out of great historic personages and events.
Adjoining this famous isle is Ankerwyke, where
are some few remains, in the form of shapeless walls,
of a Benedictine nunnery, founded late in the twelfth
century;
BACKWATER NEAR WRAYSBURY.
and behind that is a village with the very
Saxon name of Wyrardisbury: long centuries ago
pronounced "Wraysbury," and now spelled so. We
hear nothing of the Saxon landowner, Wyrard, who
gave his name to the place, but Domesday Book
tells us that one Robert Gernon held the manor after
the Conquest. "Gernon," in the Norman-French
of that age, meant "Whisker," a name which would
seem to have displeased Robert's eldest son, for he
assumed that of Montfitchet, from an Essex manor
of which he became possessed.
The river Colne flows in many channels here,
crossed by substantial and not unpicturesque white-painted
timber bridges, with here and there a secluded
mill.
Wraysbury church, restored out of all
interest, stands in a situation where few strangers
would find it, unless they were very determined in
the quest, through a farmyard; and having found
it, you wonder why you took the trouble incidental
to the doing so. But that is just the inquisitive
explorer's fortune, and he must by no means allow
himself, by drawing blank here and there, to be dissuaded
from seeking out other byways. But stay!
there is some interest at Wraysbury. Outside the
church is the many-tableted vault of a branch of
the Harcourt family, and
among the names here you
shall read that of Philip,
"youngest brother of
Simon, Viscount Harcourt,
sometime Lord High Chancellor
of Great Britian"
(sic). Thus, you perceive,
that although not the rose,
Philip found some satisfaction
in kinship with it,
and doubtless lived and
died happily in the glow of
glory radiating from that
ennobled elder brother.
BRASS TO AN ETON SCHOLAR, WRAYSBURY.
There are brasses lurking
unsuspected under the
carpeting of this unpromising
church; notably a
very small and curious
example on the south side
of the chancel, protected
beneath a square of carpet
about the size of a pocket-handkerchief. It represents
a boy in the costume worn by Eton scholars
in the sixteenth century. The inscription runs:
Here lyeth John Stonor, the sone of Water Stonor
squyer, that departed this worlde ye 29 day of August
in ye yeare of our Lorde 1512.
This Walter Stonor - or "Water" as the inscription
has it - squire of Wraysbury, was afterwards
Lieutenant of the Tower of London, and was knighted
in 1545. He died in 1550.
Horton, beyond Wraysbury, and even more
secluded, is at once a charming and an interesting
place: a village made up of old mansions and old
cottages, all scattered widely amid large grounds
and pretty gardens. The church, too, is fine, chiefly
of Norman and Early English work, with a tower
built in chequers of flint and stone; a fine timber
fifteenth-century north porch, and an exceptionally
good and lavishly-enriched Norman doorway.
Horton has a literary as well as a picturesque
and an architectural interest, for it is closely associated
with Milton, who resided here as a young man.
Milton's father had retired in his seventieth year,
with a not inconsiderable fortune, derived from his
business as a scrivener; that is to say, the profession
of a public notary, to which was added the making
of contracts and the negotiation of loans. He had
left the cares and the money-making at Bread Street
for the quiet joys of a country life, and had settled
at Horton, a place perhaps even then not more
remote from the world than now.
Hither, on leaving Christ's College, Cambridge,
came his son, John, rather a disappointing son at
this period, a son who had disregarded the dearest
wish of his parents' hearts, that he should enter the
Church; and proposed, instead, to lead the intellectual
life of study and meditation. We may quite
easily suspect that this would seem, to the hard-headed
man of business, used to placing money out
to usury, and to naturally look in every direction
for an increase, for some tangible result of pains
taken and capital expended, a singularly barren prospect.
It might even have appeared to him the ideal
of a lazy, feckless disposition. But the ex-scrivener
and his wife hid their disappointment as best they
could, and suffered their son to take his own course.
They were, after all, wealthy enough for him to do
without a lucrative profession.
Therefore, for a period of nearly six years - from
July 1632 to April 1638, to be exact - the
poet lived with his parents and his books at Horton,
occupying the time from his twenty-fourth to his
thirtieth year with study and music.
Here he composed the companion-poems, L'Allegro
and Il Penseroso, a portion of a masque entitled
Arcades, the complete masque of Comus, and
Lycidas, a long, sweetly-sorrowing poem to the
memory of a friend and fellow-colleger at Cambridge,
one Edward King, who had lost his life by shipwreck
in August 1637, on crossing to Ireland.
In
April 1637 his mother died. We may still see on
the floor of the chancel in Horton church the plain
blue stone slab simply inscribed:
"Here lyeth the
body of Sara Milton, the wife of John Milton, who
died the 3rd of April 1637."
HORTON CHURCH.
In 1638 Milton left Horton, accompanied by a man-servant, for a long term of continental travel, and Horton ceased to be further associated with him. It would be vain to seek, nowadays, for the Milton home here, for the house at Horton, where his parents and himself and his younger brother Christopher lived, was demolished in 1798.
The town of Staines, supposed to be the site of the Roman station of Ad Pontes, and to derive its present name from its position on the Roman road to the west - that is to say on the stones, or the stone-paved road - stands at the meeting of Middlesex and Bucks. It is also the western limit of the Metropolitan Police District, and a stone standing in a riverside meadow above the bridge, known as "London Stone," properly and officially "the City Stone," until modern times marked the limits of the City of London's river jurisdiction. Staines was also a place of importance in the coaching age, for it stood upon the greatly travelled Exeter road. To-day it is, in spite of those varied claims to notice, an uninteresting place.
The neighbourhood of Staines is one of many
waters. They divide Middlesex and Bucks in the
many branches and confluent channels of the Colne,
and they permeate those widespreading levels westward
of what was once Hounslow Heath known
broadly as Staines Moor. This watery landscape,
now so beautiful, was once, doubtless, a very dreary
waste. All moors and heaths carry with them, in
their very name, the stigma of dreariness, just as
when Goldsmith wrote. The name of a heath could
only be associated with footpads and highwaymen,
and to style a scene in a play "Crackskull Common"
seemed a natural and appropriate touch. This ill
association of commons long ago became a thing of
the past, but we still couple the title of a "moor"
with undesirable places, generally of an extreme
sterility and associated in the mind's eye with inclement
weather of the worst type. The sun never
shines on moors, except perhaps so fiercely as to
shrivel you up. On moors no winds blow but tempests,
probably from the north or east, and the only
rains known there are cold deluges. A moor is, in
short, by force of a time-honoured tradition not yet
quite outworn, a place good to keep away from; or,
being by ill-luck upon it, to be left behind at the
earliest possible moment.
Whatever Staines Moor may once have been, it
no longer resembles those inimical wilds. It is, in
fact, a corner of Middlesex endued with much beauty
of a quiet, pastoral kind.
In midst of it and its
pleasant grasslands and fine trees with brooks and
glancing waters everywhere, and here and there a
water-mill, is Stanwell. At Stanwell the many noble
elms of these parts are more closely grouped together
and grow to a greater nobility, and at the very outskirts
of the village is a finely-wooded park - that
of Stanwell Place. The especially fine water-bearing
quality of those surroundings is notable in the scenery
of that park, and has led of late years to the building
of an immense reservoir, now controlled by the
Water Board. It is unfortunate that it should have
been thought necessary to form this reservoir on a
higher level than that of the surrounding country,
and thus to hide it behind a huge embankment
like that of a railway, for the artificial lake so constructed
is rather much of an eyesore. It might, if
built upon the level, have proved an additional beauty
in the landscape.
Stanwell is situated in the Hundred of Spelthorne,
an ancient Anglo-Saxon division of Middlesex. It
is still a Petty Sessional division, but no man knows
where the ancient thorn-tree stood that marked
the meeting-place of our remote forefathers - that
"Spele-Thorn," or Speech Thorn, where the open-air
folk-moot was held.
It is a pleasant village, with a very large church,
whose tall, shingled spire rises amid luxuriant elms.
Near by is a seventeenth-century schoolhouse with a
tablet inscribed:
This House and this Free Schoole were founded at
the charge of the Right Honourable Thomas, Lord
Kynvett, Baron of Escricke, and the Lady Elizabeth
his wife. Endowed with a perpetuall revennew of
Twenty Pound Land. By the yeare. 1624.
A stately monument in the singular taste of that
time to Knyvett and his lady is found in the church.
Against black marble columns are drawn back stony
curtains, disclosing the worthy couple kneeling and
facing one another across a prayer-desk, with the
steadfast glare of two strange cats on a debatable
roof-top. At the same time, although the taste is not
that in favour to-day, the workmanship is very fine.
It is the work of the famous sculptor, Nicholas Stone,
who, it is recorded, received £215 for it.
In the churchyard is a very elaborate tomb,
all scroll, boldly-flung volutes, and cherubs gazing
stolidly into infinity, recording the extraordinarily
many virtues of a person whose name one promptly
forgets. It is melancholy to reflect that only in the
centuries that are past was it possible to write such
epitaphs, and that such supermen in goodness no
longer exist. Or is it not rather that we have in our
times a better sense of proportion in these mortuary
praises?
The manor of Stanwell was granted to the then
Sir Thomas Kynvett by James the First, in 1608.
It had been a Crown property since 1543, when
Henry the Eighth took it, in his autocratic way, from
the owner, Lord Windsor. The story is told by
Dugdale, who relates how the King sent a message to
Lord Windsor that he would dine with him at Stanwell.
A magnificent entertainment was accordingly
prepared, and the King was fully honoured. We
may therefore perhaps imagine the disgust and alarm
with which His Majesty's host heard him declare
that he liked the place so well that he was determined
to have it; though not, he graciously added,
without a beneficial exchange.
Lord Windsor made answer that he hoped His
Highness was not in earnest, since Stanwell had
been the seat of his ancestors for many generations.
The King, with a stern countenance, replied that it
must be; commanding him, on his allegiance, to
repair to the Attorney-General and settle the business
without delay. When he presently did so, the
Attorney-General showed him a conveyance already
prepared, of Bordesley Abbey in Worcestershire,
in exchange for Stanwell, with all its lands and
appurtenances.
"Being constrained," concludes Dugdale,
"through dread of the King's displeasure, to accept
of the exchange, he conveyed this manor to His
Majesty, being commanded to quit Stanwell immediately,
though he had laid in his Christmas provision
for keeping his wonted hospitality there, saying
that they should not find it bare Stanwell." But the
deed of exchange, still in existence in the Record
Office, is dated nearly three months later, March 14,
1543.
Two and three-quarter miles below the now
commonplace town of Staines, and past Penton Hook
lock, the village of Laleham stands beside the river,
on the Middlesex side, in a secluded district, avoided
alike by railways and by main roads. Laleham - in
Domesday Book "Leleham" - has altered little for
centuries past, and although quite recently the park
of Osmanthorpe, by the riverside, has been cut up
and built upon, the building speculation does not
appear to have been very successful.
The old church, barbarously interfered with, as
most Thames Valley churches within some twenty
miles of London were, in the eighteenth century,
has suffered only in respect of its tower, rebuilt in
monumentally heavy style, in red brick; and a dense
growth of ivy now kindly mantles it, from ground to
coping. It is a picturesque church, with queer little
dormer windows in the roof, and the interior shows
it to be much more ancient than the casual passer-by
would suppose; heavy Norman pillars and capitals
with billet mouldings proving it to date from some
period in the twelfth century. It was, in fact, the
mother-church of the district, and Staines and
Ashford were mere chapelries to it, and so they
remained, in ecclesiastical government, until the
middle of the nineteenth century.
There is little in the way of interesting monuments
in the church, except that of George Perrott,
which is perhaps mildly amusing. He died 1780,
"Honourable Baron of H.M. Court of Exchequer."
By his decease, we learn, "the Revenue lost a most
able Assessor of its legal rights." The coat-of-arms
of this able personage shows three pears, in the old
heraldic punning way, for "Perrott," but the joke
was not pressed to its conclusion, for they are shown
as quite sound pears.
Laleham is notable for its literary associations,
for here lived Dr. Arnold for some years, before he
became headmaster of Rugby; and here was born,
in 1822, Matthew Arnold, who, dying in 1888, lies
buried in the churchyard.
Here, too, is the tomb of
Field-Marshal George Charles Bingham, third Earl
of Lucan, who also died in 1888. He was in command
of the Heavy Brigade in the Crimea. It was entirely
due to the personal animosities of the Earls of Lucan
and Cardigan, and of Captain Nolan, that the mistake
leading to the sacrifice of the Light Brigade at
Balaclava was made.
LALEHAM CHURCH.
MATTHEW ARNOLD'S GRAVE, LALEHAM.
The quiet of Laleham was sadly disturbed some years ago, when there descended upon the village that extraordinary person - a curious compound of mystic and humbug, who called himself "Father Ignatius." With some seven or eight of his "monks," he established himself at Priory Cottage. Here they so outraged the feelings of the neighbourhood with their fantastic proceedings in the back-garden, in which they had established a "Mount of Olives," and other blasphemous mockeries, that the place was on the verge of riot, and the aid of a strong force of police had to be secured to restore order.
Another charming village, more charming and even much more secluded than Laleham, is Littleton, not quite two miles distant, across these flat fields of Middlesex. It is well named "little," for it consists of only a little church, a fine park and manor-house beside a pretty stream, and some scattered rustic houses. Nothing in the way of a village street, or shop, or inn, is to be discovered, and the place is delightfully retired amid well-wooded byways, all roads to anywhere avoiding it by some two miles.
LITTLETON CHURCH.
The Early English church has been provided with an Early Georgian red-brick tower, of a peculiarly monstrous type, and in skeleton, roofless form.
INTERIOR, LITTLETON CHURCH.
The
interior of the church is so plentifully hung with old
regimental colours that it looks almost like a garrison
chapel. There are twenty-four in all, chiefly old
colours of the Grenadier Guards, and were placed here
in 1855 by their commandant, General Wood, who
had served in the Peninsular War, and afterwards
resided at the adjoining Littleton Park.
A tiny window, little, if at all, larger than a
pocket-handkerchief, is filled with stained glass, representing
a fallen, or sleeping, shepherd, with a
lion looking upon a dead sheep and the rest of the
flock running away. An inscription says:
"This
panel was designed by Sir John Millais, R.A., and
presented to Littleton church by Effie, Lady Millais,
1898."
Returning from this détour, Chertsey - Anglo-Saxon
"Cearta's ey," or island - next claims our
attention. It is a town, and a dull one, duller now
that suburban London has influenced it. Of the
great Abbey - one of the greatest in the land - that
once stood here, nothing is left except a few moss-grown
stones and bases of pillars, situated in the
garden of a villa that occupies part of the site. Excavations
of the ground in years gone by disclosed
the size and disposition of the Abbey church and
the monastery buildings, and a few relics were then
found, including some remarkably fine encaustic tiles,
now to be seen in the Architectural Museum at
Westminster. That is all Fate and Time have left.
It is an extraordinarily complete disappearance.
Stukeley, a diligent antiquary, writing in 1752, was
himself astonished at it:
"So total a dissolution I scarcely ever saw. Of
that noble and splendid pile, which took up four acres
of ground, and looked like a town, nothing remains.
Human bones of abbots, monks, and great personages,
who were buried in great numbers in the church,
were spread thick all over the garden, so that one
might pick up handfulls of bits of bone at a time
everywhere among the garden-stuff."
A fragment of precinct-wall is left, and the "Abbey
Mill" of to-day is the direct descendant of that which
occupied the same site in the old times, while the
cut originally made by the monks to feed it still flows
from near Penton Hook to the Thames again, near
by, under the old name of the "Abbey River."
Weybridge, two miles below Chertsey, is a place
of which it is difficult to write with enthusiasm in
pages devoted to villages. It is no longer a village,
and yet not a town; and is, indeed, like most of the
places to which we shall henceforward come, a
suburban district.
What constitutes such? The answer is that it
largely depends upon the distance from London.
Here we are some twenty miles from town, and by
reason of that fact, and all it means, the suburban
residences are expensive and imposing, and stand,
many of them, in their own somewhat extensive
grounds. Thus, the original village and village
green, to which these developments of modern times
have been added, remain not altogether spoiled, and
come as a pleasant surprise to that explorer who
first makes acquaintance with Weybridge from the
direction of the railway station, from which a typically
conventional straight suburban road leads, lengthily
and formally.
On the village green stands a memorial
column to a former Duchess of York, who died in 1820,
at Oatlands Park, near by, and has another monument
in the church. The column is intrinsically
much more interesting for itself than as a monument
to a duchess whom every one has long since forgotten,
for it is nothing less than the original pillar set up
at Seven Dials in London, about 1694, and thrown
down in 1773. It remained, neglected and in fragments,
in a builder's yard, until it was purchased for
its present use, and removed hither in 1822.
Anothermemorial of that forgotten duchess is found
in Weybridge church, a great modern building, built
in 1848, and enlarged in 1864, with an additional
south aisle. It stands on the site of an older church,
is remarkable rather for size than excellence, and
contains some really terrible stained glass. The
sculptured memorial to the Duchess is by Chantery,
but it is not a very good example of his work. She is
represented kneeling, with her coronet flung behind.
This, and other memorials removed from the older
building, are all huddled together in the tower.
Among them is a truly dreadful brass, representing
three skeletons - among the very worst products of
a diseased imagination to be found in the length
and breadth of the land. It ought to be destroyed;
and it really seems as though some one had entertained
the idea, for the head of one of the figures
has disappeared.
The river winds extravagantly at Weybridge,
where it receives the waters of the river Wey and
the Bourne, and is full of islands and backwaters.
SHEPPERTON.
Some way downstream, and on the Middlesex shore,
is little Shepperton, one of the most secluded places
imaginable, consisting of a church, a neighbouring
inn - the King's Head - and some old-fashioned
country residences. It forms a pretty scene. In the
churchyard there will be found a stone with some
verses, to
Margaret Love Peacock, Born 1823, Died 1826, one of the
children of Thomas Love Peacock who lived many years at
Lower Halliford, and died there, 1866.
GRAVE OF THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK'S DAUGHTER, SHEPPERTON.
There are some very pleasant places on this Middlesex side of the river: Shepperton Green and Lower Halliford notable among them; Lower Halliford fringing the river bank most picturesquely and rustically.
HALLIFORD.
WATERSPLASH NEAR HALLIFORD.
Between this and Walton is the place
known as "Cowey, or Coway, Stakes," traditionally
the spot where Julius Cæsar in 54 B.C. crossed the
Thames, in his second invasion of Britain. Cæsar
himself, in his Commentaries, writing, as was his
manner, in the first[sic] person, says:
"Cæsar being
aware of their plans, led his army to the Thames,
to the boundary of the Catuvellauni. The river was
passable on foot only at one place, and that with
difficulty. When he arrived there he observed a
large force of the enemy drawn up on the opposite
bank. The bank also was defended with sharpened
stakes fixed outwards, and similar stakes were placed
under water and concealed by the river. Having
learnt these particulars from the captives and deserters,
Cæsar sent forward the cavalry, and immediately
ordered the legions to follow. But the soldiers
went at such a pace and in such a rush, though only
their heads were above water, that the enemy could
not withstand the charge of the legions and cavalry,
and they left the bank and took to flight."
Many of these ancient stakes have been found,
during the centuries that have passed - the last of
them about 1838 - and they have been for many years
the theme of long antiquarian discussions. Formed
of young oak trees, "as large as a man's thigh,"
each about six feet in length, and shod with iron,
their long existence under water had made them
almost as hard as that iron, and as black as ebony.
It was Camden, writing early in the seventeenth
century, who first identified Coway Stakes as the
scene of Cæsar's crossing, for Bede, writing in the
eighth century and describing the stakes in the river,
mentions no place. They were said by Bede to be
shod with lead and to be "fixed immovably in the
bed of the river." Camden was quite certain that
here he had found the famous passage by Cæsar's
legionaries, and expressed himself positively: "It
is impossible I should be mistaken in the place."
But later investigators are found to be more than
a little inclined to dispute Camden's conclusions;
and it is certain that whatever may now be the
possibilities of fording the Thames hereabouts, between
Walton and Halliford or Shepperton, and
however deep the river may now be elsewhere, this
could not, as Camden supposes, have been the only
possible ford. In Cæsar's time - it is a truism, of
course, to say it - there were no locks or weirs, and
the Thames, instead of being what it is now, really
to a great degree canalised, flowed in a broader,
shallower flood along most of its course, spreading out
here and there into wide-stretching marshes, through
which, however difficult the crossing, the actual
depth of water would tend to be small. But in any
case, arguments for or against Coway Stakes must
needs be urged with diffidence, for the windings of the
Thames must necessarily have changed much in two
thousand years.
There are not now any of the stakes remaining
here, but the disposition of them in the bed of the
river has been fully put upon record. They were
situated where the stream makes a very pronounced
bend to the south, a quarter of a mile above Walton
Bridge, and were placed in a diagonal position across
it, not lining the banks, as might have been expected.
But whether this disposition of them was
original, or due to one of the many changes of direction
the river has undergone, it would be impossible to say.
It seems certain that in the level lands between
Chertsey, Weybridge, and Walton the present course
of the Thames is not identical with that anciently
traced, and that the river has cut out for itself between
Shepperton and Walton a way considerably to the
north. There still exists a lake, very long and very
narrow, in the grounds of Oatlands Park, between
Weybridge and Walton, which is reputed to be a part
of the olden course of the Thames. It has been
pointed out, as a proof of these changes, that there
are in this neighbourhood several instances of detached
portions of parishes, situated, contrary from expectation,
on opposite sides of the river. Thus
Chertsey and Walton, both in Surrey, own respectively
fourteen and eight acres in Middlesex. Laleham,
in Middlesex, possesses twenty-two acres in Surrey,
and Shepperton twenty-one acres. Eighteen of these
more particularly concern this discussion, since they
are part of the ancient grazing-ground of Coway
Sale. The name "Coway" has been assumed by
some, having reference to the ford, or supposed ford,
at Coway Stakes, to be a corruption of "causeway,"
while others find in it, according to the spelling they
adopt, Cowey = Cow Island, or Coway = Cow Way.
The supporters of the last-named form are those
who refuse to recognise this place as the true site of
Cæsar's crossing. They point out - ignoring the
diagonal course of a ford at this point, heading down
river, instead of straight across - that the placing
of the stakes more resembled the remains of an ancient
weir or wooden bridge than the defences described by
Cæsar, and say, further, that their being shod with
lead or iron is a proof that they formed part of some
deliberately constructed work and not a hastily
thrown up defence. The position of the stakes,
four feet apart and in a double row, with a passage of
nine feet between, has given rise to an ingenious
speculation that they formed an aid to fording the
river, both for passengers and cattle, instead of being
designed as an obstruction. This, then, according to
that view, was the Cow Way, principally devoted to
the convenience of the cattle belonging to Shepperton,
to go and return between that place and the detached
grazing-grounds of Coway Sale on the Surrey side of
the river.
But that there has been fighting hereabouts is evident enough in the name of a portion of the grounds of Shepperton Manor House, known from time immemorial as "War Close." At the time when Coway Stakes were driven into the bed of the river, to form a safe passage for the cows, or in the futile hope of withstanding the advance of the masterful Romans, the river must have spread like some broad lagoon over the surrounding meadows, and would have been much more shallow than now. Walton Bridge, in its great length, much of it devoted to crossing those low-lying meadows, gives point to this contention.
BRADSHAW'S HOUSE, WALTON-ON-THAMES.
The village of Walton-on-Thames is at the end of its tether as a village, and the only interesting things in it are its church, and what is known as the "Old Manor House." Dark yews form a fine setting to the old church, whose tower of flint and rubble, with repairs effected in brick, survives untouched by the restorer of recent years. The interior, although greatly suburbanised, discloses some as yet unspoiled Transitional-Norman portions. Here, in the stonework near the pulpit, is cut the famous non-committal verse ascribed to Queen Elizabeth, on the sacramental bread-and-wine:
Christ was the worde and spake it.
He took the bread and brake it.
And what the Worde doth make it,
That I believe and take it.
Here is preserved a scold's, or gossip's, bridle, otherwise "the branks," an old English instrument of punishment and repression for a scolding or gossiping woman. On it is, or was, the inscription,
Chester presents Walton with a bridle.
To curb women's tongues that talk too idle.
The instrument is now so rusted that it is difficult,
if not impossible, to trace the words. The date of
it, and who this Chester was, are not known; but
legend has long told that he was a gentleman who
lost a valuable estate in the neighbourhood through
the malevolence and irresponsibility of a lying
woman.
The bridle, originally of bright steel, was made
to pass over the head, and round it, and is provided
with a flat piece of metal, two inches in length and one
in breadth, for insertion in the mouth, the effect
being to press the tongue down and to prevent
speech. It is duly provided with hinges and a
padlock. For many years it hung by a chain in the vestry,
and thus became injured and rusted; but in 1884 it
was enclosed in an oaken, glass-fronted cabinet; so
its further preservation is assured.
BRASS TO JOHN SELWYN.
On a board suspended against the chancel wall are
four small brasses of the Selwyn family, showing John
Selwyn and his wife Susan, and their eleven children.
He was keeper of the royal park of Oatlands, and
died in 1587. On one of them, Selwyn himself, is
represented mounted on a stag and in the act of
plunging a hunting-knife through the animal's neck.
This traditionally represents an actual occurrence.
It seems that when Queen Elizabeth was once hunting
at Oatlands, a stag stood at bay and made as if to
attack her; whereupon Selwyn jumped from his
horse on to the stag's back, and killed it in the manner
shown.
Several elaborate monuments are to be seen here,
including that of Richard Boyle, Viscount Shannon,
who died in 1740. The life-size statues of himself
and his wife are by Roubiliac.
The "Old Manor House" has of late years been
rescued from its former condition of slum tenements.
It stands off some bylanes, where there is a good
deal of poor cottage property, and was long subdivided
into small dwellings. A long, low building of timber,
lath, and plaster, it dates back to the time of Henry
the Eighth, and was then probably the residence
of the keeper, or ranger, of Oatlands Park; and
perhaps the residence one time of that John Selwyn
of whose notable deed mention has just been made.
In after-years it was associated with Ashley Park,
and in Cromwell's time was occupied by Bradshaw,
President of the Council, and one of the signatories of
Charles the First's death-warrant. If one were to
credit the old rustic legends and tales of wonder, this
would be a historic spot indeed; for the old Surrey
peasantry firmly believed that Bradshaw not only
lived here, and was a party to the King's execution,
but that he executed him with his own hands, on the
premises, and buried him under the flooring. English
history, it will be perceived, written from the rustic
point of view, should be entertaining.
WALTON-ON-THAMES CHURCH.
SUNBURY.
Leaving Walton behind, the Thames Valley is
seen to have become the prey of those many water
companies which some few years since were all
merged into the Metropolitan Water Board. Between
them and the spread of London, the once beautiful
scenery of the reaches of the Thames has in long
stretches been completely spoiled. Not sheer necessity,
only bestial stupidity, has caused this truly
lamentable condition of affairs. With the immense
modern growth of the metropolis, it is specially desirable
that the beauty of the river at its gates should
have been jealously safeguarded, but it has been
given over to those true spoilers, the waterworks
engineer and the speculative builder; and the
interesting and beautiful old-world villages and forgotten
corners that survive do but increase the
regret felt for those others that have been wantonly
extinguished.
The Surrey side of the river between
Walton and Molesey has been made monotonously
formal with the embankments of great reservoirs;
and it is only when Molesey Lock is reached that their
depressing society is shaken off.
A BUSY DAY, MOLESEY LOCK.
On the Middlesex-side, that part of Sunbury where the bizarre semi-Byzantine modern church of the place stands is the only unspoiled spot until Hampton Court comes in sight, and between the two we have perhaps the very worst exhibition of those outrages of which the water companies have been guilty. There, on either side of the road, a long, unlovely line of engine-houses and pumping-stations stretches; but hideous though> it may be from the road, it is worse when seen from the river. There is always an entirely gratuitous ugliness in a water company's engine-houses, and these examples are not by any means exceptions; being built in a kind of yellow-white brick, with a long series of chimneys and water-towers that have already been proved insufficiently tall and have each in consequence been lengthened with what look like exaggerated twin stove-pipes. It is a distressing and unlovely paradox that the buildings and precincts of waterworks are invariably dry and husky, gritty and coaly places, and these bring no variation to that rule. The roads are blackened with coal-dust, the chimneys belch black smoke, and the poor little strips of grounds that run beside the river, with lawns, and some few anæmic trees, seem parched up. The Thames Ditton and Surbiton front of the river is in the same manner defiled with engine-houses and intakes, with coal-wharves and filter-beds, and with nearly half a mile of ugly retaining-wall. The especial pity of all these things is that they were not at all necessary where they are. They would have been just as efficient if placed in some position out of sight, away from the river bank, and could so have been placed, with a small expenditure for additional piping, instead of being the eyesore they are.
The village of Thames Ditton still keeps its rustic church, with curious old font, and the Swan by the waterside stands very much as it did when Theodore Hook wrote enthusiastic verses about it;
but
Surbiton, and Kingston, Hampton Court, Teddington,
and Twickenham - what shall we make of these,
now that electric tramways have girded them about
with steel?
Only by the actual riverside is Nature
left very much to herself, and there, where the
water roars over the weir of Teddington, you do find
the river unspoiled.
TEDDINGTON WEIR.
But it is only necessary to walk
a few steps back from the river, into Teddington
village that was, and is, alas! no longer - for a sadness
to take possession of you. There you see not
only a surburbanised village, but even perceive the
original suburbanisation (an ugly word for an ugly
process) of about 1870 to be now down upon its luck,
in the spectacle of the villas of that date offered
numerously to be let, with few takers. What is the
reason of this? you ask. Electric tramways. They
are the reason. Also, if you do but explore farther
inland, you shall find more reasons, in the discovery
that Teddington is now quite a busy town, and therefore
offers no longer that charm of comparative
seclusion it possessed when those villas of the
seventies were built.
But there are yet other reasons, chief among
them the very bulky and imposing one of the modern
parish church of St. Alban, which rises like some
great braggart bully, and utterly dwarfs the poor
old parish church opposite, now degraded to the
condition of a mortuary chapel, or the like, and
doubtless to be demolished so soon as ever public
opinion is found to be in an indifferent mood. It
is not a beautiful old church, being indeed an Early
Georgian affair of red brick, but it is representative
of a period, and, with the Peg Woffington almshouses
near by, is all that remains of old Teddington.
The neighbourhood of the great new church,
built handsomely in stone, in a Frenchified variant of
that First Pointed style we are accustomed to name
"Early English," is sufficient to frighten away any
would-be resident, for it is as large as many a cathedral,
and will be larger yet, when foolish people
are found to subscribe toward the completion of its
tower. If all this stood for religion instead of merely
for religiosity - a very different thing - there would
be nothing to say; but when we perceive the clergy,
all over the country, striving for funds towards
heaping up of stone and brick and mortar, all intended
towards the end of aggrandising their own
discredited order, and of again bringing about the
imprisonment of men's consciences, we can only
imagine that the devil laughs and the Saviour
grieves. Meanwhile, the great unfinished building
dominates the place, and its long unbroken roof helps
to spoil the view up-river, nearly two miles away.
If we may call Teddington a town, then, by comparison, Twickenham, adjoining it, is a metropolis. All this Middlesex side of the river is, in fact, spoiled, but the river itself, and the lawns and parks fringing it, are, happily, little affected, and none, wandering along the towing-paths, would suspect the existence of those great populations on the other side of quite a narrow belt of trees. The only inkling of them is when the wind sets from the streets and brings the strains of a piano-organ, the cries of the hawkers, or the squeaking of tramcar-wheels against curves, yelling like damned souls in torment.
The older part of Twickenham centres about the
church, one of those pagan eighteenth-century boxes
of red and yellow and grey brick that are so familiar
along these outer fringes of London. The old church
sank into ruin in 1713, but the tower of it remains.
In the churchwardens' accounts of some two
hundred years ago we gain some diverting glimpses
of an older Twickenham. Thus, in 1698, we find,
"Item: Paid old Tomlins for fetching home the
church-gates, being thrown into ye Thames in ye
night by drunkards, 2s. 6d.";
and
"Item: To Mr. Guisbey, for curing Doll Bannister's nose, 3s."
The old and slummy lanes that here lead down
to the waterside are bordered with houses that date
back to the time of those entries.
TWICKENHAM CHURCH.
In the church is a monument to Pope, with an
epitaph written by himself,
"For one who would not be buried in Westminster Abbey":
the last scornful effort of his bitter spirit. The stone in the
floor that marks his actual resting-place is covered
over, and many therefore seek his grave in vain. I
have, in fact, myself thus vainly sought it; questing
in the first instance among the tombs in the churchyard,
to the puzzlement of a group of working-men
engaged upon a job there.
"What you looking for, guv'nor?" asked one.
"I want to find Pope's grave."
"Don't know the name," said he.
"'Ere, Bill" - raising his voice to one of his mates a little way
off -
"d'ye know where a bloke named Pope is berried?"
O! horror.
An epitaph upon Kitty Clive, the actress, who
died in 1758, may be seen here, among those to
other notabilities.
From the crowded streets of Twickenham let us escape by means of Twickenham Ferry. Crossing the river at this point, Twickenham is seen at its best; for here the gardens of the three or four great mansions that yet remain entirely mask the ravages of late years. But even so, those who have known the scene from of old cannot look upon it altogether without regrets for the noble cedars of the estate known as "Mount Lebanon," among the very finest - perhaps the very finest - in the land, wantonly cut down some few years since.
The most complete oasis in all these developments
is Petersham, on the Surrey side: Petersham, and
Ham, and Ham Common. There railways come
not, nor tramways. At Petersham are few but old
houses and the time-honoured mansions of the great
of bygone centuries, inhabited nowadays by the
small and futile. So, at any rate, I gather them
to be from the sweeping remark made to me some
years ago by a man whom I discovered leaning
meditatively over a fence, contemplating the view
across Petersham meadows.
"Purty place, ain't it?" said he.
"It is indeed," said I.
"Ah!" he resumed, "boy and man, I've lived
here forty year. I remember the time when the
people as lived here was people. Now there's nobody
here worth a damn."
The Duke of Buccleuch lived near by in those
halcyon times.
Pleasant hearing, this, for a new-comer who had
just taken over a long lease in this region of souls
so worthless. This shocking old cynic was - - But
no matter; suffice it that he was one who ought to
have put it differently.
Yet there are some of the elect, the salt of the
earth, who pleasantly savour the lump. Indeed, I
live at Petersham myself.
But even here there are woeful changes. Instead
of the three inns that formerly graced the village,
there are now but two: the Petersham Arms
went about fifteen years ago, and now there are
but the Dysart Arms and the Fox and Duck. If
you want further variety, you must resort to the
Fox and Goose, at Ham, or the New Inn, Ham
Common. Besides this grievous thing, the landscape
is seared by an undesirable novelty, in the shape of
a new, very red, red-brick church, which partakes
in equal parts of the likeness of a pumping-station
and a crematorium. Woodman, spare those trees
that grow around it, and Nature, kindly mother,
do thou add yet more to their height and size, that
we may not, in our going forth and our return, have
it, and all it means, constantly before eyes and mind.
It has, in addition, lately been furnished with bells,
of sorts, that commence early in the morning and
wake one untimeously from sleep, often with an air
associated with the words of that pagan hymn, "A
few more years shall roll." Pagan, I say, because
it tells us that when those few years shall have
rolled "we shall be with those that rest - Asleep within the tomb.
It is a godless teaching. We shall not be asleep
within the tomb. Our poor bodies, yes, but they are
not us. In any case, it is not a pleasant reminder,
several times a day, that we shall soon be dead.
Church-bells, whatever the legal aspect of the case,
are in fact licensed nuisances, established without
consulting those who have to hear them, and continually
rung without any necessity, in spite of
indignant protests.
PETERSHAM POST-OFFICE.
In this rustic spot we have two churches, two inns, one general shop, a decreasing population, and a general post-office which will hold, all at once, if they are not very big people, and if they stand close together, quite six persons. Exactly what it is like, let this illustration show. It will be seen at once, and without any difficulty whatever, that it is a very humble relation indeed of the General Post-Office in St. Martin's-le-Grand.
PETERSHAM POST-OFFICE.
There are some curious survivals at Petersham, the more curious because they survive at these late times in such comparatively close proximity to London. Adjoining the Fox and Duck Inn - one of the two aforesaid - is a little wooden building that looks like nothing else than an outhouse for gardening tools. It is really an old village lock-up for petty misdemeanants, such as may often be seen in remote rural places. Behind it is another old institution, equally disused, although it is not so very long since a strayed donkey was placed there. It is the village pound for lost and wandering cattle found upon the road and placed in the pound - impounded - until a claimant appears and pays a shilling to the beadle for release. The present condition of the pound is such that no animal placed in it could well be kept there, for the fence is decayed, and all attempts at maintaining the old institution appear to have been given up. A magnificent crop of nettles and thistles now grows within, and would make it an ideal place for any donkey that might chance to be impounded: donkeys being reputedly fonder of them than of any other kind of food.
"Why does a donkey prefer thistles to corn or grass.
Because he's an ass..
Close by this quaint corner the two old curiously gabled Dutch-looking cottages pictured here are seen. The space between them is now merely a yard occupied by the Richmond Corporation for storing carts and road-making materials, but these were once the lodge-gates to the entrance of Petersham Park, in the old times when it was a private estate containing old Petersham Lodge, the mansion of my Lord Harrington, that peer to whom the poet Thomson, of "The Seasons," alluded in his lines on the view from Richmond Hill:
"There let the feasted eye unwearied stray.
Luxurious, there, rove through the pendant wood.
That nodding hang o'er Harrington's retreat..
The view in these pages shows a glimpse of those
pendant woods, still flourishing up along the ridge
of Richmond Park, but it is now the better part of
a hundred years since the Commissioners of Woods
and Forests purchased that peer's old estate, demolished
the mansion, and added the land as a
very beautiful annexe to Richmond Park. The
cottages, with their little gardens, are charming,
and would be even more so were they red bricks
of which they are built, instead of common yellow
stock brick.
I have just now remarked that there are at
Petersham those who are numbered of the elect.
But it must sadly be admitted that not all in the
borough of Richmond, in which we have the doubtful
honour of being included, are of the opinion that
Petersham is inhabited by the children of light and
grace. Indeed, the following remarks of a deleterious
and poisonous character, lately brought to my notice,
convince me that there exists among some misguided
folk up yonder an idea that this most delightful of
surviving villages within a short distance of London
is inhabited wholly, or at least largely, by the mentally
afflicted. This desolating and alarming belief
was brought home to me by a friend, who hired a
conveyance at Richmond station, to be brought down
to our idyllic village.
"Where to, sir?" asked the flyman.
"Petersham."
"Ah!" exclaimed the driver - this was entirely
uncalled-for, you know - "you mean balmy Petersham."
"Yes," rejoined the unsuspecting stranger, "the
air there is good, I suppose."
"I don't mean the hair," he was astonished to
be told,
"but the people what lives there. Don't
you know that they're all balmy on the crumpet - what
you call 'off it'?"
My poor friend looked a little astonished at this.
I am afraid he is not intimately acquainted with
the language of the streets.
"Oh! you know!" continued the man, noticing
this air of bewilderment:
"they're dotty, that's what they are."
"You mean non compos mentis," rejoined my
friend at last, comprehending what was meant, and
heroically and waggishly endeavouring to get a bit
of his own back, and in turn to mystify this
derogatory licensed hackney-driver.
The man, convinced that he had happened upon
a "sanguinary German," said:
"Yus, I suppose that's what you call it in your country," and mounted
his box, and in silence drove down to this asylum for the "balmy."
PETERSHAM: THE "FOX AND DUCK," OLD LOCK-UP AND VILLAGE POUND.
It should be said that we in Petersham, who live
quietly and engage in delightful pursuits - such as
writing books, flower-growing, and criticising our
neighbours - do by no means endorse this opinion
of our surroundings. As we are of the elect, so
also are we exceptionally sane, even among the
level-headed. But there is a reason to be found in
most things, even in the remarks above quoted.
That reason is sought and discovered in the fact
that our village is unique: the only place within
its easy radius from London in which the surroundings
are unspoiled, the air pure, and the means of
communication with the great neighbouring roaring
world primitive and not readily at command. The
nearest railway station is a mile and a quarter away,
and such services of omnibuses as have run between
Kingston and Richmond, through Petersham, have
ever been fugitive and evanescent, and have generally
run at intervals of not less than twenty minutes.
The peculiar humour or the peculiar tragedy - according
to point of view - of these omnibus services
is that in fine weather every one wants to walk,
and in rain all want to ride; so that in the first case
the omnibuses are empty, and in the second cannot
cope with the sudden and unlooked-for demand, and
one has perforce to walk home and get wet through,
or alternatively to wait until the rain ceases.
And during the last remarkable summers there
have been occasions when it has rained in torrents,
without ceasing, for four days!
My pen, entered upon the woes of the would-be
passenger by omnibus, has run away with me, and
I must at once disclaim the dawning conclusion that
the alleged "balminess" of Petersham is due to
rain and the lack of conveyances other than the
comparatively expensive flys. Those are not the
reasons. Petersham, being entirely rural, even
though surrounded by great populations, and yet
being near London, it is found by the medical profession
to be a convenient district for recommending
to patients to whom, for a variety of reasons, it
would be inconvenient to go remotely into the
provinces. Here, then, qualified somewhat of late
years by fleeting irruptions of motor-cars, and by
brake-loads of mischievous and bell-ringing children
who are brought down from London in summer for
school-treats in Petersham Park, invalids may hope
to obtain a happy recovery, even though the air,
instead of being sharp and bracing, is steamy and
languorous. Thus the expression "balmy Petersham,"
whether used in the literate sense, or in the
regular way of slang, if duly analysed, is found to be
essentially a proud title to consideration, instead of
a term of reproach. The neighbouring village of
Ham is a co-partner in these things, perhaps even in
a greater degree, for it is equally distant from a
railway station, and fringes a wide common whose
remotest corners are at all times extremely secluded.
I spoke just now of mischievous and bell-ringing
children, but there are others not intentionally mischievous,
who are yet, perhaps, apt to be a little
wearing to the nerves of quiet folk who live within
gardens behind tall wooden fences overhung by
flowering shrubs, such as lilac and syringa. These
are a great temptation in their flowering season to all
kinds of persons who ought to be able to enjoy the
sight of them without tearing off branches; but
the Goth and the Vandal we have always with us
on Bank Holidays and fine Sundays and Saturday
afternoons. We expect them, and our expectations
are commonly realised. But sorrow's crown of
sorrow is reached when, hearing a crash of boards,
you rush out and find a dismayed child standing
among the ruins of a part of your fence, and explaining
that she "didn't mean it, and was only
reaching up to pick a bit of syringa for nyture study."
And to this the modern attempt to inculcate the study
and the love of Nature brings us!
PETERSHAM, FROM THE MIDDLESEX SHORE.
Before reluctantly I leave Petersham, let something
be said as to its name. And, firstly, let it be
duly borne in mind that we who reside here are
perhaps a little concerned that the place-name shall
be properly pronounced. Petersham, we like to
think, is the real thing, with no sham about it at all.
Hence the particularity with which "Peters-ham"
is enunciated by the nice in these things; even as
the villagers of Bisham, near Marlow, say "Bis-ham,"
or (the tongue being ever at odds with the
letter H) "Bis-sam."
Petersham obtained its name as long ago as
those dim Saxon times when the great mitred Abbey
of Chertsey was founded and dedicated to St. Peter.
In charters of those times the land here is noted as
the property of that Abbey, and the place is called
"Patriceham" and "Patricesham." In the Cartulary
of Merton Abbey, in 1266, it becomes "Petrichesham."
It thus would appear fairly conclusive
that the name originated with the land becoming
the property of St. Peter's Abbey at Chertsey, and
in no other way. But none of those who delve deeply
into the origins of place-names is ever satisfied with
things as they are; and it would now appear that
an effort has been made to derive "Petersham"
from a supposititious early Saxon landowner, a
certain - or as we find no real documentary or other
evidence of his existence here, it would be better to
say an uncertain - "Beadric," whose "ham" it is
thus assumed to have been. This is a heroic attempt
to argue from the old original name of the town
we now call "Bury St. Edmunds," which was in its
beginning "Beadric's-worth." Although the Saxon
name of "Beadric" was not uncommon, it is surely
something of an effort to drag this East Anglian
example out of Suffolk arbitrarily to fit a place in
Surrey; even though, in the course of the same
argument, in citing the well-known parallel derivation
of "Battersea" from the land there having anciently
been the property of the Abbey of St. Peter at Westminster,
it is found that in the original charter of
A.D. 693 the place-name is spelled "Batricesege."
This becomes, in a charter of 1067, "Batriceseie"
or "Patriceseia."
THE OLD LODGES OF PETERSHAM PARK.
One somewhat speculative blocked-up lancet
window of the Early English period is the remotest
thing that remains to Petersham old church; which
is, for the rest, chiefly of George the First's time.
It is, of course, dedicated to St. Peter. Nowhere
do we find the slightest real trace of the ancient
cell of Chertsey Abbey which is supposed to have
existed here, on the Abbey lands. The curious mass
of brickwork along the footpath leading out of
River Lane and between the gardens of Church
Nursery and the filter-beds of the Richmond waterworks,
is commonly said to have been a portion of
those ancient ecclesiastical buildings, but no one has
ever discovered the slightest hint of church or monastic
architecture about that problematical fragment,
nor has its purpose been hinted at. The footpath
rises sharply between somewhat high walls, and is
indeed carried over an arch. The old village folk
long knew the spot as "Cockcrow Hill"; but
during the last two years, in course of the works
undertaken for the neighbouring filter-beds, the
brickwork has been patched and the pitch of the
lane leading over the arch lowered; so, doubtless,
the name of "Cockcrow Hill" will become among
the things forgot. If a theory may be entertained
where no facts are available, this building was probably
a bridge across some long-vanished or diverted
stream which at one time flowed from the high
ground of what is now Richmond Park, across these
level meadows, and so into the Thames.
But if there be indeed no architectural features
in this brickwork, there is an almost monastic air
of seclusion about the rather grim and very picturesque
old seventeenth-century gazebo that stands
beside this self-same lane. There is some speculative
interest in it, for no one can certainly declare to
what this old four-square two-storeyed building of
red brick, with the queer peaked roof, belonged.
The presumption is that it was at one time a gazebo,
or garden-pavilion, attached to the walled garden
of Rutland Lodge, adjoining, an early seventeenth-century
mansion, the oldest house in Petersham.
Presumably, when it was built, its upper windows,
some of them long since blocked, had a clear look-out
across the unenclosed meadows to the river. The
meadows are still there, but a fenced-in garden and
an orchard now intervene, and by some unexplainable
changes, the building, although at the angle of the
walled garden of Rutland Lodge, has no communication
with it, and is in fact included within the grounds
of Church Nursery and the garden of the modern
house called since 1907 "Rosebank," presumably
for the usual contradictory reasons that roses have
ever been conspicuously absent from that garden,
and that the site is a dead level. Much patching and
altering has been done at times to the old gazebo,
and attempts have been made to convert it into a
cottage. Hence the added fireplaces and the chimney,
not requisite in a garden summer-house, but indispensable
for living in. Otherwise, the lot of the
old building has been the common and almost invariable
fate of such - neglect, and a surrender to
spiders. The cult of the gazebo came in originally
with the Renascence from Italy, and as it was not
an indigenous, so it was neither a hardy growth in
this land of ours, where the sunshine is never oppressively
hot for the house, and chills all too often
are the portion of the garden-dweller. Thus the
numerous, and often highly picturesque, gazebos and
pavilions to be found attached to old English gardens
are most often seen to be deserted and in the
last stages of disrepair. The gallant fight against
climatic conditions has had to be abandoned.
RIVER LANE, PETERSHAM.
Another hopeless fight against overpoweringly adverse
conditions ended here in 1907, when the famous
Star and Garter Hotel on Richmond Hill was
closed. We who make Petersham our home know
well that the "Star and Garter" is closed, if only
for the reason that, it being situated in the parish,
the loss to the local rates incidental to the closing
meant a sudden rise of ninepence in the pound.
We are thus hoping, without in the least expecting
it, that some greatly daring person or corporation
will be good enough to take and open it again. This
increased demand, added to the hungry re-assessments
recently made, and to the other increases,
caused by the extravagant proceedings of the Richmond
Corporation, which would appear to carry on
the business of the town on behalf of the tradesmen
instead of the residents, is rendering the neighbourhood
an increasingly costly one to live in. Every one
would now seem to share the fallacious belief that
to live in Richmond one must necessarily be rich.
True, one will presently need to be if things continue
on the lines of recent developments.
Meanwhile, will no one take the poor old "Star
and Garter"? It really seems as if no one would,
for at least two unsuccessful attempts have been
made to dispose of it at auction. The property
was stated by the auctioneer to have cost £140,000.
He described it in a phrase which sounds like a
quotation, as "a far-famed hostelry, a palace of
pleasure on a hill of delight." He also declared the
view from it to be "the finest prospect in England,
perhaps in the world." But he was not prepared,
it seems, to assure the purchaser of a much finer
prospect still: that of a dividend from the purchase,
and so the result was a bid of only £20,000. The
second attempted sale resulted in no bid being made
at all.
The "Star and Garter" was ever noted for its
high charges, framed to match its lofty situation
and the exalted station of many of the guests who
of old patronised it. Louis Philippe, King of the
French, and Queen Amélie resided there for months
at a time, and were frequently visited by Queen
Victoria and the Prince Consort. The unhappy
Napoleon the Third, the ill-starred Emperor Maximilian
of Mexico, the equally ill-fated Prince Imperial,
and other crowned, or prospectively crowned,
heads were the merest every-day frequenters; but
the "Star and Garter" long since discovered that
there were not enough crowned heads to go round.
Nor did the enterprising Christopher Crean, sometime
cook to the old Duke of York, who took it and re-opened
it after an old-time disastrous interval of
five years, in 1809, find that he could secure constant
relays of visitors to pay him, as some were stated to
have done, half a guinea for the mere privilege of
looking out from the windows upon the beauties of
the Thames Valley.
It would seem, in conclusion, that the coming of
motor-cars has finally rendered the huge "Star and
Garter" impossible. Time was when the drive to
Richmond was a delightful and leisurely affair,
occupying in the coming and the going a considerable
part of the day. Motor-cars and taxicabs have
rendered it a matter of minutes only, and those
who used to lunch or dine at Richmond now do the
like, just as luxuriously, and almost as quickly by
modern methods of travel, at Brighton, Hastings,
or Eastbourne.
I have written much elsewhere of Petersham, in a little book called Rural Nooks round London, and so will now leave the subject for the last Thames-side nooks that can by any means claim to preserve to this day any relics of their old village life. The first of these is Isleworth, in Middlesex.
Isleworth, an ancient and almost forgotten village
overlooking the Thames, is not by any manner of
means to be confounded with the station of that
name, or with the better-known outlying portion of
the parish known as Old Isleworth. The reason of
this popular ignorance of Isleworth is easily to be
found in the pronounced bend of the river by which
it stands, the great roads in the neighbourhood going
approximately direct, and leaving Isleworth in a
very rarely travelled nook, not often penetrated,
except by those who have some especial reason for
calling at Isleworth itself. It is thus a singularly
old-world place, and, strangely enough, it is more
often seen from afar, from the towing-path on the
Surrey side, than at hand.
The village, however little known it may be to-day,
was sufficiently well known to the compilers of
Domesday Book, in whose pages it appears in the
grotesque spelling, "Ghistelworde." Afterwards it
is found written Yhistleworth, Istelworth, Ysselsworth,
and at last, before the present formula was
found for it, "Thistleworth." A vast deal of contention
has raged around the meaning of the place-name,
and with such an orthographic choice you
could give it almost any meaning you chose; but
there can be little question but that it comes from
two words, the Celtic uisc for water, and the Saxon
worth for village. It is, indeed, distinctly a water-village,
for not only does the Thames flow by it, but
here the Crane, rising near Northolt, and coming
down through Cranford, falls into the Thames, near
by a little nameless brook that rises on Norwood
Green. It is indeed the confluence of the Crane and
the Thames that contributes so largely to the
picturesqueness, the somewhat squalid waterside
picturesqueness, of Isleworth; for the outlet of the
smaller into the larger river is closed by little dock-gates,
and the space thus shut in is presided over by
the huge, and in themselves unbeautiful, flour mills
of Messrs. Samuel Kidd & Sons. There is, however,
always a something attractive about flour-mills, let
the builders of them build never so prosaically; and
here, where the little stream comes sliding out beneath
the massive buildings, and where the road passes
over the little dock, the sight of the barges coming
up, each laden with their thousand or so quarters of
wheat for the mills, is found generally interesting,
especially to boys sent about some urgent business;
the more immediate and pressing the errand, the more
attractive the mills; which have their historical
interest to the well-read in local story, for they are
the successors, on this same spot, of the ancient
water-mills of the Abbey of Sion.
ISLEWORTH.
Most of the houses at Isleworth are old brick structures, with heavily sashed windows, and the humbler houses and cottages are very much out of repair. There is a look of the passive mood and of the past tense about the place, and you expect (and probably would find if you inquired) holes in the stockings of every other inhabitant, patches on their posteriors, and mere apologies for soles on their footgear; while shocking bad hats are the only wear. The artist who knows what's what will already have perceived that Isleworth is a place likely to have pictorial qualities, and in his supposition he will be quite correct. It would certainly have captivated Whistler. Imagine the parish church on the river-bank, at the end of this rather feckless street of houses;
THE "LONDON APPRENTICE," ISLEWORTH.
imagine a very large old inn, the London Apprentice, almost dabbling in the water, and then conceive two large islands, or eyots, or aits, as they may with equal correctitude be called, off-shore, dividing the stream of Thames in two. They are extremely interesting eyots, for they grow to this day abundance of osiers, whose periodical harvesting, for the making of baskets, is a by no means negligible local industry. Lately I walked through Isleworth on the day before Christmas, and there, stepping down between two rows of little tenements forming Tolson's Almhouses, and looking down upon the river from the railed wall at the farther end, could be seen lying six or eight great barges that had come, not from foreign climes, but from the creeks and ports of the Essex and the Kentish coasts, from the Swale, the Medway, the Blackwater, or the Crouch. Each and all of them had at their mastheads a bundle of holly fastened to a spar, in honour of the coming Day. Beyond them rose the ivy-clad tower of the church, and an occasional pallid gleam of sunshine broke upon the river. It was a pretty and a touching scene.
THE DOCK AT ISLEWORTH.
A great deal of very unreliable and really unveracious
"history" has been written about the
inn, the London Apprentice, said to have been a
favourite haunt of highwaymen, among whom our
ubiquitous old friend, Dick Turpin, of course figures;
but we may disregard such tales. It was once, however,
a favourite resort for water-parties from
London.
The tower of the church is a really beautiful and
sturdy pinnacled stone Gothic building, but the body
of the church was rebuilt in 1705, from designs left,
so it is said, by Sir Christopher Wren; and it is,
within and without, typical of the style then prevalent:
that well-known type of exterior of red brick,
pierced with tall, factory-like windows, and an interior
modelled after a "classic" type, with galleries, and
painted and gilded more like a place of amusement
than a place of worship.
A few much-worn brasses remain from an older
building, notably one to Margaret Dely, a Sister of
Sion during the brief revival of the Abbey under
Queen Mary.
But the most interesting monument is one of ornate
design, in marble, placed in the west entrance lobby,
under the tower. This is partly to the memory of
Mrs. Ann Tolson, and partly to Dr. Caleb Cotesworth,
and narrates, in the course of a very long epitaph, a
romantic story. Ann Tolson was the donor of the
group of almshouses already mentioned, for six poor
men and an equal number of poor women. She
married, as the epitaph very minutely tells us, firstly
Henry Sisson and then one John Tolson. When he
died
"she was reduced to Narrow and Confined
Circumstances, and supported herself by keeping
School for the Education of Young Ladies, for which
She was well Qualified by a Natural Ingenuity. A
strict and Regular Education, and mild and gentle
Disposition. By the loss of Sight She became unfit
for her Employment, and a proper object to receive
that Charity, She was Sollicitous to Distribute."
In the midst of these misfortunes, Dr. Caleb Cotesworth,
a connection of hers by marriage, died. As
the epitaph, with meticulous particularity goes on
to report, he "had By a long and Successful practice
at London" amassed a fortune of "One Hundred
and Fifty Thousand Pounds and upwards." A part
he distributed by his will among relatives, "and the
residue, One Hundred and Twenty Thousand Pounds
and upwards he gave to his Wife.
They both died on the 2nd May, 1741.
But she survived and Dying Intestate, her Personal Estate became
distributable among her three next Of Kin, one of
whom was the above Ann Tolson. With a sense
of this Signal Deliverance and unexpected Change
from a State of Want, to Riches and Affluence, She
forthwith appointed the Sum of Five Thousand
Pounds to the establishment of Almshouses for Six
men and six women," and then the giddy old thing
went and married a third time, although over eighty
years of age, one Joseph Dash, merchant, of London.
She died, aged 89, in 1750; and this monument, for
which she had left £500, for the narration of her
interesting story, was soon afterwards duly placed
here.
Opposite the monument of this lady is that of Sir Orlando Gee, a factotum of Algernon, Duke of Northumberland and Registrar of the Admiralty, who died in 1705. It is a very fine marble monument, with a half-length portrait effigy of Sir Orlando himself, in the costume and the elaborate wig of his period. He is represented in the act of reading some document unspecified.
The Middlesex shore, when once past Sion Park, now grows thickly cumbered with buildings, and the view of the Surrey side from Middlesex is distinctly preferable to that of Middlesex from Surrey.
For
on the opposite shore stretch the long reaches of
Kew Gardens, whose beauties no one, I suppose,
has ever yet exhausted; the grounds are so extensive
and their contents so varied, so rich and rare.
But, after all, I see, the extent of Kew Gardens
is not so great, measured by acreage instead of
their riches. I detest mere facts, and love impressions;
but here is a fact, for once in a way books of
reference give the size of Kew Gardens as some 350
acres only.
The Director and his colleagues in botany and
arboriculture look across to the factory chimneys
of Brentford with dismay, and write alarming things
in annual reports about the effects of the noxious
fumes from those chimneys upon the trees and plants
of the gardens, so Brentford, we may take it, is a
menace, and since the Brentford Gas Company is a
highly prosperous and expanding business, and is
certainly in the front rank as a fume-producer, the
menace we may further suppose to be increasing.
The end of these things no man can foresee, but the
passing away of Kew Gardens would be a thing too
grievous to contemplate.
Brentford, it is true, cannot by any means be styled
a village, and it owns indeed the dignity of the
county town of Middlesex. Thus it would find no
place in these pages, were it not that Brentford sets
up as the rival of Coway Stakes near Walton, for
the honour of being that historic spot where Julius
Cæsar crossed the Thames. It is only of recent years
that this claim has been put forward, and until
then Coway Stakes scarcely knew a competitor. But
at different times during dredging operations in the
bed of the river, and in the course of building new
wharves and other waterside structures, great numbers
of ancient oak stakes have been discovered,
extending with intervals, from about four hundred
yards below Isleworth ferry down to the upper
extremity of Brentford eyot. Near Isleworth
ferry they were found in 1881, in a threefold line,
interlaced with wattles and boughs, and continue,
generally in a single line, at intervals, under the
river banks, with advanced rows in the bed of the
river, past the places where the river Brent falls
into the Thames in two branches. The stakes, that
have been numerously extracted in these last thirty
years, are in fairly good preservation, and measure
in general fifteen inches in circumference.
The criticism, of course, arises here, How could
the Britons at such necessarily short notice have
executed so extensive a work to impede the passage
of the Romans, who came swiftly up from Kent and
who could not have been confidently expected at
any one point? The stakes extend for about two
miles and appear to have been thoroughly and methodically
arranged. The wattling, too, is evidence of
care and deliberation. Doubts must arise. They
may have been already long in existence before
Cæsar came, and have been intended for defence
against rival tribes; or again, they may not really
be so ancient as supposed; and their object merely
for the protection of the banks from being eroded by
the current.
The name, Brentford, refers of course to a ford
across the Brent near its confluence with the Thames,
which is broad and deep here; but there was also,
doubtless, a ford across the Thames, at this place,
for the present depth of the river has been produced
in modern times by the industrious dredging works
of the Thames Conservancy. But still at low tide
between Brentford ferry and Kew bridge the river
has normally only three feet depth of water, and in
summer sometimes much less. Children can at such
times often be seen wading far out into the bed of
the stream. There must evidently have been a ford
across the Thames here in ancient days, as well as
across the Brent, and we know from later historic
events that undoubtedly took place here that this
junction of rivers was always an important point.
Thus much may be said in support of the modern
contention that it was here Cæsar crossed on his way
to Verulam, and it may be conceded to those who
hold this view that the delta formed by the two
outlets of the Brent is curiously named "Old
England." It will be found so called on large Ordnance
maps, and by that name it has been known
from time immemorial.
"OLD ENGLAND."
Much significance may be
found in that title in such a place as this. Nothing
is known as to the origin of it. It has just come
down to us from the old, dim ages of oral tradition,
and is now fixed by printed maps. The significance
of the name is, however, strangely supported by that
of a spot far indeed removed from it, but (if we
accept the theory that Brentford is really the scene
of Cæsar's crossing) most intimately correlated in
history. This second name has also been handed
down in like manner out of the misty past. We
need not wonder at it. Tradition was everywhere
strong in times before the people could read, but
their memory has become gradually atrophied since
they have become literate, and the wisdom and the
legends of our forefathers are fading away. Fortunately,
the art of printing, which, in conjunction with
the widespread ability to read, has destroyed much
oral tradition, has at the same time fixed and perpetuated
many floating legends and memories.
This fellow traditional name is "Old England's
Hole," the title given by many generations of rustics
to a hillock on the summit of Bridge Hill, beside
the Dover road between Canterbury and Dover,
and adjoining Barham Downs, where Cæsar fought
with and defeated the Britons, July 23, 54 B.C. It
is a hillock with a crater-like hollow in the crest,
and was one of the forts in which the Britons long
held out. Cæsar himself, in his Commentaries, describes
these forts and the storming of them by his
soldiers; and the rustics of the neighbourhood have
fixed upon this particular spot, and say in effect
"This is Old England's Hole, and here a last stand for
freedom was made by your British forefathers."
"OLD ENGLAND": MOUTH OF THE BRENT, AND BRENTFORD FERRY.
"Old England," on the banks of Brent and Thames, is partly included within Syon Park and in part extends over the squalid canal outlet and the sidings, docks, and warehouses the Great Western Railway has established here; but the name more particularly attaches to the meadow just within the park. It forms from the Surrey shore a charming picture not at all injured by those commercial activities of docks and railways adjoining: perhaps even gaining by contrast. There the earthy banks of the Thames, in general hereabouts steep and some ten or twelve feet high, are lower and shelve gradually; and in the meadows a noble group of bushy poplars stands behind a few willows that look upon the stream. There are trees, too, in the background, and the spire of the modern church of St Paul, Brentford, forms a not unpleasing feature on the right.
Brentford Ferry, down below "Old England,"
commands an extensive view down river, towards
Kew Bridge and along the northern channel of the
Thames, divided here into two channels by the long
and narrow Brentford Eyot, thickly grown with
grass and underwood, and planted with noble trees.
It is acutely pointed out by Mr. Montagu Sharpe that
the boundary-line dividing the counties of Middlesex
and Surrey is not at this point made to follow the
stream midway, as customary elsewhere, but is
traced along the northern channel; and he sees in this
fact a hint that the original course of the river was
along that branch, and assumes that the main stream
is of later origin; that the river at some time later than
the era of the Romans made this new way for itself.
On the steep bank above Brentford Ferry there
was placed in May 1909 a sturdy granite pillar
with inscriptions setting forth the historical character
of the spot. The events known to have taken
place at Brentford, and the crossing here by Cæsar,
now boldly assumed, form a very remarkable list, as
this copy of those inscriptions will sufficiently show:
54 B.C.
At this ancient fortified ford the British tribesmen under
Cassivellaunus bravely opposed Julius Cæsar on his
march to Verulamium.
A.D. 780-1
Near by, Offa, King of Mercia, with his Queen, the
bishops, and principal officers, held a Council of the
Church.
A.D. 1016
Here Edmund Ironside, King of England, drove Cnut
and his defeated Danes across the Thames.
A.D. 1642
Close by was fought the Battle of Brentford, between
the forces of King Charles I. and the Parliament
A.D. 1909
To commemorate these historical events this stone
was erected by the Brentford Council.
This memorial has certainly been placed in a
most prominent position, and challenges the attention
of the passer-by along the footpath past Kew
Gardens, on the opposite shore. As you approach by
the ferry-boat, the crazy old stone and brick stairs
leading steeply up, beside the broad and easy incline
of the shingly ferry-slip, look most imposing,
and group well with their surroundings.
Where the old original ford across the Brent
was situated no man knows, but perhaps near to
its junction with the Thames, at a spot where the
waters from the greater tidal river rendered the ford
impassable except at the ebb. That was the awkward
situation of Old Brentford, and one not for very
long to be endured by travellers along the great
West of England road that runs through this place.
Thus it gave way at a very early period to a new
ford, somewhat higher up the Brent; and around it
in the course of time rose the town of New Brentford,
whose being and name in this manner derived
directly from the needs of travellers for a ford passable
at all hours. The ford was replaced by a bridge
in 1280, and that by later stone bridges, or patchings
and enlargements of the original. The present
representative of them is a quite recent and commodious
iron affair, built over the stone arch: very
much more convenient for the traffic, but not at all
romantic. New Brentford church stands near by;
that of Old Brentford is a good quarter of a mile
along the road, back towards London, but there is
nothing old or interesting about it, seeing that it
was entirely rebuilt a few years ago.
The Brent, as it flows through the town, is not
easily to be distinguished amid the several canal
cuts, where the close-packed barges lie, but it may
with some patience be traced at the western end
of the broad and retired road called "The Butts,"
an ancient name significant of a bygone Brentford,
very different from the present aspect of the place.
"The Butts" is a broad open space, rather than a
road, and the houses, old and new, in it are of a
superior residential character that would astonish
those - and they are far the greater number - who
know Brentford only by passing through its narrow
and squalid and tramway-infested main street. "The
Butts" would appear to have been an ancient practice-ground
in archery.
The Brent appears at the extremity, down below
a very steep bank, and barges lie in it, on the hither
side of a sluice. It goes thenceforward in a pronounced
curve, to fall into the docks, and passes by
the backs of old houses and some still surviving
gardens, with the church-tower of St. Leonard's,
New Brentford, peering over old red roofs and
clustered gables.
In an old-world town such as this there are many charming village-like corners and strange survivals, when once you have left the main arteries of traffic. Brentford is, of course, a byword for its narrow, congested, squalid High Street, down which the gasworks send a quarter-of-a-mile of stink to greet the inquiring stranger; but it is a very long High Street, and the gasmaking is in Old Brentford; and at the westward end, New Brentford, you are far removed from those noisome activities and among the barges instead. It is largely a bargee population at this end; and the bargee himself, the cut of his beard (when he has one it is generally of the chin-tuft fashion affected by the Pharaohs, as seen by the ancient statues in the British Museum), the style of his clothes, and his manner of living his semi-amphibious life are all interesting. It would need a volume to do justice to the history, the quaintnesses, and the anomalies of Brentford, which, although the "county town" of Middlesex, and thus invested with a greater if more nebulous dignity than London - merely the capital of the Empire - is not even a corporate town. If I wanted to justify myself for including it in a book on villages, I should feel inclined to advance this fact, and to add that, although the traditional "two Kings of Brentford," with only one throne between them, are famous in legend, no one ever heard of a Mayor of Brentford, either in legend or in fact. When it is added that Old Brentford owns all the new things, such as the gasworks, the brewery, and the waterworks, and that the old houses are mostly in New Brentford, the thing is resolved into an engaging and piquant absurdity. It is to be explained, of course, in the fact of Old Brentford being so old that it has had to be renewed.
The very names of Brentford's streets tell a tale of
eld. It is only in these immemorially ancient places
that such names as "Town Meadow," "The Butts,"
"The Hollows" "Old Spring Gardens," "New
Spring Gardens," "The Ham," "Ferry Lane," or
"Half Acre" are met with. They are names that
tell of a dead and gone Brentford little suspected
by the most of those who pass by. No unpleasing
place this waterside town when the "Town Meadow,"
that is now a slummy close, was really a piece of
common land green with grass and doubtless giving
pleasantly upon the river. And when Old and New
Spring Gardens first acquired their name, perhaps
about the age when Herrick wrote his charming
poems, or that era when Pepys gossiped, they were
no doubt idyllic spots where the springs gushed
forth amid shady bowers. To-day they are old-world
alleys, with houses declining upon a decrepit
age that invites the attention of improving hands.
There was an ancient congeries of crooked alleys and
small cottage property near the corner of Half Acre
known as "Troy Town." It stood hard by where
the District Council offices are now placed, but tall
hoardings facing the road now disclose the fact
that Troy Town is in process of being abolished.
The name is curious, but not unique. It is found
frequently in England, and seems generally to occur
as the name of an old suburb of a much older town;
some place of picnicking and merry-making, where
there were arbours, and above all, a maze, either
cut in the turf or planted in the form of a hedge,
like that most glorious of mazes at Hampton Court.
Such were the original "Troy Towns"; and whatever
once were the clustered alleys in Brentford that
were called by that name, certainly they have carried
out to the full, and to the last, the mazy, uncharted
idea.
But this old suburb of Old Brentford must at
an early date have been swallowed up in the growth
of New Brentford and at a remote time have lost
everything of its original character except its old
traditional name. Names, we know, survive when
all else has vanished or been utterly changed.
FERRY LANE, BRENTFORD.
Ferry Lane is one of Brentford's many quaint corners. There is an old inn there, the "Waterman's Arms," and a stately old mansion, "Ferry House." And there is a curious old malthouse, too, which, in the artistic way, simply makes the fortune of Ferry Lane, so piquant are the outlines of its roofs and its two ventilating shafts, like young lighthouses. Buildings of such simple, yet such picturesque lines do not come into existence nowadays.
And so to leave Brentford, with much of its story untold. To tell it were a long business that would lose the sense of proportion which to some degree, let us hope, distinguishes these volumes. So nothing shall be said of those two mysterious "Kings of Brentford" who shared, according to tradition, the throne; nothing, that is, but to note that a brilliant idea has of late occurred to antiquaries, puzzled beyond measure by these indefinite kings. It is now conceived that the legend originally was of the two kings at Brentford, and that so far from sharing one throne happily together, they were Edmund Ironside, the Saxon king, and Canute the invading Dane (or Cnut, as it seems we are expected to style him now), who was severely defeated here by Edmund, and driven out of Brentford across the river.
There is a waterside walk from Brentford to Kew
Bridge, commanding a full view of that new and
solid, perhaps also stolid, structure of stone, opened
May 20, 1903. The old bridge was a more satisfactory
affair to the eye, although its roadway was
steep, rising sharply as it did from either end to
an apex over the middle arch. The arches, boldly
and beautifully semicircular, were delightful to look
upon, not like the flattened-out segmental spans of
the new bridge, which have a heavy and ungraceful
appearance, looking for all the world as though they
had settled heavily in the making upon their haunches
and would presently fall, flop, into the river.
Things change, after all, but slowly here. Much
has gone of late years, but much is still left. Here,
for example, stands a riverside inn the "Oxford and
Cambridge," with a delightful little lawn, exquisitely
green, behind a low wall that gives upon the towing-path.
It has a very rural look, amid urban surroundings,
and at the rear you may yet see a range
of old malthouses, with cowled ventilators upon
their old richly-red tiled roofs, in every way resembling
their fellows far down in Kent. But they
are to be let or sold, and for long past the side of
them giving upon the road has served the purpose of
an advertising station; so the end of these things
is at hand.
Kew - called on some old maps "Cue" - across the bridge into Surrey, stands grouped around its green, as of old; the curious church, which is half Byzantine and half of the Queen Anne method, presenting an outline so remarkably suggestive of an early type of locomotive engine that one would scarce be surprised to find some day that it had steamed off.
Kew Green is charming, but there is a dirty
little slum down by the riverside, with labyrinthine
alleys and corners where children make dust-and
mud-pies and women in aprons stand at doorways
with arms akimbo and gossip. Here is a street of
modern cottages with an odd old name: "Westerly
Ware."
I do not think Kew can be condemned as being
go-ahead and ultra-modern. Time was, somewhere
about 1880, when a tramway was laid along the Kew
Gardens road from the foot of Kew Bridge into
Richmond. It was regarded when new as a very
rash and deplorable and innovating thing, and the
tinkle of its horse-bells was anything but pleasing
to the ears of the wealthy residents of the mostly
peculiarly ostentatious villas on the way. But
"circumstances alter cases," as the old adage tritely
tells us, and now that few provincial towns of any size
are without their electric tramways, this little single-line
horsed tramway is come to be regarded almost
in the nature of a genuine antique. You take your
seat upon one of the little cars and wait and wait,
and still wait. It is very pleasant and drowsy in
summer to wait until the next tram down has left
the way clear at one of the occasional sidings, but
if you are in a hurry, it is quicker to walk. I do not
think any one really wants electric tramways into
Richmond, though, no doubt, they will come.
When they do, there will be introduced an altogether
undesirable element of hurry into a road that
at present veritably exhales leisure. There is a
certain æsthetic pleasure in lingering along this road,
for although the architecture of those villas is perhaps
not the last word in art, their gardens are
beautiful and are easily to be seen. Would that Kew
Gardens were so readily visible. But the churlish
Government department that formerly had the
management of the gardens built a high and ugly
brick wall the whole length of the road, so only the
tree-tops are visible over it, even to travellers on
tramcar roofs; and no one has yet had the public
spirit to demolish the useless thing and to substitute
an iron railing in place of it. One opening, indeed,
was made, about 1874, when a charming red-brick
building by Eden Nesfield was erected, just inside
the grounds, and the peep it gives into Paradise, so
to speak, only makes one the more inclined to ask
why any of the wall should be allowed to remain.
STRAND-ON-THE-GREEN.
Strand-on-the-Green is the name of the picturesque waterside row of houses of many shapes and sizes that extends along the Middlesex foreshore from Kew Bridge towards Chiswick. It is a kind of home-grown Venice, and sometimes, when the Thames is in flood, its feet are dabbled in the water, and ingenious ways with planks and clay are resorted to for the keeping of the river out of ground floors. But since the Thames has become more and more curbed and regulated, these occasions have grown and are still growing fewer. I do not know where is the "Green" of Strand-on-the-Green, and the "strand" itself that stretches down to the river at low tide from the brick-and-asphalted walk in front of the village, or hamlet - by whichever name we are rightly to entitle the place - is mostly mud, where the rankly-growing grass ceases. Old boats and barges that long since grew beyond any more patching and mending, and were not worth even breaking up, have been left here to lie about, half in mud and half in water, grass growing in them.
And an island lies in mid-stream; an island on which, for many years past, men may have been observed wheeling barrows to and fro and engaged in other apparently aimless activities that certainly during the last thirty years have had no beginning and no end. It is a picturesque island, with flourishing trees, and it looks a most desirable Robinson Crusoe kind of a place, especially when viewed from the trains, that just here cross the river on an ugly lattice-girder bridge. A timber gantry projects from one side, and things are done with old boilers and launches. Repairs are occasionally made to the banks of this island, and they have at last resulted in making it a very solid and substantial place, faced upstream and down and round about with bags of concrete; so that no conceivable Thames flood that ever was, or can be, could possibly wash it away.
There is half a mile of Strand-on-the-Green. It is
a fairly complete and representative community,
comprising in its one row of houses those of an almost
stately residential class, including Zoffany House,
where the painter of that name lived and died at last
in 1810; some lesser houses, a number of cottages
housing a waterside population, three inns, the
"Bull's Head," the "City Barge," and the "Bell
and Crown"; and some shops of an obscure kind,
such as one might expect to see only in remote
villages. A highly-sketchable old malthouse or two
and a row of almshouses complete the picture. As
to the almshouses, they are going on for the completion
of their second century, as a tablet on them
declares:
Two of these Houses built by R. Thomas Child, one
by M. Soloman Williams, and one by William Abbott,
Carpinter, at his own Charge for ye use of ye Poor of
Chiswick for Ever, A.D. 1724.
Also the Port of London Authority has an office
overlooking the river, and a firm of motor-boat
builders has established works here, amid the ancient
barges - a curious modern touch.
STRAND-ON-THE-GREEN: VIEW UP-RIVER.
Strand-on-the-Green is a hamlet of Chiswick, long
a delightful retreat of the Dukes of Devonshire,
whose stately mansion of Chiswick House in its
surrounding park dignified the old village. But when
a suburban population grew up around the neighbourhood
of that lordly dwelling-house the owners left
it. There is an antipathy between dukes and
democracy comparable only to oil and water. Even
the neighbourhood of a highly-respectable (and
highly-rented) suburb renders the air enervating to
ducal lungs, even though the ducal purse be inordinately
enriched by the ground-rents of it. It seems
that when a man becomes a duke the sight of
other men's chimney-pots grows unendurable; unless
indeed they be the chimney-pots of another duke;
and so he is fain to seclude himself in the middle of
his biggest park, in the most solitary part of the
country he can find. The higher his rank in the
peerage, the more cubic feet of air he requires.
What I should like to see - but what no one ever
will see - would be a duke graciously continuing to
reside in the midst of the suburb that has grown up
around him, and to which he owes a good part of his
living, and being quite nice to his neighbours. Not
only patronising and charitable to the poor, but
just as human and accessible as middle-class snobbery
would allow him to be.
It cannot be said that the local developments have been at all swift, or more than very moderately successful. For example, as you proceed from Strand-on-the-Green to Chiswick, you come first of all to Grove Park, where there is a railway station of that name which, together with an ornate public-house and a few shops and houses, wears a look as though left in the long ago to be called for, and apparently not wanted. I have known Grove Park for forty years, and it is just the same now as then. "The last place made" was the description of it long ago given me by a railway official there, pleased to see a human being; and although many places have come into existence since then, it still wears that ultimate look.
In the long ago, when I went to school in the
Chiswick high road at Turnham Green, at a boarding-school
that occupied an old mansion called "Belmont
House," we fronted almost directly opposite Duke's
Avenue, which still remained at that date just an
avenue of trees, with never a house along the whole
length of it, until you came to the noble wrought-iron
gates leading into the awful ducal sanctities
themselves. One might freely roam along the
delightful avenue, but the great iron gates were, it
seemed, always jealously shut; and even had they
not been, one's vague ideas of a something terrible
in unknown ducal shape would have prevented
trespass. I have seen not a few dukes since then,
and haven't been in the least frightened, strange to
say.
Nowadays the needs or the greed, I know not
which, of their successive Graces have caused the
land along either side of Duke's Avenue to be let
for building upon; and although, as already
remarked, the trees remain, and are indeed finer
than of yore, numerous very nice villas may be
found there; a little dank perhaps in autumn and
in wet weather generally, when those trees hold
much moisture in suspense, but still, quite desirable
villas.
The wonderfully fine old wrought-iron gates
were really much finer in the artistic way than one
ever suspected, as a schoolboy, and they were flanked
by rusticated stone piers surmounted by sphinxes.
Exactly what they were like you may see any day
in London, for they were removed in recent years
to Piccadilly, there to ornament the entrance to
the Duke's town house, and to render the exterior
of that hideous building, if it might be, a thought
less hideous. They have had their adventures,
having originally formed the chief entrance to
Heathfield House, Turnham Green, inhabited about
the middle of the eighteenth century by Viscount
Dunkerron. A Duke of Devonshire acquired them
in 1837.
There were very frequent grand spreads and
entertainments of various gorgeous kinds at Chiswick
House in the distant days when one went to school
at Turnham Green. His late Majesty Edward the
Seventh, of blessed memory, occasionally, as Prince
of Wales, had Chiswick House in summer-time
between 1866 and 1879. He was not perhaps so
universally popular then; for those were the days
when Sir Charles Dilke was posing as a red-hot
Radical, and furious persons of that kidney talked
of republics and all that kind of nonsense. But at
anyrate, rank and fashion were to be observed
flocking to the princely garden-parties here; and
very stunning the carriages and the horses, the
harness and the liveries looked; and very beautiful,
it seemed, the ladies with their sunshades and dainty
toilettes. Those were days long before any one
could have predicted the present motor-car era,
and no one could ever have imagined that the
daughters of those daintily attired ones would be
content to drive along amid dust and stinks, and to
tie up their countenances with wrappings that
sometimes look like fly-papers, and at others like
dishclouts. And those, too, were the days not
only before electric tramways, but also before even
horsed trams, along the Chiswick high road;
and Turnham Green (the worthy proprietor of our
school called it "Chiswick," because it looked
better) was a quite rustic place, and the distance
of five miles to home in London seemed to one
person at least a very far cry.
These be tales of eld, and now Turnham Green
is, to all intents and purposes, London, and shops
have long been built where the school stood, and
that dark high road - upon whose infrequent pedestrians,
certain schoolboys, packed off to bed all too
early, and not in the least tired, were used to expend
all the available soap and other handy missiles,
from lofty windows - has become a highway even
more than a thought too brilliantly lit at night.
CHISWICK CHURCH.
What remains of the park and gardens around
Chiswick House now looks sorry enough. The
place came into the hands of the Dukes of Devonshire
in 1753, when William Cavendish, the fourth duke,
who had married the daughter and heiress of the
third and last Earl of Burlington, succeeded on
that nobleman's death. It was this Earl of Burlington
who had created the glories of Chiswick.
A princely patron of the arts, especially those of
architecture and sculpture, he had brought home
with him from his travels in Italy a taste for the
grand exotic manner in the building of mansions
and the planning of gardens; and built the house
here in 1729, after the Palladian model. It has
been somewhat altered since, but the general idea
remains, and sufficiently proves that the grand
manner, learned abroad under summer skies, is
not the comfortable manner as evolved by the
necessities of a less ardent clime. English architects
have been slow to unlearn the classic fallacy, but
the home-grown architecture wins in the end, not
from any appreciation of the artistic merits or
demerits of the many methods, but on the score
of sheer comfort or discomfort in living.
The gardens of Chiswick House abounded in
formal walks and long vistas, with conventional
"ruins" and groups of antique statuary, but most
of these are now gone.
Chiswick House, deserted by its owners, became
a lunatic asylum, and stands at last more than a
little forlorn, with new streets and roads everywhere
around its grounds, and a newer suburb with the
projected name of "Burlington" arising by piece-meal,
instead of being created ad hoc, as the intention
originally was. Burlington is an excellent name;
substantial people, with good bank balances should
surely reside at such. It radiates respectability; no
one could be ashamed of it. I can easily imagine
confiding tradesfolk giving unlimited credit to residents
at Burlington; but it has not yet come into
being, and the vast wilderness-like expanse of
Duke's Meadows, projecting far southward, like a
great cape between two bends of the river, remains
a tussocky place of desolation, looking over to
Mortlake.
In Burlington Lane, which is an old name, is a
new length of villas, "The Cresent," its name so
misspelled, and kept so with the valiance of ignorance,
uncorrected, for at least five years past.
What remains of the old village of Chiswick lies
considerably to the east of all these developments,
and beside the river. There, past Hogarth House,
where that famous painter lived and worked - now
a museum and showplace at sixpence a head, in
memory of him - stands old Chiswick church. Restorations
and additions have left really very little
of the original building, but it wears a very plausible
appearance of age. The weather-vane exhibits a
figure of St. Nicholas, to whom the church is dedicated,
standing in a boat and holding a staff surmounted
by a cross.
A strange inscription may be seen on the churchyard
wall, at the east end. It seems to tell of a
time when Chiswick was a village in every rustic
circumstance:
This wall was made at ye charges of
Ye right honourable and Truly pious
Lorde Francis Russell, Earle of Bedford,
out of true zeale and care for ye keeping of this church yarde and
ye wardrobe of godds saints whose
bodies lay theirin buryed from violating by swine and other
prophanation so witnesseth
William Walker V. A.D. 1623.
Rebuilt 1831. Refaced 1884.
No one appears to know who was William Walker
the Fifth, and history is equally silent on the subject
of the others of that dynasty.
The neighbourhood is now one of remarkably
striking contrasts. By the church stands the "Burlington
Arms," an old inn claiming a remote origin,
early in the fifteenth century, and with obvious
honesty, for the ancient oaken timbers remain to
bear witness to the fact. It is a quite humble, but
cosy, little inn, astonishingly dwarfed by a great
towering fortress-like brewery at the back; as
though Beer had withdrawn itself into a final stronghold,
there to defend itself to the last vat. Opposite
the inn and this Bung Castle stands a stately red-brick
mansion of early in the eighteenth century, with
fine wrought-iron garden-gates. Up the street are
other fine old mansions, mingled with squalid streets;
and round by the riverside is Chiswick Mall, with
other noble houses of the olden times. Osiers are
cut even to this day on Chiswick Eyot, the reedy
island opposite.
Such are the contrasts of Chiswick, one of the
last outposts of rural things in these parts. To find
the last we must travel on through the Mall and on
to the more sophisticated Mall of Hammersmith;
thence proceeding across the bridge and along the
Hammersmith Bridge Road to Barnes. That is the
very last village.
Near by is Mortlake. No one has ever satisfactorily explained that place-name, nor attempted to define the mortuus lacus - the dead, or stagnant lake - that would seem to have originated it. Nowadays it is rather to a dead level of commonplace that Mortlake is descending, in the surrounding jerry-building activities. All that is left of the old church is the tower, apparently restored in the time of Henry the Eighth, for a tablet on the western face is inscribed "Vivat R.H. 8, 1543."
TOMB OF EDWARD ROSE, BARNES.
To speak of Barnes in these days of suburban expansion as a "village" may at the first mention appear to be unduly stretching a point, but although Suburbia spreads for miles in every direction, and although Barnes is completely enfolded by modern developments, the ancient village is still where it used to be. It is true that a frequent service of motor-omnibuses does by no means tend to the preservation of the old-time rural amenities of Barnes, nor do those who remember the Barnes of thirty or forty years ago welcome the sudden irruption of modern shops and flats opposite the old parish church; but very much of old Barnes is left embedded within these twentieth-century innovations; and while Barnes Common remains, it is not likely that the place will decline to the common characterless condition of an ordinary suburb. Of the original Barnes - the "Berne" of Domesday Book - the place owned by the canons of St. Paul's, before the Reformation, nothing, of course, is left; and we may but dimly picture that rural riverside manor, then considered remote from London, with its great spicaria, or barns (the barns that were so much larger, or more numerous, than the usual type that they gave the place its name); but there is a half squalid, half quaint appearance in the narrow, winding streets and lanes that hints, not obscurely, of the eighteenth or even of the seventeenth century. The church, too, although an examination of the interior proves it to have been, in common with most other once rural churches round London, swept almost entirely bare of ancient features, is picturesquely placed, and its sixteenth-century red-brick tower, partly clothed with ivy, looks venerable. There is little of interest within the church, beyond the somewhat curiously-worded epitaph to a former parson, which deserves the tribute of quotation:
Merentissimo Conjugi
Coniux Moerentissima.
To the best of hvsbands Iohn Sqvier
the Late Faithfvll Rector of This Parish;
the only Son to That most strenvovs Propvgnator
of Pietie and loyaltie (both by Preaching and Svffering)
John Sqvier, sometime Vicar of St. Leonards, Shoreditch near London:
Grace Lynch (who bare vnto him one only Davghter)
Consecrated This (such as it is) small Monvment
of Theyr mvtvall Affection.
He was invested in This Care An: 1660 Sept: 2,
He was devested of all Care An: 1662, Jan. 9,
Aged 42 yeares.
The really most sentimentally interesting thing here
is something that might well be overlooked by ninety-nine
of every hundred whose curiosity prompts them
to enter the churchyard; and it is probably so overlooked.
This is the not at all striking tomb of one
Edward Rose, citizen of London, who died in 1653,
and lies buried in the churchyard, against the south
wall of the church, by the great yew tree. He left
£20 for the purchase of an acre of land, from the rent
of which he ordained that his grave should be maintained
in decent order, and bequeathed "£5 for
making a frame or partition of wood" where he
had appointed his burying-place; and further ordered
three rose-trees, or more, to be planted there. The
bequests were to the minister, churchwardens, and
overseers for the time being, so long as they should
cause the wooden partition to be kept in repair and
the rose-trees preserved or others planted in their
places from time to time, as they should decay.
Thus it is that, duly honouring his sentimental
fancy, rose-trees are to this day to be seen here,
enclosed within a low wooden railing.
The way from Barnes into Putney is now, when once you have passed the Common, wholly cut up into a suburb of streets originally mean, and at last, by contact with the stern squalors of life in a striving quarter of London town, become little removed above the level of slums. But Barnes Common remains something considerable in the way of an asset, and through it still runs the Beverley Brook along the last mile or two of its nine-miles course from Cheam to its outlet into the Thames at Barnes Elms. I should say it would be a sorry business attempting to fish nowadays in the Beverley Brook; but regrets on that score are the sheerest futilities, and it should rather be a matter for congratulation that the brook has not been piped, and so altogether hidden from the eye of day. One, to be sure, regrets many things within this sphere of change; notably the very considerable slices the London and South-Western Railway has been allowed to appropriate from the very middle of the Common, not only for the purpose of running the line through it, which, it might possibly be argued, was a geographical necessity, but also for the building of its Barnes station there, which was nothing less than a sublime piece of impudence. What is left of Barnes Common is particularly beautiful in the way of towsled gorse and some pretty clumps of silver-birches. On a byroad leading off it into Putney - a route called Mill Hill road - is something very much in the nature of a surprise in these parts, nothing less than an old toll-house; a queer little building picturesquely overhung by bushy poplars. Its unexpected presence here (it must be now the nearest survival of its kind to London) hints that the days when Putney was really a village are not, after all, so long gone by.
THE OLD TOLL-HOUSE, BARNES COMMON.
Presently we come into Putney, and to the tramway
terminus hard by the bridge and under the
shadow of the church-tower, whose great sundial
warns all and sundry that
"Time and Tide Wait for no Man."
Is it a result of laying to heart this maxim,
truism, self-evident proposition, or whatever else
you choose to call it, that the tramway-cars and the
motor-omnibuses hustle so impatiently round the
corners of the bridge?
Those two church-towers, that stand so prominently
here on either side of the river and seem to
bear one another close company, although divided,
as a matter of fact by a quarter of a mile, with the
broad river running between, belong to the churches
of Putney and Fulham, both now to be regarded as
parts of London.
Putney Church, standing with its churchyard
actually on the river bank, was almost wholly rebuilt
about 1856, the exterior disclosing walls built of what
was once white brick, reduced now to a subdued
neutral tint. The old tower is left, and some few
small and late and much-battered brasses, now
preserved on the walls of a little north-eastern
chancel chapel, which is a survival from an earlier
building, and has a fine, though small, vaulted ceiling.
The usual absurd legends that seek to explain
place-names to the ignorant and the credulous are,
of course, not lacking here. The names of Putney
and Fulham, and their situation directly opposite
one another, on the Surrey and the Middlesex sides
of the river, both so prominently marked by their
church-towers, seem to the popular mind to need
some story. The writer on places becomes tired in
course of time at meeting those familiar rival "sisters"
of legend, who are always found, in these strictly
unveracious tales, to have been the competitive
builders of the two churches occasionally found in
one churchyard, of the twin towers possessed by some
few parish churches, and indeed of most buildings
which, for no very immediately apparent reason,
have been duplicated within sight of one another.
Here, therefore, we learn of two strange sisters
of gigantic stature who, in the conveniently vague
period of "once upon a time," lived on these opposite
banks of the Thames. One is almost ashamed
to repeat the stupid tale of their having agreed to
build the towers of the respective churches, and
having only one hammer between them, being
accustomed to throw it across from one to the other
when required. When the sister on the Fulham side
needed the hammer, she asked the other to throw it
over "full home." When it was returned, it was
flung with a will, in response to the request "put
nigh!" The flinging back and forth with every
stone bedded must have been very wearing, and the
shouting terrific. At last the hammer got broken,
and had it not been for the help of a blacksmith up-river,
who promptly mended it, the building must
have ceased. Of course you guess where this kindly
craftsman lived. Where else than at the place ever
after called, in memory of him, "Hammersmith"?
The expansion of Putney from the likeness to a country village which it wore until quite recent times well within the memory of many who do not yet call themselves old, dates from the completion of the new and commonplace bridge that spans the river here in five flattened arches, and is seven hundred feet in length, and cost over £240,000. Handbooks and guides of various sorts will tell those who know nothing about it that the old wooden bridge which this replaced in 1886 was "ugly and inconvenient." The inconvenience we may readily enough grant, but no artist who ever knew old Putney Bridge will agree to its having been ugly. Indeed, so picturesque was it, in its maze of timbering, that every one who knew it, and at the same time owned the artistic sense, bitterly regretted its clearing away to give place to the present commonplace, though convenient, stone structure. Old Putney Bridge was the first to span the river between Fulham and Putney, and was originally projected in 1671. The proposal to build a bridge here was in the first stage discussed in Parliament, and there met with such opposition and ridicule that the scheme failed and was not revived until 1722, finally meeting with the approval of the House and receiving the Royal sanction in the early part of 1726. It is well worth while, after that space of time, to recover some of the discussion in 1671 respecting the providing of a bridge in place of the immemorially old ferry. It was not only honest ridicule, but also a good deal of the fear and jealousy felt by "vested interests," that at first prevented a bridge being built here. And what person, or what corporate body, think you, was threatened so seriously by a bridge between Putney and Fulham? The owner of the ferry? the local watermen? my Lord Bishop of London, whose palace was and still is, on yonder bank? None of these were in such near prospect of being overwhelmed; but it would appear that the great, ancient, and prosperous City of London, more than five miles downstream, was in that perilous state, on the mere threatening of a bridge at Putney.
It was a Mr. Jones, representative of the City of
London in that honourable House, who caught the
Speaker's eye and thus held forth, in mingled appeal,
warning, and denunciation:
"It is impossible to contemplate without feelings
of the most afflictive nature the probable success of
the Bill now before the House. I am sensible that
I can hardly do justice by any words of mine to the
apprehensions which not only I myself personally
feel upon the vital question, but to those which are
felt by every individual in the kingdom who has
given this very important subject the smallest share
of his consideration. I am free to say, Sir, and I
say it with the greater freedom, because I know that
the erection of a bridge over the river Thames at
Putney will not only injure the great and important
city which I have the honour to represent, not only
jeopardise it, not only destroy its correspondence
and commerce, but actually annihilate it altogether."
It might be thought that this ludicrous extravagance
of language would have aroused derisive
laughter; but no, the House appears to have taken
him seriously, for, "Hear, hears" are reported at
this stage. Apparently fortified by them, he continued
in the same strain:
"I repeat, in all possible seriousness, that it will
question the very existence of the metropolis; and
I have no hesitation in declaring that, next to pulling
down the whole borough of Southwark, nothing can
destroy more certainly than building this proposed
bridge at Putney. (Hear, hear.) Allow me, Sir, to
ask, and I do so with the more confidence because
the answer is evident and clear, How will London be
supplied with fuel, with grain, or with hay if this
bridge is built? All the correspondences westward
will be at one blow destroyed. I repeat this fact
boldly, because, as I said before, it is incontrovertible.
As a member of this honourable House, I should not
venture to speak thus authoritatively unless I had
the best possible ground to go upon, and I state,
without the least fear of contradiction, that the water
at Putney is shallow at ebb, and assuming, as I do,
that the correspondences of London require free passage
at all times, and knowing, as I do, that if a
bridge be built there not even the common wherries
will be able to pass the river at low water, I do say
that I think the Bill one which only tends to promote
a wild and silly scheme, likely to advantage a few
speculators, but highly unreasonable and unjust in
its character and provisions; because independently
of the ruin of the City of London, which I consider
inevitable in the event of its success, it will effect an
entire change in the position and affairs of the watermen - a
change which I have no hesitation in saying
will most seriously affect the interests of His Majesty's
Government, and not only the interests of the Government,
but those of the nation at large."
Mr. Jones was followed by a member arguing
with almost equal extravagance and vehemence in
favour of the proposed bridge. It appeared to him
that, if built, it
"could not fail to be of the greatest
utility and convenience to the whole British nation."
Then presently arose Sir William Thompson,
who considered this project "romantic and visionary."
He added,
"If a bridge be built at Putney,
London Bridge may as well be pulled down. (Hear,
hear!) Yes, Sir, I repeat it - because this bridge,
which seems to be a favourite scheme of some honourable
gentleman whom I have in my eye - if this
bridge be permitted, the rents necessary to the
maintenance of London Bridge will be annihilated;
and therefore, as I said before, the bridge itself must
eventually be annihilated also. But, Sir, this is not
all. I speak affectionately of the City of London,
and I hope I shall never be forgetful of its interests
('Hear, hear,' from Mr. Jones); but I take up the
question on much more liberal principles, and assume
a higher ground, and I will maintain it. Sir, London
is circumscribed - I mean the City of London.
There are walls, gates, and boundaries, the which no
man can increase or extend; those limits were set
by the wisdom of our ancestors, and God forbid they
should be altered. But, Sir, though these landmarks
can never be removed - I say, never, for I have no
hesitation in stating that when the walls of London
shall no longer be visible and Ludgate is demolished,
England itself shall be as nothing; yet it is
in the power of speculative theorists to delude the
minds of the people with visionary projects of increasing
the skirts of the City so that it may even
join Westminster. When that is the case, Sir, the
skirts will be too big for our habits; the head will
grow too big for the body, and the members will get
too weak to support the constitution. But what of
this? say honourable gentlemen; what have we to
do to consider the policy of increasing the town while
we are only debating a question about Putney
Bridge? To which I answer, Look at the effects
generally of the important step you are about to
sanction: ask me to define those effects particularly,
and I will descend to the minutiæ of the mischief
you appear prone to commit. Sir, I, like my honourable
friend the Member for the City of London, have
taken opinions of scientific men, and I declare it to
be their positive conviction, and mine, that if the
fatal bridge (I can find no other suitable word) be
built, not only will quicksands and shelves be created
throughout the whole course of the river, but the
western barges will be laid up high and dry at Teddington,
while not a ship belonging to us will ever
get nearer London than Woolwich. Thus, not only
your own markets, but your Custom House, will be
nullified; and not only the whole mercantile navy of
the country be absolutely destroyed, but several
west-country bargemen actually thrown out of
employ. I declare to God, Sir, that I have no feeling
on the subject but that of devotion to my country,
and I shall most decidedly oppose the Bill in all its
stages."
All this reads sufficiently absurdly nowadays, but
it is surpassed in curious interest by the remarks
added by a Mr. Boscawen, who, after declaring that,
before he had come down to the House he could not
understand what possible reason there could be for
building a bridge at Putney, went on to say that
"now he had heard the reasons of honourable gentlemen,
he was equally at a loss to account for them."
And then, with concentrated satire, he proceeded:
"If there were any advantage derivable from a
bridge at Putney, perhaps some gentleman would
find that a bridge at Westminster would be a
convenience."
It should be remembered here that the first bridge
at Westminster was not opened until 1750. Until
that date there was not any bridge between London
Bridge and Putney. Hence the true inwardness of
the sarcasm in Mr. Boscawen's remarks already
quoted, and of those now about to be set forth.
Thus he continued:
"Other honourable gentlemen
might dream that a bridge from the end of
Fleet Market into the fields on the opposite side of
the water would be a fine speculation; or who knew
but at last it might be proposed to arch over the
river altogether and build a couple more bridges;
one from the Palace at Somerset House into the
Surrey marshes, and another from the front of
Guildhall into Southwark (great laughter). Perhaps
some honourable gentlemen who are interested in
such matters would get up in their places and propose
that one or two of these bridges should be built of
iron. (Shouts of laughter.) For his part, if this Bill
passed, he would move for leave to bring in half a
dozen more Bills for building bridges at Chelsea,
and at Hammersmith, and at Marble Hall Stairs, and
at Brentford, and at fifty other places besides."
Bridges at all those places have long since been
built, and, of course, many of them in iron; so the
foolishness of one generation becomes the sober
commonplace fact of the next.
The bridge thus hotly debated and rejected and at last permitted to be built, was eventually begun in 1729. It was wholly a commercial speculation. The Company interested in it had at the beginning to satisfy the claims of the Duchess Dowager of Marlborough, Lady of the Manor of Wimbledon, and of the Bishop of London, Lord of the Manor of Fulham, for the extinction of their respective rights in the ancient ferry. The Duchess received £364 10s., and the Bishop the meagre amount of £23. The three tenants of the ferry, however, received altogether as much as £8,000; and at the same time the Bridge Act provided for £62 per annum to be paid by the Company, in perpetuity, to the churchwardens of Putney and Fulham; to be divided between the watermen, their widows and children, for the loss of the Sunday ferry.
On November 27, 1729, the bridge was fully opened. The cost was remarkably small. Including Parliamentary expenses and the amounts paid to persons interested in the ferry, it totalled only £23,084 14s. 1d. The old building, narrow, and patched, and crazy-looking, but strong enough to have stood for many more long years, remained to the last in all essentials the bridge of 1729. It had twenty-nine openings, and at the top of the cut-waters of every pier a sanctuary for foot-passengers to step into when wheeled traffic occupied the narrow road. The modest sum of one halfpenny freed the pedestrian, except on Sunday, when the discouragement to gadding about on the Sabbath was a doubled toll. In 1880 the Metropolitan Board of Works purchased the bridge for £58,000, and on June 26 of the same year it was declared free of toll. The last chapter of its long story was concluded on May 29, 1886, when, upon the opening of the new bridge, it was closed.
Putney Bridge is found sometimes referred to as "Fulham" Bridge, but those references are few, and there has never been any general disposition to style it other than the name it bears by common usage. Yet it is as much Fulham Bridge as Putney. The present costly structure, built at such great expense in 1886, is already of insufficient width for conveniently carrying the great press of traffic that now uses it, especially since electric tramways have been laid across. The cynical indifference to the comfort and even the safety of other users of the road often displayed by public bodies and by the engineers who lay tram-rails, is shown markedly here, where the London County Council's lines run for a considerable distance within two feet of the kerb. It is already so evident that the width of the bridge is insufficient that the ordinary observer would not be surprised to find the necessary widening works soon begun.
Fulham Church was rebuilt in 1881, and only
the ancient tower of the former building remains.
It is in the Perpendicular style of architecture, of a
quite common type, and greatly resembles in general
style that of Putney Church, at the other end of the
bridge; but is on a much larger scale. It contains
a peal of ten bells, of which the Fulham people
used to be very proud, but an inordinate fondness
for ringing them in crashing peals has destroyed
any liking; and, in any case, Fulham of to-day,
as a part of London, has lost that sense of individuality
which used to take a proud interest in local
possessions.
The interior of the church, which has weathered
so greatly in the few years of its existence that it
resembles an ancient building, is rich in monuments,
but at one time possessed many more. The oldest
is a lozenge-shaped Flemish brass dated 1529 to
one Margaret Svanders, with a curious head-and-shoulders
representation of the lady herself;
but the oddest of all the memorials here is that to John,
Viscount Mordaunt, including a statue of that
nobleman, rather larger than life-size, in white
marble. It has now been banished to the tower,
from the prominent position it formerly occupied
in the south aisle, and is not a little startling, seen
suddenly and unexpectedly in a half light. The
weird-looking figure is like that of a lunatic policeman
standing on a dining-room table in his socks,
and pretending to direct the traffic, with a sheet
wound partly round his nakedness, and something
like a rolling-pin in his hand.
It stands on a raised slab of polished black
marble, with a black background throwing it into
further relief. This extraordinary effigy was sculptured
by Bird, author of the original statue of Queen
Anne in front of St. Paul's Cathedral, of which
an exact replica by Richard Belt now occupies the
same spot.
The mad-policeman idea is due, of course, to
the sculptor having chosen to represent that distinguished
nobleman as a Roman, with a truncheon,
which he is seen to be wielding with a mock-heroic
gesture. The truncheon typifies the official position
he held as Constable of Windsor Castle.
Lord Mordaunt was a younger son of the first
Earl of Peterborough. Born in 1627, he was active
among the younger Royalists, and figured at last
in the restoration of Charles the Second, who created
him Viscount Aviland, a title which seems to have
been somewhat thrust into the background. He
died of a fever in 1675, and appears to have led
an active and an honourable life, which ought to
have excused him from this posthumous grotesquery.
The whole monument is indeed a prominent example
of the fantastic taste of its period, and is set about
with marble pedestals bearing epitaph and family
genealogy, and sculptured gauntlets and coronets.
A number of very distinguished personages lie in the great churchyard. Prominent among the later monuments, as you enter along Church Row and past the Powell almshouses, is that of the fifth and last Viscount Ranelagh and Baron Jones, who died November 13, 1885, in his seventy-third year. There are still very many who well recollect the distinguished-looking figure of Lord Ranelagh: a tall, slim, bearded man, with his hair brushed in front of his ears in an old-world style, a silk hat rakishly poised at an angle, a tightly buttoned frock-coat, in which always appeared a scarlet geranium, throughout the year, and light-tinted trousers. He gave the general impression of one who had seen life in circles where it is lived rapidly; and to this his broken nose, which he had acquired in thrashing a coal-heaver who had been rude to him in the street, picturesquely contributed. He looked in some degree like a survival from the fast-living age of the Regency, although, as a matter of fact, he was born only when that riotous period was nearly over. The very title "Ranelagh" has something of a reckless, derring-do sound. He was one of the early Volunteers, and raised the Second (South) Middlesex corps, of which he remained colonel until his death. The military funeral given him by his men would have been of a much more imposing, and even national, character, befitting the important part he took in the Volunteer movement, had it not been that a general election was in progress at the time. At such times the military and auxiliary forces are by old statutes not allowed to assemble. The theory is the old one of possible armed interference with the free choice of electors.
Numerous monuments to long-dead and forgotten
Bishops of London are found here. A group
of them, eight in number, chiefly of the eighteenth
century, is found to the east of the church. They
are a grim and forbidding company. Amid them
is found the meagre headstone and concise inscription
to a humorist of considerable renown:
"Theodore Edward Hook, died 24th August, 1841, in the
53rd year of his age."
Efforts to provide a better
monument have failed to secure support. Perhaps
it is thought by those who withhold their subscriptions
that the reading his books is the best memorial
an author can be given.
THE TOWER, FULHAM CHURCH.
Immediately to the west of the church extend
the grounds of Fulham Palace, which run for some
distance alongside the river, where a strip has been
modernised and provided with an embankment
wall, and opened to the public as the "Bishop's
Park"; Fulham Palace and its wide-spreading lands
forming the "country seat" of the Bishops of
London, whose "town house" is in St. James's
Square. The Bishops of London have held their
manor of Fulham continuously for about nine centuries,
and are said in this respect to be the oldest
landed proprietors in England. Here they have
generally maintained a considerable degree of state
and secluded dignity, hidden among the luxuriant
trees and enclosed within the dark embrace of a
sullen moat, which to this day encircles their demesne,
as it probably has done since the time when a body
of invading Danes wintered here in A.D. 880-1.
This much-overgrown moat is a mile round, and,
together with the surrounding ancient muddy conditions
which were remarkable enough to have given
Fulham its original name of the "foul home," or
miry settlement, must have proved a very thorough
discouragement to visitors, both welcome and unwelcome.
Fulham Palace does not look palatial, and its
parts are very dissimilar. The two principal fronts
of the roughly quadrangular mass of buildings face
east and west. That to the east was built by Bishop
Howley in 1815, and has the appearance of the
usual modest country mansion of that period;
while the west front, which is the oldest part of
the Palace, and dates from 1502-1522, when the
then dilapidated older buildings were cleared away,
is equally typical of the less pretentious country-houses
of the age. It was Bishop Fitzjames who
rebuilt this side, and his approach gateway and the
tower by which the Palace is generally entered,
remain very much the same as he left them. A
modest, reverend dignity of old red brick, patterned,
after the olden way, with lozenges of black, pervades
this courtyard, upon which the simply framed windows
still look, unaltered. The sculptured stone
arms under the clock upon the tower are those of
Bishop Juxon, more than a century later than the
date of these buildings, and have no connection
with the position given them here in modern
times.
The Great Hall is immediately to the left of this entrance. It is in many ways the most important apartment in Fulham Palace. Here, while it was yet a new building, the ferocious Roman Catholic Bishop Bonner sometimes sat to examine heretics, while on other occasions they would appear to have been questioned in the old chapel, a structure that seems to have been situated in the eastern, rebuilt, portion of the groups of offices. The boldness of those sturdy men, many of whom became martyrs and confessors for righteousness' sake, reads amazingly. They were brought here in custody to the enemy's own precincts, and questioned for their lives, with preliminary tastes, in the shape of burning on the hands, of greater torments to come if their answers were deemed unsatisfactory. Yet we do not find that they often faltered. On September 10, 1557, there were brought before Bonner, in his private chapel here, Ralph Allerton and three other religious suspects. To one of these Bonner propounded the singular question, "Did he know where he was?" The answer came swiftly, "In an idol's temple." This was bold indeed, but awfully injudicious, according to modern ideas. But expediency and time-serving were cast aside then, and men were earnest though they died for it. I do not know what happened to the person who made that bitter repartee, but I suspect he suffered for it.
THE FITZJAMES COURTYARD, FULHAM PALACE.
In the Great Hall occasionally used by Bonner
in his examination of those who were not of his way
of thinking in religious matters, Thomas Tomkins
had his hand burned over the flame of a candle.
He perished at Smithfield in February 1555.
This hall, after various changes, was converted
into a domestic chapel by Bishop Howley, who had
demolished the old chapel in the course of his rebuilding
works. And so it remained until Bishop
Tait had completed his modern chapel, in 1867;
when it became again the Hall, and the marble
flooring in black and white squares, with which it
was paved, was replaced by oak.
Among the several changes that followed upon
Bishop Howley's rebuilding of a portion of the
Palace was that by which the old dining-parlour
was converted into a kitchen.
In the time when
Beilby Porteous was Bishop of London, 1787-1809,
there hung over the mantelpiece an object
that aroused the curiosity of all the Bishop's visitors;
not because they did not know what it was - for it
was nothing more than a whetstone, a sufficiently
common object outside the dining-room of a Bishop - but
because they could not understand its being
here. And when the Bishop further mystified his
guests by telling them it had been given to him on
one of his journeys as a prize for being an accomplished
liar, they gave up wondering, and waited
for the story obviously belonging to it.
The particular journey on which he accomplished
these supposed prodigious feats of lying and prize-winning
took him to Coggeshall, in Essex, which
appears at that time to have rejoiced in the possession
of a "Liars' Club." The tale is well told in the
old New Quarterly Magazine:
"There is a story
that Bishop Porteous once stopped in this town
to change horses, and, observing a great crowd in
the streets, put his head out of the window to inquire
the cause. A townsman standing near by replied
that it was the day upon which they gave the whetstone
to the biggest liar. Shocked at such depravity,
the good Bishop proceeded to the scene of the competition,
and lectured the crowd upon the enormity
of the sin, concluding his discourse with the emphatic
words: 'I never told a lie in my life,' whereupon
the chief umpire exchanged a few words with
his fellows, and, approaching the carriage, said:
'My Lord, we unanimously adjudge you the prize,'
and forthwith the highly objectionable whetstone
was thrust in at the carriage window."
This inimical article in course of time disappeared
from these walls, later Bishops being less appreciative
of the peculiar humour of the situation, or perhaps
feeling themselves to be unworthy of the exceptional
honour; for, after all, if Bishop Porteous "never
told a lie in his life," surely he must have ranked
with the only other personage reputed to have
been naturally truthful, George Washington. But
it is to be remarked that we have these statements
from suspect sources - from the personages themselves.
The Bishop said he had never done such a
thing, and Washington as a boy declared he "could
not." Now, it has been declared on eminent authority
which no one will care to dispute that "all
men are liars," and it would seem, therefore, that
these two were superhuman. They were not, on
account of that alleged natural truthfulness, one
whit the better than their fellow-men, for there is
more joy in one sinner that sees the error of his
ways and repents than in a hundred just men.
On the north side of the old courtyard are the
rooms especially associated, according to tradition,
with Bonner, whose ghost is said to haunt the corridors
and the apartment still known as his bedroom.
This part of the Palace is appropriately dark, and
the passages narrow. These rooms are now occupied
by the servants, as also are those on two other sides
of the quadrangle, generally known as Bishop Laud's
rooms. Until a few years ago - and perhaps even
yet - the servants were wakened in the morning
by a man known as the "knocker-up," who went
round the courtyard with a long wand, and tapped
sharply with it at the upper windows.
In these days of pageants, the picturesque
wooded grounds of Fulham Palace have witnessed
some striking reconstructions of the brave and the
terrible days of old. There was, for example, the
Church Pageant, in which numbers of participants
enjoyed themselves immensely as in a long bout of
private theatricals, all in aid of some deserving
charity. The charity did not, it would appear,
benefit after all, for those doings resulted in a deficit,
and a Military Pageant was held the following year
to make up the loss. What was done to abolish the
loss that probably resulted from this is not within
my knowledge.
The Bishops of London, or the Ecclesiastical
Commissioners, are now making some profit by
letting or selling land for building upon, around the
outskirts of the park. If any kind friend can help
an overburdened Bishop who cannot without difficulty
make two ends meet, let him remember the
occupant of Fulham Palace. His bitter cry has
appeared in the newspapers, so that there can be
no breach of delicacy in mentioning the subject
here.
Not the least of his burdens is the large sum it
is necessary to disburse before he can finally style
himself "London." Thus, the Reverend Winnington
Ingram, when installed Bishop of London, found his
accession to the Episcopal Bench and his coming
to Fulham Palace a little expensive. Other newly
made Bishops had ever found the like, but they
had never before taken the public into their confidence,
nor raised a howl of despair at the fees
customarily payable by new-made Right Reverend
Father in God. But this is an age of publicity,
in which very few unexplored or secret corners
survive; and Dr. Ingram is essentially at one with
an epoch which has produced General Booth and
the Reverend Wilson Carlile. We should, however,
be grateful for this, for by favour of it we learn
some curious ecclesiastical details that beset those
unhappy enough to have obtained high preferment
in the Church.
THE GREAT HALL, FULHAM PALACE.
Thus, on filling up a vacancy on the Bench of
Bishops, the first step, it seems, is that taken by
the Crown Office, which confers upon Dean and
Chapter the Sovereign's congé d'élire, or leave to
elect; not, be it said, the leave to elect whom they
please, but permission to elect whomsoever it shall
please the Sovereign (or the Prime Minister at the
head of the Government at the time in power) to
select, in place of the right reverend prelate recently
gathered to Abraham's bosom. The warrant for
this humorous "leave" to elect is paid for by the
Bishop who is presently elected. It costs £10, and
is but the first of a series of complicated costs
that come out of his pocket, and in the end total
£423 19s. 2d.
The initial warrant is followed by a certificate,
costing £16 10s., and that by letters patent,
costing another £30, with 2s. for the "docquet."
So far, your Bishop is only partly made. He is
"elected by Dean and Chapter." Thereupon,
through the Crown Office, the assent of the Sovereign
to the choice himself has made through his Prime
Minister, is graciously signified, and the original
costs are reimposed, plus 10s. The chapter-clerk
of the Bishop's own cathedral then requests fees
totalling £21 6s. 8d.
A technical form of procedure, known as "restitution
of temporalities," has then to be enacted,
not without its attendant fees, which include £10
for a warrant, £31 10s. 6d. for a certificate, £30 for
letters patent, and 2s. for another "docquet."
Next comes the Home Office, clamouring for
Exchequer fees: £7 13s. 6d. for the original congé
d'élire, and the like for letters recommendatory,
Royal assent, and restitution of temporalities.
The oath of homage costs £6 6s. 6d.
The new Bishop has then to reckon with the
Board of Green Cloth, with its homage fees to the
Earl Marshal and the heralds, totalling £15 0s. 2d.
Your Bishop is not yet, however, out of the
wood of expenditure. When he takes his seat in
the House of Lords the Lord Great Chamberlain's
Office wants £5 - and gets it. When he is enthroned
the precentor pockets £10 10s., and the chapter-clerk
£9 14s. 8d., the bell-ringers of the Cathedral
ring a merry peal - fee £10 10s. The choir then
chorify at a further expense of £6 17s. 4d.
Have we now done? Not at all. The clerk
of the Crown Office is tipped half a guinea, plus
two guineas for "petty expenses"; and takes £14
when the Bishop takes his place among his brethren
in the House of Lords.
When all these various officers of Church and
State are busily picking the new Bishop's pockets,
in advance of their being filled, as an Irishman
might say, the Archbishop himself is not behindhand.
His turn comes when the archiepiscopal fees
for confirmation are demanded; and they are heavy,
costing in all £68 4s. 10d. These imposts are made
up of the following items: Secretary, with Archbishop's
fiat for confirmation, £17 10s., Vicar-General,
£31 0s. 10d., fees at church where confirmation is
made, £10 5s., and to Deputy Registrar, for mandate
of induction, £9 9s. To the Bishop's own secretaries
a sum of £36 5s. is then payable. The
Bishop may then, surveying these devastations, at
last consider himself elected, and in every way
complete.
Let us hope that although the spreading tentacles of London town have enfolded Fulham and abolished its old market-gardens and numerous stately mansions in favour of commonplace streets, the evident episcopal wish to be rid of Fulham Palace will not lead to it being alienated. It remains one of the very few things that connect this now populous suburb with the village that many still remember; and the romantic-looking moat, often threatened to be filled up, is a relic of remote antiquity it would be vandalism to destroy. "No one," as Sir Arthur Blomfield remarked in 1856, "could say that the Bishops of London had constructed that defence. We may well hesitate to believe that any prelate, however rich and powerful, would have in any age undertaken to dig round his house a moat of such extent that, if intended as a means of defence, it would require a very large force to render it effective; still less can we believe that it was ever dug with any other object than that of defence." The Danes constructed it, and the bishops found it here when they came. It is fed by a sluice communicating with the river, and was until recent times a stagnant, malodorous place, owing to the sluice being rarely raised, the ditch cleansed, or the water changed. On the rare occasions when the mud was cleared away, the cost varied from £100 to £150, owing to the great accumulation of it. Those were the times when lilies grew in the moat. The Fulham people called them "Bishops' wigs." In 1886 the then Bishop of London received a communication from the Fulham Vestry, requiring him to fill up the evil-smelling moat, or to cleanse it. He had it cleaned out, and it looks no less a place of romance than before. It is too greatly overgrown with trees and brushwood to make a picture for illustration, but while it lasts, with the woodland park it encloses, Fulham will still keep some vestige of its olden condition of a Thames-side village.