OLD NAN'S WEIR was about a mile above Rushey, close to a towpath gate: its site now not very easy to find.
There is a not very distinguishable pool, grown up all one side with aquatic plants.
The lower end of a row of thorn bushes and willows slants down to the right bank at the spot.
There was a public house near here within living memory; possibly the Spotted Cow, though not certainly.
I discovered no stonework of the weir.
Mylne is my earliest authority for this station.
In June 1790 he judged a poundlock inadvisable here.
Ireland about the same date writes of
"the old stream falling almost into total neglect and disuse; its locks and wiers are falling fast into decay; and in many places we find only a few old timbers remaining, to mark where such aids to navigation were once thought of utility."
His humour has occasionally this flavour of dryness; his expression "locks" is to be understood in the antique sense; the first poundlocks above Oxford were only just building.
The weir was reported in 1791
"totally blown up; the water runs under the Sill, and leaves only ten inches of Water on the Sill; the whole obstructs the Navigation in such a manner, that it is impossible to make any pen ; even the Navigation Shallop, after being lightened, was obliged to be lifted over with Leavers." It was accordingly rebuilt almost immediately; and marked up to 1793 the upper limit of a district for improvements.
In 1802, however, whether through dilapidation or carelessness is not stated, Mylne found all open and no tackle in whatever; to the detriment of the floating depth all the way up to the next sound pen.
It belonged at this time and in 1821 to Mr. C. Loder of Lechlade; being rented in 1796 by Joseph Winter, tenant of Rushey also, who charged "4s. each London boat".
Mylne added that there was "no keeper in attendance, nor shelter for one of any sort, except an old willow".
In the autumn of 1810 a proposed short cut hereabouts was deferred.
Fearnside speaks of the station in 1832 as "a small weir with merely a hut".
Ravenstein notes it as free in 1861.
It is stated to have been removed, and the waterway nearly doubled in 1868.
There is no bridge here now; though I get in 1798 an allusion to
"a Long swing bridge Over the Barge Canal as is nockt Down by the Boats and all to pieces and lies in a daingerous Situation a Little above Rushy pound Lock.
Built by the Order of Mr. Clews placed in a Rappid Stream and a Daingerous place."
Its removal was besought; I regret I have no further notes about it.

RUSHEY LOCK WTSWG

The earliest note I have of this spot is a grant in September 1542 to Robert Kyng, bishop of Oxford, of
"the several water called Rushey, flowing within the parish of Bampton, in tenure of John Bond."
On 6 November 1756 I find a reference to an inquisition on the body of Richard Ridge "there drowned by Misfortune"
Rudge or Ridge: it is all the same hereabouts.
The lock was built of stone and opened in the winter of 1790 with a toll of 2½d. per ton.
"Rudge, the tenant of Rushey", is the first keeper named, in 1793, with about 3s. 3d. weekly.
Mr. Southby then and in 1821 owned the weir.
The association of the name of Rudge with both this and one or two lower stations affords another instance of the intricacy attending the history of the locks and weirs.
In 1794 Boydell calls it Rudge's: a name usually attached to Tadpole next below.
Rushey might seem a happy development of Rudge's: but I do not think it is.
Joseph Winter was keeper in 1798, with a monthly wage of 17s. He charged "each London boat 5s. 6d." for 60 tons.
Mylne in 1802 says that Mr. Perfect owned the weir, and that Winter rented it; and was supposed to look after both it and Old Nan's immediately above.
Winter's descendants still inhabit the neighbourhood of Tadpole; one surviving old man was indeed born at the former lockhouse.
In June 1813 the monthly wage was raised to 28s.
The ferry belonged to the Commissioners at least as early as 1816.
In October 1822 Wm. Brooks was keeper with 24s. monthly.
In 1857 the lock was
"in a most frightful state of dilapidation.
It had only two gates out of four, and it was stuffed up with hurdles, and straw, and that sort of thing, to keep the water up to a certain height":
a result of the farming out of this district, already alluded to.
In October 1866 the Conservancy considered the appointment of a keeper at 48s. monthly, to have general oversight between Radcot and New Bridge.
I do not, however, find anyone put in charge until Thos. Winter in October 1872, at 28s. monthly: doubtless a descendant of the Joseph Winter noted above in 1798.
In the early part of 1874 he asked for an extra 8s. monthly for rent in lieu of the lockhouse.
It was refused; and he seems to have retired; as in April of this year James Clark, possibly of Clark's Garden, is named as keeper.

Rushey Weir, Etching by Phillips 1874

The weir, which Taunt in 1871 describes as old and broken, was repaired during 1875 at a cost of £300.
The etching presented, dated this year, shews no tackle in it whatever, and doubtless represents its condition before rehabilitation.
The overflow is broken only by the crazy uprights of the footbridge.
Tom Weal l-lent me the drawing; it shews the older house, supported by a buttress: now replaced with the trim cottage nearer the lock side.
In May 1876 wages were increased to 125s. weekly.
Keeper Townsend was later complained of as inefficient; and resigned in January 1889.
In March, E. Lambeth of the Trout at Tadpole, tenant of the house and land at the lock also, was appointed keeper.
(The Conservancy, I should explain, hold no property at this station except the bare lock, and possibly the weir.)
S. Burge, his sub-tenant at the lockhouse, succeeded him in January 1891; but deserted the place a twelvemonth later, and Lambeth returned.
Wm. Shewry (surely a Romany name) was placed in charge in May 1892.
Lambeth, an old waterman told me as I loafed about at Godstow one August day in 1912, was drowned in a well; perhaps the one at the end of the weir bridge.
An extent of fishery defined in 1890 affords some interesting local place names:
"At the Black Stream from its commencement at the site of a weir formerly called the Company's Weir immediately above Rushey Weir and extending to a point a little below the weir in the said Black Stream called Winney Weg's Weir."
In October 1893 occurred the curious incident of a pony, apparently a stray, being drowned in the lock.
The house was rebuilt about 1896, with "a pyramidal roof over a square building".
Its predecessor had become very dilapidated, and the floor was raised in the new house.
"I had seen," a recent owner writes me, "the older one in time of flood, the door half open and the floor all awash; tenant had fled.
The meadows for nearly a mile north and south of the River were covered in a bad flood: such as 1894."
The lock was rebuilt a little before October 1898.
In October 1900 Shewry got an allowance for house rent, there being "no {official} lockhouse" on the spot; and the nearest other dwelling being the inn, probably the Trout, which he rented at about £34 annually.
Tom Weal succeeded him before 1905.

WINNEY WEG'S WEIR, Winey Weg's Or Werg's Weir

which I first notice in Jessop's report of 1789, did not stand across the main Thames, but was situated upon an outfall and in the northern neighbourhood of Tadpole Bridge.
Mr. Southby is noted as owner in 1821.
It is mentioned in 1877 as an example of a weir not belonging to the owners of the land in which it stood.
Tom Weal wrote me in 1911:
"There was a Winnie Weg's weir at the Isle of Wight Brook, but there is no weir now.
The ground there is ours and it is still called by this name in the agreement for our House and Grounds."
This location of the weir disagrees with the allusion under Rushey above; Company's weir being doubtless on the south bank of the River, while the Wight stream is on the north.
I have written about the Winney Weg weir in my Stripling Thames.
It comes into Thames navigation history through its effect upon the water level.
The tolls levied will be found in my General History.

LOWER RUDGE'S WEIR

Lower Rudge's occurs also in the above Report.
I am at a loss regarding its identification; possibly it stood on the same channel as the foregoing.
A note of 1793 speaks of "Lower Rudge's or Rushey", as though they were one and the same; and again a Bodleian MS. seems to identify it with Winnie Weg's: "Thomas Rudge and Winney Weg's Weir".

TADPOLE BRIDGE WTSWG

A late 18th century stone bridge of one large, commodious arch.
This always seems to me the Cinderella amongst the bridges.
No Act for it appears in the Statutes at Large; and my earliest reference is Robt. Whitworth's map of 1784.
In 1796 "a new bridge at Tadpole" was in contemplation; was the present bridge not the first here?
I get allusions to a shoal called Adam's Flat here in 1793 and 1796.
The Trout inn stands close by; I said something about it in my Stripling Thames which I still maintain.
"Herring is a local folk name ; and at one time over the entrance was the legend: The Trout, kept by A. Herring."

TADPOLE WEIR, Rudge's, or Kent's Weir

Griffiths in 1746, Bowles in 1772 and Dawe in 1827 call it Rudge's only; Boydell in 1794 and Fearnside in 1832 Tadpole or Kent's.
Tombleson's very inaccurate map of about 1859 (whose errors the modern editions, adornments of the Great Western and other railway bookstalls, still perpetuate), Hall in 1859 and Ravenstein in 1861 name it simply Kent's.
It is interesting that a Mrs. Kent was responsible in 1802 for Duxford weir, 3½ miles below.
Mylne mentions no owner in 1791, but Sir John "Throgmorton" in 1802; reporting "all thrown open".
It was in very bad repair in 1792-3.
It appears in the Conservancy records in 1866, but was removed under an order of September 1869, and the waterway nearly doubled.
In September 1870 one W. B. Wood of Chippenham asked permission to build a weir at Tadpole "like the old one removed"; but was not allowed.
Exactly six years later the neighbouring farmers claimed on the Conservancy for damage to their crops through the removal of the weir; and asked for its restoration.
It is stated that before 1877 Tadpole had "a considerable coal wharf".
The right bank still contains some broken stonework at the head of the quite distinguishable pool a very little below the bridge.

THAMES WEIR

I thought in my Stripling Thames that the curious name of Ten Foot Bridge was perhaps a corruption of Thames Foot Bridge.
It gradually emerges, however, after protracted study that "Thames" had a separate identity, and stood about half way between Tadpole and Ten Foot.
Griffiths in 1746 and Dawe in 1827 name Thames only.
Whitworth's map of 1784 shews both.
In August 1821 I get a record that this weir was in a very bad state;
"Mr. Courtenay should have notice to repair."
Perhaps the strongest evidence for the separate identities of the two stations is in the List of Old Lock Tolls of 1821 which I print in my General History; where in the 1771 column the toll for "Thames" is named as a penny per 5 tons (to be paid at Rushey); while Ten Foot levies a different and additional charge.
There is a quite evident weir pool about half a mile above Ten Foot, without any stonework surviving, which some haymakers in the summer of 1910 assured me was the site of the old "wyres."

Ten Foot Bridge

TEN FOOT FOOTBRIDGE WTSWG

I discussed this curious and puzzling name in my Stripling Thames.
Considered as applying to either the height or the length of the present bridge it is plainly a misnomer.
Most probably the true explanation is that at some ancient period the weir possessed a ten foot flash opening for the barge traffic.
Indeed, after coming independently to this conclusion I found it perhaps corroborated by an allusion in Jessop's Report of 1791 to "the 10 feet weir".
The site is about 1¾ miles below Tadpole.
Bowen's map of 1775 names a Newnton weir above Duxford.
Doubtless he intended this station; the hamlet of Lower Newton lying about half a mile southeast.
A variation of the name is Newton's Weirs.
Mylne notes the weir without comment in 1791; in 1793 he recommended a poundlock.
The tenant in 1796 was Thos. Yeates: "4s. each boat".
In 1802 Mylne reported:
"The wear house is a public house belonging to Sir John Throckmorton, who lets the whole of the Fishery, tolls, etc., for £26 a year."
There is no dwelling here now ; Mylne perhaps meant the Trout at Tadpole.
In November 1811 £70 was paid to John Kent, doubtless a relative of the Mrs. Kent alluded to at Tadpole, for repairs to the worst parts of the towpath between here and Duxford.
Wood in 1850 names it below Thames weir; Ravenstein in 1861 passed free.
It appears in Conservancy records in 1866.
In February 1867 the bad state of the weir bridge, from the foot passengers' point of View, was complained of.
The Conservators replied that they did not recognize any right of way across the weir; but were informed that the right undoubtedly existed.
The weir was removed, the bridge built, and the waterway nearly doubled, under their order of September 1869.
In Dredge's view of 1897, taken apparently from exactly the same point as my own, a very dilapidated thatched cottage appears on the right bank.
Mylne therefore may after all have meant a public house immediately adjacent.
A note of 1639 from the Loder-Symonds Papers may be printed here as fittingly as elsewhere.
On June 15th a declaration was made
"that Mr. Alderman Pratt's bank in the parish of Buckland, now questioned to be cut by the Commissioners of Sewers, has stood time out of mind, and that the inundations thereabouts do not proceed from it, but from the narrowness of the Thames below it, belonging to Robert Veseye of Chimney (the Thames being there only 27 feet broad, but next Mr. Alderman's ground 36 feet), as also from the stopping of a common watercourse called Boylake in the lordship of Sir H. Martyn."
The alderman is evidently Sir Henry Pratt, of whose tomb at Coleshill I wrote in my Stripling Thames.
What his "bank" was I cannot tell : whether a raised Riverside bank, or a weir.
If a weir be meant, Ten Foot suits the circumstances, except that it seems always to have been in the ancient Throckmorton family.
The Commissioners may have been the Oxford body of 1623.
Boylake, in Sir H. Martyn's domain, must have been in Longworth parish: perhaps one of the network of small streams on the right bank across the River from Shifford.

SHIFFORD UPPER WEIR

This weir, at the head of the lock cut, was first built in the summer of 1898.
Amongst the landmarks at Shifford, mentioned in a grant by Ethelred to Eynsham abbey in 1005, occur two weirs: "one above the lake, the other beneath."
"Lake" must be understood Wiltshire way, as a small brook; the brook being an outfall running up to Chimney.
The higher of these ancient weirs I do not identify, unless it was by Duxford hamlet; is not the one "beneath" the ancestor of Shifford old flashweir, which stood, as mentioned below, rather lower than the present lock, probably close to the junction of the Great Brook?

DUXFORD WEIR

DUXFORD WEIR stood immediately below the hamlet.
It was called three miles below Ten Foot of old time, but is not, I think, more than two.
Griffiths in 1746 and Bowles in 1772 both call it Ducksford; as also Wood in 1850.
There was much wading and shoving your craft over the shallows here easily within living memory, before the lock was built at Shifford.
Mylne in 1802 states : " Mrs. {Grace} Kent rents it under Mr. Loder, the proprietor."
There was then only a cabin at the weir; and Mrs. Kent's house was an inn
"at a considerable and inconvenient distance from the Navigation."
Coupling this statement with the association of the Kents with Tadpole, it seems very probable that the inn was the Trout there, and that this family served no less than four weirs.
The Rev. R[ober]t Symonds is named as owner in 1821.
A ferry was established here in 1827.
Ravenstein names a toll of Sixpence in 1861 and instructs you here, and at Shifford weir and Limbre's below, to "hook up planks with a hitcher from a punt close by".
The weir appears in Conservancy records in November 1866; and was removed under an order of September 1869, and the waterway widened.
The latter is now almost entirely grown up with reeds, and wonderful waterlilies in the summer; you might perhaps get a canoe along it.
The official ferry has gone; an aged woman in Duxford told me the craft was swept away in a great snowstorm years ago, and has never been replaced.
There is one, however, down at the lock.

SHIFFORD LOCK WTSWG

About 1490 "Shyffordesfery" near the "town of Longeworth" is mentioned, and it is claimed that the "fierybarge" ought to be maintained by the abbot of Eynsham.
I think, from several scattered indications, that the old fiashlock was about three quarters of a mile or more below the present lock, close to the junction of the Great Brook.
It is supposed to have been called Newditch in an order of 1762.
Mr. Loder owned it in 1791.
This year John Treacher reported:
"Only a fishing place. Can't shut in now. Should be all swept away."
In 1703 it was stated not to have been shut for two years past.
In 1796 "Townsend (fisherman) wants to establish a charge of 2s. 6d. per boat, which he is not entitled to but when used - the Weir never being used but in very short water."
In 1802 Mylne recommended a poundlock at Chimney, a mile higher than where it was actually built; and another at "Shifford's Wear"; having found "all open and the Tackle kept at a distance in a punt, hid in a side ditch. No person near it."
The "side ditch" was perhaps the mouth of the Great Brook.
Herein is illuminated Ravenstein's note at Duxford about "the hitcher in a punt close by."
A tough world, then, afloat ; and immeasureably the better for you!
He paid Sixpence here.
Mylne plaintively exemplifies the prevalent waste of water: an outfall always running, in the neighbourhood of Chimney, unchecked by even a gauge weir, simply because for a few weeks in harvest the farmers found it convenient to bring their corn along it in punts.
Possibly this was the Chimney lake of the survey at 1005, just mentioned.
The weir in 1821 belonged to the Rev. R[ober]t Symonds.
In September 1829 it was in very bad repair, and the owner was to be deprived of his tolls until he remedied matters.
In May 1853 "all that remains of this weir is part of the sill and some stones; yet 2s. is levied on each Boat passing, which is collected at Ducksford Weir."
In October 1876 the Severn Canal Company complained that their tug, drawing 3 feet 6 inches, could not proceed past Old Shifford on account of the shoals.
In March 1881 the Conservancy were asked to enable a launch drawing only 2 feet 9 inches to pass the weir.
In July 1883 occurs an allusion to Swiftlake brook in Bampton parish, by Chimney farm: an interesting parallel to the Swift Ditch near Abingdon.
The present lock is the newest foundation on the River; it was not even discussed before April 1896.
The lock cut was engineered in part from an old side channel.
The weirs at its head and against the lock are both entirely modern.
Towards the end of 1896 the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, in view of the approaching completion of the lock, interceded on behalf of certain of their tenants at Chimney, who had been in the habit of going to church by water: I presume at Shifford.
The Conservancy granted free lock passes for the purpose.
J. Iles was appointed first keeper in December 1897; and the pound was ready for traiiic by the end of March 1898.
The weir "across the main River at the upper end of the cut" was expected to be ready early in the same summer.
It is interesting to discover that there was at first a very considerable majority of the Authority in favour of calling it Chimney lock, "as being in that parish".
(Chimney is far from being a parish ; it is simply the name of a farm with two labourers' cottages attached.)
Through the laudable persistence of the minority, however, the more natural and historic name of Shifford was retained.
D. E. Collins was keeper in 1913, having been brought down from St. John's.
A by-stream running from Thames weir to Chimney (see map ..) is, in some ancient plans, called The Old River.

SANSON'S OR SAMSOM'S FORD WTSWG

I get a note in 1829 of ballasting required hereabout; and the towing path to be raised.
This ford was, not as I conjectured in my Stripling Thames across the Duxford channel, but at the head of a poplar island about half a mile above Limbre's, or a mile and a half below Shifford.
The raising of the towpath mentioned above under Ten Foot survives in the long broken mounds which line the right bank upwards from this spot.
I get the name, usually Sansom's, at intervals down to about 1875 ; probably it is still current.
I note in 1890 two River meadow names : Black Ham and Haul Ham, in the parish of Longworth.

LIMBRE'S WEIR

Traces of this station stand exactly two miles below Shifford lock; so that the ancient reckoning of a mile from Shifford old weir is further evidence that the latter stood appreciably lower than the present lock; though I think even so that the mile must have been one of the longest of Dr. Plot's three Oxfordshire sorts.
A variety of names attach themselves.
Bowles in 1772 calls it Limbress; Ravenstein in 1861 and Taunt in 1872 add Daniell's.
A Report in 1789 and Mylne in 1802 describe it as Hart's or Langley's; until I discovered the 1821 list printed in my General History I thought this a mere confusion.
This station therefore is the third in the series of Hart's weirs.
In 1796 it is called "Townsend's-Weir, or Langley's; rented by Thomas Hart."
Another witness to the name Langley's is a note of 1821 in which the tenant, one Rose, states that the flash mark of "Langley's" is too low; and that craft are thus hindered in passing over "Shifford hill" just above.
In 1877, and indeed earlier, as mentioned below, it is called by the name of this tenant Rose also.
Mylne in 1802 "found all open"; they preferred the fishery to the navigation in those days.
"No House", he adds, "but a Cabin, for the Wearkeeper, when he attends."
He recommends a lock to be placed here.
"Limbre's Weir", wrote Fearnside in 1832, "is rather picturesquely situated; and from the compressure of the current, there is generally a fall of water, forming, in the rainy season, a kind of cascade, dangerous, without due caution, to small boats."
Ravenstein in passing over mentions that he paid "at Cock's below" for doing so.
In 1866 the name of Rose's is attached both in the official records and in Parliamentary evidence.
In the latter a witness stated: "Mr. Rose lives at Duxford and has occasionally coals taken from the Oxford Canal.
I have myself frequently passed that weir when the keeper has not been there; he works for a neighbouring farmer; he is a fisherman, and is frequently away.
It is possible for boats to pass" ; but the works seem to have been in a very ruinous condition.
The weir is doubtless in Standlake parish.
Probably "Longham's" weir in this parish, for whose suggested removal compensation was demanded early in 1867, is meant for Langley's.
The owners presenting the claim were Magdalen college, Oxford.
"Langham" weir, belonging to Magdalen, was removed by the Conservancy a little before February 1872.
The ownership by a Mr. Langham, possibly a tenant of Magdalen, in 1821 establishes my association of this name with the weir.
You may still see what I conjecture to be remains of the old stonework if you search the left bank at the head of the well defined pool about three quarters of a mile above New Bridge, just against the first slopes of Harrowdown hill.
A charming and secluded spot; the surviving stonework so hidden behind festoons of creeper and bramble and the tall reeds that you would not notice it unless specially searching.

NEW BRIDGE WTSWG

New Bridge was built about 1250; perhaps, it is stated, by the monks of some adjacent monastery.
It is popularly spoken of as the oldest bridge on the upper River in its origin; probably for the sake of the antithesis between its age and its name.
But Windsor amongst others has older records; and why should it have been called New, if there were no predecessor? Personally I think that Radcot is the oldest extant bridge foundation above Oxford; and that New Bridge was so called in respect of it.
John Golafre, "the iirst man ever called esquire," seems largely to have rebuilt New Bridge about the middle of the fifteenth century.
Leland about 1535 notes:
"Ther is a longe Cawsye of Stone at eche end of the Bridge.
The Bridge it self hath vi greate Arches of Stone."
They tell you seven, locally ; but I could never so count them.
The Baskervile MS. of 1692 says:
"6 New Bridge on Bark sheir side has 17 Arches to y^e main bridge.
The Main bridge has 6 Arches & is about 53 paces or yards over
On Oxford sheir side beyond y^e main bridge are 28 Arches
The Causeway on Oxfordshire side is about 300 yards & y^e Causway on Barkshire side are 373
And in all over Causeways & Bridge about 726 yards over 51 Arches, to vent water in great flouds."
Where are these arches now?
Also in 1693:
"Some little sage Chees of late has been sold at Newbridge fair wch fair since Sr Edmond Warcope got y^e Charter is not above 20 years standing Anno Dom 1693."
In 179I Robert Mylne complained:
"At New Bridge there are many serious obstructions.
The best Arch for Navigation, 17 feet 11 inches wide, is totally obstructed in low water time by the land above the Bridge having grown by degrees {by the action of the Windrush} quite across the River towards the south, with trees thereon.
A straight Cut should be made {but never has been} directly through this land or Eye."
He proceeds (and shudder, O quantumst hominum venustiorum!):
[ Latin quotation from Catullus - maybe:
"Oh what a great and charming man!"]
"All the Ribs and their impost Stones should be cut out of the Arches, as they are no use, and Damage Barges greatly.
The third Arch should have the pointed Arch cut away, and a new Flat one thrown over, on the same piers."
The Commissioners cautiously postponed the mischief "until the Consent of the County of Oxford be obtained".
We have been spared the "Flat one"; but the ribs, at least of the navigation arches, have been smoothed away.
John Nock, builder of St. John's and Buscot locks, received £44 for repairs in 1801.
In 1865, owing to the defective state of the navigation, not a single vessel had passed the bridge up to May.
The embankment some three feet in height, extending hence nearly down to Eynsham, was constructed under the Act of 1866, to protect the meadows from floods.
Speaking of the River above the bridge in 1871 Taunt says:
"You will find it all grown up with water parsley ; but it is not so bad as it was a summer or two ago, before Mr. Campbell's barges went up and down from Buscot."

RIDGE'S WEIR

RIDGE'S is the current popular name of the next old weir site, one and a quarter miles below New Bridge; though Taunt in 1879, and Salters' recent Guides, are the only printed authorities I find for the title.
Very commonly it was called Langley's, like Skinner's below Bablock Hithe; Select Committee evidence in 1866 expressly states that there were then two weirs called Langley.
A third might have been added: Limbre's; as I have already shewn.
The name Langley's was used by writers so diverse as Jessop in 1789, the O.S. of 1805-1844, Hall in 1859, Ravenstein in 1861, and Taunt himself in 1872.
(The latter stated in 1871 that "the weirs above Ridge's are all gone; some washed away, and the rest pulled out by the Conservators."
He meant those unattached to locks; but even of these there was at least one left: Hart's at Eaton.)
Other appellations are Cock's or Old Hart's in 1793; Granny Cock's or Rudge's in 1821.
This will further illustrate the difficulty I have had in disentangling the separate histories of these ancient, remote obstructions of the distant reaches of the River.
Rocque's Survey of 1761 marks Hart's ferry at a mile below New Bridge, just above one or two islands.
Next follows the romance of a peer falling in love with the weirkeeper's daughter Betty, here "at Rudge's Weir", having her educated, and then marrying her: actually in 1766, at Northmoor church.
She is said to have left many descendants when she died in 1808; and to have been much loved and respected as a "courtly old grandame".
The story is unassailable; the curious in such matters will find evidence enough in Lodge's Genealogy of the Peerage, 1859 edition, and in similar earlier publications.
Her signature is in the register of Northmoor church.
In the year 1789 the weir was owned by a Mr. Doughton, in lease to Mrs. Grove.
In 1821: St. John's College were the owners; had it changed hands, or was Mr. Doughton the college agent?
Boydell in 1794 places, at a mile below New Bridge, a weir which he calls simply Hart's, and which he thus describes:
"On approaching Hart's weir the banks are so thickly planted that the river appears to be passing through a wood whose trees overarch the water.
Here the Thames divides itself into one large and two lesser streams, forming as many islands; one of which is inhabited.
The weir stretches across from the meadow bank to these islands, and is a principal feature of one of those home scenes, which frequently afford a more complacent delight to the mind than the wide expansive variety of distant prospect.
A range of flood-gates crosses the larger current; while the diminutive streams, that divide the islands, tumble over their sluices in unbroken waterfalls."
He then came "in a very few miles", not noticing Ark at all, to "Langley-weir"; evidently Skinner's, as he proposes thence to visit Stanton Harcourt.
Now I cannot dispossess my mind of a suspicion that good Lord Mayor Boydell, or the bibulous Coombe his ghost, confused Ridge's with Ark two miles below.
It is noteworthy (a)that his description suits the present aspect of Ark exactly, and scarcely Ridge's at all; (b) that it tallies very largely with Fearnside's description of Ark in 1832; (c)that he does not mention Ark; and (d)that Westall in 1828 employs a thin paraphrase of Boydell to describe Ark.
It is all along of the Harts, those sowers of dragons' teeth throughout the River.
This is their fourth station.

Ridge's Footbridge 1910

In 1796 [Ridge's] weir belonged to one Dalton, of Fyfield; and was rented by Mrs Butler, who charged "4s. each London boat".
Dalton and Doughton are probably identical.
Mylne speaks in 1802 of "Butler's, formerly Hart's"; adding: "a fine and useful pound lock might be made here".
Northmoor may perhaps be regarded as the realisation of his idea.
In a survey of 1811 the title of "Butler's or Hart's" is again given to this station; the Trencher Papers add Jourdens in 1826.
I get no further history whatever until October 1866, under the Conservancy, when the weir was evidently still at work:
"At Ridge's or Hart's Mrs. Ridge to be allowed 1s. for each canal boat and 4d. for each pleasure boat as remuneration."
St. John's College still owned in February 1867.
In the following October S. Ridge was granted 1s. weekly for attending the weir.
In January 1868 the property in it was reserved to the college, with the right of nominating the keeper subject to the approval of the Conservancy, who retained the tolls.
He was to live in the house belonging to the college adjacent to the weir.
The weir was ordered, apparently at the owners' suggestion, to be removed in January 1872; but as will appear the demolition was delayed for some years.
In June 1873 Thomas Ridge, "of the weir near Fyfield," was accused of illegal fishing; and again in October 1876.
He was dismissed (being described as "of Skinner's weir"), and Ebenezer Henry Scarlett succeeded him at 2s. weekly.
In May 1878 Scarlett moved to Standlake; and wrote the Conservancy he could not afford to attend the weir "at present pay". It was still working in June 1879, although extremely dilapidated; and the River needed widening.
At this date Benjamin Godfrey was suggested to succeed Scarlett, as living nearer to "Standlake" weir; to have 2s. 6d. weekly.
Doubtless this Station is meant; though I do not think it is in Standlake parish.
In July 1880 the weir was alluded to as "now removed": the footbridge was building in October 1879.
It is now a very picturesque scene.
Close by, on the right bank, just discernible in my photograph between the willows and the tall reeds, is an ancient thatched house of some size, which may have been the weirkeeper's.
The bridge crosses at the exact point at which the River ascends northwards for its long sweep round by Oxford and thence southward to Abingdon: only six miles away as the crow flies, although some twenty-four by water.
Noah's Ark was an inn or house about half a mile below: not immediately adjacent to either Ridge's or Ark.
Whitworth's map of 1784 confirms this location of the inn.
In 1796 the necessity of several bridges "to continue the Towing-Path through the pleasure-ground and garden belonging to the house" was alluded to.
"The horses go at present full three quarters of a mile round about; and it is a very great hindrance to upward boats."

NORTHMOOR LOCK WTSWG

A wholly modern station, one mile below Ridge's, both lock and weir first discussed in July 1890, and opened in January 1896.
A long mile and a half from the tiny village of its own name, the lock seems set in a solitude similar to that of Grafton.
J. Basson of Reading was appointed first keeper in February 1896.
He was transferred to Marsh in February 1899, and R. Basson from St. John's took his place here; being sent down to Day's later on.

ARK, or HART'S, or ARK ISLAND WEIR WTSWG

ARK, or HART'S, or ARK ISLAND WEIR stood three miles below New Bridge.
This memorable station has been known by a variety of other names also; and its descriptions and location by successive writers are very confused.
Bowles in 1772, Dawe in 1827 and the erratic Tombleson in 1859 call it Noah's Ark: an appellation Thames side and also inland communities have always been fond of bestowing upon "desolate houses".
You may find many scattered about your various maps.
Fearnside in 1832 calls it Ark or Hart's.
"Here", says he, "the banks become more wooded, and the river is divided into three separate streams; between the two broadest is an ait, with a pretty rustic cottage.
One one side is the sluice, through which the water, having attained more body, rushes with considerable noise; another branch hows through the open weir, and a third forms a backwater.
Not far distant is a small ferry {Bablock Hithe, I imagine}, and about a mile in advance Langley Weir."
If you will compare this description with Boydell's notes about "Hart's" you will find corroboration of my conjecture that the latter had Ark weir in his mind.
As I have said, Westall in 1828 thinly plagiarises Boydell on "Hart's" to describe this station.
Wood in 1850 calls it Ark Island, and places it exactly one mile above Bablock Hithe.
Exactly what constitutes the charm of this place is a little difficult to define, but it is assuredly full of a strong allurement that lingers in the memory.
The lace-like fall of foaming water has disappeared which so charmed those elder men; but even so, perhaps because you remember it was once there and entailed so much ancient busyness, the attraction still remains.
The pool is large, but not so large as Skinner's.
The chief island is at first scarcely distinguishable from the main land; as the little eastern channel, which nominally insulates it, quitting and rejoining the main stream beneath white towpath bridges, is now in dry seasons almost empty.
There it still is, however, on the left bank; and the third, almost grown up, is still discernible on the right; while broad and living Thames still runs between.
The island is large and oval shaped.
Four elms tower towards heaven at its lower end; and close by a large thorn leans over the low stunted brick wall of the old weirkeeper's cottage.
"Leans", I say; and indeed so it did when I first landed to view it in August 1910.
But as I returned a week later a cart was busy removing the brickwork; and only the shallow hollow remained beneath the bush.
Immediately adjacent the ancient stone foundation of the weir beam is still plain to see in the turf of the bank.
According to a report of 1789 the weir then belonged to Magdalen, in lease to Lord Ashbrook.
I find it called Noah's Ark in 1811; and in the O.S. of 1805-44.
In 1851 and 1853 it was said to be "not used: gone to decay".
Ravenstein in 1861 passed free.
Select Committee evidence in 1866 mentions "remains of an old weir" here; and again in 1884: "A very small extent of fishery, belonging now to a man named William Hart, who has deeds going back as far as 1745; and this family have got their living from that piece of fishery from that time to the present."
This is the fifth scene of their labours.
I do not discover when its frequently proposed and alleged removal actually took effect; the timbers probably lapsed peacefully away, with occasional assistance from the authorities.

BABLOCK HITHE FERRY WTSWG

I do not learn that the Commissioners ever exercised any authority here.
My earliest reference is about 1279, when John Cocus held "the ferry of Babbelak" at a yearly rental, including some adjacent land, of 31s., paid to the prior of Deerhurst.
In a grant of 1320 it is declared to have then belonged for a century, under the style of Babbelak in la More, to Deerhurst priory.
Part of the duty of the tenant, John 1e Keu, was to ferry over the prior and his servants, and those also of the church of St. Denis in France.
The rent was 20s. annually; and the tenant was bound also to maintain a ferry boat, and keep in repair a causeway nearly a league and a half long.
It is highly interesting that the neighbouring church of Northmoor is dedicated to St. Denis.
The Baskervile MS. of 1692 says: "Bablock Hythe has a great boat to carry over Carts & Coaches."
In 1793 it Was reported to the Commissioners by their surveyor that
"at or near Biblick Hythe he found a Quantity of Trees cut down for the purpose of clearing the Bank for the Towing Path, which trees had been left lying on the Bank in a most confused way.
He believes all the necessary Bridges for the Towing path across Ditches, and the Mouth of Side Streams, are still left undone, and by that Means the Towing path is interrupted and deficient."
The delay was due to some disagreement between the Commissioners and their Oxford district committee; the latter, it is quite possible, comprising some members of the just superseded Burcot Commission not forgetful of their former independence.
In 1812 Joseph Brookings of Bablock Hithe had one barge: the Mary, of seventy tons, trading on the River.
In October 1894 the Conservancy made a determined attack upon the ferry rope, desiring to substitute a submerged chain for the benefit of modern degeneracy.
A chain costing about £8 was actually provided until nearly the end of 1898.
Then Mr. Aubrey Harcourt decided that it was more dangerous than the old method, and accordingly reinstated the rope; "almost at the level of the surface of the water", the Conservancy was informed in March 1900.
The Authority removed it, and replaced the chain; but the rope won, and remains till this day.

SKINNER'S WEIR

SKINNER'S WEIR stood a long mile and a half below Bablock Hithe ferry.
Roque's survey of 1761 shews a mill on the right bank two miles below the ferry; it must have been close hereabouts.
This station, like its neighbours, has had several names, especially Langley's: the third to which this title has been attached ; Limbre's and Ridge's being the other two.
Griffiths in 1746, Bowen in 1775 and Dawe in 1827 call it Langley only.
Fearnside in 1832 and Ravenstein in 1861 use both names; the latter paid 6d. for going over.
It is the lowest station above Oxford noted by Boydell in 1794:
"On a small island, planted with fruit trees, a thatched cottage offers repose and refreshment":
pleasantly reminiscent of Mr. Stevens's orchard island at Abingdon, though were there any parakeets?
The name of Brookin's, or a variation thereof, obtained between 1789 and 1802.
In 1796 the weir was owned by one Rawlins, who charged 5s. "each London boat".
Barges frequently had to lighten at this weir, as is noted this year.
In 1802 Mylne mentions Brookin of Bablock Hithe as the owner, and thinks a poundlock should be built.
The ownership is attributed in 1821 to Mr. Spenlove and Lord Harcourt.
Westall in 1828 notes the alluring little orchard.
In 1866 two weirs named Skinner's are spoken of; the other was perhaps Pinkhill.
In the O.S. of 1876 the weir is called simply Langley's, and the inn The Fish.
The weir being very dilapidated, repairs and a keeper were ordered in June 1880.
In July it gave way, and its maintenance seemed of doubtful utility.
"The old weir", says Mr. Taunt, "was one of those picturesque places that artists love.
It had been in possession from father to son for a long number of years.
It was a little inn ; and the last landlord, Joe Skinner, was one of the besthearted, quaintest fellows that ever lived.
He was original in the highest degree, and it was a rich treat to listen to his curious remarks on some one who, not understanding him, had rubbed old Joe the wrong way of the wool."
Mrs. Siret, wife of the Pinkhill lockkeeper before Smith, was a Skinner.
James Basson, keeper at Chertsey in 1915, knew Joe Skinner, and drank the last drink served in The Fish as he relates.
A white footbridge now crosses the narrow neck of water streaming and dimpling over the old weir site.
The pool is perhaps the finest and broadest above Oxford; and was for long an important reservoir for flashes.
At its lower end is the little heartshaped island, with a tiny laybye at its head facing the bridge.
I saw nothing on it but a heap of gravel and a tree or two not of the orchard variety.
Only the right bank channel is now easily navigable: a modern cut made or improved about 1896-1899.
The house and mill and fruit trees are all gone; but the downstream view from the bridge, on a clear sunlit morning, across the island to the Wytham and Beacon hills, is an abiding and refreshing joy to the memory.

PINKHILL LOCK WTSWG

Simplex munditiis! [ Quotation from Horace - modern "translation" -
"It does what it says on the tin!" ]
Pinkhill was always and only Pinkhill.
It lies a very tortuous mile below Skinner's.
The poundlock was built in 1791, the flashlock owner being Lord Harcourt, who proposed to surrender its tolls and profits to the Commissioners provided they would maintain both lock and weir, and allow him to nominate the keepers.
In 1793 Mylne complained that the lock was
"of no Kind of Use in itself to the Navigation, on Account of the old Weir of Timber in the Bed of the River being totally rotten and tumbled into the River, and seemingly deserted."
I do not get the name of the first keepers; in December 1796 John Winn was appointed owing to the inefficiency of his predecessor.
Nock built the lock: a favourite contractor with the Commission; and Daniel Harris the Oxford gaoler was the engineer,
"who was a journeyman carpenter when he came to Oxford",
and brought much sarcasm upon the heads of the Commissioners.
In November of this year a sum of £5 6s. 6d. was spent upon repairing the lock gates:
"beat down by boats and other damage".
In 1796 the weir was rented by Mrs. Wyatt; who charged "4s. each London boat and 2s. for Mr. Nalder's weir": which latter I do not identify.
Thomas Brocks was keeper in 1798 with 20s. monthly wage: raised in June 1813 to 24s.
The owners in 1821 are stated as Mr. Spenlove and Lord Harcourt.
In October 1822 Wm. (or Abel) Skinner of the local family was in charge; perhaps this accounts for a statement in 1866, already alluded to, that there had been two stations called by their name.
Surgit amari aliquid! [Quotation from Lucretius - Something bitter arises - perhaps -
"Its hard to stomach but"
perhaps after all not even Pinkle was always Pinkle.
Fearnside in 1832 remarked:
"No toll house being attached, it is necessary for the aquatic tourist to be provided with a winch."
[ I think this must be a winch handle, ie lock key ]
Wood in 1850, also, found no keeper.
Ravenstein in 1861, however, seems to have paid his usual Sixpence here.
In 1866 the Conservancy talked about an appointment; but Mr.Taunt in 1872, being at Eynsham, wrote:
"See Tredwell, at the Lock-house close to the bridge, as he will get Pinkle (the next Look) open for you."
This R. Tredwell, appointed in October 1866 at 52s. monthly to take charge between New Bridge and King's weir, lived at Eynsham and not at Pinkhill.
During 1872 the lock was in a very ruinous condition; it was partially rebuilt before 1877.
A separate keeper, and a house for him, were decided upon in June 1880; and T. Wentworth was appointed the following month at 60s. wage.
The following January he was missing, supposed drowned; and in July 1881 W. Curtis succeeded him.
In May 1890 a new cut below the lock was discussed, "to provide for the escape of flood water".
In October 1896 the Conservancy moved to purchase the island; and I believe ultimately did so.
Curtis was retired in July 1899, being 74 years old; and was succeeded by C. W. Siret, whose wife was a Skinner, as I have said.
The new cut had been dug below the lock by February 1899.
The Sirets kept the Golden Balls in Brighthampton after leaving Pinkhill.
H. Smith, who followed Siret about 1909, has entirely changed the appearance of this lock island.
Once a rambling wilderness of a garden, full of vegetable patches and familiar old world flowers, crowded in summer with scores of campers, it is now like a County Council parterre with sloping banks of shaven turf whereupon I have hesitated to tread in leaving my craft, seeing the orderly geraniums, perhaps the merest suspicion out of place in these surroundings, and but a decorous handful of the merry old rout.
And so he had the prize in 1910; not only for the handsomest garden in his district, which for long went to Mr. Williams at Radcot, but also the challenge cup for the best kept lock on the whole River.
The name of Luck's or Lot's Hole is attached to part of the weir stream on the far side of the island.

EYNSHAM or SWINFORD BRIDGE WTSWG

Baskervile in 1692 says that the ferry (which preceded the bridge) had "a great boat to bear horses over".
It is noted by Rocque, also, in 1764.
The present bridge was built by the Earl of Abingdon in 1777; some contemporary history is in my Stripling Thames.
It is one of the noblest bridges on the River: seven and a half miles above Folly Bridge.
In December 1815 a warping roller was ordered at a point a little above the bridge, doubtless at one of the many sharp bends.
In May 1890 the Conservancy stated they "intend eventually to make a cutting through the horseshoe bend above Swinford Bridge"; it is said officially to have been dug in 1900, but I do not remember it.

EYNSHAM or BOLDE's WEIR [now Eynsham Lock] WTSWG

EYNSHAM or BOLDE's WEIR was in 1791 owned by Lord Abingdon.
In 1795 it was quite decayed; "does not pen any water nor has for some years past."
The owner, still Lord Abingdon, was to have no more tolls, "3s.per boat," till he repaired it.
Mylne in 1802 enforces with an object lesson the necessity of poundlocks to ensure a more economical use of the water.
"By our boat going thro' the weir,", he writes, "eight inches was lost to the upper Water."
Eight inches, that is, along a mile of water; a modern lockful would make no distinguishable difference in the level.
In August 1821 sluice gates were suggested at the mouth of a "ditch near to Bolde's" to prevent water running into it from the River: probably the ratty little channel just above the weir of which I write in my Stripling Thames.
You will find the gates if you walk a little along it into the meadow.
Fearnside in 1832 is alone, except for Plot in 1677, in calling this station Swithin's.
Wood's Oarsman's Guide says there was no keeper here in 1850.
Hall in 1859 found the passage "somewhat dangerous"; there is truly a nasty bend and narrowing just below the fall; and the fall may have been considerable.
Krausse in 1889 shews it without the boatslide; which was ordered in 1890.
The Conservancy thought of removing the weir in January 1886; but were dissuaded by the landowners.
A "proposed new cut near Swinford" is mentioned at this time; perhaps the same as I refer to four years later, under the bridge.
The R. Tredwell spoken of by Mr. Taunt in 1872 died in 1881; and was succeeded by his son E. Tredwell.
I believe the latter's son served here for some time also; I am not sure if this family is identical with that one to whose tragical history I allude in my Stripling Thames.

CASSINGTON LOCK on Evenlode Cut

Cassington Lock was at the entrance to Cassington cut, on the [right] bank about three quarters of a mile below Eynsham weir.
This cut is a disused canal that joins the Evenlode about three miles up the very tortuous course of the little stream.
I looked for remains of the lock in 1913, but could find nothing; it stood, I think, close to the mouth.
The cut seemed to have degenerated into a mere brook.

DUKE'S CUT WTSWG

The lock connecting the River with the Oxford Canal is interesting, being so constructed as to give a fall either way, according to whichever navigation has for the time being the higher level.
This design of lock is invariably used for docks, where the tidal range is considerable.

CLAY WEIR

Clay Weir is mentioned between Eynsham and King's in 1796.
I have no further history.
It charged "1s. per boat for shutting."

KING'S WEIR, now KING'S LOCK WTSWG

King's Weir:. The distance from Bolde's was anciently called two miles.
I think it is probably half a mile more.
The weir is mentioned in a grant in 1541 of the manor of Wolvercote to Dr. George Owen.
Griffiths in 1746 and Bowen in 1775 note nothing between here and Iffley.
It was owned in 1791 by the Duke of Marlborough, who seems, the scandalous peer! never to have collected any tolls.
Mylne in 1802 found it in ruins and all the tackle open.
An extract from the Yarnton church books illuminates the attitude of the millers:
"1813. On 14th June water rose to high water mark.
Hart, the keeper of the weir, was called upon to draw up the sluices and let off the water, which he did not do, and thereby made the owner of the mill his employer liable to penalty of £10.
Proceedings taken against him by Williams of Wolvercote.
Hart said Williams of Wolvercote had come down to the weir and pelted him with stones; that he suspected what he had come for and could swear the water was only up to the crease and not above it.
Fine proved.
£5 given to the Navigation Company & Mr. Williams means to give £5 to the parish of Wolvercote.
Mr. Williams observed respecting the alleged throwing of stones that he had recourse to this mode of getting Hart to come out of his house to him, because he could not make him hear or at least make him attend to him by calling over the water.
Hart saw him but would not pay any attention, and it was not till he saw him retire to his Basket-work in the house that he tried this way of making him attend to his call."
This makes the sixth station at which the Harts officiated.
In December 1817 a poundlock was thought desirable here, and was ordered to be made as soon as funds were available.
In October 1823 complaints were frequent against Mr. Swann, the owner of the weir, for interference with the pen gates.
The remedy was thought to be to get the weir placed under the care of the Commissioners.
In 1827 some new sluices were spiked up and rendered useless until the nails were drawn.
In August 1842 the weir was closed for repairs, and the Wolvercote miller took the opportunity of once more surreptitiously raising the pen eight inches.
A lock was again recommended in 1845.
There was then no resident keeper:
"Extra power is generally required to get Boats up the Weir."

Wood's Oarsman's Guide of 1850 notes the continued absence of a keeper, and delightfully warns you
"when the sluice is up the gate flies over; 'cave ne titubes'."
We were all scholars then!
[ "Cave ne titubes" means "Beware you do not stumble!" ]
Ravenstein in 1861 had to "open with a lever obtained at the adjoining cottage."
A statement occurs in 1861 amongst the Treacher Papers that
"no Canal Boat or Barge has passed down the said part of the River {between King's weir and the Sheepwash} (with the exception of two or three Boats partly loaded with Timber and two or three Canal Boats with Coals) during the last two years."
Taunt in 1872 alludes to the "boatslide lately put up"; the official order is dated only in 1877.
In the spring of 1873 the University paper mills offered to share the expense of a modern lock; but the Conservancy decided against the step.
In July 1888 tolls were ordered to be collected at the rollers, I believe for the first time; and T. J. Powell, later at Godstow, was put in charge, a houseboat being provided for his residence.
S. B. Kirby took his place between September 1889 and May 1890, and then went to Culham.
H. Edmonds followed here; he went to Spade Oak in October 1891, being succeeded by J. Bossom.
During this winter the weir was the scene of a fatal accident; and the father of a lad who was saved purchased the lifebuoy his son had clung to, and asked permission to erect a small iron cross by the weir as a recognition.
Bossom went to Clifton Hampden in October 1892, and Edmonds returned here.
The University paper mills mark the highest latitude north of the River's course; just as the mouth of the Wey opposite Shepperton marks its extreme latitude south.
Merrilees, keeper for several years previous to 1913, told me in August 1912 that in the 'fifties [1850s] an old lady had a cottage and garden on the side of the weir opposite his cabin.
She looked after the weir: a much simpler affair then.
Merrilees had to live at Wolvercote: a long tramp across the meadows; there was still no weir house.
Part of the weir is a single pair of gates exactly like poundgates, provided with sluices and opened with winches and chains.
This was probably the "peculiar construction" so often alluded to, and suggested for other stations.
[ The modern King's Lock was finally constructed in 1928 ]

WYTHAM STREAM OUTFALL

[ King's Lock may have moved the Wytham Stream Outfall. It is now 1 Km above King's Lock ]

Wytham Stream outfall occurs on the [left] bank, a little above Godstow Bridge.
This stream, during the passion for improvements in the closing years of the eighteenth century, had a perhaps very narrow escape of becoming the main navigation.
In a House of Commons report of 1793 a witness
"thinks the Navigation ought to have gone down the Witham Stream, but he can't speak with certainty, not having surveyed it himself."
Another was of the same opinion; he thought
"it would have been much better, and less expensive, to have gone by the Witham Stream."
The tumbling bay here was built in 1845.

[ THAMES BRIDGE, A34 ] WTSWG

GODSTOW BRIDGE WTSWG

The Baskervile MS. of 1692 says:
"Between Witam & Woolvercot is a stone bridge yt has two Arches through which laden boats do pass, & here by y^e help of foards & other bridges both horse & foot do pass into each County viz. Barks & Oxfordshire,
see more in a sheet of paper" which is unhappily missing.
Ireland has a sketch in 1790, showing only one arch left open for navigation, the other being blocked.
Mylne in 1791 says that the weir was the property of the Duke of Marlborough.
In 1796 the bridge and "lock" were rented by one Bishop, who charged "4s. 6d. for shutting, each way."
He was probably the lockkeeper mentioned below in 1798. In 1811 the "penning apparatus" at Godstow Bridge was reported as "badly contrived and out of repair."
The bridge over the lock cut was built according to Dredge in 1780.
It has two round arches, lying a little skewwise; and has recently been rebuilt.
The old bridge still stands; its eastern arch being pointed.

GODSTOW LOCK WTSWG

Godstow Lock lies a terribly winding mile downstream from King's.
It was opened at the end of 1790; Harris, "keeper of the Oxford gaol in the Castle," being the Commissioners' adviser in respect of both this station and Osney: an occasion, as I have said, for many public sarcasms.
Jessop in 1789 speaks of "Woodward's Hole" here.
Mrs. Bryan Stapleton, in her recent book "Three Oxfordshire Parishes", says:
"The erection of the pound lock at Godstow and the water pen at King's Weir destroyed the fordway into Pixey {the great mead above Port Meadow}, and thereby deprived the farmers of their easy access to that meadow, the water being raised four or five feet.
It had also the effect of filling the ditches and causing the water to stand in pools throughout the year, and had changed some of the best pasture in Yarnton into coarse, worthless grass."
She alludes to the trouble at King's weir in 1813 which I have described.
This spoiling of the grass was dilated upon during the Floods Inquiry of 1877.
In the summer of 1910 I myself came down on a noble flash from King's to Godstow, and saw how the water overflowed into the meadows.
Particularly do I remember seeing a mowing machine plashing through the flooded hay.
Mr. C. J. Cornish states that
"the stone coffins of the { Godstow } prioresses were disturbed and displaced" during the excavation of the lock cut.
The pound toll in 1793 was 2½d per ton.
The earliest keeper recorded is Jas. Bishop in July 1798.
Rd. Bishop, perhaps his son, had charge in October 1822 at 24s. monthly wage.
No further keepers are named for about half a century; doubtless owing at first to the farming out of this district already described, and later perhaps to the necessity of dispensing with their services.
Ravenstein in 186I mentions a charge of sixpence to be paid "at Ousney".
In 1865 the lock was so dilapidated that it was considered dangerous for boats to pass through it.
Next year the Conservancy discussed the appointment of a supervisor between King's weir and Botley Bridge, to reside at Medley and to receive £3 monthly.
Mr. Taunt witnesses that nothing had been done in the matter by 1872; at which time the lock was closed for repairs.
In January 1876 John Taylor is noticed as in charge here, at Buscot and at Medley; I note him at Buscot ten years earlier.
P. Scholey was keeper in July 1879.
A house was ordered for him, but only "a shelter" was provided for long after; in 1888 he received permission to occupy "a houseboat at the back of the lock."
In May 1890 the Conservancy decided not to interfere with persons evading the tolls at Godstow and King's by navigating along the Wolvercote stream and hauling over: a subject I have pursued in my General History.
Scholey was transferred to Osney in February 1894, and succeeded here by Francis Newcombe.
In June T. Butcher was appointed; Newcombe being transferred to Mapledurham.
Negotiations for land for a lockhouse, opened in 1894, succeeded about the end of 1896; one of the conditions imposed by Lord Abingdon being that the keeper should not sell refreshments.
This restriction was still in force twenty years later; at which time that obliging keeper Powell, once of King's weir, told me he could dispense me nothing, lest the trade of the neighbouring Trout should take cold!
A burly River character told me in 1912 that the poor old woman mentioned on page 56 of my "Stripling Thames" used often to open and shut this lock.
In 1540 I note a fishery in the Thames at Wytham called Westmans Wynde.

PORT MEADOW

In 1787, before the site of Godstow lock was fixed, there was a good deal of surveying and discussion about making a pound at Black Jack's.
In August 1791 the line of the towpath between Medley and Godstow was under dispute.
It had been begun on the east or [right] bank at the lower end of the mead, as now; and the Commissioners decided that it should be so continued
"in the bed of the River, where the horses at present tow."
The path thus made was washed away in the next flood; and in August 1798 it was transferred to the west side up to Godstow.
Felons from Oxford jail made this path for us.
In December 1808 a new fence was ordered for the Binsey bank, as a makeshift hindrance to cattle crossing the water into Binsey mead.
The reason for the great width of the River along this reach has always been something of a puzzle.
A Parliamentary Witness in 1877 said he thought that
"Port Meadow got the water and retained it because the place of discharge under Folly Bridge was so very narrow."
Jessop in 1789 speaks of Peel Yate Ford in Port Meadow.

BINSEY BRIDGE [ MEDLEY FOOTBRIDGE ] WTSWG

Binsey Bridge: an iron bow bridge, bearing the date 1865.
Before it was built the barge horses used to ford across in low water; at high water times they were
"obliged to be Shot off from the Boat and go round nearly two Miles and a half to Take to it again."
Binsey ford, from which, according to Hearne, Oxford took its name, crossed at the single withy tree on the towpath about a hundred yards above the south end of Binsey Green.
I note about 1837 "Bridge Water Close" as a towpath meadow name in Binsey parish.

MEDLEY or BINSEY WEIR WTSWG

Medley or Binsey Weir is I believe identical in situation with the "main weir" that belonged to Rewley abbey; and which in ancient days caused ceaseless trouble to the Castle mills.
My earliest modern note is in 1793, when a small pound lock was ordered for the benefit of the pleasure traffic
"by the side of the { flash } lock now erecting near Midley."
It was never built; but in a plan of 1798 a single pair of gates, as at King's weir, is marked.
And in 1826 I find several allusions to the provision of new gates: a single pair, apparently.
The station is never spoken of as a lock in the modern sense.
In 1812 Thos. Bossom of Oxford had four barges trading on the River: one of them the "Minner" of seventeen tons.
In January 1819 it was suggested to
"take away the stone work and erect Sluice Gates at the four Streams at Medley Lock."
Wm. Bossom was in charge in August 1823; and in 1826 of "Medley gates."
Wm. Bossom was dismissed in March 1838; and a John of the same family succeeded him.
A keeper's cottage was ordered in October 1839.
Wood says there was no keeper in 1850; but a Bossom was certainly in charge in February 1854, with a monthly wage reduced from 35s. to 24s.
Hall in 1859 and Ravenstein in 1861 both call the station Binsey.
"Lift up the paddles", says the latter, "and then the stakes that hold them."
In October 1866 John Taylor is said to have been keeping both here and at Buscot at £3 monthly.
Some error seems apparent, unless he had oversight over the whole intervening district under the farming arrangement described on pages 180-1 of my General History.
In January 1867 John Bossom, possibly the same man as mentioned in 1854, claimed wages from February 1865 to November 1866: £27 6s. in all; which the Conservancy declined to pay.
In July 1871 the Authority offered to build an iron bridge, perhaps the existing one, if the Oxford Corporation would pay the expense.
At a Floods Inquiry in 1883 it was stated that
"it is intended to remove Medley Weir, which forms a great impediment, and has doubtless in a great measure contributed to the wretched state of the River above it."
In May of this year the Conservancy undertook to remove it at their own charge.
A boatslide was promised in September; but Krausse shews none in his sketch of 1889.
Taylor was pensioned in April 1888 ; and was succeeded by J. Collier.
Tolls began to be levied here this year; and a boatslide was again promised.
In August 1890 Tuesday and Friday were fixed as flash days.
Collier died in December 1893, and was succeeded by W. S. Horsfield.
The latter went to Culham in April 1896, and W. Collins followed him here.
Collins was still acting here in 1913.
He is related to most of the men of his name whom I mention in the River service at different stations, in these pages and in my General History.
His grandfather served at the Roebuck ferry; his brother at Shifford and St. John's locks; and his father was about thirty years at Abingdon, after a period at Spade Oak ferry.
The above named flash days were confirmed in May 1898.
[ MEDLEY WEIR was finally removed in 1937 ]

Chapter 3: OXFORD TO READING

Oxford, Hythe Bridge Oxford, Quaking Bridge, Bookbinders Bridge, Osney Bridge, Osney Lock, Sheeepwash Bridge Osney, Pot Stream Bridge, Osney Railway Bridge, Osney Footbridge [old Gasworks Bridge], [Oxford footbridge], Folly Bridge, [ River Cherwell ], [ Donnington Road Bridge ], Iffley Lock, [ Isis Bridge ], [ Kennington Railway Bridge ], Rose Island Bridge, Rose Island, Sandford Lock, Nuneham Weir, Nuneham Railway Bridge, The Swift Ditch, Abingdon Lock, Abingdon Bridge, Culham Bridge over Swift Ditch, Sutton Courtney Weir, Sutton Courtney Bridge, Culham Lock, Culham Lock Cut Bridge, Culham Wharf, Culham Ferry, Appleford Railway Bridge, Clifon Hampden Lock, Clifton Hampden Bridge, Clifton Ferry, Burcot, Days Lock, Dorchester Ferry, Days Lock Foot Bridge, River Thames, Thame Bridge, Keen Edge Ferry Shillingford, Shillingford Bridge, Shillingford Ferry, Benson Lock, Pollington's Weir Wallingford, Wallingford Bridge, Chalmore Hole, Littlestoke Ferry, (Papist Way slipway), Moulsford Flash Weir, [ Moulsford Railway Bridge ], South Stoke Ferry (slipway), Cleeve Lock, Goring Lock, Streatley (Goring) Bridge, Basildon [Gatehampton] Railway Bridge, Basildon Ferry, Hart's Lock (Weir), Whitchurch Lock, Engraving: Whitchurch Lock 1786, Whitchurch or Pangbourne Bridge, Mapledurham Lock, Purley Ferries, Chawsey Weir (St Mary's island), Caversham Bridge, Piper's Island, Caversham Lock, Costs of 200 ton barge London-Reading-London, River Kennet, Kennett Mouth Ferry, Breach's Weir

OXFORD WTSWG

The old navigation through the city came from Medley round the east side of Osney island, under Hythe Bridge, along Fisher Row past the Castle mill, rejoining the present navigation between the two railway bridges at the tail of what used to be called George island.
The present barge stream between this point and Medley, passing through Osney lock, is believed to have been engineered, to turn their mill, by the monks of Osney abbey: a parallel, on a smaller scale, to the streams at Abingdon.
The Hythe Bridge stream is, as Mr. C. J. Cornish remarks:
"the branch of the Thames which from the most ancient days has been the waterway by which barges and merchandise came from the country to the city.
It is still called by its old name of the Weir Stream."
A curious incident is related in the Close Rolls in 1376-7.
The "friars preachers" had their settlement along the left bank of the River immediately above Folly Bridge.
On 12 August of the former year Edward III gave them, "so far as in him lies", a strip of water extending all along their bank twenty feet out into the stream, so that they might better protect themselves from its wash, from which at times they greatly suffered.
And the sheriff and mayor were to cause the waterward limit to be marked with stakes, "whereby it may for ever be known."
An egregious nuisance to the barges!
In the same year the king upon petition ordered all weirs, stakes and kidles to be surveyed, and removed if desirable.
Note the sequel: On 20 May 1377 another letter close reached the sheriff and mayor commanding them to desist from removing the Dominicans' stakes, as on behalf of the prior and convent the king had learned that, under colour of his writ of survey, these officers
"are purposing before Monday next maliciously and unlawfully to remove the metes aforesaid; and the king is informed that the passage is in no wise hindered by them!"
An exhaustive study of the network of streams penetrating and surrounding the city is not strictly pertinent to a history of the navigation.
Only two of them have ever been used by serious traffic; although a third, the County Stream, was, as I have said, once examined for the purpose.
With these I have dealt; and now present in addition a body of other notes from various sources.
Anthony a Wood states that the Dominicans possessed a flashlock called Aldwere, indicted as a nuisance in 1508, but spared as it was proved to date from Edward I.
Other weirs were Cayseris, Harecatchers, and Castle Mill:
Dicunt quad Johannes Cosyn habet unam suem et duos porcos qui { a veritable Hercynian litter! } destruunt waram at ripam domini Regis vocatam Castell-Mill Were."
[ I think "They say that John Cosyn has one pig and two sows which are destroying the weirs and banks of the King's Castle Mill Weir" ]
He also mentions Puthulfe's Lock as the chief about Oxford:
"on the south side of Oxon near Stockwell Mede & Godefordes Heyt."
Stockwell Mede was later called Montague, after a benefactress of this name; and lay on the [right] bank close to Folly Bridge.
Puthulfe Weir was standing in 1517, and dated from the reign of Henry III, 1216-1272.
It may possibly have been the original of the pen at Folly Bridge.

From W. H. Turner's Extracts from the Records of the City of Oxford, I excerpt the following:
"1532. July 9. The Chamberleyns to have the oversight of the Waters.
John Austen, Will'm Archer, & the ij Chamberlyns for the yere shall have the oversight of the waters from Prynses Weres vnto Scisseter and Cherwell wt all the crekys, dyches therto belonging, & that they shall make laufful deputies in eny place where they thynke most convenyent.
At a Council holden the 24th of June 1545, it was agreed that a certain lock lately erected and called 'Ruly mydell lokk' shall be stopped up so that Mr. Doctor Owen { of Godstow and Wolvercot } & his assigns shall not draw the same & turn the water from the King's { Castle } mill of the city of Oxford, & also that all other sluices and locks belonging to Rewley & the wyke shall be stopped at such times as requisite to cause the water to have hys right cource to the said mill."
There is further, obscure matter in this most interesting volume regarding a similar dispute in 1576: very difficult to collate with modern conditions now that, nearly three and a half centuries later, all these old obstructions have long been swept away and forgotten.
The following note of 1583 is however clearer:
"It is agreed that a locke be made for the better kepinge of the waters to the mylls, & to amends the bancks by Rewlye wheare hit shalbe requisite.
{ This flashlock was doubtless Medley, which is in the right position, at the divergence of the two streams to Rowley and to Osney; and in Agas's map of 1578 'Rois leie lock ' is marked exactly where Medley weir now stands }
It is agreed that Mr. Mayor, & Mr. Bayliffs shall talke wth the Deane of Christ Churche and Mr. Willis for some good agreement to be had towching the savings of the waters to the mylls;"and
"that Mr. Furnesse, Mr. Massey, & Mr. Dodwell shalbe overseers, together wth Swythin to make a locke or weare by Rewlie lock, to bend the water in sommer and to draw uppe in wynter, at the charges of this Citye."
Swythin may be the man by whose name Dr. Plot calls Eynsham weir; or the Swiffin of one of the weirs by Iffley.
Bowen's map in 1775 mentions the Mills weir, and it only, between Godstow and Oxford.
Mylne in 1791 names Castle Mill and Rowley weirs.
Their barge tolls are in the Table in my General History.
Mr. Cornish remarks that, in spite of its name, the Castle mill did not belong to the castle.
It still worries the navigation even in these better regulated days.
In July 1911 "the water at the Castle Mills was lowered by 18 inches."
This was considered a danger to the navigation, and was to be remedied.
It was understood that the action was the miller's.

Some slight notes I collect from the Oxford Chronicle of 21 June 1912.
The author, the Rev. H. E. Salter, considers that "the greater part of the Thames, at all events in summer", flowed anciently in the Trill Mill stream, now confined to a culvert beneath Rose Place: " plenty of water and a strong current."
The above noted Aldwere stood on this stream "about 80 to 100 yards north of Folly Bridge."
"A large number of weirs were abolished about the end of the reign of Henry VIII, because they impeded navigation; and it is about this time that we cease to hear of Aldwere; and that the mills on Trill Mill stream ceased to work."
A little autobiographical note in John Taylor's Mad Verse of 1644 indicates that he was given the post of River inspector at Oxford at this date.
It also deposes to the extremely unpleasant condition of the River in his time.
Escaping from some trouble in London he took boat for Windsor, and so to Oxford; where he apparently found himself penniless.

Then by the Lords Commissioners, and also
By my good King (whom all true subjects call so)
I was commanded with the Water Baylie
To see the Rivers clensed, both night and dayly.
Dead Hogges, Dogges, Cats, and well flayd Carryon Horses,
Their noysom Corpes soyld the Water Courses;
Both swines and Stable dunge, Beasts guts and Garbage,
Street durt, with Gardners weeds and Rotten Herbage.
And from those Waters filthy putrifaction, Our meat and drinke were made, which bred Infection.
My self and partner, with cost paines and Travell,
Saw all made clean, from Carryon, Mud and Gravell:
And now and then was punisht a Delinquent,
By which good meanes away the filth and stink went.

I say again ; he out-rhymes Robert Browning.

HYTHE BRIDGE, OXFORD

Hythe Bridge was rebuilding in 1861.
Skelton has an excellent view published in 1817, shewing three very irregular arches.

QUAKING or QUAKEN BRIDGE, OXFORD

QUAKING or QUAKEN BRIDGE, over the mill-stream by the Castle, is an extremely ancient institution.
In the Close Rolls in May 1324 I read:
"A bridge anciently constructed over the Thames, whereby the canons of Osney were wont to pass into the chapel of St. George in the Castle, which they are bound to do daily, had been broken down and wholly removed for the greater security of the Castle in the late disturbance.
The king ordered it to be reconstructed at his own cost of 60s.":
say as many or even more sovereigns, to-day.

BOOKBINDERS BRIDGE, OXFORD

Bookbinders Bridge still crosses the very narrow stream along which doubtless passed all the through navigation not intended for the Castle mills, in old times.

OSNEY or BOTLEY BRIDGE WTSWG

Osney or Botley Bridge was perhaps originally built by the Osney monks, with three stone arches.
In November 1869 the Conservancy were seeking powers to rebuild it, as "a serious obstruction" in its damaged state.
A memorable character up at Godstow told me he remembered old Squire Campbell of Buscot having three barges wedged in it, and how Charlie Bossom had to dislodge a boat load of stone from the bridge before they could be released.
In December 1885 the central arch collapsed.
Its piers are said to have been massive.
The present bridge was opened for traffic in January 1889; a temporary crossing having meanwhile been provided just below.

OSNEY LOCK WTSWG

There is a touch of high pacing politeness between ancient ecclesiastical dignitaries in 1227 closely connected with this weir, then the property of Osney abbey.
"To the abbot and convent of Oseney:
Whereas the wear in the Thames is a nuisance to the Friars Preachers of Oxford and they { the Osney convent } purposed to move it to another place where it cannot hurt them, and whereas it appears by inquisition that it is not to the hurt of the town to move the wear, the king, commending their charity in this behalf, not only grants licence to move the wear, but thanks them for doing so."
The Dominicans, I repeat, possessed a settlement below the abbey, on the [right] bank immediately above Folly Bridge.
Preachers' Pool is named from them.
The poundlock was first spoken of in March 1787.
It was built by the Castle felons; at the end of 1789 £50 was paid to "Mr. Harris the keeper of the Castle" for their services.
One Edward Edge had contracted to build a new lock of stone for £750: but the felons were cheaper still.
It was opened at the end of 1790.
The weir belonged at this date to Christ Church, in lease to Mrs. Horseman.
In 1793 Mrs. Hill was in charge of the lock, with 3s. 6d. per week; the barge toll being 2½d. per ton.
During the year 1800 the freemen of the city of Oxford claimed free passage, as of right; which was disallowed.
At the end of this year a new keeper, Samuel Tomkins, was found to be short in his accounts; and James Millard was put in his place.
He was in addition to be responsible for the pen at Folly Bridge, for the Four Streams drawbridge, and for Medley "gates."
His wage was increased early in 1801 from 17s. to 20s.
In February 1804 his accounts were in confusion; and he was reported to have left Oxford.
John Davis was appointed in his place; and he was dismissed from his triple office of lockkeeper, joint surveyor, and receiver of the three upper districts.
In June 1811 the gates were forced by local malefactors; "which stopped the navigation for 5 or 6 days."
The offenders were possibly enraged by the fact that the lower sill was so high that barges had to unload into lighters in order to pass.
In November three horse bridges were to be built as soon as possible over " three long and dangerous fords" which interrupted the towpath between here and Folly Bridge.
In August 1815 Stephen Davies, perhaps son of the aforesaid John, was to have 5s. weekly for superintending this station, in addition to his wages at Folly Bridge.
In May 1817 Wm. Bossom was appointed keeper at £2 monthly; and remained till at least October 1822, when he was receiving £2 10s.
In May 1836 a Bossom was accused of neglecting his duty.
Wm. Bossom was in charge in May 1845: quite possibly the same man as in 1817.
He held Medley also in 1854; as there stated.
Hall has a sketch of the original lock as in 1859.
He describes it as very picturesque, and a favourite subject with painters.
In 1861: Ravenstein paid his sixpence, and remarks:
"Pay for 5 Locks above { the number includes flash locks },
and ask for a windlass to open them."
In December 1865 Hannak Basson, who had been in charge, was dead; and her son Harry took her place.
He was retained as keeper at 52s3. monthly under the Conservancy in 1866, to take charge of the upper district and to collect tolls at St. John's and adjacent locks.
His pay was increased to £5 in November 1873.
The towing bridge below the lock was to be rebuilt in iron in February 1880.
Armstrong notes the lock "in course of restoration" in 1886.
In October 1891 Basson is still named as keeper; but was replaced in November by R. Herd.
The latter resigned in January 1894 ; and was succeeded by P. Scholey from Godstow.

SHEEPWASH BRIDGE WTSWG

Sheepwash Bridge is a towpath crossing opposite the Osney bathing place.
It was formerly of timber, with three openings; exceedingly troublesome to the barges on account of the abrupt turn under it.
The present one-span iron bridge Was ordered in September 1866.

POT STREAM BRIDGE

Pot Stream Bridge was rebuilt in 1850.

OSNEY RAILWAY BRIDGEWTSWG

Two Railway Bridges.

OSNEY FOOTBRIDGE WTSWG

[ The old Gasworks railway bridge is now a footbridge into a Nature Reserve ]

[ OXFORD FOOTBRIDGE ] WTSWG

[ This ugly girder footbridge is tentatively dated 1938 ]

FOLLY BRIDGE WTSWG

The first bridge on this site of which we have positive knowledge is the one built by Robert d'Oilli about 1085.
It is commonly supposed that there was an earlier bridge; Armstrong states that authentic records, which he unfortunately does not define, prove that a bridge was "still standing" in the days of Ethelred, who died in 871.
I printed some discursive notes about d'Oilli's bridge in my "Stripling Thames".
A model of it is stated to be in the Ashmolean.
Its proper names were Grand Pont and South Bridge;
the title "Folly" apparently originated after about 1650 in connexion with a tenant of "Friar Bacon's Study", which until 1779 stood across the north end of the bridge: perhaps a defensive work of Stephen's time.
My earliest unpublished note is a grant of pontage on "Grauntpount" in 1369; the structure was "in so dangerous a state as to be well nigh impassable."
It is worthy of note that I find no further grants of pontage at this bridge.
The Baskervile MS. of 1692 says:
"Oxford Bridges
Hinksey Bridge contains 18 Arches ffrom y^e footpath wch com from Hincksey ascending by stone steps into y^e horse Casway viz from yt place to y^e South side of ffryer Bacon's Study are 20 Arches, North of ffryer Bacon study are 3 Arches & 1 over Gramspond stream wch makes 4 Arches in that side.
The whole number amounting to 42 Arches { a Wood about forty years earlier says 40 only }.
The bridge is about 100 yards over beginning at y^e South side of y^e Arch south of y^e Study & so passing through y^e Gate way as far as y^e Quine of y^e wall wch turns into y^e Wharfyard.
The whole length of these Bridges and Causway may be a mile & ½."
In the last years of the seventeenth century Celia Fiennes on horseback
"crossed y^e River Thames on a bridge att y^e end of y^e town and rode along by y^e thames side a good way, wch was full of Barges and Lighters."
Her Diary is as delightful as her name.

The summer of 1714 seems to have been very dry.
Some Oxford letters in the Portland MSS. say:
"Jun. 26. J. D. will be in town as soon as ever there is water enough in the river to carry up the barge; at present there is not, the channel may be passed without wetting your shoes in many places betwixt this and Abingdon."
"Jul. 6. No rain yet with us, nor can we tell when our river will be navigable again."
"Aug. 19. The boat which brings your books is expected here to-morrow.
You may perceive how scarce water is with us."
Camden said in 1720:
"To Oxford Bridge the Thames will bear a Barge of 90 Tun."
According to Prince's table on page 120 of my General History, by 1767 vessels of 100 tons were navigating to Oxford.
In a Common Field map of 1726 belonging to Brasenose College a barge is shewn being towed up by four men on Christ Church meadow bank, immediately below the bridge.
"Bacon's Study" was begun to be demolished on 7 April 1779; and was sold standing for thirteen pounds.
Skelton has an excellent copy, published in 1819, of a drawing of the south front in the Bodleian.
There was anciently a weir under Folly Bridge; such as may still be seen at Godstow and St. John's.
In 1791 Mylne reported it in very bad order.
In June 1793 an arch was to be proceeded with; and a "stop" was thought necessary "at that arch, as well as the others."
It was declared at this time that
"the Obstruction in passing through Folly Bridge is the greatest throughout the whole River; the Bargemen all agree on this point.
The largest Arch is only 14 feet wide; and what with the Wharf below and the Meadow above it is not possible to pass a long Barge without twisting and much Damage.
A pound lock must be made a little to the west."
It was doubtless these gyrations that Burton found such an amusing relief from his labours in anatomising Melancholy: these, and the dithyrambs, the passionate hymns, of the bargemen.
In 1796 "sixpence each time for shutting" was charged.
In June 1797 repairs were ordered to "the arch at Folly Bridge."
It is recorded that the two largest openings in the old bridge did not lie rectangularly with the roadway, but at an angle (it is alleged) of about 45°r;, to accommodate the direction of the "early stream."
Small wonder that the bargemen became here so exceedingly entertaining!
Two years later the Commissioners doubted the propriety of taking a toll at the "pen lock" here; although the expense of it had been very great.
In June 1803 the navigable arch was decayed and impassable.
It was repaired; and a dispute arose between the Commissioners and the turnpike trustees as to the liability for the expense.
Repairs were again urgently needed in 1810, at an estimated cost, which proved absurdly inadequate, of £500.
The greater part of the bridge was at this time considered as in Berkshire; and a quarrel ensued between this county and the city of Oxford as to the responsibility for the cost.
After some tentative litigation the matter was compromised by Berkshire paying half the estimated expense, and £100 towards law costs; and the city adapting the bridge and charging itself with its future maintenance.
The work was thereupon begun, the water was "pumped out of the River"; and the disturbing discovery was made that the foundations and interior of the bridge were so ruinous that it would have to be entirely rebuilt, after the wear and tear of about seven and a quarter centuries.

An Act was obtained for the purpose, receiving royal assent on 28 June 1815.
It empowered the trustees, among other things,
"to remove the Tackle and Works under the present bridge for penning a head of water for the purposes of the River Navigation to some more convenient part above and within 200 yards of the bridge."
The meadow island which, as I have said, lay immediately above the bridge might be dug away to straighten the channel; the bargeway having, up to this time, run round the north side of this ait.
This old channel was filled up after 1825 and the present channel or basin opened for traffic.
The new bridge works were begun in 1824 and completed in 1827.
"A List of Barges on the Thames remeasured in Aug.-Sep. 1812 by Zachary Allnutt" affords the following names of contemporary Oxford barge owners and their fleets:
R. & L. Wyatt 9; White 4 ; Eliz. Grain and Bossom 3 each; Hall, Toovey, Carter 2 each; Whitehouse, Bishop, Oxford Canal Co., Gardner, John Grain, Beasley 1 each.
A poundlock had been discussed here in June 1814, but the scheme was temporarily dismissed.
This is the year sometimes erroneously stated for its establishment.
A year later complaints arose about the 1s. toll levied on every barge passing under the bridge.
In August 1815 Stephen Davis was to have 9s. weekly wages at the flashlock, and a further 5s. for looking after Osney; and to make no further claim.
He does not seem to have kept the bridge long, as another man was appointed in May 1817 at 16s. monthly, for the "lock."
It was then free of toll.
The same December Davis re-engaged at 6s. 6d. weekly, "for shutting and drawing the lock tackle at Folly Bridge."
In January 1819 "a pair of gates" was suggested.
In December 1820 the propriety of an "extra pen lock" again came up for discussion; and in March 1821 was actually ordered.
The work was probably completed during this year; and this is the true establishment date of this poundlock, now dismantled.
It was on the [left] bank behind Salters' rafts; its sides still plain to see, and the little lockhouse also, perched up on the road level, painted dark red when I last saw it.
Water trafiic can now pass through the open lock and avoid the arches of the bridge.
It is said that only its lower end had ordinary lock gates; its upper end was fitted with sluices; and in high water times it was left open.

Davis was in charge till October 1822; and seems then to have been succeeded by James Bossom at 8s. weekly.
Dillon's "Lord Mayor of London's Visit to Oxford of 1826" speaks of "the old wooden bridge."
Doubtless what he so describes was merely a temporary structure for use during the rebuilding, and not "old" at all.
Much disputing occurred between the Commissioners and the bridge wardens about the penning up of the water; which was finally settled under the statutory condition that a new weir should be built within 200 yards above the bridge, as already noted.
This new weir is presumably what Fearnside describes in 1832 as "broad and well constructed."
As early as 1829 an order issued for the removal of the new lock, but without immediate effect.
In November 1840 a notice was affixed that the passage was free of toll; though the tollhouse was rebuilt about 1845.
A prospectus of the Barge Steam Towing Company, secretary E. E. Allen, superintendent S. B. Skinner (doubtless of the partnership alluded to passim in my General History), kindly lent me by Mr. Llewellyn Treacher, states that one barge with 56 tons of merchandise reached Oxford "during one week only in the month of February 1849."
I print from this document the figures for lower destinations under their respective headings.
It seems to be connected with the incident mentioned on page 188 of my General History.
The opinion is expressed that steam haulage afforded "the only means for keeping the present traffic upon rivers and canals;" and giving an opportunity of successfully competing with the railways, which now bid fair to monopolize the whole."
Successful competition with railways is instanced, from personal observation, upon the Rhine and the Danube.
The promoters had built a tug of 30 hp, running between London and Oxford, which had "overcome a considerable amount of opposition."
Three further boats were in contemplation; and the enterprise was to be extended to the Severn and the Humber.
It was "proposed to take advantage of the lately discovered electric light, by which the boats may travel with equal safety both day and night."
After much trouble a "Lamp and Battery, according to the plans of Staite and Petrie," had been installed upon the existing tug.
They noted 228 barges working on the River in the week stated, carrying a total of 9,340 tons of merchandise.
The lockkeeper noted in March 1854 was James Carter, with wages reduced from 42s. monthly to 35s.
Ravenstein in 1861 notes a fall at the lock of about three feet; with free passage.

In December 1864 the lock was ordered to be kept free of notices and placards; it was a glaring poster station in 1913, and had perhaps already become so half a century before.
A sixpenny toll on pleasure craft was imposed after October 1866; it is said that subsequently the city gamins would navigate the two streams running south from Trill Mill stream, thus dodging the lock, in order to get a cheap view of the races.
In January 1867 the free fishermen of Oxford complained of the new tax, but got no relief.
In March new gates were ordered for the pound: a proof that it was still in being, in spite of the order of 1829.
In 1856 the Treacher Papers contain many references to towpath gates and bridges damaged by the "Peace mob"; and also to repairs to the lock down to 1857.
Carter still held under the Conservancy in October 1866, at 52s. monthly.
J. Towle in August 1868 was offering to sell Grand Pont mill.
In November Carter, owing to failing health, was paid off with three months' wages, after, it appears, 24 years' River service.
In February 1869 H. Stretton succeeded him.
In September 1871 the Oxford city corporation invited the Conservators to clear the River down to Iffley of "weeds and dead animals."
The upper superintendent assured the Conservancy that he had found only one "dead animal" in the district libelled.
During this year an iron bridge was substituted for that part of the bridge called Grandpont, which had become unsafe.
Taunt says that in 1872 the lock was "Open in high water time, with a summer fall of 1½ to 2 feet."
H. Shelton resigned in February 1873 ; and Charles Clutterbuck from the Roebuck ferry at Purley succeeded him, being in November placed in charge of the Upper Navigation tugboat.
Jos. Ashley followed at the lock.
Repairs to the bridge, and the weir "on the upper side of Folly lock," to the extent of nearly £500, were recommended in April 1877; and again ordered in February 1880.
In December 1883 Ashley was dead; and Alfred Coppins took his place.
The lock was found in very bad condition in the following May; and the gates were finally removed, and the present open passage established, by December 1884.
Coppings was sent to Bell Weir in March 1885.
Church says in his "Summer Days", published in 1880, that the towpath
"was blocked by a lofty door, defended with formidable rails - in the interests of the watermen, who made a rich harvest by ferrying passengers across from Christ Church meadows."
This is the only allusion I have seen to the circumstance; the Conservancy records are silent on the subject.
He also states that the pseudo-classic name of Isis for the Thames was originated by Leland.

[ RIVER CHERWELL ] WTSWG

[ DONNINGTON ROAD BRIDGE, 1962 ] WTSWG

IFFLEY LOCK WTSWG

An allusion occurs about 1220-30 to "Ralph the bridge-keeper" (pontarius); and another about ten years later to "the bridge": presumably the weir bridge is meant.
Bishop in 1585 says that the weir belonged to Mrs. Pitts.
This was the highest of the three poundlocks built by the Oxford-Burcot Commission under the Act 21 James I.
Turnpikes was a frequent name for the first of the modern locks; and it is used of this one by Roger Griffiths in 1746.
Iffley, Sandford, and the now disused station in the Swift Ditch, were the first poundlocks built upon the Thames, though not the first in the country; it being stated by George Westall in his "Inland Cruising" of 1908 that the earliest native example was on the Exeter Canal, dug, according to Oliver, in 1564.
Even this was a very belated adoption.
Chapman, in his "Canal Navigation" of 1797, says:
"The first lock was supposed to be erected in the year 1488, upon the Brenta nigh Padua."
I believe modern research, as stated in my Introduction, has antedated the invention some sixty years earlier still.
I do not, to my regret, discover the exact date of the building of these original locks; but as early as 1632 John Taylor alludes to their existence.
I discuss the difficulty in my "General History".
Succeeding upon Griffiths's mention, noted above, Bowen's map in 1775 speaks of "Isley" turnpike: a very frequent misprint due probably to the ff being mistaken for a long s.
There are numerous variations in the spelling of the name; the art is, after all, a vastly over-rated accomplishment.
Many further allusions to this station will be found in my "General History": and need not be reprinted here.
A man named Danby, who owned or rented Iffley mill, had charge of the lock in 1767 and 1789; and seems to have been a scourge to the navigation.
In 1790 the Thames Commissioners took over by purchase the three locks and other works of the Oxford-Burcot Commission.
In 1791 Mylne mentions Swiffin's Weir as adjoining Iffley.

In 1793 the old pound was rebuilt, being lengthened in the process from about 75ft., or variously 91ft., to 120ft.
In March 1795 John Danby the miller was appointed keeper as from Midsummer 1794; his remuneration is not noted.
He was instructed to take tolls for "punts, pleasure boats, skins, wherries, etc."
He was still keeper in 1796: in a report of this year it is noted that the Severn Canal boats
"are obliged to enter the lock stern foremost, on account of the projection of the apron to the upper gates."
A swing stride was affixed to the lock in 1799, to prevent barges entering with their masts up.
You may still see strides: one at Dedham lock, for example, on the Suffolk Stour navigation, is illustrated in my General History.
The Commissioners at this time set little store by the revenue arising from the pleasure traffic; Danby was allowed to retain the whole of it for a twelvemonth, in consideration of the extra work involved.
The charge was sixpence for punts and skiffs; one shilling for four-oared craft.
In June 1802 the lock was repaired and enlarged to the dimensions of the new lower series.
The work was not done quickly enough for "Mr. Henry Burdon, Agent to the Cheesmongers of London"; who complained in October of the delay.
Another lengthening took place in 1806.
The lock was closed for three weeks from 30 June:
"but the trade will be carried on by shifting the goods over a short good passage of about 12 ft.
between the mill head and the present tail."
It is interesting to note that no recourse was had to the old passage over the weir; as seems to have occurred elsewhere.
It was noticed in 1810 that Danby was still retaining the pleasure tolls granted him for a year in 1802; and he was now requested to account for them.
A lockhouse was begun this autumn.
In June 1811 the lock was forced by men from Oxford; which stepped the navigation nearly a week.
Danby was dead by November 1818; and Wm. Hands is noted as keeper in 1821, with speciflc instructions to collect pleasure tolls.
The "old lock", and Swiffin's weir, are described this year as the property of Miss Danby.
In December 1826 it was ordered that no craft should pass through the lock during the hours of divine service, excepting when flashes were necessary.
In March 1829 Danby the old-lock owner, son perhaps of the earlier Danby, was summoned for neglecting to pen a flash, and for running the water to waste a whole night.

In May of the same year Hands was presented with £5 "as a token of the Commissioners' approbation of his great attention to his duties in collecting toll upon pleasure boats during the past year."
The gratuity was doubled before it was paid over: the official indifference to this source of revenue seems surprising to-day when the navigation works are so largely supported by it.
Hands received a further £10 at the end of 1830.
In November 1833 he resigned, and Wm. Wyatt had his office: transferred, I think, from Marsh lock.
Next month, in spite of his resignation, Hands received his usual compliment of £10, "for his diligence and integrity."
Wyatt received the same sum annually up to December 1838; in 1837 it is recorded that the revenue under this head, presumably at this station only, had amounted to about £83 for the year.
He got £20 the next two years; and only £15 each year from 1841 till 1850.
A symptom of the deleterious effect of the railways upon the barge traffic appears in the decrease of tonnage passing this lock from 38,000 tons in 1840 to 24,000 tons in 1842.
The weir still belonged to a Danby in 1846.
In December 1850 it was decided that the tolls should be let annually by auction; and Wyatt had notice to leave if the negotiations proved successful.
Accordingly in February 1851 Thomas Porter took over Iffley at £410 annual rent.
Early in 1852 Sandford was included in the arrangement; and on 31 March both locks were let to the highest bidder: Thomas John Bolton of The Earl of Lonsdale's Tavern, Westbourn Grove, Bayswater; Iflley for £250 and Sandford for £150, each annually: much lower terms than poor Porter's, who petitioned in vain for some allowance towards the loss he had made.
In March 1853 Sandford went to Wm. Baily Wyatt, perhaps the former lockkeeper, "of Wootton, Berks, Victualler," for two years at £200 annual rent ; and Iffley to John Basson, of Osney, poundlock keeper, at £100.
His son Harry kept at Sandford ; and when the father died went to Osney.

In March 1855 both stations went to George Palfrey James of Streatley, "Turnpike Tolls Renter," for one year for £260 inclusive: apparently the business was in those days a recognized profession.
In March 1856 Sandford was again let to Wyatt for £150; and Iffley to John Basson for £200.
Next year John Mattingley 0f Nuneham Courtenay, yeoman, took them both for a year for £340.
John Basson succeeded him in 1858 at £300 inclusive; one of his sureties being "William Basson, tailor, keeper of Riley pound."
Both stations next went, in 1859, to John Tuddenham of Kidlington for three years at £450 annually; inclusive.
The Commissioners, however, had driven too hard a bargain; and it is not surprising, in view of the great decrease in revenue through railway competition, that the lease had to be cancelled betore the close of the first year; neither Tuddenham nor his sureties being able to fulfil their obligation.
In 1860 John Basson of Osney took the two stations for a year at £350.
Wm. Basson, tailor, of Iffley lock, tried them during 1861 ; and after him John apparently returned, as in June 1863 he was reported dead, being the lessee; and his wife Hannah was allowed to continue the contract, having simultaneous charge of Osney.
In February 1864 the two stations were put up under a reserve of £500; and there being no bidders at this figure the Commissioners retained the tolls in their own hands.
Which concludes this quite unexpected episode.
With regard to the above named Hannah Basson, it is interesting to note that she was born a Bossom.
Until I had a conversation with James Basson at Chertsey in 1915 I was in much uncertainty as to whether the two surnames were not perhaps identical.
In their origin they probably were, but are entirely distinct for the purposes of this history; and Hannah affords, I believe, the only instance of their interunion.
A further note on the subject will be found at Chertsey.

Ravenstein paid his customable sixpence in 1861.
The lock was repaired in 1864; and had then only three feet of water on the lower sill.
At a Parliamentary inquiry in 1865 a witness stated:
"Not more than 4 or 5 years ago I remember seeing barges pass over the shoals below Oxford, and that they were in the habit of driving cows and horses into the water, so that they could create a flash, and raise the water a few inches."
There was much talk on this occasion about the expediency of removing the lock and weir altogether, and building another "just below Oxford."
It was also then mentioned that the lock, meaning the weir, had been the property of Lincoln College since 1302: the gift of Christina, wife of John Culvert, to her son; and from him to the college; which last was paying in 1866 the sum of £2. 12s. 4d. annually for it to Donnington hospital in lieu of a pound of pepper.
Effectively to repair the lock was estimated to cost £3,000, during 1866.
Richard Wheeler is found as keeper under the Conservancy in October of this year.
He was succeeded by Elijah Mayes in March 1868 With £3 monthly wages.
In May 1869 Mayes was ordered to Shiplake, and immediately resigned the service.
John Reeves was thereupon brought hither from Shiplake; being dismissed in the autumn of 1878, and succeeded by H. Cordery from Boulter's.
At a Flood Inquiry in 1877 the Rev. J. C Clutterbuck blamed Iffley, rather than Sandford, as the real cause of flooding at Oxford.
"There is a lock," quoth he, "with two mills, with their accompanying weirs; and if they were swept away that would be a great step" towards improvement.
Cordery was dismissed in July 1880 ; J. Owlett, his successor, resigned in January 1882, and was followed by J. Child.
In May 1883 the Conservancy promised the Thames Valley Drainage Commission to remove the lock and weirs at their own expense, provided the latter Authority would "meet all claims for loss of water power" at the mills.
A boatslide was promised in January 1885.
Towards the end of this year a very determined local effort was made towards abolishing the lock, mills and weirs.
The level of the River up to Folly Bridge was to be lowered 2ft. 6in., but the bed was to be dredged so that there should be a uniform depth of about five feet.
Several local petitions, however, perhaps decided the Conservators against any interference with the station.
Child died about October 1886, and F. E. Jones from Temple lock succeeded him.
The ancient and picturesque mill was burnt down on 27 May 1908; and has not yet been rebuilt; WTSWG though it still, like others in similar ruin, figures as one of the extant attractions of the River in railway and other advertisements.
Church in his Summer Days says that about 1829 the racing boats at Oxford
"were crowded together in Iffley lock, and got out as fast as they could," as each race started.

[ ISIS BRIDGE (1962)] WTSWG

[ KENNINGTON RAILWAY BRIDGE (1864-) ] WTSWG

KENNINGTON or ROSE ISLAND WTSWG

The backwater bridge was sanctioned by the Conservancy in November 1881; but whether as a fresh institution, or merely a renewal, does not appear in the record.
I note in 1825, in Kennington, a towpath meadow name of Smith's Ham; and in 1890 ait names in Littlemore parish, besides Rose: Walker's, New, and St. Michael's.

SANDFORD LOCK WTSWG

The mill was built by the Knights Templar about 1294.
In a deed of about this same date Henry, son of Adam the ferryman, grants the ferry to John Golding of Newnham and Scolastica his wife.
The ferry in 1348 and 1361 was part of a fee for masses in Witney church.
In 1514 Wm. Busshe is noted as the ferryman.
He was appointed in 1506 in the room of Thos. Hunt, deceased; and was succeeded about 1530 by John Dale.
About 1520 the mill and "the fishweir called the lok" were let for £12 yearly.
Baskervile remarks in 1692-3:
"At Sandford ferry when y^e water is high, is a boat to carry horse and man over":
the use of the ford at low water times seems implied.
An early instance of the immemorial disputes between the mills and the water traffic is recorded by Anthony a Wood as having occurred under Edward III (1327-1377); when
"the men of Oxon broke down the locks of Sandford which 'the brethren' there raised."
This is my earliest allusion to the flashlock; built by the preceptory, doubtless, for the benefit of their mill; to the enragement of the bargemen of Oxford.
Bishop in 1585 mentions "Samfords Lock kept by John Ovens."
As I have remarked under Iffley, the poundlock here was one of the three installed by the Oxford Burcot Commission; and therefore one of the first three on the River.
I cannot fix its completion earlier than 1632, when John Taylor mentions it in his rhymed survey of the River.
Edmund Powell was in charge of it in 1639 for this Commission; under whose authority it remained until their works were sold in 1790.
Many details regarding it during this period will be found in my General History.
The pound was rented in 1767 by Mrs. Hill; in 1780 by Beckley; the weir in 1791 belonged to another Hill.
At Michaelmas this year Beckley paid iifteen guineas for one year's rent of the lock; and the same sum for each of two following years: a puny amount compared with the rentals I have just detailed sixty years later, under the last lock.
In 1793 it was decided to lengthen the lock from 87 to 120 ft.; but a year afterwards it was reported that
"the old walls of the lock appear to be blowing away, and the whole work is in a very dangerous and precarious situation";
so probably nothing had been done.
Things being "worse than ever" in 1795, rebuilding was immediately started; Harris, "the Oxford gaoler", having charge of the work.
The expense was nearly £1,800, and the criticism was made that a less sum would have built a new lock in a better situation.
The passage was stopped for a year;
"and the navigators obliged to change boats and shift their cargoes over the meadows or shoot the old [flash] Lock at very great risk; one boat sunk in making the experiment."

Bickford, or Beckley (perhaps the man named in 1780 and 1791), was the first keeper named under the Thames Commissioners, in 1796; he stayed till at least 1798.
Danby the Iffley miller succeeded him before 1810; with the same privilege as at Iffley in respect of pleasure tolls.
He died in or before November 1818; and Thomas Day had his place.
In 1821 and 1822 H. Swann the miller had charge at 36s. monthly remuneration.
The mill was rebuilt about 1824.
In 1826 the lock is described as having a fall of "about 7 feet".
A new lock, on the present site, was opened in September 1836 alongside the old Jacobean structure.
The City of London committee reported very warmly in its praise in 1838:
"in place of the old decayed and shallow Lock, impassable at low water seasons without large and frequent flashes."
A lockhouse was ordered in October 1839; Wm. Haines (possibly of the Old Windsor family) was keeper in 1842.
The old pound was conveyed to the mill in December 1844.
J. Swann is named as weir owner in 1846.
In a sale catalogue of the property dated August 1850, paper is indicated as the product of the mill.
The freehold tolls of the "old lock" (flash) are stated to have produced an average of £200 annually during the previous ten years.
A press cutting of December 1854, referring to the Abingdon branch railway line, then being inaugurated, reads:
"It is reported that Mr. Norris has personal motives for decrying this railway.
As lessee of Sandford lock he will lose £100 a year toll when the railway is open."
This is probably J. T. Norris, of Sutton Courtenay also.
I do not know how he comes to be located at Sandford, unless he had the mill, and was financing Wyatt; whom the official records name as lessee of the lock at this date.
I have incorporated this lock under Iffley in respect of the period 1852 to 1864 when the tolls of both stations were let at auction.
Ravenstein paid his usual 6d. here in 1861.
At the parliamentary inquiry of 1865 it was stated that here
"was a lock some years ago which was given up, and the millowner had very indiscreetly opened the sluice of this lock, allowing the water to rush through with tremendous force, and allowed the water to undermine the embankment between that lock and the next";
i.e., between the old pound and the new one beside it.

Sandford Old Lock 1912

The iron bridge over the main stream above the lock was built between 1866 and 1877.
No keeper, except the various lessees and their deputies, is named after Swann in 1822 until Thomas Franklin under the Conservancy in October 1866, at £3 monthly.
In November 1867 Franklin, being "very aged", was given two months' notice.
He pleaded for six months, his wife offering to do the work; but in January 1868 Stephen Blake was appointed.
A symptom of the commercial hostility to the increasing pleasure traffic occurs in May of this year, when the Sandford millers asked that some arrangement might be made to prevent the interruption to their business by the constant opening of the lock gates for these craft.
The same July the Rev. A. K. B. Granville claimed under the new Act the incredible sum of £13,087 for his interest in the Sandford "locks, dams and weirs".
It is satisfactory to record that in March 1869 he and his fellow-claimants received less than £700 between them.
In February 1870 he complained that lock dues were being charged on mill cargoes: always hitherto, he declared, passed free.
His complaint was not allowed.
In February 1881 the Clarendon Press, having bought the mill, asked to buy the old pound for an extra wheel.
It was still to be seen in 1913, in site though not in actual masonry identical with the James I work.
The part of the mill astride it was built in 1880.
Buckland the naturalist is said to have declared:
"Give me power to do what I like with Sandford, and I could drown Oxford."
The Rev. J C. Clutterbuck, however, in 1877 defended Sandford, as I have said, from causing floods; and blamed Iffley
"on the River Thames. They call it Isis, but I call it the Thames."
But others also accused the mill; it had been burnt down two or three years earlier and rebuilt, the head raised from five to nine feet.
At that time it made paper for the Clarendon Press; but
"ruined everybody that has ever come to it.
It is the real fall of the Thames; and when there is a flood it is grand to see the fall."
Either Stephen Blake remained in charge here an unusually long time; or the official records omit to mention his successors.
I have no note of any other keeper until E. J. Ferrier, who in June 1910 received the thanks of the Conservancy for a gallant attempt to save a man from drowning.

NUNEHAM WEIR WTSWG

My earliest reference is in a deed dated 17 August 1576 in the possession of Mr. A. E. Preston of Abingdon:
"Thupper Locke of Newnam is a great Annoisennce to the Ryver of Thames, and to the drownynge of the Meadowes there bycause there is no order taken how high he shall penne the water and therefore to be taken awaye quite by Thomas Mullyner als Mullyneux'."
Bishop in 1585 speaks of three "locks" here, kept by John Mollyners; John Taylor in 1632 of a fishing weir and a sandbank.
It is called Newham by Griffiths in 1746.
In April 1788 Lord Harcourt, the owner, offered to resign the tolls and management of the flashlock to the Commissioners in the event of their deciding to build a poundlock, provided they agreed to keep both engines in repair and accepted his nominees as their servants.
An opinion was hazarded this year that the station belonged to the Oxford-Burcot Commission; but it seems very doubtful; see my General History, passim.
The Thames Commissioners apparently did not accept Lord Harcourt's offer; having found the tackle in extremely bad condition.
The offer was renewed in March 1791; and a committee was formed to put in hand the erection of a poundlock.
The old navigation channel ran along the [right] bank course spanned by the present bridge; which marks the site of the old weir.
Mylne reported this year:
"As all the works and Weirs, here, are very bad, and as it will cost from £1000 to £1200 to form a Pound lock, the whole may be cleared away and that money saved."
Evidently the building order had not taken effect.
It is stated, also during this year, that up till this time the towing between here and Oxford had been done at pleasure
"on either side of the River without interruption, as found more convenient."
In 1793 it was finally decided that the poundlock was unnecessary.

The local neglect seems to have resulted in there being only 6½ inches of water on the lower sill of Sandford.
Boydell notes the weir in 1794.
Next spring it was surveyed, and found in a bad state; large stones dangerous to the traffic had fallen into the barge channel.
The remedy was thought to be either to instal a pair of gates "like those at King's Weir"; or to build a poundlock.
The former alternative was decided upon.
In August 1798 it was reported that the "lock" lately erected had failed.
Repairs were ordered; and as Lord Harcourt's agent John Flory still collected the tolls it was considered that his lordship should contribute to the expense.
In an extant holograph letter, however, he firmly declines to allow any one to survey or meddle with the station; the Commissioners having rejected his previous offers.
The pen was still thought useful in assisting to hold the water up to Sandford.
Lord Harcourt might seem, from the records, clearly to have resigned the ownership by 1802; yet I find that in 1813, in spite of an open passage for barges, he was preferring a claim for the same tolls as had previously been paid by vessels using "the old navigation through the weir."
The Commissioners declined his demand.
In December 1808 another order had been made for a weir similar to King's.
The Field reviewer of my General History wrote:
"In Crimean days [1854-6] and later, there was a large gravel shoal above water in normal weather on the right hand of the channel that leads down to Nuneham cottages.
This suggests the operation for long years of sharp lasher outfall just above it, as if that backwater had once been banked by a weir with lasher relief to it, to maintain depth in barge channel on west side of the island."
It is a curious speculation; but I meet with no record of such a weir.
Armstrong's drawing of 1886 shews no weir, though his text alludes to the "so-called lock at Nuneham Cottage."
All that is to be seen now is a large circular stone like a millstone between the centre piers of the rustic bridge: an inch or two if anything under water, when I sculled by about 1910.

A bridge across the main River was almost built at Nuneham not long ago.
In September 1889 Colonel Harcourt made the proposal to the Conservators; to take effect opposite his house.
The plans, however, could not be agreed: he desired three spans; the Conservancy insisted upon one only.
In January 1890 he suggested a ferry, with a dock on the Nuneham side.
The bridge, however, was actually in course of construction in November 1891; but was finally discontinued in February 1892.
When I visited the spot in 1913 there was nothing to be seen of the works, except the raised causeway specially made across the meadow as an approach from Radley village.
The ferryman's cottage on the left bank, just above the House, marks the proposed trajectory of the bridge.
I understood locally that it was intended for little more than the convenient passage of cattle and horses over the River, which is comparatively narrow at the spot.
I note about 1825 Radley towpath meadow names : Gossey, Parker's, Stockey, Leverey, Eney, and Grinaways.

NUNEHAM RAILWAY BRIDGE WTSWG

An elevation in August 1852 shews it to have been first proposed in timber.
All the openings were to be 40 ft. wide.

THE SWIFT DITCH WTSWG

This now almost unknown feature of Thames topography possesses an important and extremely interesting history.
If tradition, as it usually is, be reliable, down this now confined and grown-up channel the whole body of Thames once ran, to the exclusion of all the other local channels now existing.
Leland wrote about 1535:
"The chefe Streme of Isis ran afore betwixt Andersey Isle and Culneham, even where now the South End is of Culneham";
adding elsewhere:
"Ethelwolde, Abbate of Abbingdon, and after Bishop of Winchestre, yn King Edgares days" caused "a Cut to cum out of Isis by force to serve and purge theofficis of thabbay."
Edgar became king in 955; Ethelwold went to Winchester in 963: within these eight years, therefore, the Thames was first brought through Abingdon.
Wm. Harrison, in his Description of England of 1577, amplifies Leland:
"No part of [the Thames] at the first came so neere the towne as it doth now, till a branch thereof was led thither from the maine streame, thorough the industrie of the monks";
a marginal note adding:
"Some write, that the maine streame was brought thither which ranne before betweene Andredeseie and Culenham."
The chronological succession of navigated Thames waterways in the Abingdon district may be thus summarized:
(1) Swift Ditch, running along the southeast boundary of Andersey, containing the whole body of the River, with nothing nearer the town of Abingdon.
(2) "A Trench cut from the Thames for [the abbey's] convenience and cleanliness" by the monks thereof between 955 and 963; still running under the name of the Abbey millstream: being the northernmost of the streams that divide at the lock.
The monks very probably caused the trafiic to use this channel in place of the Swift Ditch.
(3) The present navigation from the weirs downward to the confluence below the bridge; being the channel cut in response to the Oxford petition of 1060, quoted in my General History.
(4) The Swift Ditch, reopened by the Oxford-Burcot Commission of 1624, as recounted in my General History; who introduced a poundlock at its head, and retained a weir about half way along it; the route through Abingdon having probably become too shallow for use.
(5) The present navigation channel, reopened in 1790; the Swift Ditch route being again abandoned.
(A little initial problem connects itself with No.4: arising out of Bishop's "Collombe weare" in 1580-5 noted in my General History.
He is indicting "Locks noysome and daungerous for passengers"; and must I think be referring to the halfway weir in Swift Ditch.
If so, his complaint might seem to imply that the Swift Ditch was being used for serious traffic about half a century before the Oxford-Burcot Commission officially re-opened it.)
The length of the Ditch is about 1¼ miles; of the bend it cuts off, about 2 miles; and the consequent greater swiftness of its current, as compared with the main stream, may have obtained it its title.
There are numerous other instances, however, of the name Swift Ditch; where the conditions are by no means identical.
Another explanation that has been suggested to me is that the Swift may represent the common Saxon personal name of Swaefe.
This ancient bed of the River closely hugs the foot of the attractive little ridge that runs southwest from Toot Baldon to Culham; as you may observe on a contour map, or more pleasantly in the countryside itself if you will walk out from Abingdon in the direction of Rivy Farm and Culham Bridge.
Whether or no this adhesion to the base of the hills be a further proof of an antiquity superior to that of the modern main River, which flows away from them into the levels, is perhaps a question for the geologist.

It needs establishing, I find, that this almost forgotten title of Swift Ditch is properly applicable to the channel along the southeast face of Andersey.
Verbally, and I believe in print also, it has been erroneously given to
(a) the Abbey millstream;
(b) the cut made in 1060.
I propose therefore to establish in some detail my application of it.
The earliest mention of the title of which I am aware is in John Taylor's Thame Isis, published in 1632, and described at some length in my General History.
Coming downstream towards Abingdon he learns that the shoals there are worse than those he has just encountered at Nuneham; and exclaims: "That Swift Ditch seemes to be the better course."
Next in time, and perhaps even more conclusive, is a passage from Plot's Oxfordshire of 1677.
Herein, discoursing upon poundlocks, the doctor instances those recently erected upon the Thames
"between Oxford and Bercot: one at Ifley, another at Sanford, and a third at Culham in the Swift-ditch, which was cut at that time when the River was made navigable."
Thirdly I present two notes from Challenor's Selections from the Abingdon Municipal Chronicle:
"5th Nov. 1795. Ordered that Notice be given to Mr. Simon Peck immediately to repair the Bridge over Swift Ditch belonging to his premises called Rye Farm."
"26th Sep. 1797. Ordered that proper means be taken to enforce by Indictment or otherwise the Repairs of Swift Ditch Bridge at Culham, in the occupation of Simon Peck."
Rye or Rivy Farm, a house of great antiquarian interest, stands upon Andersey Island.
The bridge complained of was either the one at the lock, carrying a long and useful footpath from Clifton Hampden across the Ditch on to the Abingdon road close by Abingdon Bridge; or the other at the old weir site.
The frequent location of the bridge and the weir, both associated with Swift Ditch, in Culham parish, is in itself conclusive that the Ditch is the channel along the southeast border of Andersey.
Finally, I will refer to various small but decisive pieces of evidence in the chapter on the Oxford-Burcot Commission in my General History.
After you have sculled down about half-a-mile below Nuneham railway bridge you will arrive at a bay or widening of the River on the [right] bank, immediately above a ferry and a lasher, and possibly still a little white houseboat moored for many years to the [left] bank.
In this bay you will find an outlet perhaps thirty feet wide, overgrown with reeds and withies and flowering plants.
Some eighty paces along this cut will bring you to the old poundlock, built by the Oxford-Burcot Commission at some date between 1624 and 1638.
Its gates are all gone; and except for the growth there is a clear passage into it.
Its basin is perhaps under twenty feet in width, and seventy-five to eighty feet in length; approximating to the original length of Sandford and Iffley.
There is no exit; the lower gates were removed a century ago and replaced with a solid dam of masonry.
The walls are of firm and exact stonework, beautifully laid; much superior to a good deal of later construction.

Swift Ditch Lock 1910

Lower down, about halfway along the Ditch, once stood the flashweir already mentioned.
My earliest note is Bishop's in 1580-5:
"Collombe weare being Edward Wilmotts. In the parish of Collombe."
It is noted in the 1789 report of the 1770 Commissioners; and is probably the station referred to by Griffiths in 1746 as being two miles below Nuneham and half a mile above Culham Bridge: which distances approximate closely to the conditions to-day.
Why this weir was left here after the pound at the head of the Ditch was installed I do not know.
It may have perpetuated a fishing weir, far older than the pound, whose rights had to be respected; it may have been needed to pen for shoals above or to supply a flash for others below; or may have been retained to ease the current.
A pool extends above it, with accommodation for a whole fleet of barges; and another below, still larger: both are very lovely.
I visited the ancient pathetic scene twice in the summer of 1910; my interest stimulated by a report that the riparian owners were de more endeavouring to claim the channel as a private water.
I walked and scrambled, trespassing as "I piously believe", beside the lonely, grown up watercourse, down as far as the halfway bridge; and there beheld on the left bank the foundation stones on which the weir beam formerly reposed.
It was a revelation of much Thames beauty almost undreamed of: lying unvisited and unknown under the grassy slopes of the little ridge.
"Thames" beauty I say in full confidence; for the attempt to deny that this was ever a navigable highway of the River is in absurd defiance of inexpugnable facts.
For the most part the course was winding and narrow; thickly grown up and overhung with a jungle of plants and hedges and lofty timber that almost shut out the sunlight from its quiet flow.
But here and there the course is wide and deep, as no doubt it was throughout, when first reopened nearly three centuries ago; with the beautiful and unsuspected pools of which I have spoken.
The supply of water comes from a little runlet out of the Thames just above the lock, from the head lasher, and doubtless from innumerable springs.
John Sellar's map of about 1680, and Seller and Oliver's of about the same date, represent Swift Ditch as much more important than the stream through Abingdon : the reverse of modern conditions.
Camden wrote in 1720:
"Not far from [the Swift Ditch lock] is Abingdon [flash] lock, where they pay £2 5s.; but omitted in the table [of tolls], because it lies not in the Course of the Barges":
an excellent piece of evidence of the user of the Swift Ditch, which continued down to 1790, when Abingdon poundlock was built and the channel through the town cleared for traffic.
This year Ireland wrote:
"The new cut has rendered the old stream towards Culham Bridge entirely useless."
At the close of this year the Thames Commissioners, having bought up all the works of the Oxford-Burcot Commission, ordered the boats and tackle at "Cullum Old Lock" to be removed, and the gates locked up at "Cullum" poundlock.
Removal of the stonework from the old Weir, largely for repairing Sandford and Iflley locks, began about June 1791, and continued till at least December 1793.
I find no evidence against my opinion that the walls of the poundlock have not been touched since the traffic deserted it.
Many further small notes bearing upon its history will be found in my companion volume.

Swift Ditch Lower Pool

In May 1792 Thomas Hewitt was ordered to quit the Commissioners' house near "Cullum Old Lock" at the ensuing Michaelmas.
In June they took of him £2 for a year's rent of this cottage, due the previous Michaelmas; and of Henry "Collings" £14 3s. 4d. for part of a year's rent, due at the same date, for Culham old lock and pound.
In August 1793 the gates and sluices at the pound were altered and repaired "for the Letting out of Flood water."
In August 1798 "Thomas Heart [doubtless poor Hewitt], the Tenant of the house at Cullham old Lock", was to be distrained on for four years' rent: £8.
In June 1799, "the house being totally useless to the Commissioners", it was sold for breaking up for £24 10s.
The indignant Hewitt, however, would not quit until in August a bailiff managed to get in, and so vanished another relic.
Almost certainly this cottage was at the side of the poundlock; though ambiguity is introduced by the reiterated phrase "Culham old lock," which may equally indicate the weir; where also there was probably once a dwelling of some sort, though not official property.
The indenture of 1652, on page 81 of my General History, expressly stipulates that the two roomed cottage shall be built "upon the Wall of the Southside of the Turnepike" ; and a few lines down will be found a statement in 1857 that a cottage did once stand on this site.
No obvious relic of it now remains.
In 1802 Mylne found the poundlock
"all deserted and ruinous. The stonework, though long left to itself, is still sound, and better than the modern work."
During some floods in December 1807 one John Crawford drew the sluices at "Culham old lock" against orders; and was summoned for the penalty of £20.
A Commissioners' note of August 1811 says:
"In Consequence of the Navigable Channel of the River having been changed from its ancient course under Culham Bridge, the O1d Passage by disuse has become almost dry land."
In June 1842 repairs at "Culham old Lock" are recorded.
And in June 1857 occurred the last considerable transaction that I have discovered in this little history.
It was recommended to the Commissioners, then almost at an end alike of their resources and of their existence, that
"the old Turnpike or Pound Lock and Scite upon which a Cottage formerly stood situate on the back Stream or River at Culham in the County of Oxford, which Stream was formerly Navigable for Boats and Barges but has ceased to be so for Fifty years last past and is quite useless to the Commissioners be sold to James Morrell"
of Oxford, lord of the manor of Culham, who claimed the soil of the said stream and exclusive fishery;
"he having proposed to purchase the same of the Commissioners, and all their Estate and Interest therein and in the said Stream or River, he the said James Morrell his heirs etc. undertaking to repair and maintain the footbridge" at the lock.
The consideration was the surrender by Mr. Morrell of four £100 Thames Navigation bonds, worth at that date about two shillings each in open market.
I do not know what effect such a sale may ultimately have upon the status of the channel ; but I strongly cherish a hope that the ancient dictum: "Once a highway, always a highway" may finally prevail in this matter.
In May 1897 it was discovered that three arches of Culham Bridge were blocked; to prevent the passage of boats.
When Morrell's trustees were requested to reopen them they pleaded the above purchase of 1857 in justification; and declined to remove the obstructions.
They declared the latter had been in position since 1860-1; and that the channel had been claimed as a private water ever since.
I saw barbed wire stretched across the arches in the summer of 1913.

ABINGDON LOCK WTSWG

I note on page 22 of my General History a complaint in 1316 against the abbot of Abingdon, John de Salter, for so heightening his weir that both banks above were often flooded.
The tragic death of his successor, Richard de Clyve, in this same year is recited by Matthew of Westminster.
"Unhappy fate contrived that the abbot, with certain monks and seculars, through the kicking and plunging of their horses, at a certain river swollen with land water near their monastery, which he was disposed to cross with the said company: by some fell handling and the steersman's unwise management of the fragile craft were all at one stroke drowned, oh pity! in midstream";
doubtless the Thames.
In March 1539 three watermills in Abingdon were granted to John Wellesbourne.
There is in the Record Office avoluminous set of depositions regarding another alleged raising of the weir in 1570.
Sir George Stonehouse, lord of Radley manor, sued William Blacknall the owner and Richard Tysdall the "farmer" of Abingdon mill, both perhaps identical with the local surnames in Bishop's lists of 1580 and 1585 in my General History, alleging that their mismanagement of the weir as continually flooding and destroying his lands.
The action concerned itself very largely with Nyetts ford, crossing not the Thames but a bystream called Thrupp Water which left the River near "Newenamlocke".
Two not irrelevant points emerge illuminating the relations between the common people and the monasteries.
The question arose of the Radley tenants' common in a certain fishery.
"About 32 years last past before the dissolution of the monastery of Abingdon one Walton then fisherman to the Abbott did carry away out of Nyettford certain weels there laid by tenants of the manor of Radley and the sayed Walton declared to John Audelett esquyer then being steward of the Abbott what he had done well said Audelett we will for that tyme borrow their fish but look thou carry back the weels where thou hadst them for else I will set thee by the heeles for the water belongeth not to us but to the Tenants of Radley."
Audelett knew his master!
The other point is equally significant.
The king's officers put in at the suppression actually invited and advertised for complaints against the late abbot; but
"the tenants of Radley found not them selfs greved wt the said abbot or his officers concerneng anye matter."
Mr. Preston, mentioned above, possesses contemporary MSS. bearing upon this matter; and courteously gave me an opportunity of inspecting them.
Thrupp Water, one of them states:
"was known by the name of Thaymes and is parcell of the said River.
The Abbots had boats on it."
It appears at one part to have broadened into a lake, used as a fish stew by the convent.
It divided at Goosey into two streams, running respectively north and south of Nyett common, and reuniting at Porter's or "Pook's eight".
There was "a wear upon the said water".
In one passage the name is spelt Troop: an interesting survival of what was doubtless the original pronunciation.
In 1576 a great dam in Thrupp Water was condemned "to be plucked up by the inhabitants of Radley."
It was complained that elm trees lay over the water there,
"with flakes stakes earth and gravel stopping the course of the water and letting both boates and fish to pass and repass."
In November 1665 the mayor and justices of Abingdon were ordered to prevent laden barges from London proceeding any higher, and were not to allow them to unload until they were proved not to have come from any place infected with plague.
A like letter to the Justices about Burket.
Charles II was at Oxford at this time.

Inscription at Abingdon Weir, Photograph by lockkeeper Drew about 1910

When I was through the lock in 1910 Mr. Drew the lockkeeper called my attention to a stone built into the left wall of the midmost of the three weirs, recording that
"This locke was bvilded by Sr George Stonehovse and Richard Adams Ann. 1649 ";
not long, it will be observed, after the Swift Ditch had been reopened.
This Sir George would perhaps be the son or the grandson of the foregoing.
Drew gave me a copy of the excellent photograph of the stone which he had been at the pains of taking; and which I reproduce.
It is possible that this section of the weirs is the original site of the flashlock founded so many centuries ago by the abbey; and here may have been collected the hundred allecia of toll; though Messrs. Pearson's Thames book states that
"a door in an old house adjoining the mill still exists where this toll was paid."
The king's vessels seem to have been exempt; and the toll itself to have been payable only from "the beginning of Lent until the Passover": April 20.
The abbey millstream is, as I have said, the northernmost of the streams that divide at the lock.
In 1788 several "gentlemen of Abingdon" found themselves anxious to divert the navigation once more from the Swift Ditch to its previous course by the town.
In December of this year, therefore, the streams under the bridge were examined to see if either of them could be rendered suitable for the barges, so that they might avoid the shoals about Culham Bridge and the "old lock" in the Ditch.
The scheme was judged impracticable; but a year later estimates were obtained for making the navigation good from Culham Bridge to above Abingdon Abbey Lock (the present weir)
(a) by the Old (the Swift) Ditch, and
(b) by the stream flowing under Abingdon Bridge.
The result was in favour of the latter alternative.
The scheme included building a poundlock; which was accordingly begun on 21 April 1790, and opened early in the ensuing winter.

Ireland earlier in this year notes:
"The drought rendered the passage at Abingdon Abbey [flash] Lock impracticable; we were obliged to have the boat dragged over."
Bartholomew Bradfield, miller, was immediately appointed keeper of the new lock, toll collector and ferryman, for a consideration of 6s. weekly.
In 1793 and 1798 Richard Bradfleld is named; he "died suddenly going home from the Red Lion" on 27 February 1827.
Challenor in his book mentioned under Swift Ditch gives a short "Extract from the Register of Lighters, Barges etc. worked, rowed, or navigated upon the River Thames" in 1795; extending only from 23 July to 20 August.
In these four weeks eighteen vessels were registered in the town by ten owners;
of whom Robert Holmes, a troublesome lock-forcer, is one with his True Briton,
and Richard Bradfield, the miller and lockkeeper, with a lighter is another.
The barge Abingdon is of the greatest burthen: 130 tons: owned by George Gleed of Culham; and worked by himself and four other men and a boy "to do errands".
The smallest is Bradfield's lighter, of only 14 tons, worked by two men 'on the Thames [not Isis] and Mill Stream up and down within four miles of Abingdon'."
Ten of the eighteen vessels were Oxford owned, and described as working between Lechlade and London: called 160 miles.
Probably they had to register at Abingdon in order to obtain a permit to do business there.
Two of the others navigated between Oxford and London; so that perhaps only six were locally owned.
The heaviest burthen noted from Lechlade is 80 tons, fifteen tons heavier than Prince's note in 1767 on page 120 of my General History, a proof of the increase in the size of Thames barges complained of by this writer.
In 1811 the lockkeeper's house was reported to be half-a-mile below the lock; probably it was at the abbey millhouse.
In June the monthly wage was raised to £2.
On 16 April 1819 John Phillips sold to the Commissioners part of the land against the lock called Bushey Eyet for a lockkeeper's house.
In November 1819 James Blake was appointed keeper.
In February 1822 J. S. Phillips, the owner of the weir, and doubtless identical with the foregoing, was claiming his statutory right to tolls in respect of "all vessels that passed by or under Culham Bridge."
This claim, of 1s. per barge, will be found alluded to in several places in my General History.
It was allowed.
In October of this year I find John Bradfield in charge of the lock and ferry at 50s. monthly.
James Blake is named in 1842; and William Blake was appointed in May 1845.
At the end of 1850, and again a year later, this lock and Old Windsor were selected for a twelvemonth's freedom from tolls, as an assistance to the barge trade against the railways.
No reason appears for the selection of these particular stations.
In March 1853 wages were necessarily reduced from £36 annually to £33, and in the next year to £24.
Blake survived into the Conservancy period.
In September 1875, after thirty years' service, he was retired through old age; and was succeeded by J. Surridge from Chalmore Hole.
"Surrage" died in April 1883; and was followed by S. Prewett; who was drowned in the following November.
In December J. Collins was transferred hither from Spade Oak; and stayed for about a quarter of a century or more.
Drew, as I say above, was here In recent years.
I note as towpath meadow names above Abingdon: Stockey and Goosey.

ABINGDON BRIDGE WTSWG

Mr. Preston tells me that he possesses evidence that a bridge existed at this town, before the present one.
The history of the latter is in all the books.
Leland says concerning this and Culham Bridge:
"Incepti sunt autore rege [Henry V] anno Dom. 1416."
The letter patent is dated June 23.
The first stone was laid on St. Alban's Day: June 17 in the English calendar.
Leland continues:
"Every Man had a Penny a Day, which was the best Wages, and an Extraordinary Price in those times."
He counts fourteen arches.
"The great Stone Bridge at Abendun, made by John of S. Hellen, was a great decay to Walyngford, for that the Glosceashire men had usyd Walyngford, that now go by Abyndun.
Of auncient tyme ther was no Bridge at Abbandune, but a Ferie.
There were divers Mischaunces sene at this Passage."
In 1453 three new arches were added at the southern extremity of the bridge under a benefaction of Maud Hales, this part of the structure being still known by her name; thence to the crown as Burford Bridge; and only the northern part, strictly, as Abingdon Bridge.
In 1552 the town secured restitution of certain lands left for the upkeep of this and Culham Bridge, lately taken by the king "uppon coullour that the same were within the compasse of thact of Chaunteries."
Baskervile in 1692 omits even the mention of this important crossing: strong evidence that he went down the Swift Ditch and avoided Abingdon.
A sum of £1,500 was spent upon the bridge in the autumn of 1790, doubtless in connexion with the revival of traffic past the town.
Of this sum Nook, already mentioned, received £110 for his share of the work; which doubtless consisted largely in widening and raising the arches.
An early note of dredging occurs in 1583:
"Pay'd to Wm. Raphe for showlinge gravel out o y^e Themes, two days, xiid.
Paid to another laborer for showlinge gravell out o y^e Themes, on daie, iiiid.
It is curious that in Cooke's View of the scene above bridge in 1811 there is no trace whatever of Mr. Stevens's pleasant ait.
The 1812 List of Barges names at Abingdon: Kates 4; Wilts and Berks Canal Co. 2; and Pickman, Payne, Robt. Holmes, Fletcher, Crawford, Brookings, Wm. Holmes and Child and Morland with one each.
A note of about 1820 says:
"For the convenience of the barges a commodious wharf has been completed at the extremity of the town, beyond which the new cut, forming a small curve, joins the main river a short distance below Culham Bridge."
This note presents an illuminating reversal of present day ideas.
The "new cut" is what we consider as the main stream out of Abingdon; and the "main river" it joins is the now deserted watercourse that passes beneath Culham Bridge.

CULHAM BRIDGE

[ NB: This is the old bridge across the lower end of the Swift Ditch - no longer navigable - not to be confused with the bridge below Culham Lock ]

Culham Bridge was built concurrently with Abingdon Bridge, across the site of an ancient ford:
"a very fair Bridge of 7. Arches," says Leland.
It crosses, not the modern River, but the Swift Ditch, which I believe to be the original bed of the main Thames.
It is most unfortunately masked from the present navigation by a large towpath bridge crossing the mouth of the Swift Ditch: a wide pool extends between the two bridges.
The arches of the old structure are curiously unsymmetrical: very possibly a result of later interference with the original design.
Baskervile's complete silence about Abingdon, and his description of this bridge, are strong evidence that the Swift Ditch was then the accepted navigable channel; and that he passed along it.
He writes:
"Cullome Bridge is about 100 yards over and has 6 Arches":
one less than Leland's count.
In December 1788 it was thought that
"shutting in Culham Bridge with Common Tackle occasionally would be of great Service" to the navigation.
In the following May a stop was ordered at the islands below the bridge:
was the now extinct Rum Eyot referred to, once opposite the head of the present Culham lock cut?
In August 1858 Mr. Morrell desired to transform the towpath bridge into a drawbridge, to allow the passage of "a large pleasure boat."
In the summer of 1910 I found the arches stopped with barbed wire.

SUTTON COURTNEY WEIR

An early allusion to the mill occurs in the Patent Rolls in 1374.
Bishop in 1580-5 speaks of two flashlocks and one mill kept by John Elson and Richard Justice.
He also mentions weirs kept by Thomas Trullock and Clement Dabnet; and another to which he gives no name.
John Taylor in 1632 records derelict piles at the weirs.
In 1638 the millowner's name was Debois or Dubois.
Here of old time was to be seen the extraordinary spectacle of a poundlock partly beneath the ground door of a mill.
I had originally supposed that the whole lock was thus buried away; but found subsequently, from a plan of 1808 in the possession of the Conservancy, that only the upper gates stood beneath the mill floor.
The whole wide pool that extends at the back of the mill was the lock basin; and the lower gates were placed in the narrow neck below the pool.
This basin would take an immense quantity of water, and a long time to fill; at the expense of the milling business.
These conditions doubtlessly caused the heavy toll always levied here.
As will be gathered from my General History, the lock was originally installed shortly before 1638, I believe as a private speculation of the miller's; for which he gradually assumed the habit of charging the heaviest single toll on the Whole River.
There is only one very dubious hint, in 1811, that public money was ever expended upon it.
There are some Exchequer depositions of about 1667 which incidentally allude to the erection of this lock, but unfortunately do not fix its date.
This in the document is variously conjectured by different oldest inhabitants as about 26 years, as under 35, and as 40 years, before the date above mentioned.
An interesting fact emerges which I had not previously discovered: that the course of the River at Sutton Courtenay was artificially altered and "made navigable" in connexion with the building of this lock.
The inquiry was directed to examining the claims of various wharves at Sutton Courtenay to be of themselves sufficient for local business without the aid of other, more recent accommodation.
It appears that the wharf originally used for the handling of cheese was Carpenter's of Culham (mentioned by John Taylor in 1632); and that the occasion of removing this handling to a wharf in the village about 1640 was the greater suitability of the latter.
The ancient common wharf of the community was situated on a piece of ground on the south bank called the Laver.
This plot Dubois (who is in my General History) bought from the Earl of Craven for the purpose of improving the River and building the "turnpike"; and he had thrown the Laver into the new bed of the stream, destroying the ancient wharf.
(The earl's bailiff is said to have tendered to Dubois "twigs and turf", in token of the conveyance.)
The interesting comment is added that the latter was "a principal undertaker" in the business of improving the River.
It is evident from this that he had associates; but if these were the Oxford-Burcot Commissioners, or private coadventurers, does not appear.
John Quelch was miller at the time.

Malt, coal and cheese were the principal products handled at the various wharves in the village.
Lawrence Peirce of Lechlade, wharfinger, agent for several London cheesemongers, stated that he needed local wharfage accommodation for one hundred tons of cheese at a time.
In the beginning of 1772 it was reported to the Thames Commissioners that
"the Floor of the Granary or Mill at Sutton Lock is a great obstruction to the Navigation by frequently hindering Barges from passing there";
and their surveyor was instructed to inspect it and order its removal if really a nuisance.
A coloured plan of 1809 by Z. Allnutt exists, shewing it then still extant; so that though doubtless a nuisance it was tolerated.
In 1782 it is stated:
"There is a kind of pound at Sutton Mills, but the Timbers of the floor of the House under which Barges pass are too low when the Water is tolerable high, so that it is not easy to pass thro'.
A pound lock might be made with a cut just above at a gull to avoid this mill."
In 1786 there is another complaint that the
"Occupier of the public House has frequently impeded the passage of the Barges";
whether with or without the connivance of the bargemen does not appear.
There is still a bright little inn near the mill: the Fish, I think ; I do not know if it was the offender.
In 1789 the bargemasters were again complaining of the difficult and expensive passage; and it was decided to endeavour to arrange some improvement with the proprietor, a Mr. Meetkirke; who lived at St. Julian's in Hertfordshire.
Meetkirke demanded £400 for the removal of the part of the mill over the lock, and £100 for making a bridge of communication between the severed portions.
The Thames Commissioners decided to do the work themselves; and considered that the bridge was not their concern.
In the autumn of 1789 a note occurs in the Treacher Papers of about £26 paid for "taking down the building over the upper Lock and building up a new End to the Corn Mill and making good the roof and tileing on the inside of the Mill as was displaced by taking down the old Building."
It might be imagined from this reference that there were two complete locks: one beneath the mill and one in the narrow neck below it, especially as the allusions are numerous to the upper and the "loar" locks.
But very probably these terms indicate only the upper and lower gates of the one lock.
The total cost of the improvements, paid by the Commissioners, and effected between August 1790 and July 1791, was £433.
Ireland says in 1790:
"We passed it on a Sunday, and consequently, the mill not being at work, the want of water obliged us to have the boat dragged over the meadows for more than half a mile, which occasioned us no small delay, and a considerable expence."
In 1793 it was stated that the lock had been improved;
"but the Barge Masters are liable to many Impositions there ; they are obliged to drink at the Public House."
Mylne had stated two years earlier that
"the strange Invention of the present Lock, of a very large capacity, serves very well."
His allusion to its "very large capacity" strengthens the evidence of the plan of 1808, mentioned above, that there was only the one very extensive lock I describe.

In 1801, after further complaints, the end of the trouble appears in sight.
The surveyor
"recommended a cut to avoid the inconveniences at Sutton poundlock, the only poundlock that does not belong to the Commissioners."
Nothing was done for a twelvemonth; when a further complaint accelerated the drawing up of an alternative scheme, which resulted in the present Culham lock and its long cut.
I read in 1811, after the latter was built:
"A toll of 4d. per ton is now paid to the Old Lock at Sutton, whereas 2d. only is due, as the additional 2d. is paid for the Old Pound Lock which was made principally at the expence of the Commissioners."
The last statement probably refers only to the reconstruction about 1790.
In the Reading Mercury of 22 April 1811, the mills were advertised for sale:
"A large paper and flour mill", comprising "A Tollage or Tonnage, of Fourpence per Ton, for all Barges and Boats passing the said Mills to and from London, which produces a handsome income."
Application was to the name of Stevens.
A Mr. King was owner in 1821.
In a subsequent advertisement of 1824 nothing was said about the "Tollage".
Inquirers were now directed to J. T. Norris.
He evidently owned for a long period, as I find him still here in 1867; as noted at Culham lock.
The mill was idle in November 1891; the Messrs. Lloyd, paper makers, seem to have owned it after this date.
In August 1833 the weir was in a very bad condition, and the owner was asked to repair it.
It is doubtful which of the three old falls is meant.
In October 1839 the Commissioners bought up the old lock and its tolls for £3,000.
This station and Hurley were the only instances of such purchase.
These o1d tolls were remitted to the navigation on and after 1 October 1843.
In June 1845 the poundlock was conveyed to J. T. Norris, described as of Aldersgate, London.
He removed it, and built over its site the present mill.
His initials appear on the disc upon its front.
He was a member of the City Navigation Committee; and seems to have acted as an intermediary for them with the Thames Commissioners.
They say that traces of the original lock still survive in the thorough beneath the mill.
The water, they told me in 1913, was run through only for an hour or two every Monday and Thursday "to let the dirt out."
Otherwise the building was then a mere deserted and ruinous shell.
The three ancient lashers still stand on the stream above it: perhaps they are Bishop's Nos. 29, 30, and 31, noted in my General History.
The modern, main weir stands above them all.

[ NB the order going downstream is Culham Lock Cut Bridge, Culham Lock and then Sutton Courtney Bridge
The position of the onetime Culham Wharf is uncertain
Note also that Sutton Courtney Bridge should not be confused with Culham Bridge over the Swift Ditch ]

SUTTON COURTNEY BRIDGE

[NB Sutton Courtney Bridge is below Culham Lock ] WTSWG

Baskervile about 1692-3 refers to "Hart Bridge" as "about 270 yards over and hath 17 Arches."
The present main bridge was not then built; and I do not know to what he refers unless to the series of small bridges across the weirs.
It is the seventh cul de sac in the Hart labyrinth.
In 1793 Thomas Keep had charge of "Sutton Bridges", and in 1798 also, at 12s. monthly: for the Commissioners.
He re-emerges in the Treacher Papers in 1801:
"Paid Mr. Keep for a pece of haucer Cord for Cullam ferry Boat 4s. 9d.";
and the same at other times.
Also on 8 August:
"Paid Mr. Keep for Ballast boats passing through Sutton Lock 3s."
The present main bridge, I think the first, appears to have been built in 1807.
In December 1809 its preprietors were warned to remove some sunken piles near the navigable arch.
In January 1812 some "ground" below the bridge was ordered to be dredged away; over a century later there was still a very inconvenient shoal below the junction of the two waters.
Certain private motions which look like early proposals towards this bridge are noted under Culham Wharf below.

CULHAM LOCK WTSWG

Culham Lock was built, as I said above, to avoid the difficult and expensive passage at Sutton Courtenay mill.
It was Opened in 1809.
Several years of discussion were spent before the various suggestions took shape.
In January 1803, for example, a plan was submitted for
"making a navigable cut from the River near the upper end of Speel Ditch to the River at the Eyot below Culham Ferry, and also for making a pound lock, in order to avoid the shoals and rapid stream below Sutton Lock and the danger and difficulty of passing that Lock."
Speel Ditch was a straggling channel which left the Thames at the head of the present cut, and turned south at right angles, near the site of Culham lock, to rejoin the River below the mill.
It thus coincided roughly, for about two thirds of its length with the present lock cut.
A later plan, of January 1806, was for a cut and two locks.
In December 1808 it was decided to proceed with the present scheme, including a stone lock.
The new bridge over the tail cut was ordered a twelvemonth later to be 20, rather than 16, feet wide: even so it is too narrow for convenience.
At this date Danby, owner perhaps of Sutton as well as of Iffley mill, applied for the payment of tolls on account of the old mill lock, by all barges using the new station.
In 1812 I find the latter called Sutton.
In February 1822 considerable obstructions were complained of along the lock cut towing path as far as "the wharf at Sutton."

I get no keeper's name before Daniel Gibbons in October 1822, with £2 monthly.
A house was ordered for him in October 1823.
Wm. Porter is the only other old time keeper I note, in November 1837.
In 1854 he was deprived of his monthly wage of 40s., and was granted free use of the pound house on condition of continuing his duties.
He survived into Conservancy times.
In January 1867 he was being threatened "with death" by Mr. Mackey of Sutton mill, if he drew the weir.
Mr. Norris, of Sutton Courtenay Paper Works, remonstrated with Mackey.
There is a distinction here between the two buildings that constituted the mills.
Norris's mill was the main building across the old main stream; Mackey's part stood by its side across a small cut.
In May of the same year Norris himself complained of bargemen drawing Culham weir to the detriment of his business.
In August 1865 there had been some correspondence in The Times about the ruinous condition of the locks.
One holiday maker wrote:
"Culham-lock was in such a rotten state that two of the sluices out of four made no impression in emptying the water, and the lock-woman informed us that she did not know to whom to apply to repair it."
In December 1867 Porter, "very aged", was succeeded by a man with the melancholy name of Job Mouldey.
In the following July Norris was claiming and apparently exercising control of the water; and there was much complaint of its scarcity.
The Conservancy asserted their own right.
Mouldey resigned next month; and George Allen was appointed in his place.
The upper lock cut bridges were ordered to be rebuilt in oak in October 1884.
Armstrong in 1886 calls this "the deepest, coldest lock on the Thames"; "this tomb-like lock", says he.
Surely Sandford is the deepest?
Culham tail cut, however, is certainly one of the most unpleasant places to hold up in on the River; the waste water from the lock is very strong, and there is nothing but the crumbling bank to steady you.
In July 1888 Allen was discharged; and Geo. Yeates succeeded him.
In May 1890 Yeates was sent to Goring; and S. B. Kirby from King's weir was placed here.
He was transferred to Teddington, as assistant, in October 1892; and was followed here by W. Franks, who went to Romney in April 1893.
J. G. Prior succeeded him; he had to be lodged in Littlemore asylum in September 1896.
In the following April he was retired from the service, and W. S. Horsfield was brought down from Medley.
I get no later name until E. Light in June 1910.
Berrycroft occurs as a local towpath meadow name about 1825.

CULHAM LOCK CUT BRIDGE WTSWG

{ NB Culham Cut Footbridge is above Culham Lock ]

Culham Lock Cut Bridge was built at the same time as the lock.
In 1834 I get frequent requests for a towing bridge to be built; perhaps in the neighbourhood of the lime kilns.
Possibly the towpath then terminated before it reached this point.
It was stated that barges had to be poled up here: a difficult task in times of gale or flood, owing to the strong stream; and that for want of a bridge they often spent a week in proceeding from Culham to Abingdon.

CULHAM WHARF

I have not discovered the site of this wharf, but conjecture that it was at the Culham end of Sutton Bridge.
In December 1801, before the pound was built, the Rev. Mr. Banner applied to the Commissioners for their consent to his building a bridge, apparently across the old main River, by the wharf.
At first they expressed no objection, provided the towing were mulcted in no toll.
In the following April, however, certain bargemasters protested that it would endanger their vessels; and the scheme was therefore left in abeyance.
It was subsequently allowed; but apparently nothing was done; as in August 1806, still before the date of the lock, a similar application was made, "to avoid the ford and ferry", by a Mr. Morland (the name is still honourably known in Abingdon and elsewhere).
He also obtained leave on the same terms as the clergyman; but the present main bridge was built by public subscription instead.

CULHAM FERRY

Culham Ferry crossed on or close to the trajectory of Sutton Bridge.
Widow Hewit had charge of it in 1793; Daniel Gibbons in 1798 at 24s. monthly: perhaps identical with the Culham lockkeeper in 1822.

APPLEFORD RAILWAY BRIDGE WTSWG

In December 1843 this forbidding structure was being erected; and was attracting the unfavourable attention of the Commissioners.
They thought its low height and construction likely to be most injurious to the navigation.
I imagine the present is the original bridge.
[ Fred was mistaken!
The bridge he knew was the second bridge out of the three that have been here.
The bridges were: 1844-1850? a timber bridge by Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
The second which Fred knew dated from 1856 - in iron
And the modern bridge was built in 1929 ]
For the shallows here I get the title Appleford Flat; I once saw a youth standing in midstream with the water only to his waist.

CLIFTON HAMPDEN LOCK WTSWG

Both the lock and the weir are comparatively modern institutions : the former built only in 1822.
The district had for many previous years been recognized as needing improvement.
In 1793 a stop or poundlock was suggested "near Clifton Ferry"; and again in the autumn of 1811.
When definite steps began to be taken the curious difficulty arose that the owner of the requisite land was a lunatic.
James Newland was appointed first keeper in the autumn of 1822; at £2 monthly wage.
In May 1824 Wm. Holmes was in charge.
The weir was not erected till October 1835; after frequent complaints of its absence.
In March 1853 wages were compulsorily reduced from £34 16s. annually to £33; and in 1854 from 49s. monthly to 40s.; the collection of toll for Culham being added to Holmes's duties.
In November 1856 Robert Holmes was appointed keeper; and still held under the Conservancy in October 1866; at £2 12s. monthly.
Ravenstein mentions his usual toll in 1861.
In September 1867 Holmes was accused of poaching in the "canal"; and was forbidden to use nets.
Next January he asked, perhaps in dudgeon, to resign; and Joseph Brookings succeeded him the same month.
The weir was enlarged before 1877; and a tumbling bay added at the lower end of the lock cut.
Brookings died about March 1880 ; and Matthew Hickey, or Hickley, followed.
He was discharged in the summer of 1883 ; and was succeeded by Thomas Gray.
In October 1884 the lock cut bridges were ordered to be rebuilt in oak.
Gray was transferred to Marlow in October 1892; where I well knew the tall, lean old man.
He was succeeded here by J. Bossom, from King's weir.
The curiously named Wittenham Maddy, mentioned on page 85 of my General History, appears in a plan of about 1811 as part of the weir stream just above the lower end of the lock cut.
I do not discover its meaning; unless maddy be a form of the word meadow.

CLIFTON HAMPDEN BRIDGE WTSWG

The present bridge, I believe the first on its site, was being discussed in December 1863.
It was, at least till 1897, a private bridge; built, says Dredge, professedly to match Abingdon and Culham Bridge.
(It appears to me to have been diablement changé en route.)
It is to be remarked, however, that in 1887 the Conservancy were repairing it; apparently at their own expense.

CLIFTON FERRY

My earliest note is in 1607, when it constituted the downstream limit of the improvements proposed by the Oxford Commission of 1605.
Baskervile noted in 1692-3:
"At Cliffton fferry is a great boat to carry horse & man over."
In The Lord Mayor's Visit to Oxford of 1826 it is written:
"The navigation here appeared to be particularly defective; for, with all the advantage of the exertions that had been made by the Water-Bailiff's directions, and the expense that had been incurred for the supply of water; the country having been comparatively drained for several miles along the upper districts, ... and though the City Barge and shallop, and the attendant boats, drew scarcely more than two feet of water, they were detained at Clifton a considerable length of time."
A secular obstruction to navigation, this rock floored channel!
Pedestrian, in his Tour of 1834, has a pleasant note of the ferry boat
"continually passing to and fro."

BURCOT WTSWG

On page 268 of my General History I discussed at some length Thorold Rogers's theories, much exaggerated as I think, about the long continuance, first of Henley and later of this spot, as successive heads of the navigation upon the River Thames.
None of my many correspondents has touched upon this debate.
It remains therefore where I left it ; but the subject is one which might be carried much further by a leisured student.
Nor have I myself discovered any fresh information; though my position is strengthened by some comments I have more recently found in a pamphlet amongst the Treacher Papers by G. P. Hester: town clerk of Oxford in 1860.
He derides the assumption of the Act 21 James I, "and the error is copied in the next Act", that there was anciently no navigation from Oxford by Abingdon to Burcot.
He quotes the passage from the Abingdon Chronicle which I present in my General History.
I present a few additional notes regarding the works of the Oxford-Burcot Commission, gleaned from some papers and account books discovered in 1919 in the County Hall, Oxford; and kindly placed at my disposal by Mr. James Rose.
The books appear to carry the accounts forward from the date at which Convocation records dropped them.
Various millers' names in 1650 were: Quelch at Sutton Courtenay; Adams at Abingdon, Fisher at Sandford, and Ferkin at Iffley.
Some considerable operations were in progress at Swift Ditch lock at this period, described as "repairs".
One noticeable item of expenditure was a hundred loads of stone from Kennington.
As further evidence that the Swift Ditch was the stream I have indicated, and not a channel running beside Abingdon abbey, I quote a regulation of July 1654 found among these papers:
"Agreed that when the boatmen cannot come up from Cullam to the stop below the turnpike at Swift Ditch with out drawing the turnpike they shall pay the miller" certain compensation.
I do not think these combined allusions can be made to fit any local stream but the one bordering the southeastern edge of Andersey; which is, I submit, the Swift Ditch.
Widow Duffin had charge of the Commissioners' locks from Lady Day 1653 till St. Thomas in 1658, paying a yearly rental of £50.
She had to be sued for nearly this amount of arrears at the end of her tenancy.

DAYS LOCK WTSWG

Bishop alludes in 1580-5 to a flashlock and a weir kept by Edmunde Fettiplace, in Dorchester; to a weir kept by Wm. "Dunshe" in Little Wittenham ; and to one in Long Wittenham belonging to "Wyddowe Sawyer".
Either may be identical with the present weir, or with the "old lock " noted below in dealing with the footbridge.
The poundlock was staked out on 30 August 1788.
It was judged best to build it on the Oxfordshire bank, "if Mr. Hallett will remove his Bucks".
The total cost was £1,078.
When it was opened on 25 June 1789 Hallett had notice to keep the old flashlock shut.
The first toll was 4d. per ton: in 1793 it was reduced to 2½d.
James Battin, or Batting, the "old lock " shutter, was appointed first keeper in 1789 at 6s. weekly wages; being bound over, as was then usual, in personal security of £200.
He served till at least 1798; in which year he was in receipt of the slightly reduced remuneration of 24s. monthly.
He shared the usual fate of men who try to serve two masters. In 1791 Mylne wrote:
"The Lock keeper, renting Fishery and Lock dues from Mr. Hallet, and being Lock-keeper to the Pound-lock under the Commissioners, does not perform his duty to the Navigation honestly."
In December 1793 one Robert Holmes forcibly passed through with an overloaded barge.
In 1802 Mylne, styling the lock "Dorchester", writes again:
"In the cut below the lock there were 3 Thames & Severn bargeboats aground for want of water to get into it. Caused by a flash at Benson below."
In June 1813 the monthly wage was raised from 24s. to 36s.
Vincent Cherrill was getting 50s. monthly in October 1822 for the care of "Dorchester" lock; he was, I fancy, tenant of the flashlock also at this time; perhaps under Lady Holland, who is named as owner in 1821.
Robert Green may have actually done the work here, as well as at Benson, at this date.
In September 1828 the Commissioners themselves became tenants; and Cherrill received notice to resign, being allowed £6 18s. for his weir tackle.
In the following November John Drake was elected to "Wittenham or Day's Lock."
In 1842 the Commissioners held the property "on lease from Lord Cardigan."
In 1854 Drake's monthly wage was reduced from £3 to 45s.
To his duties was added the collection of the downward tolls for Benson, Caversham and Sonning.

The first note after a long period of silence is the Conservancy's report in 1865 upon the condition of the lock:
"In utter ruin: how it holds together I do not know.
One of the gates is chained up; the weir is also out of repair, and in a very dangerous condition indeed; any flood breaking down one of these upper places may destroy the whole navigation."
H. Wise under the Conservancy in October 1866, with 52s. monthly, is the first keeper named after Drake.
At the end of 1867 the Conservancy reduced the rent they paid for the weir from £50 to £40.
In March 1870 Wise was dead; and James Lowe took his place.
In July 1871: the dilapidated lock was to be rebuilt in "old ships' timber"; in which state it still remained as recently as about 1911, and may still be.
A bell push to summon the keeper was installed in May 1882 ; Romney has the only other similar contrivance that I know of.
In January 1885 the weir was to be rebuilt; Armstrong remarks in the following year that it is
"much the longest on this upper part of the Thames."
Mr. Cornish in his Naturalist has much pleasant matter upon the weir and its surroundings.
In April 1898 the Light Railways Company desired to bridge the River just above the lock for a proposed line between Didcot and Watlington.
The lock was in 1910, as I have just hinted, one of the oldest looking on the Thames.
There was still no lock house; I fancy the keeper lived near the bridge; hence the necessity for the bell push.
R. Basson succeeded Lowe as keeper; being transferred from Northmoor.

DORCHESTER FERRY

Dorchester Ferry, "at high Waters over Tames", is twice mentioned by Leland about 1530.
It may conceivably be implied that when the River was low the ancient ford was used.

DAYS LOCK FOOTBRIDGE

Footbridge, just below the lock.
The original bridge, perhaps over the ford just mentioned, and which dates back at least to the Romans, was a timber swingbridge with a navigation opening of about eighteen feet.
Sedgfield shews a photograph of it in 1868.
The lockkeeper was instructed in February of this year to coIlect "the payment for the swingbridge until further orders".
There was much local quarrelling about this bridge toll.
The present structure, of iron, in one sixty-foot span, was thrown across about 1870; at a cost of about £250.
In 1791 Mylne mentions, below Day's:
"At a Place called OLD LOCK (which is the Remains of an old wear cross the River), many old Piles, whose heads are above the bed, and the Gravel which has accumulated round them," diminishing the floating depth to about two feet.
He wished it all cleared away.
This is the only allusion I have to this ancient obstruction ; which I cannot definitely locate.
It may be identical with one of the local items of Bishop's lists in my General History.

[ RIVER THAME ]

THAME BRIDGE WTSWG

THAME BRIDGE is represented in Cooke's Thames of 1811 as a very rustic and dilapidated structure.
It was not much better a century later.

KEEN EDGE FERRY [ Shillingford ] WTSWG

Keen Edge Ferry: known a century ago as Kean Hedge.
There is another place of the same name : Cane Edge, just below Sunbury.
I suggest its sense under this head.
From 1793 till at least February 1801 Wm. Lafford was ferryman for the Commissioners; with a monthly allowance raised at the latter date from 15s. to 20s.
Jas. Patrick was in charge in October 1822 at 24s. monthly.
The first ferry house was erected in 1843; additional rooms were provided in 1889 and 1906.
Geo. Patrick was ferryman in January 1855, with wages reduced in 1854 from 32s. to 20s. monthly.
I note a dismissal of Wm. Johnson in February 1859, and the consequent saving of his 10s. monthly.
Under the Conservancy Mrs. Hannah Patrick is noted in charge, in October 1866; with 40s. monthly.
In July 1870 she was declared incompetent; but retained her position until October 1884.
She was then discharged; being replaced in December by C. Phillis from Hambledon, glad enough perhaps to return to his old haunts.
He was superannuated in January 1887; and C. Clutterbuck succeeded.
(There is some doubt about Phillis having come to Keen Edge; see further under Hambledon.)
Clutterbuck and his wife were both drowned here during the night of 25-26 March 1892.
Albert Wise, possibly related to H. Wise, of whom I have just spoken at Day's, was appointed to the ferry the following month.
I well remember him in later years at Culham and afterwards at Hurley.

SHILLINGFORD BRIDGE WTSWG

The Patent Rolls present the antiquary with a very interesting problem.
They contain one single, intriguing reference to a bridge here as early as 1301.
It occurs in the lease of a fishery extending downwards a ponte de Shillingford, and belonging to La Russhe: doubtless the present Rush Court.
There are several more or less obvious and weighty objections against the alleged existence of a bridge here at so early a date; and these I will enumerate first.
(a) The word ponte may be a draughtsman's error for passagio (a ferry); or some other similar term.
(b) No other allusion to a bridge here at this date is known; but I do not attach much weight to its absence.
Consider the date: 1301. There is but little contemporary evidence, however impregnable this little may be, for the existence of any upper Thames bridge at this period.
And if this bridge of the Patent Rolls came to grief quickly after their allusion to it, later allusions would easily be undiscoverable.
(c) Wallingford Bridge is so near as to render it unnecessary; but this argument finds an answer below.
(d) No important community immediately adjoins it.
Dorchester and Wallingford, each about two miles away on either bank, are the nearest considerable places; and are connected by means of the very ancient bridge of the latter town.
Nor do I think that the road crossing it is part of a trunk route; it seems a track of merely local convenience joining Streatley with Dorchester through Wallingford.
(e) The ferry may be regarded as hostile evidence; under the reservations, however,
(i) that active ferries are by no means unknown in the close neighbourhood of bridges,
(ii) that, so far as I have discovered, the record of Shillingford ferry begins only in 1378, and its establishment may have been due to the decay of the bridge.
The favourable evidence cannot be ignored.
(a) The record itself is a substantial witness; the Patent Rolls have a way of being meticulously accurate.
(b) Wallingford Castle, powerful and important, may well have discovered some necessity for communicating with Dorchester more directly than by the circuitous route over its own bridge.
Especially may this have been the case after the claim by Dorchester abbey in the 13th century to possess the relics of St. Birinus.
Either the abbey or the castle, or both combined, may well have built a bridge at Shillingford in order to facilitate access to this great shrine.
(c) Gough's Camden, in noting that a ford preceded the eighteenth century bridge, records the dredging up of piles and beams along its trajectory.
These may well have been remains of an older bridge; the point is of great importance.
(d) The Rev. J. E. Field, vicar of Benson, informs me that in a Sotwell charter of the year 957 the present field track leading from the bridge to Wittenham wood is called Brycwege: Bridges way.
He had assumed this to point to some forgotten Roman bridge near the tail of Day's weir stream: but is willing to agree that it may constitute an important piece of evidence in support of the Patent Rolls record.
It must however in candour be remarked that the southward continuation of the Bridgeway from Shillingford bridgend leads directly to Wallingford Bridge, and that the Brycwege may have acquired its name from this fact.
It is clear, incidentally, that the bridge actually commemorated in this title Brycwege, whichever it be, can claim through this Sotwell charter of 957 a far higher antiquity than can certainly be attributed to any other Thames bridge.

The first modern bridge, authorized by the Act 4 Geo. III, c.42, in 1764 through the influence of Sir Wm. Blackstone, was built of timber on stone piers.
Ireland has a view of it published in 1799.
A "bridge lock" is referred to in 1776.
In May 1826 it was advertised that
"the Trustees will, on 10th inst, commence taking down the present Wooden Bridge in order to build one of Stone, instead thereof."
Meanwhile "a, new and most commodious" ferry boat was to be provided.
In 1531 a fishery called Huddesbut, held by one Hacheman who reappears below, is named in this parish: recently the property of Wallingford priory.
In 1887 Kitchen Meadow is located by the Riverside in the parish of Satwell; elsewhere this meadow is attributed to Brightwell parish, and stated to include Round eyot.
Haseley is another towpath meadow name occurring in Warborough parish about 1825.
I also note, without date, Pheasant eyot, and Lower and Upper Pedmore: the second named adjoining the bridge.
From a pamphlet among the Treacher Papers I learn that there was, about 1850,
"on a stone let into a building at Shillingford wharf this inscription:
'December 3, 1768: Up to this Stone the water run.'"
A height of about eight feet four inches above the ordinary water level is indicated.
A higher stone whose lower edge is ten feet above water level, is inscribed
'January 27, 1809: Up to this Stone the water run.'

SHILLINGFORD FERRY

My earliest note of this is its grant for life in 1378 to Roger Hurst, porter of Wallingford castle.
There are many similar later references.
One is about 1530, when Roger Hacheman, just mentioned, was appointed to the ferry and its boats at an annual rental of 33s.
4d.
in succession to Wm. Yong.
"A little House called le Ferry House beside 1e Ferry at Shellingforde in tenure of Roger Hacheman" is mentioned in 1545.
It may have been the predecessor of the present inn.
Baskervile in 1692 records at "Shillingfford ferry a great boat to waft over Carts Coaches horse & man."

BENSON LOCK WTSWG

In 1396 John James, a considerable local landowner, and Christiana his wife, held the watermill in Bensington: even then doubtless an antiquity.
Bishop in 1585 describes the weir as belonging to Robert George, and kept by Robert Brodewater and Jacob Bishop.
Barge Path Furlong occurs as a Clapcot field name in 1683.
Griffiths in 1746 affords my earliest note of the flashlock as such.
It was partly carried away about 1783 ; and the mill reported as greatly decayed and of little use.
The pound was built in 1788; an interesting item of expenditure being 5s. each for one hundred and sixty willow and ash trees cleared away to make room for the horse towpath.
Some "Low Country men" were employed on the building of this particular lock: a unique instance, so far as I am aware.
Were they Dutchmen, who would perhaps be natural adepts at this kind of work?
The fact that they were paid 2s. 2d. per day, while the ordinary labourers received only 1s. 4d. - 1s. 9d., may seem evidence in favour of the conjecture.
Beer and gin for the men working in the water cost £6 16s. 6d. from June to September.
The total cost of the original lock was £1,100, and the tolls in November 1788 produced £30 11s. 6d. at 4d. per ton.
The rate was reduced to 2½d. in 1793.
Benjamin Ashby the miller had charge at first.
It seems strange to-day, though intelligible enough then, how the Commissioners so frequently delivered their works into the enemy's hand.
Joseph Ashby, perhaps son of Benjamin, succeeded to the charge about 1793, with 26s. monthly remuneration.
Of his regimé Mylne has a characteristic tale, illuminating old days afloat.
"Of course the lock was full, and there was no one to attend to it.
The Miller Ashby taking charge of it (at 28 Shillings per Month) was absent at a distant Market; and his man Hughes, who is deputy, was not to be found, but gone on a frivolous Domestick Errand.
{ I have not the woman Hughes her commentary upon Robert Mylne }
On making his appearance he shewed signs that no controul would have any effect even if the officers of the Navigation were present.
This very person did the same thing August 1801, and the Cill having blown up cost £130 to repair it."
In November 1810 the wage was raised to 9s. 6d. weekly; but no further keeper is named until Robert Green in October 1822, with 36s. monthly.
In November 1840 Rd. Jarrard, or Garratt, was in charge; his wage was raised the following August from 30s. to 42s. monthly.
At the Lord Mayor's view in 1846
"the only incident of regret was the loss of time at Benson Lock occasioned by both Towing Horses falling into the River, from which they were extricated with immense difficulty."
The weir owners this year are named as Green and Brown.
In March 1853 the wage was reduced from £44 8s. to £38 8s3. annually.
Next year Garratt was deprived of his monthly wage, stated at 42s.; and was granted the pleasure tolls and use of the house on condition of continuing his duties.
A Times correspondent in August 1865 says;
"Benson-lock house was deserted, and shut up; the handle hid away, and a great rent all down the upper gates, so that this lock detained us more than 40 minutes."
In October 1866, under the Conservancy, John Whiteman was keeper at 52s. monthly.
In September 1869 7s. 6d. was added to the wage, being deducted at Bell Weir.
The lock was rebuilt the following year.
In April 1887 Whiteman was dead; and Henry his son followed with 65s. monthly.
In February 1899 the railway bridge proposed near Day's lock was suggested to cross above Benson.
I discover a grant in 1314 to Ralph Restwold of a meadow enclosed by water called Sakenet, a weir and sluices adjacent in Clapcot, and leave to construct a watermill there at an annual rent of 10s.
Vessels were not to be hindered thereby "more than usual"
Mr. Field tells me that Restwold was probably connected with Clapcot mill, "of which traces are abundant close to Benson Lock"; also that a small meadow at the lock is still called Winch mead.
In 1379 "Blondeleswater" fishery is named in Clapcot.

WEIR

A Weir is vaguely indicated by Mylne between Benson and Wallingford at the end of the eighteenth century.
Probably he meant only traces: a few old stumps dangerous to the barges, or what not.
They are extremely likely to be relics of the local milling activities of one Pollington.
Mr. Field writes me that, according to a survey of Wallingford in 1550:
"From Radulphus Pollington was received 20s. annual rent for a fulling mill and a meadow called the Queen's arbour, lying between the castle and the River."
Again I find, in 1574: "Rafe Pollington caused to be buylt one Locke or weare over the water of Thamys to force the water to goe to the newe erected fullinge mylles upon parcell of the fyshenge in the said water of Thamys of the late King Edwardes.
The said Rafe Pollington hath incroched and inlarged his said weare uppon the water of Thamies into the quenes ma^ts stream."
He appears at "Wallingforde locke" in Bishop's lists of 1580-5 in my General History, page 180; the keeper being George Banckes.
The situation in 1574 was doubtless as roughly indicated in the sketch.
Pollington's new mill probably stood upon the diagonal channel (still represented by a dry hollow) across the Queen's Arbour; and the weir crossed the Thames just below the outfall of the channel: a matter of a few hundred yards above the bridge.
Mr. Field tells me that relics of a weir at the site indicated were quite recently traceable; he has himself seen fragments of piles.
The bulk of them were finally removed in September 1791:
"Clearing away formearly an Old Lock Drawd Operd [upward] of 60 piles."
It seems to have been a very troublesome job:
"Paid for Mending of the Chains Brock a Drawing of the piles" several amounts;
"Paid for the uce of some larg Balks for the Drawing of the Piles."

WALLINGFORD BRIDGE WTSWG

My earliest reference is in 1153, when, according to Gomme's introduction to the tale Reading Abbey, Stephen
"built a strong wooden tower at the foot of the bridge over the Thames" on the Crowmarsh side.
About 1220-1: Richard Morin, giving his body to be buried in the abbey of Reading, confirms to the monks a fishery between Mongewell and Wallingford Bridge.
Pontage was granted in 1344 for the long term of twelve years; it being stated that the structure threatened to become a ruin.
Leland describes it about 1530 as
"a large Thing of Stone over the Tamise".
Hedges, in his Wallingford, states that the lengths of this and of old London Bridge were very nearly equal: of the latter 900 and of the former 915 ft.;
also that each had nineteen arches, confirming Baskervile infra; and was built possibly by the same architect.
He adds that the navigation arch was so low and narrow that
"more barges were said to be sunk here than anywhere else on the River."
There was a stone building at the west end of the bridge called Mary Grace, probably the usual bridge chapel, beaten down by the parliamentary gunners during the siege in the Civil Wars.
The earliest allusion I find to toll is in 1576: for every barge or lighter Sixpence each passage.
During this year the Privy Council ordered certain justices to see every Michaelmas that the bridge was kept in repair; as tolls were collected for the purpose "and the bridge nothing repaired."
Later in 1576 the Council addressed Raphe Pollington; who amongst his other local activities seems to have been collector of the bridge tolls.
They understood that over £12 of collected dues were in his hands; and that he was refusing to surrender it to the bridge estate.
The sum might represent to-day [1920] the important figure of £150.
He was ordered either to pay over the money or to appear before the Council.
In 1633 it was complained by the Navy Authority charged with the supply of timber that no barge over 16 ft. 4in. wide could pass the bridge.
Wider vessels were built downstream, which could not pass upwards; while above bridge only ten existed fit for the carriage of timber, and narrow enough to pass through the navigation arch.
Church, in his Summer Days, says:
"In one of the plague years (1671) we hear of wardens being 'sett at the great bridge to keep out all Crowmarsh and Newnham people out of Wallingford.'"
In 1688, at the moment of the Revolution, the statement is made that Wallingford Bridge was the only one then left standing entire between Oxford and London: a circumstance not without its effect upon William's progress towards the metropolis.
It is a surprising assertion: the only other allusion I know of at this date to the condition of the Thames bridges being to the fortification of Maidenhead Bridge against him.
Were all the other eight bridges, then intermediate between the two cities, really down: Caversham, Sonning, Henley, Marlow, Windsor, Staines, Chertsey, and Kingston?

Baskervile states in 1692-3:
"Wallingford Bridge is 310 yards over & has 19 Arches":
both figures sufficiently near Hedges' statement just quoted. He proceeds:
"15 is a number cut on a stone of y^e Bridge it was in the year 1692 when we saw this Bridge & some say it was built so many years before this date of y^e Lord viz 1692."
(This bridge concludes Baskervile's survey of the River.)
Skermer's Wallingford refers to this mysterious "15"; which, he says,
"seems to have been cut at some time or other by workmen that repaired the bridge and heard of the tradition."
What the tradition was is not clear.
Baskervile was surely not led to understand that the original erection was at a date only fifteen years before 1692; on the other hand a date of B.C. 15, while possible, is quite incapable of proof.
The aspect of the original stone structure was doubtless very similar to that of New Bridge.
Some depositions of 1699 concern themselves almost entirely with the road tolls over the bridge.
One or two points, however, rewarded my examination of the document.
The inquiry was held at the George in Wallingford; John Whichelow being plaintiff and John Blackall defendant.
The bridge is declared to belong to the town corporation.
A grant of Henry III is referred to by which the inhabitants of Wallingford and generally of the Honour of Ewelme are exempted from tolls, customs and pontage in all England and Normandy
"by wind and by Land by Gale and by strand."
This grant is deposed to have been used successfully in resisting a toll on corn levied by the City of London.
A barge toll under the bridge is mentioned but not defined.
A toll of 2s.6d. was levied in 1746 on barges passing the bridge; and of 1s. between 1775 and 1793.
It became the subject of litigation in 1783 and 1842; the local corporation being successful in maintaining it on both occasions.
A roller was attached to the bridge to help barges through in May 1788; and a new one in February 1790.
The bridge was declared to be a great nuisance to the navigation in 1793; "the" arch needed widening and ribs taking out.
A similar complaint arose in December 1808.
Next year one of the openings is termed "the queen's arch".
Certain obstructions were subsequently removed; an application was now, however, before parliament to rebuild.
The Commissioners were assured that barge horses would be exempt from toll; and that "the" arch would be made "convenient and beneficial" to the navigation.
I describe below what happened to the bridge.
In April 1868 Reading traders were complaining of the still persistent shilling toll.
The Commissioners next year disclaimed responsibility for the charge: the income from which was stated at the time to be about £200 annually.
Ten years later the Conservancy published a similar disclaimer.
A Bargeowners' Register of 1812 names Bennet with three vessels; and Jones, Palmer, Benj. Readings and Nath. Readings with one each: at Wallingford.

The Rev. J. E. Field, M.A., vicar of Bensington, tells me that
"the winch just above Wallingford Bridge appears in an engraving circ. 1800."
He also sends me the following valuable notes:
"There is a tradition of a bridge having been erected here soon after the conquest of the district by the Saxons; but there is little doubt that the earliest stone bridge was that of which a large portion still remains; and that anything previous was of timber.
The oldest arches of the present bridge fully corroborate the opinion that Richard, King of the Romans, who held Wallingford from 1231 to 1271, was the founder of it."
I note earlier references above; but I know of no evidence whether the bridge preceding Richard's period was of stone or timber.
"Extensive repairs were made in 1530, when part of the priory church was bought by the bridgemen, and its stones used for this purpose.
During the siege of the castle in 1646 four of the arches were removed, wooden drawbridges being substituted; which remained till 1751.
In 1809 the three principal arches were so seriously damaged by a flood that it was necessary to rebuild them.
At the same time the bridge was widened on the north side by an addition of about seven feet along its entire length; leaving the rest of the old arches undisturbed.
The westernmost arch, which may be examined from the landing stage, is a good specimen of the thirteenth century, having its original deep ribs.
The arches entirely rebuilt in 1809 are the third, fourth and fifth.
The central one of these is the 'Queen's arch' { already alluded to }.
The second and sixth (the latter being the first ashore on the left bank) demand special notice.
Being next adjacent to the principal arches on either side, they are precisely those which would be likely to be taken out when drawbridges were substituted at the siege; and this proves to be the case: over the further of them there was formerly a stone tablet recording the restoration in 'brick and stone' in 1751.
The seventh arch is presumably of 1530; the eighth and ninth also: as many as nine fragments from the Norman priory may be counted in them.
The tenth is another example of what we presume to be the work of Richard; having its original vault with four massive ribs.
The eleventh is arched with brick: this may be taken as a third arch of 1751, replacing a drawbridge.
To 1530 belong the twelfth and thirteenth arches; though the former has been partly rebuilt.
The fourteenth is one of the fine ribbed arches of the thirteenth century.
The fifteenth is chiefly of brick, but partly of older work; the sixteenth is of similar character: we may conclude that it is the fourth arch replaced in 1751.
It is interesting thus to identify all the four arches for which drawbridges were substituted: the second and sixth, and the eleventh and sixteenth crossing each an outlying channel.
There are in addition three small culverts running beneath the road from the east; they may be supposed at least to represent the three remaining arches of the nineteen which the old bridge possessed.
But Letters Patent in 13 Elizabeth specify 'twenty stone arches'.
There is an additional arch at the Wallingford end: one of the original ribbed arches, but smaller than the others; and through it flowed the watercourse from beneath the east front of the castle which drove the castle mill, and which is now carried through a culvert beneath the landing stage.
This arch was built up on the north side when the bridge was widened in 1809."
It is to be remarked that Mr. Field reckons twenty arches; Baskervile and Lysons only nineteen.
I took Andrew Lang's advice and verified the reference to the above-named Patent Roll of 13 Elizabeth.
It is a grant of pontage to be levied on road and water traffic: the toll on barges being Sixpence each passage.
I discovered to my great interest that the expression translated "twenty stone arches" is, in the original Latin:
viginti columpnas lapideas, connoting surely the number of piers in the bridge.
Twenty piers would give nineteen arches.
The length of the bridge is stated as 900 ft.
Mr. Field agrees that this corrected reading fixes the number of arches at nineteen.

The prospectus mentioned at Oxford states that in one week of February 1849 one boat with fifty tons of merchandise reached Wallingford.
In June 1838 an "island below Wallingford" was ballasted away; at the time of building Chalmore lock.

CHALMORE HOLE [ LOCK ] WTSWG

Chalmore Hole: sometimes by corruption styled Chamber's Hole.
Chalmore is an ancient local place name; thus in a lease under Henry III: "one acre of land in Chalmore".
The lock was the higher of two obstructions formerly stationed in what is now the longest clear stretch of the upper River: the six and a half miles between Benson and Cleeve.
In 1787, when the horse towpath was laid down up to this point, an official ferry was established here.
Robert Child of Wallingford was the first ferryman, appointed in April 1788 at 3s. 6d. weekly: to collect a toll of twopence per horse.
The boat was "fixed" for duty on 3 May.
From the Treacher Papers I learn that in 1811 the towing here was attended with great difficulties.
"In the upward passage, the path is on the Berkshire side, as far as Chalmore Hole; the horses are then taken back a considerable distance, pass round the town, and over the Bridge to the Oxfordshire side, opposite where the Barge was left, a distance of nearly three miles."
As a remedy it was suggested to continue the towpath
"up and through Parker's Wharf, where a roller should be fixed to carry the upward barges as near Wallingford bridge as possible."
It does not appear why the usual procedure of wafting the horses across in the horse ferryboat could not be adopted.
Richard Jones was in charge of the ferry in October 1822; with 26s monthly.
In June 1829 Wm. Wilder succeeded "James" Jones, deceased.
In the following September a rood of land was to be purchased for a ferry house.
At some undefined period the boat was worked across on a chain.
The earliest suggestion of a lock was made at a parliamentary inquiry in 1793; but it was not until March 1838 that one was established, called a
"summer or low-water lock and weir".
The local committee, on visiting the works at this date, noticed a barge hung up for want of water between the lock and the bridge.
They ordered the water to be penned with the new tackle
"for the first time; and in 5 minutes the Barge was in motion; and in a quarter of an hour had reached the Wharf, and all hands were employed in unshipping her Cargo", to the great satisfaction of the officials.
A toll of twopence per ton was imposed as from 9 July: to be collected at Benson from downward and at Cleave from upward barges.
Stephen Wheeler was appointed as temporary "lock and weirkeeper and ferryman" with 12s. weekly; and as his contemplated house was in
"proximity to a favorite walk of the Inhabitants" it was to be constructed "in such a manner as to be in character with the neighbouring Buildings."
Judicet spectator! [ Let the beholder judge! ]
An undated note says:
"The works consist of a weir and two pair of gates similar to pound gates to pass boats when the weir is shut in."
In October 1839 John Garratt was in charge.
His wages were reduced from £39 annually to £36 in 1853; and in 1854 to £24; to his duties being added the collection of the upward tolls for Benson lock.
He was dead in June 1859, and John Whiteman had his office.
The Conservancy found the works in a very bad state in 1865; the fall was stated to be only "17 to 20 inches."
Next year T. J. Linteboy of Crowmarsh mills offered them his horse ferryboat for £25, his right to use it having expired under their Act.
Some doubt as to the true ownership of the ferry seems to lurk behind this incident.
In October 1866 John Whiteman junior is noted as keeper with 52s. monthly, his father having been transferred to Benson.
Next August it was ordered that no tolls were to be taken at high water times when the gates at both ends were open.
Whiteman resigned in November 1868 and Edward Morris followed.

Taunt in 1871 describes the lock as
"open in high water and does not fall above 18 in. at any time.
It is decided to remove it at an early date."
Some part of it seems to have been removed this year.
Morris was sent to Cookham in September 1873 ; and John W. May succeeded him here.
The inhabitants of Wallingford petitioned the Conservancy in December 1874, and again in the ensuing May, against the removal of the lock.
In the following September J. Surridge, May's successor, was transferred to Abingdon; and Charles Phillis was appointed here.
In the summer of 1876 there was again much local agitation in favour of retaining the lock.
Several doctors feared the effect upon the town of its removal; and the Conservancy felt inclined to repair the weir at a cost of £250, or even wholly to rebuild both lock and weir at a cost of £2,000.
In July 1881 the keeper was instructed
"not to demand toll while the lock is in its present condition".
Leslie wrote this year that
"the weir is a mere row of rimers and paddles straight across the stream, while the lock as often as not is wide open from end to end."
In September quite a crop of petitions against removal reached the Conservancy; the reduction of water at the town was much dreaded.
Sir John Hawkshaw condemned the station in April 1882.
In June tolls were suspended; and the lock was finally removed in 1883.
Krausse in 1889 says that long after the gates were removed it was
"a dangerous impediment to navigation.
The way in which tolls used to be exacted for passing the ruins of this lock, long after there ceased to be any fall, and indeed after the gates had been removed, caused considerable annoyance."
In November 1882 Phillis was transferred to Hambledon; and I. Sparks was appointed ferryman.
The bathing place was sanctioned in September 1884.
I get a curious note of "Crowmarsh weir" giving way in April 1892: was the weir left in positlon after the look was removed?
Sparks retired from the ferry in January 1895, and was succeeded by Chas. Upstone.
The lockhouse still stands about half a mile below the [ Wallingford ] bridge; and opposite it, on the left bank, two blocks of concrete survive, marking I think the two ends of the lock.
Lock and weir stood together on the open River as at Goring; the weir on the [left] bank and the lock on the [right]; so that the keeper had to cross the weir to reach the lock.
It is curious that the weir, although on the Berkshire side, is always called Crowmarsh; which is in Oxfordshire.
Bacon's 3-section Thames map, and the O.S. of 1876, confirm these positions.
Crowmarsh mill is in Domesday, among the possessions of Walter Gifard.
I do not know if it be the predecessor of "the two newe corne mylls" I find spoken of in 1583 as
"latelye erected upon the ryver of thames neere Wallingford."

MOULSFORD FLASH LOCK

Moulsford Flash Lock was the lower of the two obstructions that formerly broke the passage between Benson and Cleeve; though it was obsolete long before Chalmore Hole lock, the later of the two, was established.
There is some obscurity in the books as to its site; authorities differing by a whole mile.
Grifiiths in 1746 calls it Mousford and three miles below Wallingford, which would fix it at a most likely spot: that uncanny, haunted group of little islands immediately above the railway bridge: "the four arches " as they call it locally.
Carington Bowles's map of 1793, and other authorities, locate it a mile lower: at a mile, that is, above Cleeve, well below the Beetle and Wedge, and near the Springfield works.
Doubtless the higher is the true site; for during a discussion in 1787 upon the extension of the horse towpath to Moulsford it is stated:
"the Little Stoke Ferryman lives near the crossing at Checkenden [Moulsford] Lock, and may perhaps agree to take the horses over."
Now Little Stoke is a small cluster of houses near the islands and the railway bridge, "three miles below Wallingford"; and the ferryman, Wm. Brown, doubtless occupied one of them.
The obscurity therefore seems to be removed.
I will admit some personal anxiety that the problem be so decided; for exploring amongst these islands in the summer of 1910 I had the fortune to discover the sharpened tops of two sunken piles still looming in place under water in a narrow neck between the two westernmost aits.
I saw them again the following year.
In 1787 the Commissioners' surveyor recommended
"drawing the piles at Moulsford Lock".
The backstream also, on the Oxfordshire side, was to be opened for navigation: probably the present main channel.
In 179I Mylne found the old weir "obsolete and disused."
Next year a complaint arose of ground being washed away by the current through the "new cut".
In May 1794 fifty feet of the bank above the "new cut" was to be "campshotted"; and the whole bank was to be sloped the length of the cut and planted with willow setts.
(This poor word campsheathed is ill used in a variety of ways; "campshedded" is quite common.
I understand it to mean sheathing the "camp" { Fr. champ }, or field, to prevent it falling in.)
In June 1795 the works "at Littlestoke" could not "be proceeded on until the water is abated."
Work at the "old lock" and the "new cut" for a Mr. Read is noted in 1796.
In the City of London records for 1816 is mentioned
"an Eyet a little above Moulsford Ferry which interposes between the River and Towing Path."
This puts my discovery of the weir piles in the right position for the old channel between the islands; and seems to indicate that the new channel along the left bank was not universally used.
As late as 1865 a note occurs of the "very bad state" of this ancient survival; and only in July 1874 a claim was made upon the Conservancy for damage to a boat through striking on "a sunken pile at Moulsford"; without doubt a relic of the weir.
If my conjectural identification, in the General History, of Bishop's No. 22 in 1585 with this station be correct, his name Sowthmill might indicate the ancient presence of a mill here, on the [left] bank.
The styling of this old station Checkenden is open to an easy and interesting explanation, notwithstanding that the village of this name lies about four miles away eastward from the River.
The southern boundary of Checkenden parish, as distinct from the village, comes down to the River opposite the tail of the lowest island; being one of the numerous riparian parishes which are mere long strips lying end on to the Thames.
Mr. Belloc discusses the subject in his Historic Thames: a book which raised the literature of the River for the first time to a plane of nobility.
This stripwise plotting of parishes assured to each its own length of waterboard and waterway, for purposes of fishing and of shipment of materials and produce; its own access to the navigable highway within its own territory.

[ MOULSFORD RAILWAY BRIDGE, 1839 ] WTSWG

LITTLE STOKE FERRY

[ Little Stoke Ferry (Ferry Lane, Papist Way slipway on [left] bank) is above Moulsford Railway Bridge ]

Little Stoke Ferry: One or two comments will be found under the preceding heading.
Within the memory of persons living about 1890, wagons laden with corn had been known to cross the Thames here in times of drought.

SOUTH STOKE FERRY WTSWG

[ The ferry between Moulsford (Beetle & Wedge) and South Stoke which now gives us the South Stoke slipway on the [right] bank. ]

On 20 January 1673,
"happen'd so great a Flood that a Boat was rowed over the Tops of the Moore Hedges down to the Vicarage Gate so that most part of the Housen and Barnes in this Towne were Drowned."