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24 chapters
INTRODUCTORY
INTRODUCTORY
The Thames we all know intimately, for the river was discovered by the holiday-maker in the ’seventies of the nineteenth century; but we do not all know the villages of the Thames Valley, and it was partly to satisfy a long-cherished curiosity on this point, and partly to make holiday in some of the little-known nooks yet remaining, that this tour was undertaken. To one who lives, or exists, or resides—the reader is invited to choose his own epithet—beside the lower Thames, there must needs at t
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CHAPTER I
CHAPTER I
CIRENCESTER—SOURCE OF THE THAMES—KEMBLE—ASHTON KEYNES—CRICKLADE—ST. AUGUSTINE’S WELL The head-spring of the Thames is, in summer, not so easy a place to find. It rises on the borders of Wilts and Gloucestershire, and has been marked down and written about sufficiently often; but the exact spot is quested for with difficulty, and when the traveller has found it, he is, after all, not sure of his find, for the place is supplied, in these latter days, with no recognisable landmark, and even the roa
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CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II
KELMSCOTT MANOR. Morris loved the place with an intense love, and brought back to the house much of its old ways, with much else of his own, in artistic “Morris tapestries” and other hangings, such as were designed by him and Burne-Jones, made at Merton by Wimbledon, and sold at the establishment of Morris & Co. in Oxford Street. We do not commonly look upon Socialists as anything but discontented artisans and weekly wage-earners in general; but Morris performed his share of street-corne
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CHAPTER III
CHAPTER III
GREAT FARINGDON—BUCKLAND—BAMPTON-IN-THE-BUSH—COTE—SHIFFORD Great Faringdon, on the right, or Berkshire, side of the river, is well worth visiting. Technically a town, its inhabitants would probably feel injured by any one styling it a village; but there are towns and towns; and Faringdon, although it perhaps may not be styled “decayed,” is at any rate unprogressive. There be those among us who are so constituted that they mislike the word “progress,” and are repelled by any place they hear to be
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CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER IV
HARVESTS OF THE THAMES: WILLOWS, OSIERS, RUSHES The willows, pollarded or left to their natural growth, that form, as it were, a continuous guard of honour along many miles of the upper course of the Thames, and overhang with a wild luxuriance its mazy backwaters, are indeed a guard to those banks in more than fanciful phrase. Their tangled roots clutch them in many-fingered embrace and support them in times of flood, and their gnarled and fantastic trunks serve the useful office at such times (
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CHAPTER V
CHAPTER V
NEW BRIDGE, THE OLDEST ON THE THAMES—STANDLAKE—GAUNT’S HOUSE—NORTHMOOR—STANTON HARCOURT—BESSELSLEIGH The Oxfordshire side of the river continues as flat as ever, to New Bridge, which, rising greyly from amid the sedges, commands extensive views, less by reason of its own height, which is nothing to speak of, than by the lowness of these level lands. New Bridge, which carries the Abingdon and Witney road across—it is not a greatly-frequented road—is the oldest bridge existing on the river. The tr
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CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VI
CUMNOR, AND THE TRAGEDY OF AMY ROBSART One comes more readily to Cumnor by road, but more picturesquely by river, from Bablockhythe, whence a byway leads steeply up to that famous place. Cumnor is indeed of such fame that, although one must needs allow it to be a hill-top—certainly not a valley—village, yet to omit it from these pages would surely be unpardonable. At Bablockhythe remains the last of the old river ferries, capable of taking a wheeled conveyance across; and capable, too, of giving
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CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VII
WYTHAM—THE OLD ROAD—BINSEY AND THE ORATORY OF ST. FRIDESWIDE—THE VANISHED VILLAGE OF SEACOURT—GODSTOW AND “FAIR ROSAMOND”—MEDLEY—FOLLY BRIDGE. The river makes a great semicircular bend, as between New Bridge and Oxford, so that although but six miles between the two, measured in a straight line on the map, it is fifteen miles by water. Cumnor stands roughly in the middle of the projecting part of Berkshire enclosed within this bend, and Wytham almost at the farthest northward fling of it, just b
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CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER VIII
IFFLEY, AND THE WAY THITHER—NUNEHAM, IN STORM AND IN SUNSHINE The way from Oxford by road to Iffley is a terrible two miles of “residential” suburbia. So soon as the pilgrim has come out of Oxford, over Magdalen Bridge, and, taking the right-hand fork of roads, has passed St. Clements, he has entered upon the villa-lined Iffley road, in which the houses are numbered to over nine hundred. I hope I am neither a Prig nor a Superior Person, but I fully confess I should not like to live—or to “reside
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CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER IX
ABINGDON Abingdon, some three miles distant, now claims attention; and a good deal of leisured attention is its due. That pleasant and quietly-prosperous old town is one of those fortunate places that have achieved the happy middle course between growth and decay, and thus are not ringed about with squalid, unhistorical, modern additions. Its population remains at about 6,500, and therefore it is not, although possessing from of old a Mayor and Corporation, a town at all in the modern sense. Thu
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CHAPTER X
CHAPTER X
SUTTON COURTNEY—LONG WITTENHAM—LITTLE WITTENHAM—CLIFTON HAMPDEN—DAY’S LOCK AND SINODUN A group of rustic villages nestles undisturbed by any press of traffic on the right, or Berkshire, bank of the river: Drayton, Sutton Courtney, and Appleford; with Steventon and Milton away back in the hinterland, all very charming, and wholly unaltered. At Steventon are to be found the most delightful old cottages. There are no better in Berkshire. This is a sweeping statement, but true. The proof of it lies
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CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XI
DORCHESTER—BENSON Dorchester, Oxon, has not the slightest resemblance to Dorchester, Dorset: the two have little in common save their name, which might well have been much more than duplicated, seeing how many must have been the camps and fortresses upon various waters. Fortunately, with the result of saving us from the confusion of dozens of Dorchesters, our very remote ancestors were possessed of sufficient resourcefulness to enable them to fit distinctive names to those places. The great days
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CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XII
WALLINGFORD—GORING And so we come, past the pretty Oxfordshire hamlet of Preston Crowmarsh, into the good old Berkshire town of Wallingford. Wallingford town has been thrust aside by modern circumstances and altogether deposed from its ancient importance. If we look at large maps, and thereby see how several great roads here converge and cross the Thames, the reason of this former importance will be at once manifest, and likewise the existence of the great castle of Wallingford will be explained
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CHAPTER I
CHAPTER I
SONNING—HURST, “IN THE COUNTY OF WILTS”—SHOTTESBROOKE—WARGRAVE As Reading can by no means be styled a village, seeing that its population numbers over 72,000, the fact of its not being treated of in these pages will perhaps be excused. You cannot rusticate at Reading: the electric tramways, the great commercial premises, and the crowded state of its streets forbid; but Reading, taken frankly as a town and a manufacturing town at that, is not at all a place for censure. The Kennet, however, that
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CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II
HENLEY—THE BRIDGE AND ITS KEYSTONE-MASKS—REMENHAM—HAMBLEDEN—MEDMENHAM ABBEY AND THE “HELL FIRE CLUB”—HURLEY—BISHAM Passing Marsh Lock, the town of Henley comes into view, heralded by its tall church tower, with four equal-sized battlemented turrets; a quite unmistakable church tower. The noble five-arched stone bridge here crossing the Thames, built in 1789, at a cost of £10,000, is one of the most completely satisfactory along the whole course of the river. The keystone-masks of the central arc
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CHAPTER III
CHAPTER III
GREAT MARLOW—COOKHAM—CLIVEDEN AND ITS OWNERS—MAIDENHEAD Marlow town is well within sight from Bisham. It is very much more picturesque at a distance than it is found to be when arrived near at hand; and the graceful stone spire of its church is found to be really a portion of a very clumsy would-be Gothic building erected in the Batty-Langley style, about 1835. A fine old Norman and later building was destroyed to make way for this; and now the present church is in course of being replaced, in s
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CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER IV
BRAY AND ITS FAMOUS VICAR—JESUS HOSPITAL Beyond this astonishing achievement comes the delightful village of Bray, whose name is thought to be a corruption of Bibracte , an obscure Roman station. Bray is scenically associated with the eight—or are they ten?—tall poplars that stand in a formal row, all of one size, and each equidistant from the other, and form a prominent feature in the view as you approach, upstream or down; and with the weird shapes of the eel-bucks that occupy a position by th
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CHAPTER V
CHAPTER V
OCKWELLS MANOR-HOUSE—DORNEY COURT—BOVENY—BURNHAM ABBEY THE HALL, OCKWELLS. In a remote situation, two miles from Bray Wick, and not to be found marked on many maps, is situated the ancient manor-house of Ockwells. The hills and dales on the way to it are of a Devonshire richness of wooded beauty. The manor was, in fact, originally that of “Ockholt,” that is to say, “Oak Wood,” and oaks are still plenteously represented. Ockholt, as it was then, was granted in 1267 to one Richard de Norreys, styl
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CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VI
CLEWER—WINDSOR—ETON AND ITS COLLEGIANS—DATCHET—LANGLEY AND THE KEDERMINSTERS Between Dorney and Eton stretches an out-of-the-way corner of land devoted chiefly to potato-fields and allotments bordering the river. Here stands Boveney church, or “Buvveney,” as it is locally styled, a small building so altered at different periods as to be quite without interest. The river glides past, between the alders, that dark, strong current the subject of allusion by Praed in his “School and Schoolfellows”:
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CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VII
DATCHET—RUNNYMEDE—WRAYSBURY—HORTON AND ITS MILTON ASSOCIATIONS—STAINES MOOR—STANWELL—LALEHAM AND MATTHEW ARNOLD—LITTLETON—CHERTSEY—WEYBRIDGE—SHEPPERTON. By Datchet meads and the continuously flat shores of Runnymede, the river runs somewhat tamely, after the scenic climax of Windsor. The Datchet of Shakespearean fame it is, of course, hopeless to find. There is nothing Shakespearean in the prettily rebuilt village with suburban villas and railway level-crossing; and the ditch that used to be ide
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CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER VIII
COWAY STAKES—WALTON-ON-THAMES—THE RIVER AND THE WATER COMPANIES—SUNBURY—TEDDINGTON—TWICKENHAM. There are some very pleasant places on this Middlesex side of the river: Shepperton Green and Lower Halliford notable among them; Lower Halliford fringing the river bank most picturesquely and rustically. Between this and Walton is the place known as “Cowey, or Coway, Stakes,” traditionally the spot where Julius Cæsar in 54 B.C. crossed the Thames, in his second invasion of Britain. Cæsar himself, in h
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CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER IX
PETERSHAM The most complete oasis in all these developments is Petersham, on the Surrey side: Petersham, and Ham, and Ham Common. There railways come not, nor tramways. At Petersham are few but old houses and the time-honoured mansions of the great of bygone centuries, inhabited nowadays by the small and futile. So, at any rate, I gather them to be from the sweeping remark made to me some years ago by a man whom I discovered leaning meditatively over a fence, contemplating the view across Peters
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CHAPTER X
CHAPTER X
ISLEWORTH—BRENTFORD AND CÆSAR’S CROSSING OF THE THAMES Isleworth, an ancient and almost forgotten village overlooking the Thames, is not by any manner of means to be confounded with the station of that name, or with the better-known outlying portion of the parish known as Old Isleworth. The reason of this popular ignorance of Isleworth is easily to be found in the pronounced bend of the river by which it stands, the great roads in the neighbourhood going approximately direct, and leaving Islewor
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CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XI
STRAND-ON-THE-GREEN—KEW—CHISWICK—MORTLAKE—BARNES There is a waterside walk from Brentford to Kew Bridge, commanding a full view of that new and solid, perhaps also stolid, structure of stone, opened May 20, 1903. The old bridge was a more satisfactory affair to the eye, although its roadway was steep, rising sharply as it did from either end to an apex over the middle arch. The arches, boldly and beautifully semicircular, were delightful to look upon, not like the flattened-out segmental spans o
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