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Volume II is available as Project Gutenberg ebook #57366.
THAMES VALLEY VILLAGES
WORKS BY CHARLES G. HARPER
=The Portsmouth Road=, and its Tributaries: To-day and in Days
of Old.
=The Dover Road=: Annals of an Ancient Turnpike.
=The Bath Road=: History, Fashion, and Frivolity on an Old
Highway.
=The Exeter Road=: The Story of the West of England Highway.
=The Great North Road=: The Old Mail Road to Scotland. Two Vols.
=The Norwich Road=: An East Anglian Highway.
=The Holyhead Road=: The Mail-Coach Road to Dublin. Two Vols.
=The Cambridge, Ely, and King’s Lynn Road=: The Great Fenland
Highway.
=The Newmarket, Bury, Thetford, and Cromer Road=: Sport and
History on an East Anglian Turnpike.
=The Oxford, Gloucester, and Milford Haven Road=: The Ready Way
to South Wales. Two Vols.
=The Brighton Road=: Speed, Sport, and History on the Classic
Highway.
=The Hastings Road= and the “Happy Springs of Tunbridge.”
=Cycle Rides Round London.=
=A Practical Handbook of Drawing for Modern Methods of
Reproduction.=
=Stage Coach and Mail in Days of Yore.= Two Vols.
=The Ingoldsby Country=: Literary Landmarks of “The Ingoldsby
Legends.”
=The Hardy Country=: Literary Landmarks of the Wessex Novels.
=The Dorset Coast.=
=The South Devon Coast.=
=The Old Inns of Old England.= Two Vols.
=Love in the Harbour=: a Longshore Comedy.
=Rural Nooks Round London= (Middlesex and Surrey).
=Haunted Houses=: Tales of the Supernatural.
=The Manchester and Glasgow Road.= This way to Gretna Green.
Two Vols.
=The North Devon Coast.=
=Half Hours with the Highwaymen.= Two Vols.
=The Autocar Road Book.= Four Vols.
=The Tower of London=: Fortress, Palace, and Prison.
=The Somerset Coast.=
=The Smugglers=: Picturesque Chapters in the Story of an
Ancient Craft.
=The Cornish Coast.= North.
=The Cornish Coast.= South.
=The Kentish Coast.= [_In the Press._
=The Sussex Coast.= [_In the Press._
[Illustration: AT ASHTON KEYNES.]
THAMES VALLEY
VILLAGES
BY
CHARLES G. HARPER
VOL. I
_ILLUSTRATED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY W. S. CAMPBELL
AND FROM DRAWINGS BY THE AUTHOR_
[Illustration: ISIS]
LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL, LTD.
1910
PRINTED AND BOUND BY
HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD.,
LONDON AND AYLESBURY.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER I
CIRENCESTER—SOURCE OF THE THAMES—KEMBLE—ASHTON
KEYNES—CRICKLADE—ST. AUGUSTINE’S WELL 8
CHAPTER II
CASTLE EATON—KEMPSFORD—BY THE THAMES AND SEVERN CANAL TO
INGLESHAM ROUND HOUSE—LECHLADE—FAIRFORD—EATON HASTINGS
WEIR—KELMSCOTT—RADCOT BRIDGE 50
CHAPTER III
GREAT FARINGDON—BUCKLAND—BAMPTON-IN-THE-BUSH—COTE—SHIFFORD 110
CHAPTER IV
HARVESTS OF THE THAMES: WILLOWS, OSIERS, RUSHES 128
CHAPTER V
NEW BRIDGE, THE OLDEST ON THE THAMES—STANDLAKE—GAUNT’S
HOUSE—NORTHMOOR—STANTON HARCOURT—BESSELSLEIGH 138
CHAPTER VI
CUMNOR, AND THE TRAGEDY OF AMY ROBSART 161
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 186
CHAPTER VIII
IFFLEY, AND THE WAY THITHER—NUNEHAM, IN STORM AND IN
SUNSHINE 200
CHAPTER IX
ABINGDON 216
CHAPTER X
SUTTON COURTNEY—LONG WITTENHAM—LITTLE WITTENHAM—CLIFTON
HAMPDEN—DAY’S LOCK AND SINODUN 234
CHAPTER XI
DORCHESTER—BENSON 260
CHAPTER XII
WALLINGFORD—GORING 272
CHAPTER XIII
STREATLEY—BASILDON—PANGBOURNE—MAPLEDURHAM—PURLEY 293
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
SEPARATE PLATES
AT ASHTON KEYNES _Frontispiece_
PAGE
CIRENCESTER CHURCH: SHOWING THE GREAT BUTTRESS 11
THE OLD MILL HOUSE, ASHTON KEYNES 23
THE INFANT THAMES, ASHTON KEYNES 31
APPROACH TO CRICKLADE 35
ST. SAMPSON, CRICKLADE 39
STRAINER-BUTTRESS, ST. SAMPSON’S, CRICKLADE 43
“LERTOLL WELL” 43
THE IRON GIRDER BRIDGE, CASTLE EATON 51
THE OLD BRIDGE, CASTLE EATON 51
CASTLE EATON CHURCH: SHOWING SANCTUS-BELL TURRET 55
THE THAMES AND SEVERN CANAL, NEAR KEMPSFORD 55
KEMPSFORD CHURCH 61
INGLESHAM ROUND HOUSE 67
A STREET IN FAIRFORD 71
LECHLADE 75
FAIRFORD, FROM THE RIVER COLN 79
THE GREAT WEST WINDOW, FAIRFORD, DISPLAYING THE “DOOM” 83
MONUMENT IN THE PARK, FAIRFORD, WHERE THE FAMOUS WINDOWS
WERE BURIED 87
KELMSCOTT MANOR 95
KELMSCOTT CHURCH 99
RADCOT BRIDGE 103
A THAMES-SIDE FARM 125
GATEWAY, COTE HOUSE 125
A THAMES-SIDE FARM 129
NEW BRIDGE: THE OLDEST BRIDGE ACROSS THE THAMES 139
NORTHMOOR: CHURCH AND DOVECOTE 143
STANTON HARCOURT: MANOR HOUSE AND CHURCH 147
EARLY ENGLISH SCREEN (UNRESTORED), STANTON HARCOURT 153
CUMNOR CHURCH 163
STATUE OF QUEEN ELIZABETH, CUMNOR CHURCH 167
TOMB OF ANTHONY FORSTER, CUMNOR 173
EYNSHAM 187
IFFLEY CHURCH: NORTH SIDE 201
WEST DOOR, IFFLEY CHURCH 205
THE BRIDGE, NUNEHAM COURTNEY 209
CARFAX CONDUIT, NUNEHAM COURTNEY 213
ABINGDON 217
THE TOWN HALL, ABINGDON 223
ST. HELEN’S, ABINGDON 227
OLD HOUSES, STEVENTON CAUSEWAY 231
SUTTON COURTNEY CHURCH 235
SUTTON COURTNEY 239
INTERIOR, SUTTON COURTNEY CHURCH 239
ANCIENT TIMBER PORCH, LONG WITTENHAM (UNRESTORED) 245
DAY’S LOCK, AND SINODUN HILL 249
CLIFTON HAMPDEN 257
SEDILIA, DORCHESTER ABBEY 261
THE EAST WINDOW, DORCHESTER ABBEY 265
THE JESSE WINDOW (ON THE LEFT), DORCHESTER ABBEY 269
DORCHESTER 273
DORCHESTER ABBEY 273
WALLINGFORD 277
WALLINGFORD: TOWN HALL, AND CHURCH OF ST. MARY-THE-MORE 281
GORING CHURCH 285
HOUR-GLASS STAND, SOUTH STOKE 285
PANGBOURNE CHURCH 291
BASILDON CHURCH 291
WHITCHURCH 297
MAPLEDURHAM MILL 301
MAPLEDURHAM HOUSE 305
ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT
Near Kemble 19
At Ewen 21
At Ashton Keynes 22
Ashton Keynes Mill 27
Old Woodwork, Castle Eaton 58
Norman Porch, Kempsford 60
Inglesham Church 65
Ancient Carving, Lechlade Church 73
Fiends 82, 85
Faringdon Clump 101
St. Stephen 107
Clanfield Church 108
Faringdon Market House 117
Wooden Bridge across the Upper Thames 118
Bampton Church 123
The Kitchen, Stanton Harcourt 150
Besselsleigh: Church and Fragment of Manor House 157
Binsey Church 192
Christ’s Hospital, Abingdon 221
St. Nicholas, Abingdon 225
The “King’s Head and Bell,” Abingdon 233
Norman Belfry-window, Sutton Courtney 238
Little Wittenham 245
Wittenham Clumps 253
_SWEET THAMES, RUN SOFTLY TILL I END MY SONG_
With rushes fenced, with swaying osiers crowned,
Old Thames from out the western country hies;
By daisy-dappled meads his course is found,
Bearing upon his breast brave argosies
Of stately lilies. Poets loved to praise
The stream whose tide doth calmly flow along,
And this the echo of their tuneful lays:
“_Sweet Themmes, runne softly till I ende my song._”
Past town and village, cot and lonely farm,
His silver stream with murm’ring music goes;
Singing glad anthems, full of drowsy charm;
Sweet songs of praise, unheeded not by those
Who know his banks full well, who often love
To roam his course, his marge to pace along,
While Spenser’s line re-echoes as we rove:
“_Sweet Themmes, runne softly till I ende my song._”
THAMES VALLEY VILLAGES
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 times
come a longing to know that upper stream whence these mighty waters
originate, to find that fount where “Father Thames” starts forth in
hesitating, infantile fashion; to seek that spot where the stream,
instead of flowing, merely trickles. To such an one there comes, with
every recurrent spring, the longing to penetrate to the Beyond, away
past where the towns and villages, the water-works and breweries cluster
thickly beside the river-banks; above the town of Reading, the Biscuit
Town, and town of sauce and seeds; beyond the fashionable summer scene of
Henley Regatta, and past the city of Oxford, to the Upper River and its
unconventionalised life.
When spring comes and wakes the meadows with delight, and the osiers
and the rushes again feel life stirring in their dank roots, the old
schoolboy feeling of curiosity, of mystery, of a desire for exploration,
springs anew. You walk down, it may be, to some slipway or draw-dock
by Richmond or Teddington, or wander along those shores contemplating
the high-water-marks left by the late winter floods, which not even the
elaborate locking of the river seems able to prevent; and observing the
curious line of refuse of every description brought down by the waters,
and now left, high and dry, a matted mass of broken rushes, water weeds,
twigs, string and the like, marvel at the wealth of corks that displays
itself there. Children have been known to make expedition towards the
distant hills, seeking that place where the rainbow touches the ground;
for the sly old legend tells us that on the spot where the glorious bow
meets the earth there lies buried a crock of gold. An equally speculative
quest would be to fare forth and seek the Place whence the Corks Come.
There (not for children, but for “grown-ups”) should be, you think, the
Land of Heart’s Desire.
There are, I take it, three chief things that the world of men most
ardently wishes for. An unregenerate man’s first desires are to wealth,
to a woman, and to a drink; or, in the words attributed to Martin Luther:
Who loves not woman, wine, and song,
He is a fool his whole life long;
and the valley of the Thames, from Oxford to Richmond, would seem, by the
evidence of these millions of corks of all kinds, to be a place flowing
with champagne, light wines, all kinds of mineral waters, and bottled
beers.
Corks, rubber rings from broken mineral-water bottles, and big bungs
that hint of two-or three-gallon jars, abound; these last telling in no
uncertain manner of the magnificent thirsts inspired among anglers who
sit in punts all day long, and do nothing but keep an eye on the float,
and maintain the glass circulating.
A thirsty person wandering by these bestrewn towing-paths must sigh to
think of the exquisite drinks that have gone before, leaving in this
multitude of corks the only evidence of their evanescent existence.
Shall we not seek it, this land of the foaming champagne, that comes
creaming to the brim of the generous glass; shall we not hope to
locate those shores, far or near, where the bottled Bass, poured into
the ready tumbler, tantalises the parched would-be drinker of it in
the all-too-slowly-subsiding mass of froth that lies between him and
his expectant palate? Shall we not, at least if we be of “temperance”
leanings, quaff the cool and refreshing “stone-bottle” ginger-beer; or,
failing that, the skimpy and deleterious “mineral-water” “lemonade” that
is chiefly compounded of sugar and carbonic-acid gas, and blows painfully
and at high-pressure through the titivated nostrils? Shall we not—— but
hold there! Waiter, bring me—what shall it be?—an iced stone-bottle
ginger!
That was the brave time, the golden age of the river, when, rather more
than a generation ago, the discovery of the Thames as a holiday haunt was
first made. The fine rapture of those early tourists, who, deserting the
traditional seaside lounge for a cruise down along the placid bosom of
the Thames, from Lechlade to Oxford, and from Oxford to Richmond, were
(something after the Ancient Mariner sort) the first to burst into these
hitherto unknown reaches, can never be recaptured. The bloom has been
brushed from off the peach by the rude hands of crowds of later visitors.
The waterside inns, once so simple under their heavy beetling eaves of
thatch, are now modish, instead of modest; and Swiss and German waiters,
clothed in deplorable reach-me-down dress-suits and lamentable English
of the Whitechapel-atte-Bowe variety, have replaced the neat-handed—if
heavy-footed—Phyllises, who were almost in the likeness of those who
waited upon old Izaak Walton, two centuries and a quarter ago.
To-day, along the margin of the Thames below Oxford, some expectant
mercenary awaits at every slipway and landing-place the arrival of the
frequent row-boat and the plenteous and easily-earned tip; and the lawns
of riparian villas on either hand exhibit a monotonous repetition of “No
Landing-Place,” “Private,” and “Trespassers Prosecuted” notices; while
side-channels are not infrequently marked “Private Backwater.”
All the villages immediately giving upon the stream have suffered
an equally marked change, and have become uncharacteristic of their
old selves, and converted into the likeness of no other villages
in this our England, in these our times. There is, for example, a
kind of theatrical prettiness and pettiness about Whitchurch, over
against Pangbourne; and instead of looking upon it as a real, living
three-hundred-and-sixty-five-days-in-the-year kind of place, you are apt
to think of what a pretty “set” it makes; and, doing so, to speak of its
bearings in other than the usual geographical terms of east and west,
north and south; and to refer to them, indeed, after the fashion of the
stage, as “P.” or “O.P.” sides.
But if we find at Whitchurch a meticulous neatness, a compact and
small-scale prettiness eminently theatrical, what shall we say of its
neighbour, Pangbourne, on the Berkshire bank of the river? That is of
the other modern riverain type: an old village spoiled by the expansion
that comes of being situated on a beautiful reach of the Thames, and with
a railway station in its very midst. Detestable so-styled “villas,” and
that kind of shops you find nowhere else than in these Thames-side spots,
have wrought Pangbourne into something new and strange; and motor-cars
have put the final touch of sacrilege upon it.
Perhaps you would like to know of what type the typical Thames-side
village shop may be, nowadays? Nothing easier than to draw its portrait
in few words. It is, to begin with, inevitably a “Stores,” and is
obviously stocked with the first object of supplying boating-parties
and campers with the necessaries of life, as understood by campers and
boating-parties. As tinned provisions take a prominent place in those
holiday commissariats, it follows that the shop-windows are almost
completely furnished with supplies of tinned everything, festering in
the sun. For the rest, you have cheap camp-kettles, spirit-stoves,
tin enamelled cups and saucers, and the like utensils, hammocks and
lounge-chairs.
Thus the modern riverside village is unpleasing to those who like to
see places retain their old natural appearance, and dislike the modern
fate that has given it a spurious activity in a boating-season of three
months, with a deadly-dull off-season of nine other months every year.
We may make shift to not actively dislike these sophisticated places in
summer, but let us not, if we value our peace of mind, seek to know them
in winter; when the sloppy street is empty, even of dogs and cats; when
rain patters like small-shot on the roof of the inevitable tin-tabernacle
that supplements the over-restored, and spoiled, parish church; and when
the roar of the swollen weir fills the air with a thudding reverberance.
Pah!
The villas, the “maisonettes,” are empty: the gardens draggle-tailed; the
“Nest” is “To Let”; the “Moorings” “To be Sold”; and a general air of
“has been” pervades the place, with a desolating feeling that “will again
be” is impossible.
But let us put these things behind us, and come to the river itself; to
the foaming weir under the lowering sky, where such a head of water comes
hurrying down that no summer frequenter of the river can ever see. There
is no dead, hopeless season in nature; for although the trees may be
bare, and the groves dismantled, the wintry woods have their own beauty,
and even in mid-winter give promise of better times.
But along the uppermost Thames, from Thames Head to Lechlade and Oxford,
the waterside villages are still very much what they have always been.
All through the year they live their own life. Not there do the villas
rise redundant, nor the old inns masquerade as hotels, nor chorus-girls
inhabit at weekends, in imitative simplicity. A voyage along the
thirty-two miles of narrow, winding river from Lechlade to Oxford has no
incidents more exciting than the shooting of a weir, or the watching of a
moor-hen and her brood.
Below Oxford, we have but to adventure some little way to right or left
of the stream, and there, in the byways (for main roads do not often
approach the higher reaches of the river), the unaltered villages abound.
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 road-men and the
infrequent wayfarers along that ancient way, the Akeman Street, which
runs close by, appear uncertain. That it is “over there, somewhere,”
is the most exact information the enquirer is likely, at a venture, to
obtain.
There are excellent reasons for this distressing incertitude. The winter
reason is that Trewsbury Mead, the great flat meadow in which Thames
Head is situated, is so water-logged that it is often a morass, and
not infrequently a lake. In summer, on the other hand, the spot is so
parched, partly on account of the season, but much more by reason of the
pumping-works in the immediate neighbourhood, that not only the Thames
Head spring is quite dry, but the bed of the infant Thames itself is
generally dry for the first two miles of its course.
Thames Head is situated three miles south-west of Cirencester, that
beautiful old stone-built town whose name we are traditionally told
to pronounce “Ciceter,” just as Shakespeare wrote it. That was the
old popular way, before the folks of the surrounding country could
read or write, and knew no better; but to-day, when “education” is the
birthright of all, though culture be the acquisition of few, they are the
rustic-folk—the “lower orders”—who say “Cirencester,” as my lords and
gentlemen and ladies were wont to do; while nowadays the upper circles
refer to “Ciceter.” It is a curious reversal. If you say, in these
times, “Cirencester,” you, in so doing, proclaim yourself, socially, an
outsider, fit only to feed out of the same trough as those creatures who
pronounce “Marjoribanks,” “Cholmondeley,” or “Wemyss” as spelled. We all
know—or ought—that “Marshbanks,” “Chumley,” and “Weems” are your only
ways, if you would be socially saved. These are the last resorts of those
who have no other distinction to mark them out from the common herd: just
a verbal inflection, combined, possibly, with a method of hand-shaking.
To what straits we are reduced, in these democratic times, to express our
superiority!
There is another way to the pronunciation of “Cirencester,” lately come
into favour with provincials of this neighbourhood. It is a method of the
simplest: merely the adoption of the clipped way common to the local
milestones, which tell the tale of so many miles to “Ciren.”
The noblest thing in Cirencester is the beautiful old church, which rises
in its midst, beside the remarkably broad High Street, with much of that
scale and stateliness we commonly associate with a cathedral. It is one
of the noblest works of the Perpendicular period, when architects grew
aspiring, but did not always succeed in building artistically as well
as big. Here the two aims have been achieved. But a third desideratum,
that of building securely, was not originally included, it would appear,
for one of the most astonishing things about this structure is the
great masonry strut which would be called a “shore” if it were only in
timber, and is so clearly for utility, and absolutely unbeautiful and
unarchitectural, that to style it a buttress would be to disparage the
exquisite adornments that buttresses at their best are capable of being.
This great crutch for a noble tower in danger of falling so soon as it
was built, nearly five hundred years ago, is, however, justified of its
existence, for the lofty belfry yet stands securely. The ingenious way
in which the supporting masonry is built diagonally through the west
wall of the south aisle, down to the ground, compels admiration for the
engineering skill displayed.
[Illustration: CIRENCESTER CHURCH: SHOWING THE GREAT BUTTRESS.]
The great three-storeyed porch, by far the largest porch, and certainly
the most singular, in England, built in advance of the south aisle, and
looking proudly upon the street, would seem to have been built for the
convenience of the many priests who served the large number of chantries
established from time to time in the church. It is a very late and very
beautiful Perpendicular work. Not long after its completion the greasy
rascals were sent packing, in the life-giving Reformation that saved the
nation. It for long afterwards served as the Town Hall, but was commonly
known as “the Vice”—a strange survival and corruption of “parvise.”
The interior of the church discloses a nave-arcade of very lofty and
graceful proportions; a work probably as completely satisfactory
as anything in this country. And there is very much else to study
here. There are monuments, worn and battered, to knights and dames,
wine-merchants, wool-merchants, grocers, and other old tradesmen of the
town. Among them may be noticed the brass to Reginald Spycer, 1442, with
his four wives—Reginald in the middle, and the four ladies beside him,
two and two. A late example is that of Philip Marner, 1587, representing
him full-length, robed, with staff in one hand and a flower in the other.
A dog sits beside him. In the upper left-hand is a pair of shears,
indicating that he was a clothier. The rhymed inscription says:—
In Lent by will a sermon he devised,
And yerely Precher with a noble prised.
Seven Nobles he did geue ye poore for to defend,
and 80 li to xvi men did lend,
In Cicester, Burford, Abington, and Tetburie,
ever to be to them a stocke Yerly.
In a glazed frame is preserved an ancient blue velvet pulpit-cloth, given
in 1478 by Ralph Parsons, a priest, whose cope it had been.
The road that runs, white and broad, in a straight undeviating line,
from Cirencester to Thames Head, and so on at last, after many miles, to
Bath—the “Akemanceaster” that has given the Akeman Street its name—comes
in three miles to a stone bridge spanning a canal. This is “Thames Head
Bridge,” and the canal is the Thames and Severn Canal, which, beginning
at Inglesham, just above Lechlade, ends at Stroud. The length of this
water-way is thirty miles. The works were begun in 1783 and completed in
1789.
The object of the Thames and Severn Canal, which joins the Stroudwater
Canal, and reaches the Severn at Framilode, was to provide a commercial
water-way between the highest point of the navigable Thames, near
Lechlade, and the Bristol Channel. Its course lies along some very high
ground just beyond Thames Head, going westward, and in all there are
forty-four locks, rising 241 ft. 3 in. There is also a remarkable piece
of engineering in the Sapperton Tunnel, through which the canal takes its
course. The tunnel is fifteen feet wide, and is driven through Sapperton
Hill at a point 250 feet beneath its summit.
It follows that of necessity a canal, so elevated above the surrounding
country, must be provided with water by artificial means, and a supply
is provided by a pumping-station close at hand to Thames Head Bridge.
This raises water to the extent of three million gallons a day: hence
the dried-up character of the Thames Head spring, except in winter, and
the usual summer phenomenon of the infant Thames being quite innocent
of water for a distance of two miles from its source. Of late years the
Great Western Railway, which has a station at Kemble, a mile and a half
away, has erected a still larger and more powerful pumping-station, for
the purpose of supplying water for its own needs at Swindon, fourteen
miles distant.
The Akeman Street here divides Wiltshire and Gloucestershire. If we
descend from the Thames Head Canal bridge and follow the towing-path in
a westerly direction, into Gloucestershire, for half a mile, we come,
by scrambling down the canal-bank to the meadow below, to the source
of the river, and at the same time to the destruction of a cherished
illusion. Picturesque old histories of the Thames have made us familiar
with Thames Head, and have shown us dainty vignettes of that spring. One
such I have before me as I write these words. It shows a rustic well,
overhung by graceful trees, with a little country-girl in homely pinafore
dipping a foot in the water as it gushes forth. We need expect no such
scene nowadays. The well is buried under fallen masses of the dull,
ochre-coloured earth of Trewsbury Mead, and all we see is a rough, dry
hollow, overhung by trees which refuse to live up to the grace suggested
by the old illustrations. We need not wonder any more why so few people
know Thames Head, or why the spot is unmarked. It is merely a memory, and
Peacock’s charming verse has long ceased to be applicable:—
Let fancy lead from Trewsbury Mead,
With hazel fringed, and copsewood deep;
Where scarcely seen, through brilliant green,
Thy infant waters softly creep.
But although the pumping-stations so greedily suck up all the available
moisture in summer, the spring is said often to burst out in winter,
three feet high; and at such times it is only necessary to drive a
walking-stick anywhere into the turf of this meadow for a little fount to
spring up from the hole thus drilled.
The river thus originated is known alternatively as the “Isis,” and
in the writings of old pedantic antiquaries retains that alternative
name until Oxford is passed and Dorchester reached; where, according
to such authorities, in the confluence of the Isis and the Thame,
the “Thame-Isis,” becomes the “Tamesis,” or Thames. To the Oxford
boating-man, however, the streams below and above Oxford are respectively
the Lower and the Upper River, and “Isis” is reserved for the title of a
University magazine, or the name of a boating-club.
“Isis” is, of course, a Latinised form of “Ouse,” which in its turn is a
modified form of the Celtic “uisc,” for water, and gives us such other
river-names as Usk, Axe, Exe, and Wye; while we find it hidden again
in the names of Kirkby Wiske, in Yorkshire, and in that of “whisky,”
deriving from “usquebaugh.”
The time when the Upper Thames was first called “Isis” is uncertain.
The name is certainly a Latinised form of “Ouse”; but the Romans do not
appear to have so styled it. Julius Cæsar, in his _Commentaries_, speaks
only of “Tamesis”; and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, A.D. 905, mentions
only the “Thames.” We do not, in fact, read of anything like “Isis”
until 1359, when a monk of Chester, Ranulphus Higden, wrote in his
_Polychronicon_ a passage which, rendered into English from his Latin
original, runs thus: “Tamisa seems to be composed from the names of two
rivers, the Ysa, or Usa, and the Thama. The Thama, running by Dorchester,
falls into the Ysa; thence the whole river, from its source to the
eastern sea, is called Thamisa.” A much later writer, Leland, I think,
says, in that rarefied, detached way we expect in old writers, “The
common people call it the ‘Thames,’ but scholars call it the ‘Isis.’”
The name of “Thames” is equally Celtic with that of the Latinised “Isis,”
nor is it the only Thames in the country, for the river Tamar, dividing
Devon and Cornwall; the Teme, in Shropshire and Herefordshire; and the
Tame, in Staffordshire, are each closely allied in name.
The generally-accepted source of the Thames at Thames Head has by no
means gone undisputed, and a rival exists at Seven Springs, three
miles south-east of Cheltenham. This spot is the source of the river
Churn, which, falling into the Thames at Cricklade, after a course of
sixteen or seventeen miles, takes the stream some ten miles farther
up-country than that which issues from Thames Head. Thus we have the
singular paradox, that the Churn, this first tributary of the Thames, is
considerably longer than the parent stream. This is a problem that would
have desolated the logical mind of Euclid, and it has worried geographers
and writers of books for uncounted years. No matter how diligently we
may seek to track this heresy to its lair—to its original propagation—we
shall inevitably be foiled; nor indeed (as in the case of rival
religious dogmas) shall we ever be able to definitely settle which of the
two is the heresy, and which the true faith. If we rely upon the canon
that the source of any river is that point which is situated farthest
from its mouth, and then refer to the maps, there can be no doubt
whatever that the Churn is the true Thames, and that the Seven Springs
source is its head-spring. It is an unavoidable conclusion, like it or
like it not; and if we take the trouble to visit Seven Springs, we shall
discover that some one has been concerned to mark the spot prominently
with the same belief, in the inscription set up there on a wall going
down into the pool:—
Hic tuus,
O Tamesine Pater,
Septemgeminus fons.
or, in English,
Here flows, O Father Thames,
Thy sevenfold source.
We can only assume, in the difficulty with which we are thus faced, that
the original error, of placing Thames Head at Trewsbury Mead, and naming
the stream which issues from Seven Springs the “Churn,” arose in those
very remote times, before even the Romans came to Britain, when surveying
and map-making were unknown and relative distances were uncertain.
That the river Churn bore its present name even at the period when the
Romans descended upon Britain is an assured thing, for the Romans named
_Corinium_—the present “Cirencester”—from its situation on the Churn.
The existing form of the place-name is of Saxon origin, and is really
“Churnchester”—the “castle on the Churn.”
[Illustration: Near Kemble.]
Kemble Junction, the railway station that dominates this neighbourhood,
marks where the little four-mile branch of the Great Western Railway
goes off to Cirencester from the line to Stroud and Gloucester. There is
no likely expectation that Cirencester will begin to grow and to lose
its old-world character while it remains, as now, at the loose end of
this little single-track branch railway; and the hunting-men of this
Vale of White Horse district remain quite unconcerned and unafraid of
developments. This country, between Cirencester, Cricklade and Lechlade,
is a hunting country and an agricultural country, and long centuries
ago it lost to Leeds and Bradford, and other like centres, the clothing
industry for which this Cotswold district was in mediæval times and
after famed. Thus Kemble Junction is by no means a junction of the
Swindon or the Clapham Junction type, and is rather a peaceful than a
bustling place. The village itself stands on rising ground above this
district of springs. Even though it be more remarkable for its stone
walls than for anything else, it is a not unpleasing village, for in a
neighbourhood such as this, where laminated stone is easily dug out from
a few feet below the level of the soil, we expect dry stone walling and
stone-built houses; and certainly the hard stony effect is softened by
the plentiful trees of the place. The Early English church, with tall
spire, 120 feet high, has been so thoroughly “restored,” and swept and
garnished, and so plentifully endued with plaster, that architects with
a love of antiquity, and all antiquaries, looking upon it, can scarce
refrain from tears. Inside the church is a curious monument—
Dedicated to the memory of Beatrice and Edward, the deare wife
and son of Mr. Richard Pitt, both interred within these walls,
shee the 26th day of Aprill 1650, hee the 29th day of March 1656
{ Conflicted } { militant
who { were buried } in ye Church { materiall
{ Do reigne } { triumphant.
She died i’ th’ noone, he in the morne, of Age, yet virtue
(though not yeres) fil’d their lives’ page.
Resurgemus
Posuit maritus mæstissimus paterque plorans.
We shall probably not be wrong in regarding this as one of the
ultra-Puritan families of that Puritan age.
Just below Kemble, on the way to the hamlet of Ewen, the course of the
Thames is in summer hardly to be distinguished in the meadows through
which it runs. Grass covers it, in common with the meadows themselves;
only the grass is of a ranker and coarser kind, and largely admixed with
docks. The dry-walling of one of these meadows shows the winter direction
of the stream clearly enough, in the row of holes left in building the
wall for the water to pass through.
[Illustration: AT EWEN.]
Ewen, standing by the roadside, is remarkable only for its rustic
cottages, but they are particularly beautiful in their old unstudied way;
heavily thatched, and surrounded with old-fashioned gardens. The Thames
begins to flow, or to trickle, regularly at Upper Somerford Mill, whose
water-wheel, immense in proportion to the little stream, is picturesquely
sheltered under wide-spreading trees. The village of Somerford Keynes
lies close at hand.
[Illustration: AT ASHTON KEYNES.]
The way between this village and Ashton Keynes passes over rough
common-land, and enters Ashton Keynes romantically, past the great
church, and along a fine avenue of elms beside the manor-house, emerging
at what, until a few years ago, was Ashton Keynes Mill. The elm avenue
of Ashton Keynes is other than we should expect, if we come to the place
primed with a knowledge of what the “Keynes” in the place-name signifies.
Those elms should be oaks, for “Keynes” derives from the ancient Norman
word for an oak-tree; in later French, “chênaie.” Hence also the name of
Horsted Keynes, in Sussex.
[Illustration: THE OLD MILL HOUSE, ASHTON KEYNES.
Upper Somerford Mill.]
All the old mills that once made the Thames additionally picturesque are
disappearing. Some go up in flame and smoke, like Iffley Mill, below
Oxford, painted and sketched by a thousand artists, and described by a
hundred writers of books and descriptive articles, to whose lasting
sorrow it was destroyed by fire in 1907. Shiplake Mill met a similar fate
a little earlier, and modern milling conditions forbid their ever being
rebuilt. Ashton Keynes Mill became disestablished, as a mill, because it
could no longer compete with the modern steam-roller flour-mills, that
nowadays grind flour much more expeditiously and cheaply than the old
water-driven mills. But the old mill-house stands, little altered. It is
built substantially, of stone, and has old peaked gables and casemented
windows, and so, when its ancient commercial career came at last to an
end, its own picturesqueness, and its strikingly beautiful setting,
appealed irresistibly to some appreciative person seeking an old English
home; with the result that it has been converted into a very charming
private residence.
Little need be said about Ashton Keynes church, for it is of very
late Gothic, and plentifully uninteresting; but the village itself is
a delight. It is the queen of Upper Thames villages, with a picture
at every turn. Here the Thames flows quietly down one side of the
village street, and at the beginning of that rural, cottage-bordered,
tree-shaded highway is the first bridge across the river; an ancient
Gothic bridge, with a slipway beside it, where the horses are brought
down to wash their legs in summer. Beside the bridge stand the remains
of one of the three fifteenth-century wayside crosses which once gave
Ashton Keynes a peculiarly sanctified look. The ruins of all three are
still here,—smashed originally during the seventeenth-century troubles
in which King, Church, Parliament and Puritans contended violently
together; and further damaged by the mischievous pranks of many
generations of village children.
[Illustration: Ashton Keynes Mill.]
There are many little bridges spanning the Thames at Ashton Keynes,
for the stream washes the old stone garden-walls of a long line of
cottages, and the entrance to each cottage necessitates a bridge of
stone, of brick, or of timber. Stonecrop, candytuft, wallflowers, arabis,
snapdragon, and many other semi-wild plants grow in the crevices of
these old walls, and drape them all the summer with an unimaginable
mantle of beauty; and where the cottages end, and the highway becomes
a straight flat road, making for Cricklade, a modern country residence
has been built, with the walls of it going down in the same way into
the water, and the wild flowers encouraged in the like fashion to
inhabit there. A contemplative person might pass a pleasant time at
Ashton Keynes, where there is a homely inn, but none of those unamusing
“amusements” which serve to render places of holiday resort unendurable.
For those not very numerous persons who are satisfied with their own
company Ashton Keynes affords decided attractions. No one ever goes
there, for it is on the road to Nowhere in Particular, and not even the
motor-car is a very familiar sight. Thus the ruminative stranger will
have his privacy respected; unless indeed he happens to be either an
artist or a photographer, when he is certain to be surrounded by a dense
crowd of children, who seem to become instinctively aware of an open
sketch-book or a camera at hand, and surround the owners of them in most
embarrassing fashion. The artist is the more fortunate of the two, for
it is only an easily-satisfied curiosity to see what he is doing which
attracts these unwelcome attentions; while the unfortunate photographer
is pestered with requests to be “took,” and worried to extremity of
despair by hordes of fleeting children obscuring his camera’s field
of vision, or posing grotesquely and in most damaging fashion in his
choicest foregrounds.
Below Ashton Keynes the Thames is joined by the little Swillbrook, and
crossed at the confluence by the small, three-arched masonry Oaklade
Bridge. A mile or so below this is Water Hay Bridge, a typical “county”
bridge, whose frame of iron girders and railings, painted white, ill
assorts with the luxuriance of swaying reeds and thickly-clustered alders
that here enshrouds the stream.
We read in old accounts of the Thames that it was navigable for barges
as far as this point, and “Water Hay” may possibly be a corruption of
Water Hythe, indicating a wharf. It is in this connection to be noted
that the Cricklade and Ashton Keynes road crosses here, and that however
unlikely it may now seem that the stream could ever have been navigable
to this spot for such heavy craft as barges, it must always be borne in
mind that, in the many general causes that have led to the shrinkage of
rivers throughout the country, and here in especial in the pumping away
of the head-spring of the Thames, the stream cannot now closely compare
with its old self of a hundred and fifty years ago. We may therefore very
well believe those old writers who speak of the Thames being navigable
to this point, and imagine, readily enough, a rude wharf where goods were
landed, and left for Ashton Keynes and surrounding villages, in days
when even the few roads of the present time either did not exist at all,
or were so bad that haulage along them was almost impossible, by reason
either of the mud, or of the water that very often flooded them.
Between this and the little town of Cricklade the stream winds
continually, but the road goes straight over Water Hay Bridge and
makes direct for the townlet, three miles distant. The navigation of
these first few miles of the Thames was long ago considered to be so
irretrievably a thing of the past, that it was permitted the constructors
of the North Wilts Canal, in crossing the stream, one mile above
Cricklade, to build a brick bridge or aqueduct so low-pitched across it
that the crown of the arch scarcely appears above water, and effectually
stops any attempt to get even a canoe through.
[Illustration: THE INFANT THAMES, ASHTON KEYNES.]
The approach to Cricklade from the west by road is a noble introduction
to the town. It is a small town, of entirely agricultural character, yet
it has been a place of importance in its day; and although that day has
long passed, its two churches of St. Sampson and St. Mary prove it to
have been once considerable. Cricklade, indeed, standing on the Ermine
Way, the Roman road that led from _Spinae_ to _Corinium_—or in modern
terms, from Speen by Newbury to Cirencester—could not have been other
than important. The invading Danes, making their way up the Thames Valley
in A.D. 905, and again in 1016, found it worth while plundering, and it
has from very early times been a market-town. It prospered in a quiet
way until the opening of the Thames and Severn Canal, in 1789, for it
was, after the ancient wharf at Water Hay had been abandoned, at the
head of the Thames navigation; but when the canal came past, outside
the northern end of the town, the water-borne traffic halted here no
more, and Cricklade was, in a minor-tragical way, ruined. Nor have
railways served ever to redress the injustice. The Great Western comes
no nearer than the small wayside station of Purton, four miles distant,
and although the Midland and South-Western Junction Railway comes to
Cricklade, and has a station here, the railway management—judging from
the fact of its providing only one train a day each way, at inconvenient
hours—would much rather you did not use it, you know, if you don’t
mind. And the Cricklade people do _not_ use it, and go the four miles
to Purton, instead. We have, therefore, not the slightest prospect of
Cricklade ever growing. It is quite in keeping with the rural look of the
one long broad street of Cricklade, bordered by houses that are, for the
most part, of cottage-like appearance, that it has for centuries been
known as the “Peasant Borough”: the technical territorial “township”
including no fewer than fifty-one surrounding parishes. That it should
have been, until the passing of an early Reform Act, also a Parliamentary
borough, returning members to Parliament, does not of itself seem
remarkable, knowing as we do that places like Gatton and Old Sarum, with
no inhabitants at all, shared the same privilege. Cricklade, however,
lost its representation through long-continued and shameless bribery.
Here, in the long silent streets of Cricklade, the stranger is noted
curiously in summer, the local season being in winter; for this is now a
hunting-centre of the divided Vale of White Horse country, and the hounds
are kennelled here.
Cricklade, we are told, is properly “cerriglád”: an ancient British
expression signifying a “stony ford”; but is it not, even more properly,
“Cerrig-let,” _i.e._ the stony place where the river Churn has its outlet
to the Thames? We have several places in England in which “cerrig” is
hidden under various corruptions: notably Crick, in Northamptonshire,
and numerous places named Creech, in widely-sundered districts; while
in Wales we find Cerrig-y-Druidion in the north, and Crickhowell in the
south. In Scotland the word is commonly rendered “Craig.”
[Illustration: APPROACH TO CRICKLADE.]
But old writers who flourished before the science of place-names had
come into existence generally guessed at the meaning of the names
of those places of which they wrote; and extremely bad guesses they
almost always made. Their way with “Cricklade” is a shocking example
of a “reach-me-down” ready-made meaning, supplying a barbarous misfit.
Cricklade, if you please, is, according to these seekers after truth who
are content to pick up the first obvious lie that rests in their path, or
to seize the first absurdity that suggests itself, is “Greeklade,” the
site of a forgotten Greek university established here even before the
coming of the Romans. Forgotten! yes: that university is easily forgotten
which had never any existence; but this derivation served its day, and
was generally accepted. Thus we find the poet Drayton content to write in
his _Polyolbion_:
Greeklade, whose great name yet vaunts that learned tongue,
Where to Great Britain first the sacred muses sung.
But Drayton erred only where others had erred for some seven or eight
hundred years; for indeed the absurd legend derives from the name of
“Greek-islade,” given to the town in the time of Alfred the Great.
St. Sampson’s, the chief church of Cricklade, stands by the road as you
enter from the direction of Ashton Keynes; its tall, curiously-panelled
tower framed beautifully in the view by a noble group of hedgerow elms.
This odd dedication puzzles most people, and in truth St. Sampson,
or “Samson,” without the “p,” is a remote and obscure personage who
flourished in the sixth century, and is thought to have died A.D.
560. He appears to have been a Breton who fled his country, and in
after-years returned to Brittany and became Bishop of Dôl. Two other
churches are dedicated to him: South Hill, by Launceston, and Golant,
near Lostwithiel, in Cornwall; while the island of Samson, in the Scilly
Isles, owes its name to this source. Milton Abbey, in Dorsetshire,
was formerly quadruply dedicated to SS. Mary, Michael, Samson, and
Bradwalladr; while there still exists a St. Sampson’s church in the City
of York. But that owes its name to another fellow—an early Archbishop
of York; so early, indeed, that he is not generally included among the
primates. He, strangely enough, appears to have been contemporary with,
and a friend of, the other Sampson.
[Illustration: ST. SAMPSON, CRICKLADE.]
This church of St. Sampson at Cricklade does the saint especial honour,
for it is a much more than usually fine cruciform building, greatly
superior to the usual parish type. It presents, in general, an exterior
view of Perpendicular character, even though, on closer examination,
the architectural expert may discover very considerable Early English
and Decorated portions. The central tower is its great feature, for
you not only see it from afar, but on a closer view it is found to be
so strikingly individual that even those persons unusually well-versed
in these things are puzzled to find anywhere its fellow. The detailed
illustration of it in this book will render unnecessary any lengthy
description; and will at the same time reveal the noble quality of its
sturdy pinnacles and the exquisitely effective character of the deep
panelling that covers the upper stage and mounts into the angle-turrets.
It is a finely massive, robust design, to which the elegant light pierced
parapet adds a contrasting note of airy grace. In the detailed view of
this tower an empty niche will be seen, which probably once held a statue
of the eponymous saint of this church. On the side of the tower not shown
a keen eye may observe a pair of scissors sculptured at a considerable
height from the ground: an indication, doubtless, that the tower, rebuilt
in its present form, owed its existence to the benefaction of one of
those wealthy clothiers who in the fifteenth century attained in the
Cotswold and surrounding districts to their highest degree of prosperity,
and gave liberally of their wealth to the rebuilding of churches, the
founding of almshouses, and other good deeds, and have left numerous
records of their existence in the fine monumental brasses of Wiltshire
and Gloucestershire, ensigned with their merchants’-marks or the emblems
of their trade—the wool-pack and the shears, in place of the heraldic
achievements of nobler persons.
The interior of this charming church is even more noble than the
impressive exterior bids us expect. It is at once massive, and
well-lighted, and graceful: the climax of its beauty found beneath the
central tower, where the piers and arches and finely-ribbed vaulting
go soaring up to form a handsome lantern, set about with many shields,
sculptured with the arms of Edward the Confessor, of the diocese of
Salisbury, and of the Dudleys, Earls of Warwick. Prominent here among
these cognizances we shall find the intertwined sickles of the extinct,
but once wealthy and powerful, Hungerford family, whose ancient badge
is found plentifully all over Wiltshire, and frequently in Somerset. It
is a Sir Walter Hungerford of the mid-fifteenth century who is here the
subject of allusion in this shield, for he gave the presentation of the
living of St. Sampson’s, together with the manor of Abington Court, to
the Dean and Chapter of Salisbury, for the express purpose of maintaining
the Hungerford Chantry in Salisbury Cathedral, and to assist in keeping
in repair the Cathedral campanile.
Many changes have befallen since then: the Church has been reformed,
and chantries are no longer possible; but the ancient, beautiful, and
interesting detached campanile of Salisbury Cathedral was in existence
until nearly the close of the eighteenth century, when it was wantonly
destroyed by Wyatt in the course of the disastrous “restorations”
in which the Dean and Chapter, charged particularly to maintain the
campanile, placidly betrayed their trust, and calmly saw it levelled with
the ground. To-day the presentation belongs to the Dean and Chapter of
Bristol.
A curious feature of the exterior of St. Sampson’s is the flying
angle-buttress to the south-east, supporting a Perpendicular south-east
chapel built very clumsily on to the already-existing Decorated chancel.
The illustration clearly shows the awkward way in which the addition
abuts upon the older building, partly blocking up a very fine window. The
addition was obviously not built with good foundations, as the necessity
for further adding the flying buttress, and the subsidence still evident
in the distinctly out-of-plumb lines of the chapel, still show. The date
of the buttress is still visible, carved on the stonework: “Anno Domini
1569.”
The tall canopied cross now standing in the churchyard was originally
in the street, but was removed hither to preserve it from the injury it
was there likely to suffer; and in its stead we find an object of a very
different character, and warranted to withstand the ill-usage of many
generations of mischievous children: nothing less than a Russian, or
other, gun. The school-buildings immediately in the rear of the cross are
the successors of those founded and endowed in 1652 by one Robert Jenner,
goldsmith, of London.
[Illustration: STRAINER-BUTTRESS, ST. SAMPSON’S, CRICKLADE.]
[Illustration: “LERTOLL WELL”]
Another similar cross is to be seen in the little churchyard of the
curious old church of St. Mary at the other, the northern, extremity
of the town, and immediately looking on to the street. St. Mary’s is
altogether different in appearance from the noble, upstanding church
of St. Sampson, but none the less interesting on that account. It is
a huddled-together old building, with a squat tower, or remains of a
tower, and altogether on a miniature scale. Queer little dormer windows
start out of its broadly-sloping roofs, and they and the south porch are
things of delight in the picturesque way. The interior is an affair of
very slender Late Perpendicular nave piers and arcade, contrasting with a
stern, sturdy Norman chancel-arch.
Proceeding still northward beyond this point, the Thames is seen, here
reinforced by its confluence with the river Churn; and if we care further
to proceed a few yards, the Thames and Severn Canal will be found.
A strange belief exists among the people of Cricklade, to the effect
that any native of the town possesses, as his or her birthright, the
privilege of selling anything without a licence in the streets, not
only of Cricklade, but of any other town in England and Wales. This
belief, although unsupported by any evidence, has been handed down from
time immemorial. It would be curious if any native-born inhabitant of
Cricklade were to test this by selling any articles in (say) the streets
of London, without first providing himself with a hawker’s licence,
so that this traditionary right could be proved still effective,
or otherwise. The privilege is said to have been conferred by some
unspecified king, in acknowledgment of Cricklade having given shelter to
his Queen “when in distress.”
In this connection we may profitably turn to the old farm-house, once a
manor-house, in Cricklade, by the banks of the Thames, called “Abington
Court,” once the property, as we have already seen, of the Dean and
Chapter of Salisbury. This is said to have been formerly a Royal
hunting-box, and tradition further tells us that Charles the Second was
the last monarch to use it. History does not tell us of any Queen in
distress at Cricklade, nor of any Queen ever here; but kings have ever
been accustomed to maintain many queens (so, without offence, in these
pure pages, to call them) from the time of Solomon and David, throughout
the ages, and until modern times. It is a kingly privilege, not often
allowed to lapse; and it is quite within the bounds of possibility that
there was at some time one of these uncertificated consorts at Abington
Court, and that here she gave birth to a child, and that this particular
(or shall we say, this not very particular?) king thereupon celebrated
the occasion by conferring the curious privilege already discussed.
There is something in this ancient house which seems to support
the theory: a substantial something in the shape of a large and
elaborately-carved old oaken four-poster bedstead, fine enough to have
been used by such distinguished personages. No one knows how it came
here, but here it remains, and goes with the property. Tenants may come
and go, but the bedstead, left by the last royal occupant, stays.
An exceptionally interesting spot exists at a distance of a
mile-and-a-half to the north of Cricklade town, in the neighbourhood of
Latton and Down Ampney. You will not easily discover this interesting
spot, because no map marks it, no guide-book tells of it, and only very
few among the older generation of the rural agricultural labourers
cherish any recollection of it. The younger folk know nothing whatever
of this historic landmark, which is so insignificant and elusive a thing
that one might readily be in the same field with it, and yet not see
it. It is the pure and never-failing spring of St. Augustine’s Well,
once famed in all the country round about; either by that name, or by
the alternative title of the “Lertoll Well,” or stream. This pure and
cooling fount was long credited with medicinal virtues, less because of
any properties in the water itself than because it was blessed by Saint
Augustine. For it was to these parts that Augustine came, somewhere
about thirteen hundred and twenty years ago, for his conference with
the dignitaries of the native British Church. Augustine, accredited
by the Pope, Gregory the Great, to England, on a mission to reconvert
the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity, in addition sought to reconcile the
early British Church, which had continued to survive in Wales, with the
Church of Rome; and to that end he arranged a conference on or near this
spot, beyond the then boundary of Saxon England, in the territory of the
British clan known as the Hwiccas. Had Augustine been a different manner
of man, the proposals he had to offer for a fusion of the Churches would
probably have been entertained; but although long since canonised, he was
really very little of a saint, and by no means the eager missioner he is
generally represented. He came to England, in the first instance, only
because he was sent, very much against his inclination, by his spiritual
head, whom he dared not disobey; and his haughty, intolerant temper
brought these ideas of unity to naught. At the place of meeting was an
oak-tree, for many centuries afterwards known as “St. Augustine’s Oak,”
but long since utterly decayed and vanished away. It is said to have been
felled about 1825, and the site of it is supposed to be a small group of
farm-buildings, rebuilt in modern times, known as the “Oak Barn.” The
British clergy had heard unfavourably of Augustine’s domineering spirit,
and went with suspicion to meet him. They had agreed, however, when they
proceeded to this oak, which must have been a notable landmark, that if
he received them standing, they would listen favourably to his proposals;
but if he sat when they presented themselves, thus receiving them as
inferiors, they would refuse to discuss the question of unity.
Augustine received them sitting, and the conference broke up. He is said
to have performed miracles here, at this meeting, and to have touched
the eyes of the blind with the water of the Lertoll stream, so that
their sight was restored; but none of these prodigies availed with those
slighted native clergy.
It is remarkable, however, that an obscure tradition lingers among the
peasantry of the neighbourhood to this day, to the effect that the water
of this stream is “good for the eyes.” You will not find this tradition
in books; it is just a belief handed down from father to son in the
course of some forty generations.
The spring is situated in a meadow to the north of the Cricklade and
Maisey Hampton road, and bubbles up and runs unheeded away, in these
material, sceptical times; but those days are not far removed when the
peasantry of Gloucestershire and Wiltshire resorted to it, for cure of
their ailments, and filled bottles with the treasured water, for home
use.