CASTLE EATON—KEMPSFORD—BY THE THAMES AND SEVERN CANAL TO
INGLESHAM ROUND HOUSE—LECHLADE—FAIRFORD—EATON HASTINGS
WEIR—KELMSCOTT—RADCOT BRIDGE.
A mile or so below Cricklade, the river Ray flows into the Thames, from
the direction of Swindon. Opposite, on the left bank, stands Eisey
Chapel, on its little knoll amid the meadows. It is the place of worship
of the hamlet of Eisey, a little collection of cottages removed out of
sight from the river; and is just a small rustic Perpendicular building,
with a bell-cote. Water Eaton, which is not on the water, and Castle
Eaton, which does not possess a castle, come next, both deriving the
name from ea = “water”; the first named of the two therefore given its
name twice over. The “water” of Water Eaton refers perhaps to the old
manor-house, rather than the church, the manor-house being in sight of
the stream. The prefix to the name must have been added in Saxon times,
when the Romanised British were driven out and the descriptive nature of
the name “Eaton” forgotten. Although not spelled in the same way as Eton
by Windsor, the two mean precisely the same, and have fellows in very
many other “Eatons” throughout England.
[Illustration: THE IRON GIRDER BRIDGE, CASTLE EATON.]
[Illustration: THE OLD BRIDGE, CASTLE EATON.]
Water Eaton manor-house, of heavy Georgian architecture and dull red
brick, with characteristically prim rows of heavily-sashed windows, is
unimaginative but decorous.
Although Castle Eaton has now no castle, and not even the discoverable
site of one, here was formerly situated a stronghold of the Zouches. It
is a very quiet village, of a purely agricultural type, and generally
littered with straw and fragments of hay. Here the Thames was until
quite recent years crossed by a most delightful old bridge, that looked
like the ruins of some very ancient structure whose arches had been
broken down and the remaining piers crossed by a makeshift affair of
white-painted timber. “Makeshift” is perhaps hardly the word to be
properly used here, for it seems to indicate a temporary contrivance; and
this bridge, if not designed in keeping with the huge, sturdy, shapeless
stone and rubble piers, was at any rate sufficiently substantial to have
existed for many generations, and to have lasted for many yet to come.
Alas that we should have to write of all this in the past tense! But it
is so. Twenty years ago, when the present writer paid his first visit to
Castle Eaton, the old bridge was all that has just been described—and
more; for no pen may write, nor tongue tell, of the beauty of that old,
time-worn yet not decrepit, bridge, that carried across the Thames a
road of no great traffic, and would have continued still safely to carry
it for an indefinite period. It was one of the expected delights of
revisiting the Upper Thames, to renew acquaintance with this bridge,
sketched years before; and it was with a bitter but unavailing regret
and a futile anger that, coming to the well-remembered spot, it was seen
to have been wantonly demolished, and its place taken by a hideous,
low-pitched iron girder bridge, worthy only of a railway company; and so
little likely to be permanent that it is observed to be already breaking
into rusty scales and scabs beneath its hideous red paint. The ancient
elms that once formed a gracious background to the old bridge stand as
of old beside the river bank; but the old bridge itself lies, a heap of
stones that the destroyers were too lazy to remove, close by, on the
spot on which they were first flung. No description, it has been said,
can hope to convey the beauty of Castle Eaton Bridge, for the old stone
piers were hung with wild growths, and spangled and stained with mosses
and lichens. A sketch of one end of it may serve; but it once formed the
subject of a painting by Ernest Waterlow, and in that medium at least,
its hoary charm has been preserved. Let a photograph of its existing
successor be here the all-too-shameful evidence of the wicked ways of the
Thames Conservancy with this once delightful spot in particular, and with
such spots in general. We cannot frame to use language too strong for a
crime so heinous against the picturesque.
[Illustration: CASTLE EATON CHURCH: SHOWING SANCTUS-BELL TURRET.]
[Illustration: THE THAMES AND SEVERN CANAL, NEAR KEMPSFORD.]
Let us recapitulate the facts, and draw the indictment more exactly
against that sinning body. We shall thus ventilate a righteous
indignation, and help to create a healthy public feeling against all
such damnable doings, by whomsoever done. We are, of necessity, in
this country of change and of an increasing population, faced with a
continuous defacement of places ancient, beautiful and historic; and
it behoves us to use our utmost efforts to preserve what we have left.
What, then, shall we say of such absolutely unnecessary outrages as
this? Shall we not revile the whole body responsible, from the Board and
the Secretary down to the chief engineer and the staff of underlings
who did the deed? The Thames Conservancy, in fact, has been a most
diligent destroyer of the beauty of the river; slaving early and late
and overtime in that devil’s work, but remaining supremely idle where
the encroachments of private persons, or the uglifications by waterworks
companies, and modern mill-and factory-builders are concerned. It is
the Thames Conservancy that has repaired the banks of the river and has
reinforced the walls of its weirs and lock-cuts, with hideous bags and
barrels of concrete, that retain their bag-and-barrel shape for all time,
and so render miles of riverside sordid in the extreme. We simply cannot
afford these ways with the river.
The church of Castle Eaton is in a modest way a remarkable building.
It is a moderate-sized Early English structure, chiefly notable for
retaining its original stone sanctus-bell turret on the roof. The
interior discloses nave and chancel only, with a shallow elementary
north aisle, built out from the original building, and supported upon
two wooden pillars on stone bases. This extension—a half-hearted
addition—was itself made several centuries ago, apparently for the
purpose of affording additional seating accommodation at some period
when the population had increased. But it has greatly shrunken since
then; and in these times when the towns have superior attractions for all
wage-earners, it still continues to shrink.
[Illustration: OLD WOODWORK, CASTLE EATON.]
A very curious old oak post, some seven feet high, and carved with a
spiral pattern, stands at the end of one of the pews, and seems to mark
what must have been the old manorial pew; bearing as it does on its
ornamental head a shield of arms, dated 1704, probably that of some
bygone local family. The whole affair looks remarkably like a part of
some old four-poster bedstead, but it may be one of the supports of a
former western gallery. A half-length fresco figure of the Virgin—the
church being dedicated to St. Mary—is to be seen on one of the walls,
and a very large, and apparently fine, brass of a knight was once in the
church. But this has been at some time destroyed, and the stone indent
itself is now to be found, flung out of the building and used as a
paving-stone, outside the west door.
Road, river, and canal now all make for the village of Kempsford, which
does not derive its name from some ancient, prehistoric Kemp, but from
“Chenemeresford,” said to signify “the ford on the great boundary”; that
is to say, the river. And Kempsford is situated in Gloucestershire, here
divided from Wiltshire by the Thames, which forms the natural frontier
of many counties along its course, from Thames Head to the sea.
We shall find the best way from Castle Eaton to Kempsford, little more
than a mile distant, to be across the meadows and to the towing-path
of the Canal, here and onward to its beginning at Inglesham, a very
beautiful stretch of water-way; overhung, as it is, by noble trees in
places, and rich in rushes and water-lilies. When the Gloucestershire
and other County Councils, together with the local Rural District
Councils, procured an Act of Parliament for taking over this neglected
waterway, great hopes were entertained of reviving an undertaking which
had never been remarkable for its financial success, and it was fondly
hoped thereby to break the “monopoly” held by the railway. A trust was
formed in 1895 by those public bodies interested, and it was agreed to
guarantee £600 annually for thirty years for repairing and working the
canal. The Great Western Railway was thus rid of an incubus, and the
ratepayers of these various districts find themselves saddled with an
utterly unremunerative expenditure that no commercial firm would have had
the folly to assume. For not only were the repairs of Sapperton Tunnel
exceedingly costly, and the general overhauling of the canal expensive,
but no traffic worth the mention has been induced to come this way.
Those squanderers of public money were heedless of the facts of modern
business, and forgot to consider that in these latter days time is more
than ever the essence of the contract in worldly affairs. Less able
than ever, therefore, are canals to compete with railways. So once more,
after a fugitive period of activity, we see the Thames and Severn Canal
returning to its old neglected condition.
[Illustration: NORMAN PORCH, KEMPSFORD.]
[Illustration: KEMPSFORD CHURCH.]
Kempsford church-tower is prominent across the meadows, and we find
it to be a notable and interesting church, and the village a place
of aristocratic appearance, where humble cottages are few and the
manor-house imposing. This is as it should be in a place with its
history: the manor having once belonged to Edward the Confessor, who
gave it to Harold. William the Conqueror conferred it upon one of his
knights, and in the course of the centuries the property came to Henry,
Duke of Lancaster, whose son-in-law, John o’ Gaunt, Shakespeare’s
“time-honoured Lancaster,” once resided here, greatly favouring this one
of his many manors, of which the number scattered all over England was so
great that it would have been distressingly hard work for him to visit
them each and all in the course of a year.
The only son of Henry, first Duke of Lancaster, was drowned here, and his
sorrowing father is said never again to have resided at Kempsford. On the
north door of the church is nailed a horseshoe, in allusion, it is said,
to one cast by his horse on his departure, and immediately nailed up here
by the inhabitants. It is, indeed, often said to be the original shoe,
but that is an absurdity. A curious other horseshoe legend and observance
is to be noted at the town of Lancaster, John o’ Gaunt’s ancient palatine
seat. There, where the two principal thoroughfares of the town cross, is
“Horseshoe Corner,” so named from the horseshoe let into the roadway, and
renewed in every seven years; in memory, says tradition, of a shoe cast
there by his horse.
Kempsford church consists of a long and lofty aisleless nave, with tall
central tower. The nave is Norman, with Norman doorways and Perpendicular
windows, and very beautiful, gorgeous, and impressive.
The ancient manor-house, frequently styled “the Palace,” came at last
into the possession of the Hanger family, Earls of Coleraine, one of whom
wantonly destroyed it.
The Thames and the Thames and Severn Canal, running almost side by
side at Kempsford, now abruptly part company again, and meet only
three-and-a-half miles farther on, at Inglesham. The canal is the more
easily followed, since the windings of the Thames in those miles add
certainly another mile and a half to the distance, and are to be followed
only with extreme difficulty by canoe, or afoot through many fields.
Hannington Bridge, crossing it nearly a mile and a half below Kempsford,
is the first bridge of any importance, and is a solid, stolid modern
masonry building, eminently practical and unimaginative, serving to carry
the road from Highworth to Fairford across. The remains of an old weir on
the way give pause to the exploring canoeist at most seasons; and a small
tributary, the river Cole, hailing from Berkshire, is seen on approaching
Inglesham.
There are no churches in these surroundings more interesting than the
humble little building at Inglesham, one mile from Lechlade, in an almost
solitary situation. It is quite a rustic church, chiefly in that best
period of gothic architecture, Early English, and it is so far removed
from restoration, or even adequate care, that it is almost falling to
pieces. Damp and neglect have wrought much havoc here, and the zealous
concern of the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings, by
preventing any large scheme of repair, seems not unlikely to result, at
no distant date, in the entire dissolution of the structure.
The meeting of the canal and river at Inglesham Hound House is marked
picturesquely by the grey round tower of the Hound House itself, and
by a row of tall poplars. The Round House is nothing but a glorified
lock-keeper’s house, situated beside this, the first lock, where the
canal sets forth on its way toward Stroud and the Severn. A mile farther
downstream lies the town of Lechlade, across the lovely level meadows,
with the tall spire of its church glinting whitely in the sun. It
is an exquisite view, and so alluring that you are in haste to make
acquaintance with Lechlade itself, that promises so romantically. But let
us not hurry. Rather that distant view than Lechlade at close quarters;
for although it is in very truth an inoffensive town, it is also
sufficiently true to remark that it is dulness incarnate, and that this
mile-long glimpse will be found the better part.
[Illustration: INGLESHAM CHURCH.]
At Inglesham Round House there are plentiful facilities wherewith
to refresh the body and to employ the uncultivated mind; for the
lock-keeper’s domain includes a number of apologetic sheds and shanties
devised for the benefit of picnic-parties; and anything eatable or
drinkable likely to be called for by parties on picnic, or boating, or
merely padding the hoof, is obtainable, together with the mechanical
music of melodeons or other such appliances that will serve you with
pennyworths of minstrelsy, as more or less appropriate sauce. Here also
is a greatly-patronised camping-ground, generally plentifully occupied
with tents in favourable summers. The river Coln here also flows into the
Thames from Fairford.
It is a pretty spot, with its hunchbacked lock-bridge, and the not
unhandsome modern foot-and tow-bridge that spans the Thames, helping to
compose a picture. It is the _Ultima Thule_ of the Oxford man’s “Upper
River”; the farthest point to which it is generally navigable for small
boats.
Passing Inglesham Round House, and proceeding over the foot-bridge to the
right bank of the Thames, toward Lechlade, we enter Berkshire; crossing
over the stone single-span Lechlade bridge into the town and into
Gloucestershire.
The town of Lechlade takes its name from the little river Leach which
rises at Northleach, fourteen miles in a north-westerly direction,
and gives its name to Northleach, East Leach Turville, and East Leach
Martin. Although Lechlade—_i.e._ “Leach-let,” the outlet of the
Leach—thus obtains its name, that little river flows into the Thames at
a considerable distance away, two and a half miles below the town, at
Kelmscott.
[Illustration: INGLESHAM ROUND HOUSE.]
The disastrous persons who derived “Cricklade” from “Greeklade,” and
invented a university of Greek professors there, made “Lechlade” a rival
seat of learning, where Latin was taught, and gave its original name as
“Latinlade.” Fuller tells us how this imaginary university—in which he
seems to have believed—ended by migrating to Oxford. He is quite poetic
about it. “The muses,” he says, “swam down the shores of the river Isis,
to be twenty miles nearer to the rising sun.”
Other, and equally weariful, persons made Lechlade, “Leeches-lake,” the
home of the College of Physicians (“leeches”) relegated to this obscure
town—which, of course, it never was.
It is now hardly conceivable that once upon a time there was a
considerable traffic in cheese upon the upper Thames, between Cricklade,
Lechlade, Oxford, and London; but such was the case. This was formerly a
great cheese-producing district, as it might well be now; and, as roads
were bad everywhere and railways were not yet, the only method was to
load the cheeses on barges, and so float down-stream.
Lechlade is very well on week-days, in the quiet way of all such decayed
townlets, but on Sundays it is not to be recommended. Dulness stalks its
streets almost visibly, and the only sounds are the argumentative tones
of the preacher in the Wesleyan chapel (a building with black doors and
gilded mouldings, after the fashion of a jeweller’s shop) at one end of
the street, whose raucous voice can be distinctly heard at the other: not
unlike that of a man quarrelling outside a public-house.
But the fates preserve us from a Sunday at Lechlade! It is fully
sufficient to skim through the place at such a time, and make for some
other that does not so completely figure the empty life. A village is
not dull, because it has no pretensions to being a town—and country life
is never dull. But at Lechlade the position is so desperate on Sunday
that, for sheer emptiness of other incident, a large proportion of the
population flock the half-mile that stretches between the town and the
railway-station, and hang, deeply interested, upon the bridge, to witness
the Sunday evening train depart. It is a curious spectacle, and one that
carries the mind of a reminiscent reader back to stories of marooned
castaways on desert isles, gazing hopelessly upon the departing ship that
has left them to solitude and despair. That must needs be a place of an
extreme Sabbath emptiness where the grown-up inhabitants are impelled,
by way of enlivening the weary evening, to walk half a mile to witness
what seems an incident so commonplace to the inhabitants of places whose
pulses beat more robustly.
[Illustration: A STREET IN FAIRFORD.]
The “pratie pyramis of stone,” as Leland styles the spire of Lechlade
church, is almost the only architectural feature of the townlet, if
we except a few mildly-pretty stone-built houses of Tudor gables and
mullioned windows; among which may be included the “Swan” inn. None
of these are included in the accompanying view of the church, which,
although graceful without, and promising interest within, has been
miserably treated, and swept clear of anything of note. A few curious
carvings are to be noted on the lower stage of the tower exterior,
including a singular bearded and capped profile head and a hand grasping
a scimitar. Although well done, they look like the idle sport of some
irresponsible person or persons, and do not appear to have any particular
meaning or local application.
[Illustration: ANCIENT CARVING, LECHLADE CHURCH.]
The architecture of the building is of no great interest to
archæologists, being of somewhat late Perpendicular date, but a charming
example of tabernacle-work may be noted on one of the piers of the
nave-arcade, adjacent to the font. On the gable of the nave, at the east
end, is a figure of St. Lawrence, to whom the church is dedicated. He
holds a gridiron, the symbol of his martyrdom, in one hand, and the book
in the other.
Fairford is the centre of attraction in this district. It lies away
north-west, four miles distant, at the end of the little railway from
Lechlade, on the river Coln. The Gloucestershire Coln has its name
spelled without a final “e” (for what reason no man knoweth), and gives a
title of distinction to a group of villages—Coln St. Denis, Coln Rogers,
and Coln St. Aldwin’s—that are famed for their beauty. But Fairford has
superior claims to notice, chiefly for the celebrated stained-glass
windows of its church.
“Fair-ford” may or may not derive its name from its picturesque
situation, but the beauty of the ancient ford of the Coln, now and for
long past crossed by a bridge, might well warrant an assumption that the
name arose from an æsthetic appreciation of the scenery. Exactly what it
is like to-day may be seen by the view shown here, with its noble church
placed finely above the meadows.
Fairford is a village that was once a town, prosperous in the far-off
days when the wool-growers and the cloth-workers of the Cotswolds made
fortunes in their trades and founded families that came in time to a
dignified haven in the peerage; and at last declined and died out, or
have rejuvenated themselves with American marriages and the dollars
incidental thereto. This old process of founding families by way of
successful trading we may still see at work, in our own times, under our
own intimate observation, encouraged by the institutions of primogeniture
and a House of Lords, two most powerful incentives to success.
[Illustration: LECHLADE.]
Fairford nowadays stands aside from all these activities. Its day is
done, and except on those occasions when the motor-omnibus between
Lechlade and Cirencester plods through, and on the weekly market-day,
there is no stir in the place at all. Its fine church and the famous
windows alone bring strangers here. The church is due to the munificence
of the Tame family. John Tame, merchant, of London, purchased the
manor in 1498, and died twenty-seven years later. He must have been a
typical “new man,” with plenty yet to spare of the abounding energy
that had made his wealth in London, for it was he who began, and nearly
completed, the rebuilding of Fairford church. We may well picture
him, in our imagination, hopeful of founding a family, as many other
successful traders of that expansive age had already done, or were
doing. His immediate descendants, however, failed him, and the name is
extinct. It was his son, John, who completed the church, and died in
1534. Monumental brasses to the memory of these Tames, and of the third
and last, Sir Edmund Tame, are seen here, but their greatest monument
is the church itself, a beautiful example of the last developments of
Perpendicular architecture, in which the coarsened mouldings, here and
there noticeable, the curiously-set pinnacles of the tower, and the
character of the grotesques carved on the exterior, alone hint of that
new leaven in matters architectural and spiritual, the Renascence, that
was presently to overthrow ancient architecture and much else.
But the wonderful windows, twenty-eight in all, the finest and largest
set of old stained-glass windows in England, are our chief concern at
Fairford.
The question as to the foreign or English workmanship of these windows
has always been in dispute; unnecessarily, it would appear to the present
writer. They are, for the most of them, obviously of Flemish origin; and
a late discovery would seem to have at last settled the point. In the
west window of the south aisle will be observed an executioner with a
sword, on which is a monogram A. An ape also appears in the window, for
no very obvious reason, except that it affords material for a pun; a form
of humour greatly favoured by the old craftsmen, as all conversant with
ancient churches well know. The monogram and the ape point to the glass
being the work of Aeps, a Flemish worker in this sort at the period of
the Fairford church-building.
The large figures of the prophets and apostles which fill the windows of
the aisles are so unmistakably Flemish that there should never have been
the least doubt about them. If there were any room for incertitude, it
would be in respect of the great west window, the most remarkable of the
series, which appears to disclose no foreign element; but, as it in all
other respects obviously belongs to the general scheme, it may perhaps be
called Flemish, in common with the others.
[Illustration: FAIRFORD, FROM THE RIVER COLN.]
A legend long current, accounting for these windows, says that John
Tame, asked to pilot a vessel containing them from Nuremberg to Rome,
turned his course to England instead, and in fact stole the windows. Now,
however fantastic this story, it probably contains this much of truth,
that it hands down a foreign origin; but that this glass was acquired in
any chance way is altogether unlikely, for it bears every sign of having
been designed for this church, and for the exact position and size of the
windows it occupies. The designs have been ascribed by some to Albrecht
Dürer, and an old manuscript goes so far as to relate a visit paid by
Vandyck to Fairford, when he said the drawing was Dürer’s work. This,
however, would seem to be impossible, as Dürer was but twenty-three
years of age when Fairford church was in course of building.
The great west window affords the chief interest, illustrating as it does
the Last Judgment. The upper half, above the dividing transom, displays
the company of the blest, assembled round the central figure of Christ in
majesty, with St. John Baptist on His right hand, and the Virgin on the
left. Three half-circles, somewhat resembling rainbows, surround these
figures; the first a deep red band, filled with representations of the
seraphim; the second, yellow, with figures of the apostles; the third,
blue, filled with the cherubim. Angels fill the outer spaces, quiring
before the Throne. These be the glorious surroundings of the good, the
constant, and the true.
The Doom, occupying the lower portion of the window, is a striking
example of imagination applied to the subject of retribution for sin.
The Devil and his infernal host and the flames of Hell were evidently
very real to those who pictured these scenes of torment, and to those who
first looked upon them, and they could certainly never have thought it
possible a time would come when people would either laugh at these ideas
of a real personal Devil with attendant fiends, or look upon them as
curiosities; certainly without any fear or awe.
[Illustration]
Here, in all the grotesque drawing and vivid colouring of which that age
was capable, we see the rewards of wickedness. St. Michael the Archangel,
in the centre, is shown, holding the scales of justice, wherein the
souls of the dead are being weighed. On the left of him is St. Peter,
with his key, standing at the gates of Paradise; while on the right
are seen the dead rising from their graves, and the flames of Hell, a
little subdued by the weathering of the centuries, awaiting them. In
the lower right-hand corner is a representation of the Devil himself,
with a head like a cottage loaf, in the very opening of his own especial
region, holding the red-hot bars, and grinning out between them. Curious
auxiliary devils are shown, actively engaged in carrying the dead to
torment; among them the remarkable group illustrated here. The tall scaly
devil on the right, carrying one of the damned on his back, is a blue
fiend; the other, displayed in the act of lashing a woman just rising
from her grave, is a strawberry-coloured devil, covered with pips, and
glaring with eyes of flame.
[Illustration]
Other fiends in green, in red, and in yellow, are pursuing shrieking
souls, or, having caught them, are seen flinging them into pits of fire.
Some of these places of torment are shown neatly enclosed in masonry,
like blast-furnaces. Another fiend, illustrated here, regarding a woman
clasping her knees, seems to be rather of an apologetic, gentlemanly
type. It is his business to be a tormentor, but he looks genuinely sorry
for it.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: THE GREAT WEST WINDOW, FAIRFORD, DISPLAYING THE “DOOM.”]
The other windows are of distinctly inferior interest, displaying as
they do mostly saints, but some of the smaller lights repay close
attention. In them you see the persecutors of the Church, set forth
with every horrific detail of innate malignity; while, hovering over a
representation of the Crucifixion is seen a batlike devil, awaiting the
last breath of the impenitent thief, to secure his escaping soul.
These remarkable windows owe their preservation to the care taken of them
by William Oldisworth of Fairford, during the Puritan upheaval, probably
with the aid of Lady Verney, wife of Sir Thomas Verney, lord of the
manor. She was daughter and heiress of Sir Edmund, the last of the Tames,
and interested, of course, in seeing that the gifts of her ancestors were
in safe keeping. The glass was, accordingly, carefully removed and buried
in Fairford Park. There it remained until the restoration of order, when
it was exhumed and replaced. A tall classic column stands as a monument
to this singular history.
It is not always so easy a matter as you might suppose to hire a boat at
Lechlade for the thirty-two miles’ voyage to Oxford; which, after all,
is not only the best way of seeing the Thames, but the Thames Valley
villages also. Unless considerable notice is given, especially if it
be the week before Bank Holiday, the boat-proprietor is extremely chary
of letting his craft out of sight, and it becomes a matter of favour
and delicate negotiation to secure a boat, even though you tender good
value in coin of the realm for its hire. The proprietor’s point of view
is that it is all very well for pleasuring folk to drop easily down to
Oxford with the stream in two days, but it remains for him, or one of his
men, to get it back against stream; not so easy a matter, even though
the stream be gentle. In fact, the demand for boats for the trip is not
sufficiently large for special arrangements for cartage back by road to
be made; and that familiar summer sight anywhere between Richmond and
Oxford, a slowly-progressing van, laden with boats, rolling along the
intervening miles of highway, is not visible here. But, although the
hiring is, as already said, somewhat difficult, the explorer has at least
the satisfaction of finding the Upper River secluded and unspoiled.
Immediately below Lechlade begins that long and ever-increasing series
of locks by which the Thames Conservancy has converted the river into
an astounding succession of toll-gates; with this result, that you are
not long out of sight of one lock before another comes in view; while
lock-cuts in addition grow longer, as well as more numerous, and tend
to make the river in many places very formal. But, at any rate, the
true river-course, leading to the weirs, or often round by what are now
backwaters, is by contrast, and by disuse, rendered often a very paradise
of wild, untended life.
[Illustration: MONUMENT IN THE PARK, FAIRFORD, WHERE THE FAMOUS WINDOWS
WERE BURIED.]
The first lock of the forty-two locks on the Thames is that of St.
John’s, which, like Lechlade Bridge, often styled “St. John’s Bridge,”
takes its name from the Priory of St. John the Baptist that once stood
hard by. The Priory was a Hospice as well, and was charged with the care
of travellers who came this way. As part of their charge the Black Canons
who formed the establishment built the original bridge across the Thames
here.
St. John’s Bridge, like some carefully-restored old dowager, by no means
looks its age, but all those who care to know are credibly informed that
“This bridge, though often repaired and altered on the upper part, is
the original structure of great antiquity, having existed prior to the
reign of Henry III.” The “Trout” inn, formerly the “St. John Baptist’s
Head,” stands beside a backwater, on the site of the Priory that was
disestablished so long ago as 1473.
At St. John’s Lock the lock-keeper not only hands you the first of
the many threepenny pink tickets that are painfully familiar to those
who cruise upon the Thames, but another in addition, for Buscot Lock,
one-mile-and-a-quarter onward, where the poor, impoverished (or, perhaps
more likely, the mean, parsimonious) Conservancy cannot, or at least
does not, maintain a resident lock-keeper; with the result that you have
the choice of working your own way through, or of leaving the job to
the official hands of the keeper at St. John’s, who in the latter event
cycles the distance. But in any case you pay your threepence for each
lock.
The Thames from this point becomes singularly lonely. Few roads cross
it, and the villages are small and infrequent, and are rarely to be seen
from a boat. The ideal method of exploration is to take a bicycle on the
boat and to lay it across the bows, where it is out of the way and yet
easily within reach when wanted. Then, at some convenient point, where a
road or path comes down to the river, and places likely to be of interest
are but a mile, or two or three miles, distant, it is your easiest
method to have out the machine and explore swiftly and with ease, among
little-visited ways.
Buscot, however, on the Berkshire shore, is so close at hand that its
church may easily be seen from the boat and visited by the mere effort of
pulling to the bank under the hoary willows, and stepping into the meadow
beside whose buttercup-spangled grass it stands.
Buscot—formerly Burwardscott, then corrupted into Burscott, and finally
into the present rendering—is a place of some note, artistically and
agriculturally, for the little parish church has an east window by
Burne-Jones, representing the Good Shepherd, instead of the usual
ecclesiastical-furnishers’ impossible stained-glass saints. We may
perhaps, without offence, congratulate ourselves and all concerned that
those stained-glass freaks are, and must ever have been, impossibilities.
They have the most unprepossessing countenances, of an impossibly holy
type, and generally the vilest taste in coloured robes; while of the
Burne-Jones saints we can at least say that, although commonly eight
feet high in proportion to their heads, and generally of a consumptive
type, they are at least recognisably like human beings. And a saint,
you know, was originally, before he or she was given his or her halo and
other extraordinary attachments, merely a more than usually good person
of just ordinary physical attributes. I don’t think anyone will have the
hardihood to deny that. One other prime curiosity the church of Buscot
possesses: a very highly enriched pulpit of wood, with panels painted in
various religious subjects, by or after artists of the Italian School.
A panel representing the Annunciation is more remarkable than ever was
intended, for among the attendant Wise Men from the East is shown a negro
with black head and arms and white legs! “Can the Ethiopian change his
skin?” Partially, it should seem.
Buscot manor-house is as notable for containing the Burne-Jones “Briar
Rose” sequence of paintings illustrating the ancient legend of the
Sleeping Beauty, as the owner is for his successful shire-horse breeding.
It is not often that the love of art and keen interest in shire horses
are shared equally by one man, as they are by Sir Alexander Henderson, of
Buscot, who is at once the owner of the finest Burne-Jones pictures and
the breeder of “Buscot Harold,” champion of three successive London Shire
Horse Shows.
It is interesting to know that Buscot manor-house, standing in its park
on the ridge above the river, on the way to Faringdon, was built from
the stones of the demolished palace at Kempsford, even though we may see
only an eighteenth-century solidity and comfort, rather than any hint of
beauty or history in the re-edified stones.
Hart’s Weir, or Eaton Weir, as the Conservancy elects rather to style
it, is but a mile-and-a-quarter below Buscot, and is one of the few
old-fashioned weirs, fitted with paddles and rymers, of which a few are
removed for the passage of a boat, that now remain. Beside it stands the
“Anchor” inn, with not another house in sight, and the little church
of Eaton Hastings—it would be an affectation to speak of the village,
unless a few scattered cottages may so be named—two miles away, by the
riverside, but so hidden that its existence is not suspected by passing
oarsmen.
It is amusing to observe the blank puzzlement that overspreads the
faces, and governs the actions, of those occupants of boats from
Lechlade who, coming for the first time to this unfamiliar type of weir
and lock combined, helplessly steer from one side of the river to the
other, in search of the familiar lock-cut and lock-gates, and, failing
to find them (as well they may, for such things do not exist here), at
last landing and enquiring for them at the inn. Eaton Weir is one of
the last now left of the old weirs that served the turn of the river
in days of old, and they are therefore now so uncommon that none need
feel ashamed of coming unexpectedly for the first time to one, and not
comprehending the situation. But those who are taken by surprise here and
cannot understand why they can find no way through, do, it is evident by
leisured observation, feel a kind of shame at being so completely “sold.”
Eaton Weir, and others of its kind, are, in fact, complete barriers
across the river, affording a check to all craft until four or five of
the paddles are pulled up. The construction is simple, consisting of a
sill, generally a heavy beam of wood, laid across the bed of the river,
with a similar beam crossing immediately over it, from bank to bank.
These form the framework of the weir, which is completed by a number of
stout supports going perpendicularly down at intervals from upper beam
to lower, and by a continuous row of “paddles” set between them. The
“paddles” are, roughly speaking, in the shape of shovels, but much longer
in the handle and bigger in the blade. It is obvious that when all the
paddles are down in their places the head of water must be considerably
raised above the weir, although a volume of water pours through all the
while. To admit the passage of a boat, the weir-keeper draws up four
paddles or more, and then, if the craft be going down-stream, it is
guided by the steersman carefully to the weir, and deftly allowed to be
shot through by the force of the waterfall thus created in the opening. A
little mild excitement generally accompanies this “shooting the rapids,”
even though the fall be only about eighteen inches to two feet when the
paddles are first drawn, and reduced to almost nothing if you wait a few
minutes while the head of accumulated water runs itself away. The Thames
Conservancy will have its dues, and whether it be a lock or a weir you
pass, you render threepence for a small boat, and receive a pink ticket
in return.
And so one comes to Kelmscott, which owes its name to some Saxon thane,
just as Buscot derives from some dim ancient Burward. But of that Kenelm
whose “cot” this was, history says no more than it does of Burward. If
we adventure into the _hinterland_ at the back of Bampton—whose full
name is Bampton-in-the-Bush—we shall find two other “cots,” or “cotts,”
Alvescott, and Kencot—and there is Cote (which is merely “cot” spelled in
another way, and unappropriated to any personal name) further down-stream
behind Shifford.
At Kelmscott the river Leach comes really to its “lade,” or outflow; its
“let,” or outlet: a similar word being used at Oaklade (“uisk-lade,” or
water outlet), where the Swillbrook joins the Thames, and at Cricklade,
where the Churn falls in. In the words of the presiding genius of the
place, the late William Morris, Socialist, poet, decorative-artist,
demagogue, literary man, and master-printer, this is “a reach of the
river where on the side of the towing-path is a highish bank with a thick
whispering bed of reeds before it, and on the other side a higher bank,
clothed with willows that dip into the stream, and crowned by ancient
elm-trees.” Very true. It is also a beautiful and sequestered spot;
and although now, since the death of William Morris in 1896, become a
much-talked-of new literary shrine, few are those who trouble its ancient
peace.
The village lies near the banks of the Thames, with a rough, unkempt
piece of common opposite the old Elizabethan, stone, gabled manor-house
that was for some years the home of Morris and of Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
Nothing but the upper windows of the old house can be glimpsed from the
road, for a very high wall effectually guards its seclusion.
[Illustration: KELMSCOTT MANOR.]
Morris loved the place with an intense love, and brought back to the
house much of its old ways, with much else of his own, in artistic
“Morris tapestries” and other hangings, such as were designed by him and
Burne-Jones, made at Merton by Wimbledon, and sold at the establishment
of Morris & Co. in Oxford Street. We do not commonly look upon Socialists
as anything but discontented artisans and weekly wage-earners in general;
but Morris performed his share of street-corner spouting with such, and
yet dreamed golden dreams of the World Beautiful, and did much to make it
so. But, at the same time, his lovely wares in wall-papers, in hangings
and carpets, in furniture and stained-glass, were of the most expensive
kind that none of those “have nots” could by any means possess. The
famous Morris books, too, produced at the Kelmscott Press, Hammersmith,
were of those prices that only plutocrats could afford, and were produced
strictly after the individualistic and anti-Socialistic theory of
“limited edition.”
The only new house in Kelmscott village is one built to preserve the
memory of this man who wrought such beautiful things and preached
doctrines so impossible; and on the front of it is a very ornate tablet,
bearing a portrait-medallion. The work is, however, in such low relief
and so elaborated that it is difficult to be clearly distinguished.
Away through the scattered village, and out at the other end, stands
the little decayed parish church of St. George: decrepit and surrounded
in most melancholy fashion by spindly overhanging lime-trees. The
place oppresses the stranger, even on summer days, with gloom, which is
increased as he walks up the dank little pathway to the south porch,
among the serried graves of a numerous local family, each one within his
concrete bed. The quite plain headstone to William Morris is close by.
There is no feeling of this melancholy in the account written by Morris,
in his _News from Nowhere_, of a village church; but which was evidently
a description of this:
“We went into the church, which was a simple little building with one
aisle divided from the nave by three round arches, a chancel, and a
rather roomy transept for so small a building, the windows mostly of
the graceful Oxfordshire fourteenth-century type. There was no modern
architectural decoration on it; it looked indeed as if none had been
attempted since the Puritans whitewashed the mediaeval saints and
histories on the wall.”
The building is chiefly of Early English date, consisting of nave,
chancel, rudimentary north aisle of a makeshift character, and north
and south transepts and clerestory. There is a rough tub-font. Some
traces of ancient colouring are found on the round-headed arches of the
nave-arcade; while the accompanying illustration will show that the
sculptured capitals of the columns are of great, if simple beauty, and
doubtless studied in the long ago from the water-plants of the Thames.
[Illustration: KELMSCOTT CHURCH.]
Nothing can equal the calm delights of those still, hushed hot days of
early summer on these reaches of the upper Thames, when the tall sweet
grasses of the meadows by which we float are ripening to the scythes of
the reapers, and before the birds have quite finished their wild torrent
of springtime mating song. Here, with the boat drawn up beside some tall
sheaf of growing rushes, we may listen to the twittering distant song of
the skylark, flying, an almost invisible speck, high up in the intensely
blue sky; and may see the water-rat swimming across the stream. Cows gaze
with a mild curiosity from the banks, under the welcome shade of the
willows, or recline, with a certain lumpish dignity, among the buttercups
and daisies. The fragrance of spring is yet in the land, and that man
who, lazing here, lights a cigarette, and so imports an alien fragrance,
offends against his environment.
[Illustration: FARINGDON CLUMP.]
So we shall come, after many intervals and halts by reedy shores where
the waterlilies grow, to Radcot Bridge; the meads spreading wide on
either hand, and the great imposing landmark of Faringdon Clump for
always prominent in the view on the right: now, with the continued
extravagant loopings of the river, far ahead, now abreast of us, and
again in the rear; so that it becomes difficult to believe this elusive
landmark really one and the same hill.
Beneath Faringdon Clump lies the little town of Great Faringdon, great
only in its quietude, somewhat broken, it is true, in these latter days
by motor-cars, that, rushing along the ridgeway road on which it is
situated, indecently disturb its slumbrous dignity.
Faringdon Clump is emphatically _the_ landmark of this district, even
as Wittenham Clumps are the geographical pointers of a wide district
between Oxford and Wallingford. Many people know it as “Faringdon Folly.”
The height of Faringdon Hill itself, on which the clump of Scotch firs
called “the Folly” is situated, is about 500 feet, and Faringdon town,
although beneath it, is not itself by any means in the levels, as those
who, cycling to it from the Thames at Radcot Bridge, shall easily find,
as they come laboriously up the ascending gradients.
But, before we reach Radcot Bridge, the newly-built Grafton Lock has to
be passed through. It is situated in a grassy solitude, and takes its
name from an insignificant hamlet quite remote from the river. At Grafton
Lock, indeed, the lock-keeper’s wife and daughter, who between them take
our threepence and work the lock-gates, are pleased to see the infrequent
stranger, and to exchange the news, and receive well-earned compliments
on the beauty of the lock-garden.
[Illustration: RADCOT BRIDGE.]
Now comes Radcot Bridge, neighboured and overhung by a wealth of trees;
tall, slim, spiring poplars, and others that spread boldly out. Radcot
Bridge is your only possible halting-place hereabouts for the night;
for here is the waterside “Swan” inn, with its lawn sloping down to the
river, its landing-steps and boathouse: and Faringdon and its inns are
three miles distant. Thither, however, you must needs fare, if so be the
“Swan” is full.
The single-span, round-arched bridge through which one comes in these
times is not the real original bridge, nor is the present course of
the Thames at this point the real original river. This is a new cut,
made in 1787, to improve the navigation, then still considered to be of
considerable commercial importance. The old course of the river flows
sluggishly to the right-hand, and is not now practicable for boats. Here
still stands the ancient gothic bridge, with its three pointed arches and
the base and socket of what was once a cross on the eastern parapet. This
bridge and the causeway built to it, across the meadows, once formed a
more important means of communication than now, for the road across the
Thames from Faringdon led northwards to Burford, and so by degrees into
the Midlands. Its strategic value has been at least twice illustrated.
The bridge itself dates from about 1300, and was on December 20th, 1387,
the scene of a sharp action in which Henry, Earl of Derby, met and
defeated Robert de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, favourite of Richard the
Second. Many of de Vere’s men were drowned here on that December day, and
their commander himself narrowly escaped, by swimming across the river,
half clad in his armour. His force seems to have been taken completely
by surprise. The “Henry, Earl of Derby” of this affair was he who twelve
years later, 1399, at last succeeded in deposing Richard, and reigning
in his stead, as Henry the Fourth.
The second occasion of Radcot’s figuring in martial annals was a skirmish
in the long course of the Great Rebellion, when Faringdon House, up
yonder, three miles away in the town, was held for the King, and the
bridge was occupied as an outpost. Cromwell’s men appear to have driven
the outpost in, with some loss.
But, before an end is made with Radcot Bridge, let us note the
little-known fact that it was hence, in those seventeenth-century times,
when roads were little better than muddy tracks across the fields are
now, that much of the stone employed by Wren in the rebuilding of St.
Paul’s Cathedral was brought to London. The old quarries whence this
stone came have been closed now for two hundred years, but the site
of them is still to be found at a spot to this day known as “Kit’s
Quarries,” near Burford, eight miles north of Radcot Bridge. I have
written about Christopher Kempster—the “Kit” of those quarries—in
another place,[1] and have shown that he was firstly clerk of works and
master-mason in the employment of Sir Christopher Wren for many years,
not only in the rebuilding of St. Paul’s Cathedral, but also in the
general rebuilding of the City of London churches. Retiring from those
positions, he bought the quarries, and thenceforward dealt largely in the
stone with which he had once built.
The stone was conveyed from near Burford, along eight miles of bad
roads, and here at Radcot Bridge, on the old course of the river, before
the new channel was cut, was loaded, into barges, and so found its way to
London.
It will be well to explore into the level Oxfordshire _hinterland_
behind Radcot Bridge. There we shall, in the course of two miles, find
the untidy village of Clanfield, which straggles lengthily on either
side of the grassy edges of a stream three parts dry in summer, and
thus revealing to the disgusted wayfarer rich and varied deposits of
unconsidered village refuse—in the way of battered tins and old boots
embedded in the ooze. Thistles, nettles, and scrubby weeds bedevil the
grass that might so easily be made beautiful.
[Illustration: ST. STEPHEN.]
But there are evidences that Clanfield is awakening to better things.
A “Village Institute” has arisen amid these rank undesirables, and
tentative clippings, sweepings, and garnishings may be noticed. The
church and churchyard are, fittingly enough, in the forefront of these
improvements.
[Illustration: CLANFIELD CHURCH.]
It is a charming village church of moderate size, built in the
Perpendicular period, and dedicated to St. Stephen, as those well versed
in saintly symbols may readily perceive on approaching, by a glance at
the curious figure of the saint himself, boldly sculptured on the tower.
He bears in his right hand a little heap of what look like apples,
but are intended to represent stones, in allusion to the manner of his
martyrdom, by being stoned to death. On the west side of the tower is a
tablet to the memory of James Joy and Robert Cross, killed by lightning
when at work side by side in the fields, August 9th, 1845. Over the
south door is an ancient sundial, cut into the masonry, and screened
from casual observation by the porch, which is thus seen to be a later
addition.
[1] _The Oxford, Gloucester, and Milford Haven Road_, vol. i., pp.
263, 266-269.