NEW BRIDGE, THE OLDEST ON THE THAMES—STANDLAKE—GAUNT’S
HOUSE—NORTHMOOR—STANTON HARCOURT—BESSELSLEIGH
The Oxfordshire side of the river continues as flat as ever, to New
Bridge, which, rising greyly from amid the sedges, commands extensive
views, less by reason of its own height, which is nothing to speak of,
than by the lowness of these level lands. New Bridge, which carries the
Abingdon and Witney road across—it is not a greatly-frequented road—is
the oldest bridge existing on the river. The traveller who has spent much
time in exploring in the highways and byways of England is not surprised
at this paradox, and has indeed met with so many Newtowns and Newports,
Newmarkets, New Inns, New Colleges, and the like that are demonstrably
of a hoary antiquity, and older than most other towns, markets, inns,
and colleges, that he really expects a New Bridge to be at least five
centuries gone in newness. And this bridge was built _c._ 1260, by the
monks of a neighbouring monastery, which itself has wholly disappeared,
while their old pont remains as sturdy as ever.
[Illustration: NEW BRIDGE: THE OLDEST BRIDGE ACROSS THE THAMES.]
It is a queer, seven-arched building, just as Leland wrote of it in the
time of Henry the Eighth, “lying in low meadows, often overflowed with
rage of rain.” At the Berkshire end is the “Maybush” inn, and on the
Oxfordshire side is the “Rose,” in friendly rivalry; but where the trade
comes from, in this lonely situation, to keep them both going, is a
mystery. The customers can be but few, but what magnificent thirsts they
must possess!
At New Bridge the river Windrush falls into the Thames, from its source
in the Cotswolds, thirty miles away, after passing through Witney, and
by some very beautiful scenes. It is the “nitrous Windrush” of Drayton’s
verse: those supposed nitric qualities of its waters having originally
led to the establishment of Witney’s blanket-making industry.
That the flat, low-lying lands here were in former times under water
seems sufficiently evident in the name of Standlake, a village a
mile-and-a-half distant from New Bridge. A British village, discovered
in 1857, near by, may have been one of those lake-villages in which,
for security, our remote ancestors dwelt. The church of Standlake has a
quaint semi-detached octangular tower, crowned with a spire.
There are some curious and interesting places to be found in these flat,
unfrequented lands. Proceeding towards Northmoor, ever and again crossing
tributary rills of the Windrush, the moated manor-house, now a farm, of
“Gaunt’s House” lies secluded amid meadows. It takes its name from one
John Gaunt, who originally built it about 1440, but there is nothing
nearly so old here to-day. The place has its own little niche in history,
for in the seventeenth century, at the outbreak of the Civil War, it was
the property of that Dr. Samuel Fell, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, who
was the subject of the famous undergraduate rhyme—
“The reason why I cannot tell,
I do not like thee, Doctor Fell.”
The Doctor was a Royalist, and his moated house here was held for that
side in 1644. After a stubborn defence by its garrison of fifty men,
who kept a besieging force of eight hundred at bay for three days, it
surrendered on May 31, 1645. The house, greatly injured in this warlike
passage, was rebuilt in 1669 by Dr. John Fell, who also was Dean of
Christ Church. It is not a picturesque house, and seems to have been
greatly modernised about the beginning of the nineteenth century. The
woodwork of one of the doors is, however, curiously pierced, as though
for musketry defence.
But, although the house itself is commonplace, the broad moat, brimming
full of water, is beautiful, and in summer-time is so covered with
waterlilies that the water itself is not to be seen. Let those who think
this the language of exaggeration go and see for themselves.
[Illustration: NORTHMOOR: CHURCH AND DOVECOTE.]
An old bridge, replacing a former drawbridge, gives access to the house,
through two tall gateposts surmounted by worn stone heraldic effigies,
blunted by time out of all recognisable likeness; not only to anything
in nature, but even to anything in heraldry. Here, serving to keep the
wooden gateway open, is an iron cannon-ball found in the moat, which,
according to an inscription on the wall, was cleared in 1883.
Northmoor village, near at hand, has an interesting church of the Early
English period, and a charming and unspoiled Jacobean mansion adjoining,
which has the appearance of never having been altered since the first
building of it.
Oddly placed by the road between mansion and church, is a delightful
old timbered pigeon-house, which seems to be contemporary with the old
residence.
At the west end of the church a quaintly balustered bell-loft bears the
following inscription, obviously considered (by those who inscribed it)
to be poetry:
“Richard Lydall: Gave a new Bell,
And Built This Bell Loft Free:
And Then He Said: Before He Dyed,
Let Ringers Pray For Me. 1701.”
Which was very wrong of him, a Protestant, living under the reformed
religion.
The inner sides of the aisle-window splays here at Northmoor exhibit
that peculiarity already noticed in several churches of the upper Thames
Valley: a more or less decorative treatment of the inner arch. Here
the special treatment is confined to a corbelling-out of the archway;
but this is effected in a quaint manner: the corbel on one side being
provided with a kind of vaulting-shaft. Here, as elsewhere along, or
near, the course of the Thames, the strong influence of the river
upon the imagination and work of the old architectural sculptors is
distinctly to be noted: the capitals of the shafts being carved with
representations of aquatic plants.
But the chief attraction, in all these parts adjacent, is of course the
village of Stanton Harcourt, and that it is so, you who penetrate to it,
along the level roads, cannot fail easily to perceive, if not by evidence
of many sightseers making for it, then, at any rate, in the numerous
notices displayed offering accommodation for tea-parties. Stanton
Harcourt is beautiful, alike in its old-world rustic village of thatched,
unpretending cottages, screened by noble elms from rude blasts, and in
the romantic and unusual group formed by the ancient church-tower and the
towers of the old manor-house. Approaching, it is as though the church
had two towers, for the chief one of the manor-house is very like its
ecclesiastical neighbour.
Stanton Harcourt must have derived the first part of its name from some
stone road, but the road is obscure, and an absurd local legend, almost
too childishly-ridiculous to be repeated, tells us that it arose from the
brave deeds of a former Harcourt, who, in that conveniently vague period,
“ages ago,” was fighting desperately in some unnamed battle, and was
enjoined by his chief to fight on. “Stand to un, Harcourt,” he exclaimed;
and Harcourt feats of arms in “standing to un” accordingly won the day. A
curious thing may be noted: that the stones called the “Devil’s Quoits,”
near the village, are themselves thought to be relics of a battle fought
in A.D. 614, between the Saxons and the British; long before there were
any Harcourts in the land.
[Illustration: STANTON HARCOURT: MANOR HOUSE AND CHURCH.]
The Harcourts first came into possession of Stanton over seven hundred
years ago. It was in 1125 that the second Queen of Henry the First gave
the property to one Millicent de Camville, whose daughter married Richard
de Harcourt, thus the first of a long line of that family, which really
ended with the mother of Edward Vernon, who assumed his mother’s maiden
name, and died in 1847, as Archbishop of York. The later and present
Harcourts are therefore really Vernons.
The ancient and beautiful manor-house of Stanton Harcourt, a group
of buildings forming a quadrangle, was built about the middle of the
fifteenth century, with a rebuilt gatehouse tower of a century later, the
work of a Simon Harcourt of that period. The house was occupied until
1688; and then, with the death of Sir Philip Harcourt, it fell upon evil
times, for his widow deserted the place. Nuneham Courtney, which, in the
course of these pages, we shall visit, below Oxford, had been purchased
in 1710 by a later Simon Harcourt, and to it the family seat was removed,
and the manor-house at Stanton allowed still further to fall into decay.
Seventy years later the buildings, by that time mostly ruinous, were
demolished, with the exception of the gatehouse, one of the towers of
the mansion, and the curious and interesting ancient kitchen, which has
only one fellow to it in England: the well-known and remarkable Abbot’s
Kitchen at Glastonbury.
This Stanton Harcourt kitchen, standing now beside quiet lawns, and
overgrown with creepers and ivy, has long lost any association with
cookery, and looks particularly ecclesiastical, except perhaps for the
rampant griffin, holding a vane, which crowns the tall pyramidal tiled
roof, and wears rather a devilish expression. He is a formidable griffin,
too, measuring eight feet high.
[Illustration: THE KITCHEN, STANTON HARCOURT.]
To properly impress the reader, or the beholder, with this kitchen, it is
necessary to give its dimensions. It has a total height of seventy-two
feet, made up of thirty-nine feet of the wall, twenty-five feet roof, and
the eight feet, as aforesaid, of that banner-bearing monster.
There are no chimneys. The fires were made against the walls, which are
three feet thick; the smoke from them escaping through wooden louvres,
or shutters, above. According to the direction from which the wind
blew, these louvres were shut to on one or other of the four sides. The
mechanical ingenuity of the age was at a low level, and was not able to
contrive means by which these ventilators could be opened or shut from
within; so we find a turret staircase leading up to the roof, around
which runs an open-air passage for access to the louvres.
Alexander Pope, residing in the neighbouring old tower during three
summers, “translating” Horace, and writing fantastic letters in the
meanwhile to his friend, the Duke of Buckingham, exercised his fancy on
this kitchen, and found it to resemble the forge of Vulcan, the cave of
Polyphemus, and the Temple of Moloch: “The horror of it has made such an
impression upon the country people that they believe the witches keep
their Sabbath here, and that once a year the Devil treats them with
infernal venison, viz. a toasted tiger, stuffed with tenpenny nails.”
But all, according to him, was decrepit at Stanton Harcourt:—
“Its very rats are grey. I pray the roof may not fall upon them, as they
are too infirm to seek other lodgings.”
It is the nature of rats to be grey; but we need not seek to deprive
Pope of his point. The place was haunted, too, by the ghost of one “Lady
Frances,” and we hear “some prying maids of the family report that they
have seen a lady in a fardingale through the keyhole; but the matter is
hushed up, and the servants are forbidden to talk of it.”
“Pope’s Tower” is in three floors. On the ground-floor is the domestic
chapel, roofed in fan-vaulting. You enter it by an ante-chapel with
a wooden ceiling in blue, spangled with gilt stars: a gorgeous, but
tarnished firmament. The upper room, known as “Pope’s Study,” was
occupied by him during two hard-working summers, and he celebrated the
completion of his task by inscribing on a pane of red glass in one of the
windows, “In the year 1718 Alexander Pope finished here the fifth volume
of Homer.” The glass has been removed, and is now at Nuneham.
I have already placed the word “translating” in quotation-marks, to
indicate the fact that Pope’s claim to have rendered Homer’s _Iliad_
from the Greek into English verse was a mere pretence. He was no Greek
scholar, and fobbed off upon his publisher and upon confiding subscribers
his metrical version of translations by more scholarly persons. He grew
rich upon the fraud, and still enjoys a reputation among the uncritical
for a classical learning he did not possess.
The church, standing close at hand, has a central tower, of which the
lower stage is clearly seen to be Early English. On this an upper stage
has been reared. The junction of the two is prominently marked by
the upper stage being boldly set back; producing a striking sense of
massiveness.
[Illustration: EARLY ENGLISH SCREEN (UNRESTORED), STANTON HARCOURT.]
The chancel-screen, west of the crossing of north and south transepts, is
of exceptional interest, as perhaps the earliest such screen remaining
in this country unaltered. The hinges and the lock and bolt of the door
are in perfect order, and as good as ever they were, although now nearly
seven hundred years old. The screen is of the Early English period,
simple and pure in its every detail. A little more care for this relic
would have resulted in the organ and the choristers’ seats being placed
at less close quarters. The lock of the door is original, and so are the
several curiously-patterned holes pierced through the lower part of the
screen.
The altar-tomb in the north wall of the chancel, said to be that of
Isabel de Camville, is very short, and its architectural details are of a
hundred years’ later date than her death, leading to the supposition that
this is rather an Easter sepulchre than a tomb. The sculptured emblems
of the Passion support this view. On the south side is the tomb, with
effigy, of Maud, daughter of Lord Grey, of Rotherfield Greys. She died,
wife of Sir Thomas Harcourt, 1394. In the Harcourt Chapel, locked, and
the key kept at Nuneham, many of that family lie; prominent among them
Sir Robert Harcourt, and Margaret his wife, 1471; both effigies wearing
the order of the Garter, the lady represented with it above the elbow of
her left arm. She is one of the three dames known to be so decorated in
monumental effigy: the others being the Duchess of Suffolk, at Ewelme,
and Margaret Camoys, at Trotton, Sussex. There were some sixty ladies
admitted to the Order between 1376 and 1488: the last of them the Lady
Margaret Tudor, mother of Henry the Seventh. Since that time, the only
women Companions have been reigning Sovereigns or Queens-consort.
Here, among the Harcourts, is an altar-tomb to that Archbishop of York
who was not, as already shown, really a Harcourt, but a Vernon; and a
life-sized marble effigy of William, third Earl Harcourt, Field-Marshal,
and G.C.B., who died 1830.
On the south side of the church an unassuming tablet records the tragic
fate which befel “John Hewet and Sarah Drew, an industrious young man and
virtuous maiden of this parish, contracted in marriage, who, being with
many others at harvest, were both in one moment killed by lightning, on
the last day of July, 1718.”
Beneath are some lines written by Pope:
“Think not by rigorous judgment seized,
A pair so faithful could expire;
Victims so pure Heaven saw, well-pleas’d,
And snatch’d them in celestial fire.
“Live well, and fear no sudden fate;
When God calls virtue to the grave,
Alike, ’tis justice, soon or late,
Mercy alike to kill or save.
“Virtue unmov’d can hear the call,
And face the flash that melts the ball.”
The Berkshire side of the river, from New Bridge downwards, now demands
some notice. There, instead of the unbroken flatness that continues
through Oxfordshire as far as the city of Oxford itself, you have a lofty
ridge more or less closely continuing to follow the course of the stream.
A fine highway runs along the ridge, with pleasant and interesting
villages upon, or near it. There may be found Longworth, and Appleton;
and there, too, Besselsleigh.
[Illustration: BESSELSLEIGH: CHURCH AND FRAGMENT OF MANOR HOUSE.]
We can scarcely call Besselsleigh retired, for it stands directly upon
this fine, broad, and well-frequented road that leads out of Oxford, on
to Faringdon and only students of maps know what many towns further west.
The motors come swishing along it at some very fine turns of speed, for
there is none to say them nay. Such travellers never notice Besselsleigh,
for the modern mansion stands well hidden within its park, and of the old
house that once almost fronted the high road there is absolutely nothing
left but two of the stone entrance gateposts, and those in a more or
less wrecked condition. Those travellers may indeed notice the church,
but even that is doubtful, for it is a very little and a very humble
church, and although its little churchyard gives upon the road, it is so
enshrouded by large trees and small trees that its very existence may not
be suspected by quick-moving traffic.
The trees here are indeed noble, and form a splendid aisle of living
green: elms, oaks, and Scotch pines intermingled. The church, rather
barn-like, has an Early English double bell-cote at its west end. Of the
Besils who gave this place its name in 1350 history has but a moderate
amount to say. They married the estate, so to speak, with an heiress,
last of the family that had hitherto held it; and in the course of time
it passed from them in like manner: the heiress-general of the Besils
marrying a Fettiplace. And nowadays for even a Fettiplace one may seek
in vain, for that family, once so numerously spread over Oxfordshire,
Berkshire and Gloucestershire, is itself extinct. But Besselsleigh did
not pass from them in that accustomed manner, for they sold it to the
Lenthalls in 1634, and it is still held by the same race.
“At this Legh,” says Leland, “be very fayre pastures and woodes; the
Blessels hathe been lords of it syns the time of Edward the First. The
Blessels cam out of Provence in Fraunce, and were men of activitye in
feates of armes, as it appearith in the monuments at Legh; how he faught
in lystes with a strange knyghte that challengd hym, at the whiche deade
the kynge and quene at that tyme of England were present. The Blessels
were countyed to have pocessyons of four hundred marks by the yere.”
Sir Peter Besils seems to have been the worthiest member of this family,
for he not only gave freely of stone to the building of Burford Bridge at
Abingdon, and of Culham Bridge, close by, but left £600 by his will of
1424 for the purpose of making amends for any wrong he or his ancestors
may have done any man. If his executors did not spend that sum in this
manner, presumably because they could find no aggrieved persons, then
they were to construct roads with it.
Mr. Speaker Lenthall, to whom Besselsleigh was sold in 1630, repaired the
little church, and here later members of that family are buried. But none
of them have attained to the fame of Mr. Speaker, who died in 1662, and
lies buried in Burford church. He was a long-headed and tactful man, and,
as such, one well calculated to hold his own in troubled and uncertain
times, by care not to give offence to either of the contending parties.
He was member of Parliament for Woodstock, and was elected Speaker in the
Long Parliament.
King Charles, at that critical moment in parliamentary history when his
Majesty went down to the House in person, for the purpose of arresting
the five members who had courageously withstood his will, asked Lenthall
if he saw any of these five present, and he replied, with marvellous
resourcefulness at so strained a juncture: “May it please your Majesty,
I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as this
House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here; and humbly beg
your Majesty’s pardon that I cannot give any other answer than this to
what your Majesty is pleased to demand of me.” Lenthall was one of the
few prominent men of that time who were able to enrich themselves. While
most were ruined in those long-drawn troubles, he snatched profits out
of them, became extensively rich, and died owner of many manors. These
are the goodly rewards of a moderator; but history gives no favourable
verdict upon such.