WALLINGFORD—GORING
And so we come, past the pretty Oxfordshire hamlet of Preston Crowmarsh,
into the good old Berkshire town of Wallingford.
Wallingford town has been thrust aside by modern circumstances and
altogether deposed from its ancient importance. If we look at large maps,
and thereby see how several great roads here converge and cross the
Thames, the reason of this former importance will be at once manifest,
and likewise the existence of the great castle of Wallingford will be
explained. Wallingford derives its name from “Wealinga-ford,” a Saxon
term by which the ford of the Wealings—that is to say the British, or the
Welsh, whom the Saxons were gradually displacing—was meant.
[Illustration: DORCHESTER.]
[Illustration: DORCHESTER ABBEY.]
How they held the fort here in those dim times before the Norman came
and built his great stone castle—and before even the Saxon came—we may
perhaps see in the remarkable earthworks that still form three sides of
a square enclosure: the river itself forming the natural defence of the
fourth side. No stranger whose eye lights upon those ancient dykes in
the Kine Croft can fail to notice them, nor help speculating for what
purpose they were made. No facts are, or will ever be, available; but
it does not require much penetration to reconstruct the needs of that
primeval community protected within these earthworks, not in themselves
a sufficient protection, but easily defensible in that age when they
formed—as they doubtless did—the foundation for a wooden stockade.
At that time, when William the Conqueror had descended upon England and
fought the battle of Hastings, there lived and ruled in Wallingford
a Saxon thane, by name Wygod, who, noting the caution which forbade
the Conqueror to advance directly upon London and caused him to make
a circuitous march, invited him to cross the Thames here, which he
accordingly did, at this place receiving the homage of the chief Saxon
notables. Was Wygod, then, a traitor, or was he merely a level-headed
opportunist who saw that all was lost, and sought to moderate strife by
wise action? We are not in full possession of the facts, and therefore
cannot tell whether to praise or blame him. But the results show that he
did well: did, perhaps, better than he knew at the time of doing; for he
thus—and also in giving his daughter Edith in marriage to Robert D’Oyley,
one of the Conqueror’s knights—helped in the great work of bringing
about the settlement of the realm and the eventual merging of the Norman
and the Anglo-Saxon races. And by so much those who fell at Hastings,
fighting for their country, had died in vain.
It was not very long before the great castle of Wallingford was put to
proof as a fortress, for it played an important part in the wars between
the Empress Maud and King Stephen. The Empress, sorely beset in the
castle of Oxford, escaped thence through the snow of one December night,
covered with a sheet; and by favour of that covering entirely escaped
observation, and came safely to Wallingford, whither she was followed
after an interval by Stephen, who built a castle at Crowmarsh, on the
Oxfordshire side of the river, to keep her in check. She then escaped
to Gloucester, while her trusty partisan, Brian Fitzcount, held out for
years: until, indeed, Stephen was wearied, with the result that the long
civil war was at last concluded by the treaty of Wallingford, effecting
the compromise by which Stephen was to reign for his life, and Henry,
son of the Empress Maud, was to succeed him: which, in the fulness of
time, he accordingly did; and reigned, and misgoverned sometimes, and at
others governed well, as Henry the Second, in a truly Norman way, for
thirty-five years.
[Illustration: WALLINGFORD.]
Wallingford was in after-centuries frequently a royal residence; chiefly,
it is true, for royal widows and other such extinct volcanoes, Have
Beens, and back-numbers; but by the sixteenth century the castle appears
to have become dilapidated. Leland, for example, declared it in his
time “sore yn ruine”; but Camden, coming after him, said its size and
magnificence were amazing to him, as a young man. “My fer-ends, what is
ter-ewth?” as Chadband despairingly asked. Perhaps Leland’s capacity for
amazement was less than that owned by Camden. After Leland’s time, it
must surely have been repaired; or how else could the sixty-five days’
siege have been withstood by the gallant Royalist governor, Blagge, in
1646? I pause for a reply, without, however, in the least expecting one.
Six years later, the cautious Parliament caused this stronghold to be
blown up, and now all we can see are some rude fragments of walls in the
large and beautiful grounds of a private residence, courteously opened on
summer afternoons.
Its curious privileges also mark the antiquity of Wallingford. Among them
is the nine o’clock curfew, instead of at eight o’clock: said to have
been granted as a special favour by William the Conqueror, in recognition
of his friendly reception here. The curfew-bell still sounds from the
tower of St. Mary-le-More every evening at nine o’clock.
The native-born burghers of Wallingford had the immemorial right (perhaps
they have it now, for what it may be worth) of claiming, when tried for
a first offence against the criminal law, that, instead of being put to
death, they should have their eyes put out and be otherwise mutilated.
Those lenient, soft-hearted, sentimental ways of dealing with crime have
ever been the curse of the country! At Wallingford, Thomas Tusser, author
of _Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry_, who was born about 1524 and
died 1580, began his career as a chorister in the castle chapel, and
appears to have had a sorry time of it here, according to his reminiscent
verses,
“What robes, how bare, what college fare!
What bread, how stale, what penny ale!
Then, Wallingford, how wert thou abhor’d
Of seely boys!”
Reason sufficient, it would seem, by those eloquent lines!
There were of old fourteen churches in Wallingford; but the town suffered
so greatly in the plague of 1343, and then from the Black Death, that the
population dwindled away to almost nothing, and most of the churches fell
into ruin, so that three only remain: St. Mary-the-More, St. Leonard, and
St. Peter’s; and even those were greatly battered during the siege. The
last named is that whose fantastic white masonry steeple is prominently
seen from the river. It was built, together with the body of the church,
in 1769. In its churchyard lies Sir William Blackstone (died 1780), Lord
Chief Justice, and author of the most famous _Commentaries_ since Julius
Caesar. But Blackstone’s work is of quite another kind than that of the
“noblest Roman of them all.” It is, of course, a work of legal erudition.
[Illustration: WALLINGFORD: TOWN HALL, AND CHURCH OF ST. MARY-THE-MORE.]
St. Mary-the-More, whose name carries with it allusion to another St.
Mary’s—St. Mary-the-Less, united with St. Peter, so long ago as 1374, is
in the market-place, grouping finely with the curious seventeenth-century
Town Hall that stands supported on an open arcade, affording space for
the market. It is so fine and so entirely satisfactory a Town Hall, and
so imbued with architectural grace and distinction, that no one will
be in the least surprised to see it some day improved off the face of
the earth, in the usual manner of provincial authorities with such. The
prominent gallery above was, and is, used for proclaiming public events,
from the accession of a Sovereign down to the result of a municipal
election.
For the rest, Wallingford is a quiet town, with a workhouse and the
gasworks as the chief architectural features of one end; and a very fine
stone bridge of fourteen arches, rebuilt in 1809, at the other. Some
solid, comfortable-looking seventeenth- and eighteenth-century residences
somewhat ennoble the quiet streets, and the George Inn is picturesque.
Crowmarsh Gifford is a little village on the Oxfordshire side of the
river.
Newnham Murren stands beside a steep and exquisitely-wooded road that
leads on past Mongewell, where it loses that lovely woodland character
and goes undulating over chalky switchbacks to come eventually to North
Stoke, South Stoke, and Goring.
Mongewell church stands in a beautifully-wooded park, on a lawn-like
expanse close to the river bank. It has, unfortunately, been entirely
rebuilt. Shute Barrington, Bishop-Palatine of Durham, who possessed a
country residence here, and died in London in 1826, aged ninety-three, is
buried in the building.
North Stoke is just the matter of a few farms and a rustic church, but
South Stoke is a considerable village, lying between the river and the
Great Western Railway on its way from Goring to Cholsey. It is, perhaps,
a thought too much obsessed by the railway, for the embankment of it,
not at all masked by trees, looks starkly down upon village street
and church. Here, too, the church has been restored and rendered
uninteresting, except for its old wrought-iron hour-glass stand.
And so we come into Goring, and to its strangely-named inn, the “Miller
of Mansfield”; its sign, painted by Marcus Stone, R.A., with a scene from
the old legend, and a quotation from it; “Here,” quoth the Miller, “goode
fellowe, I drink to thee.” The sign is strangely out of its geographical
setting, for the neighbourhood of Mansfield, in Nottinghamshire, is a
far cry from Goring. The legend tells how Henry the Second, lost while
hunting in Sherwood Forest, sought shelter of the miller, who gave him
half a bed with his son Richard, and fed him well on venison; “only,”
said he, “you must not let the King know I poach it.” The King (always
according to the legend) gave the miller a pension of a thousand marks
yearly, for life. His name, it appears, was Job Cockle, and the King
created him “Sir John,” and made him ranger of the forest; and perhaps,
on the well-proved principle of “set a thief to catch a thief,” he served
well to preserve the royal game.
[Illustration: GORING CHURCH.]
[Illustration: HOUR-GLASS STAND, SOUTH STOKE.]
Goring (“Garinges” in Domesday), whose name means “the meadow on the
edge,” or margin—i.e. on the shores of the Thames—is a Thames-side
village improved utterly out of its olden country style. It is still
a village, just as one may truly say that a commoner created a peer
is still a man; but it is a village almost wholly composed of stylish
up-river residences; and those few shops, a hotel or two, and a scanty
sprinkling of cottages that exist here, do so only by way of ministering
to the villa-residents. It is extremely difficult to come to the river
banks here, except at the picturesque bridge that joins Goring with
Streatley, on the opposite shore, for every piece of land and every
access are jealously guarded, and there are not a few rights-of-way
that may be observed by the observant to be artfully masked with hedges
and screened by gates, or even decorated with lying “Private Road,” and
“Trespassers will be Prosecuted” notices. The stranger who desires to
wander at will is well-advised to disregard all such. The same new tale
is told from the river, for boating-parties nowadays proceed up-stream or
down between endless notices displayed on inviting riverside lawns and at
seductive side-channels, to the effect that this, that, and the other are
“Private”; “No Landing,” or “Private Backwater,” and the like.
Amid all these modern developments, the ancient Norman parish church of
St. Thomas à Becket stands, not so greatly altered. Even tyros in the
understanding of architecture can tell at a glance that its tower is of
that period, and some heavy cylindrical columns within proclaim the same
age; but the “Norman” semicircular apse is a modern rebuilding of the
original, destroyed long ago.
The evident ancient importance, ecclesiastically, of Goring is due to
the existence of an Augustinian convent here, from the time of Henry the
Second; but its secular importance was of far remoter date, for this was
the place where that immemorial British track, the Icknield Way, crossed
the Thames, on its course from Icklingham, the capital of the _Iceni_,
out of Suffolk and through Essex, Buckinghamshire, and Oxfordshire, to
climb the Berkshire downs, and so continuing into the West of England.
The Romans found Goring as useful a strategic point as did those early
British peoples; and must, if the evidences of coins, and foundations
of buildings, and mosaic pavements discovered here are worth anything,
have made it almost as favourite a residence in the more settled years of
their occupation of Britain as it is in our own era. Streatley, on the
Berkshire bank, in its name, the “street meadow,” alludes to the passing
through it of this ancient street, or road.
There are a few unimportant brasses and other memorials to the Whistler
and other families in Goring church. Among these is a Latin inscription
to “Helinor and Margaret Whistler,” which is rendered into English thus:
“This Helinor Whistler, a pious, beautiful, and modest virgin, lies with
her sister Margaret in the tomb. These, whom love and one spirit united,
are enshrined together in bronze by their only brother. She was wont
to weep ever, seldom to smile; for a season, vows, prayers, and tears
were her meat and drink. She seemed to outlive her two sisters in actual
existence, yet to them it was as if she were dead, though living; and
after they were ashes she, fed by the fear of God, did not touch bread
and drink for seven years. The vows and prayers of the poor of Goring and
the neighbourhood and the muse of Oxford forbid her to die; and, being
dead, she still lives.”
Fortunately for the gaiety of nations, we may say with conviction that
this remarkable person is exceptional.
Goring was the scene of a sad happening in 1674, by which “about” sixty
persons were drowned. This is related in a scarce pamphlet of the time,
called
SAD AND DEPLORABLE NEWS
FROM
OXFORD-SHEIR & BARK-SHEIR
BEING A LAMENTABLE AND TRUE
RELATION
of the drowning of about sixty persons, Men, Women, and
Children, in the lock near Goring in Oxfordsheir as they were
passing by water from Goring-Feast to Stately in Barksheir.
Readers, this story is both strange and true,
And for your good presented unto you.
Be careful of your life all sin to fly,
Lest you by death be taken suddenly.
When he is sent on you arrest to make
No fees, nor Bail, can purchase your escape.
London:
Printed for R. Vaughan in the Little Old Bailey.
1674.
“a punctual account of a most true and unparalleled Disaster
which happened at Goring Lock, going to Stately on Monday the
6th of this instant July 1674 about 7 aclock at night, where
about 50 or 60 persons, of Men, Women, and Children, with one
Mare crossing the water together in a boat from Oxfordsheir to
Barksheir by the watermen’s imprudently rowing too neer the
shore of the Lock they were by the force of the water drawn
down the Lock, where their boat being presently overwhelmed
they were all turned into the Pool except fourteen or fifteen
(who had been all there at the Feast at Goring) were all
unfortunately drowned, and to show how vain all human aid is
when Destiny interposes, this happened in the view of hundreds
of people, then met at the same feast, near this fatal Lock,
who found the exercise of their pastime disturbed, and their
Jollity dashed by this mournful Disaster, of which they were
helpless—but I hope not fruitless—spectators.”
This calamity so impressed the pamphleteer that he drew from it the
conclusion the end of the world was at hand; but he appears to have been
quite as eager to sell his pamphlet as though the world were good enough
to last all his time. That is over two hundred and thirty years ago, and
the old globe still spins in space.
The white-painted wooden toll-bridge that carries the road across the
river to Streatley gives the wayfarer the best views. From it you see to
greatest advantage the foaming weir, the green backwaters, and the mill.
Let us cross this bridge to Streatley, avoiding the fearful hill that
leads past the hamlet of Gathampton, circuitously up to Goring Heath, and
then alarmingly down to Whitchurch. Streatley we shall find much smaller
and simpler than Goring. There, to one side of the bridge, is the mill,
with the neatest of lawns, decorated with brilliant flowers, giving
upon the water; while on the other is the waterside Swan inn, greatly
resembling some ancient private residence, also with its lawns and with a
full supply of the easiest chairs, wherein to do that most difficult of
things—nothing.
[Illustration: PANGBOURNE CHURCH.]
[Illustration: BASILDON CHURCH.]