TWO AVONS
Two Avons join the Severn, if that of Bristol may be accounted a
tributary at so late a period of its entry. Such hair-splitting,
however, matters nothing, for, as the other Wiltshire Avon has claimed
so much notice in our chapter on Chalk Streams, no process of selection
would quite justify another pilgrimage by what is, on the whole, a less
seductive stream.
If the tidal reaches of a river count for aught, however, the North
Wilts Avon should rank with the Thames, the Mersey, and the Tyne; for
all the world knows it is the life-blood of the great port of Bristol,
and that Ocean liners load and unload within its mouth. The harbourage
aspect of rivers, however, as already stated, does not come within our
survey. Even eliminating this, it may fairly be said that the Bristol
Avon, as the world usually designates it, is no mean river above its
tidal ways, and washes no mean cities. Indeed, from the beautiful old
town of Bradford, where the river leaves its native county--a town that
boasts at once the most perfect Saxon church, and in the eyes at any
rate of an International Exhibition Committee the most perfect Tudor
mansion in England--on to Bath and by Keynsham to Brislington above
Bristol, the Avon winds through singularly gracious scenery with all the
distinction natural to a region of lofty hills.
Below Bristol, too, on its tidal way to the Severn, all the world knows
personally or by illustration the striking gorge over which nearly
half-a-century ago was flung the famous suspension bridge of Clifton.
Nor would it be fair to omit that, before leaving its native county,
this more sluggish Avon has gathered into its bosom all the waters of
North-West Wilts. Obscure streams most of them, one or two bursting from
the Chalk of the Marlborough Downs, but, heading the wrong way, soon to
lose their qualities and efface themselves in sluggish partners which
draw nourishment from the clays and greensands. Beside these waters,
however, of the Avon or its immediate feeders, rises on its rocky seat
the noble half-ruinous pile
[Illustration: THE BRATHAY, LANGDALE, WESTMORELAND]
[Illustration]
of Malmesbury. On the main river, too, are the Abbey and village of
Lacock, which, taken together as a survival of fifteenth and sixteenth
century England, have no match within my knowledge in the whole of
Wessex. Calne, Chippenham, Trowbridge, and Westbury are all upon the
Avon or its tributaries; and, if these run sluggishly and gather mud
after the manner of those in the Midlands, they have their moments of
inspiration. It can be said, too, for the Wiltshire basin of the Avon,
that it is not only rich in village architecture, both of the Bath or
Cotswold stone, as well as the half-timbered and thatched type, but
excels by comparison even more in its profusion of fine country houses
of great traditions, from the Tudor to the Georgian age. Nor is this a
mere accident, but for a good reason which stands out for those who know
anything of Old England. It is worth noting, too, of this North Wilts
Avon, that it is from all these accessories, and from its association
with such scenes and memories, rather than from any particular charms of
its own beyond such as are inseparable from any combination of water,
meadow, and woodland, that its merit arises. Further, that almost at the
moment it leaves Wiltshire it leaves the purely arcadian behind it;
and, as it drops down through scenes beyond measure more naturally
beautiful, civilisation of another and denser sort, industrial or
residential, takes at the same time something from it. A river, however,
that is concerned with almost everything which makes North-West Wilts a
region of more than common interest, that washes Bradford, and flows
through two places so famous and in such different ways as Bristol and
Bath, might well claim to be the Avon of Avons. In any such dispute its
sister of South Wilts might fare badly, even with a cathedral town and
Stonehenge to its credit. But then it belongs in itself to the order of
chalk stream, and consequently ranks among the aristocracy of rivers.
In the ears of many persons, however, probably a majority of my readers,
neither the Salisbury nor the Bristol Avon have such a familiar ring as
that one of Shakespeare, the mouth of which we passed at Tewkesbury with
scant notice, having in mind this brief return to it.
The "Stratford Avon," as usually entitled, deserves some fame even apart
from its uncommon claim to notoriety; for of all the rivers of its type
and class, the reedy and the leisurely, it is surely the most beautiful.
It is of no use pretending
[Illustration: THE THAMES, BACKWATER BY THE ISLANDS, HENLEY]
[Illustration]
that its waters are pellucid or its streams melodious, for they are
neither, unless urged to unwonted activity by a weir or one of the many
old brick water-mills that may be accounted among its indisputable
charms. Like all such rivers, it is in maturity, not in youth, that it
shines. Yet if the Avon were in need of further associations, which it
assuredly is not, it might boast among other distinctions of its birth
on the field of Naseby in Northamptonshire, and, while still young, of
figuring on the immortal pages of _Tom Brown_ as the familiar haunt of
Rugby boys. But though in the deer park at Stoneleigh its streams really
frolic upon gravel and turn corners with a hurried swish almost like a
Herefordshire grayling river, it is in later stages drifting idly with a
pair of oars on its quiet surface that the Avon commends itself so
irresistibly to those--and they are many, nay, almost a multitude--who
know it. The wider expanse of water at Guy's Cliff, the beautiful
stretch above which Warwick Castle rises so superbly, are as familiar to
almost as large a public as the reaches of the Thames at Windsor.
Stratford, also, with its two bridges, and the stately church wherein
lies Shakespeare's dust, all casting shadows on the widened surface of
the river, is a scene of even more world-wide note. No river of
secondary size in England has so many places of distinction upon its
banks. Rising at Naseby, skirting Rugby, and washing Leamington,
Warwick, and Stratford, is a fine record for the upper part of a single
river. This is the group of names with which the world chiefly
associates the Avon; but the world knows much less of its lower half,
which is far the most naturally beautiful, and has to its credit the
more or less ample remains of three great abbeys, Evesham, Pershore, and
Tewkesbury. It is a river of locks and weirs, so to cast its leisurely
progress in its teeth coming fresh from the Teme or the Dart or the
Itchen would not be fair, as the Avon was harnessed by an enterprising
Tudor squire of the Sandys family and made navigable for freight boats
between Evesham and the Severn, a wonderful benefit we are told to the
people of the Vale if only by introducing them to the use of coal.
Moreover, it is just as well that a Midland stream should be thus
artificially held back. Its natural antics tended probably to spreading
and oozing and trickling amid weeds and willows and muddy channels
rather than to the sparkle and rush of a mountain burn or a chalk
stream. But when dammed back, the water in
[Illustration: THE AVON AT CLIFTON]
[Illustration]
some reaches brims well up to the buttercup-spangled bank, with its
purple fringe of willow herb, or laps among the long battalions of
quivering flags, all making for quality and greater beauty in these slow
rivers. And the Avon, too, gathers about it a fine wealth of foliage,
often stealing for long periods between screens of drooping alder and
willow; avenues of verdure quivering again in the glassy depths, as the
oar dips into the greenwood fantasy which would cheat one into
forgetfulness of the muddy bottom, and the fact that the waters are not
as those which come from the Black Mountains or from the Wiltshire
Downs. But such waters as these are for dreaming on in the full flush of
summer, for catching the moods of summer skies, or doubling the
splendour of autumn woods; for reflecting the ruddy glow of old brick
bridges, the moist and lichen-covered walls of old brick mills. And
after all this peace comes now and again in delightful contrast those
interludes in which the Avon so often rejoices: the white rush of the
water over a long sloping weir of rugged stones, a fine spread of swirl
and ripple over a gravelly bottom racing away in tortuous channels
between small bosky islands of tangled verdure. And not least, there is
the ancient mill of mellow brick, its wheel often missing, but
occasionally still rumbling on as of yore, with the white water tearing
over it from the mill-stream into the churning pool below. And round
about the mill there are generally some tall trees, veteran oaks or
beech or ash that clutch with their long roots at the mossy walls, which
hold the steep bank against the rush of the water.
If the Warwick and Stratford reaches of the Avon are best known, as is
only natural, its lower portions as a river are beyond question the more
beautiful. In the former the scenery through which it flows, though
possessed of the graciousness of the Midlands, has also its limitations.
Halfway between Stratford and Evesham, however, as the traveller tops
the hill which runs down into the riverside village of Bidford, the
traditional scene of Shakespeare's drinking bout, the Avon would seem to
be entering into almost another country as the vale of Evesham lies
spread before him. For this is something more than glorified Midland in
scale and distinction, and the flavour of the West Country would almost
seem to be upon it. The Cotswolds rise steadily to the heights of
Broadway and Cleeve upon the south; the great humpy mass of Bredon Hill
seems to lie right athwart the vale, while in the no remote distance
the amazingly bold peaks of the Malverns look like some range of Welsh
mountains that have strayed eastward and lost their way. The people of
Evesham, like those of Warwick and Stratford, have widened and
beautified the Avon as it washes the foot of the green slopes on which
the noble belfry of Abbot Lichfield, barely finished at the Dissolution,
alone marks the site of the once splendid Abbey. Between Stratford and
Evesham the long ridge of Edgehill, where the first great battle of the
Civil War was fought, rises away to the south, and the villages by
inference or evidence associated with Shakespeare's life are all about
the stream. The Avon has already passed by many scenes characteristic of
its sober charms--Wellford Bridge and Bidford, Cleeve Prior and
Offenham. Flowing through the garden of England, the Vale of Evesham,
where thousands of acres of plum and damson, apple and pear make a
matchless blaze of bloom in springtime, there is not a dull mill upon
its banks between here and its confluence with the Severn. Swollen by
the entry of the Stour near Stratford, it runs henceforward a good
brimming stream, where in many parts two or three boats can row
abreast. Shooting down the weir and with great stir below upon gravel
reaches about Chadbury Mill, gliding peacefully under the woods and
lawns of Fladbury to another weir and another mill, it winds along to
Pershore, the second of its three abbey towns, with the beautiful
portion of its great abbey church still standing intact.
Drawing near the foot of Bredon Hill the last twelve-mile stage of the
Avon is occupied in curving around it on its tortuous way to Tewkesbury.
And continually beside or near its banks, from Stratford down, but above
all in the Evesham and Bredon neighbourhood, are rural villages, that
for consistency of architectural beauty are as a whole surpassed in no
part of England. Cleeve Prior and Abbot's Cleeve, Norton, Cropthorne,
Birlingham and the Combertons, Elmley Castle and Bredon, will occur at
once to any one who knows the Avon, with their wealth of half-timbered
black and white buildings, in which the country of the Wye, the Severn,
and the Stratford-Avon so pre-eminently excel. Most of the great army of
worshippers at the Stratford shrine and the banks of Avon content
themselves with a visit to two or three of the surrounding villages
which either evidence, speculation, or inference have associated
[Illustration: THE AVON, STRATFORD, WARWICKSHIRE]
[Illustration]
with Shakespeare or his relatives. Comparatively few realise what a
beautiful stream of its kind it is, what a wealth of architectural
treasures--churches, manor-houses, and cottages--are clustered along its
banks. Nor had any river in England more concern with the great war
between King and Parliament, watering as it were the very cockpit of the
strife.
Naseby and Edgehill, as we have seen, were both fought upon or near its
banks. But they were almost as nothing compared with the constant
skirmishes and minor sieges, the burning and harrying that for four
years went on along the banks of the Worcestershire Avon. The Upper or
Warwickshire Avon was held for the Parliament, the lower or
Worcestershire portion for the King, nearly all through the war. But the
fords and bridges of the river, being vital points between Oxford and
the West, were constant scenes of strife. Evesham was the scene of siege
and battle then as it had been four centuries earlier, when
Simon-de-Montfort heard his last Mass in the Abbey church and fell that
same day upon the banks of Avon. Charles and Rupert, Maurice and Massey,
Essex, Waller, and Cromwell himself knew the Lower Avon as well as a
modern general commanding on Salisbury Plain knows the Avon of South
Wilts, and in grimmer fashion. Its mouth was dyed crimson with
Lancastrian blood at Tewkesbury in the last sanguinary battle in the
Wars of the Roses, and Tewkesbury itself was taken and retaken no less
than eleven times in the wars of King and Parliament. And then
inseparable from the story of the Avon is that of the three great
monasteries upon its banks, from the legends associated with their
inception in Saxon times down to the great power they became in the West
Midlands prior to their fall at the Dissolution. Finally, the Avon can
boast, not merely of all the Shakespeare and Warwick glories, and of its
great abbeys, but yet further of what in regard to its wealth of Tudor
and Jacobean buildings is perhaps the most striking country town in
England. Tewkesbury Abbey would alone be sufficient glory for any little
town, but even without its abbey Tewkesbury would be very hard in its
own style to find a match for anywhere.
[Illustration: A GLIMPSE OF THE THAMES, KEW]
[Illustration]