ISLEWORTH—BRENTFORD AND CÆSAR’S CROSSING OF THE THAMES
Isleworth, an ancient and almost forgotten village overlooking the
Thames, is not by any manner of means to be confounded with the station
of that name, or with the better-known outlying portion of the parish
known as Old Isleworth. The reason of this popular ignorance of Isleworth
is easily to be found in the pronounced bend of the river by which
it stands, the great roads in the neighbourhood going approximately
direct, and leaving Isleworth in a very rarely travelled nook, not often
penetrated, except by those who have some especial reason for calling at
Isleworth itself. It is thus a singularly old-world place, and, strangely
enough, it is more often seen from afar, from the towing-path on the
Surrey side, than at hand.
The village, however little known it may be to-day, was sufficiently well
known to the compilers of Domesday Book, in whose pages it appears in
the grotesque spelling, “Ghistelworde.” Afterwards it is found written
Yhistleworth, Istelworth, Ysselsworth, and at last, before the present
formula was found for it, “Thistleworth.” A vast deal of contention has
raged around the meaning of the place-name, and with such an orthographic
choice you could give it almost any meaning you chose; but there can
be little question but that it comes from two words, the Celtic _uisc_
for water, and the Saxon _worth_ for village. It is, indeed, distinctly
a water-village, for not only does the Thames flow by it, but here the
Crane, rising near Northolt, and coming down through Cranford, falls
into the Thames, near by a little nameless brook that rises on Norwood
Green. It is indeed the confluence of the Crane and the Thames that
contributes so largely to the picturesqueness, the somewhat squalid
waterside picturesqueness, of Isleworth; for the outlet of the smaller
into the larger river is closed by little dock-gates, and the space thus
shut in is presided over by the huge, and in themselves unbeautiful,
flour mills of Messrs. Samuel Kidd & Sons. There is, however, always a
something attractive about flour-mills, let the builders of them build
never so prosaically; and here, where the little stream comes sliding out
beneath the massive buildings, and where the road passes over the little
dock, the sight of the barges coming up, each laden with their thousand
or so quarters of wheat for the mills, is found generally interesting,
especially to boys sent about some urgent business; the more immediate
and pressing the errand, the more attractive the mills; which have their
historical interest to the well-read in local story, for they are the
successors, on this same spot, of the ancient water-mills of the Abbey of
Sion.
[Illustration: ISLEWORTH.]
Most of the houses at Isleworth are old brick structures, with heavily
sashed windows, and the humbler houses and cottages are very much out of
repair. There is a look of the passive mood and of the past tense about
the place, and you expect (and probably would find if you inquired) holes
in the stockings of every other inhabitant, patches on their posteriors,
and mere apologies for soles on their footgear; while shocking bad hats
are the only wear. The artist who knows what’s what will already have
perceived that Isleworth is a place likely to have pictorial qualities,
and in his supposition he will be quite correct. It would certainly have
captivated Whistler. Imagine the parish church on the river-bank, at
the end of this rather feckless street of houses; imagine a very large
old inn, the London Apprentice, almost dabbling in the water, and then
conceive two large islands, or eyots, or aits, as they may with equal
correctitude be called, off-shore, dividing the stream of Thames in two.
They are extremely interesting eyots, for they grow to this day abundance
of osiers, whose periodical harvesting, for the making of baskets, is a
by no means negligible local industry. Lately I walked through Isleworth
on the day before Christmas, and there, stepping down between two rows of
little tenements forming Tolson’s Almhouses, and looking down upon the
river from the railed wall at the farther end, could be seen lying six or
eight great barges that had come, not from foreign climes, but from the
creeks and ports of the Essex and the Kentish coasts, from the Swale, the
Medway, the Blackwater, or the Crouch. Each and all of them had at their
mastheads a bundle of holly fastened to a spar, in honour of the coming
Day. Beyond them rose the ivy-clad tower of the church, and an occasional
pallid gleam of sunshine broke upon the river. It was a pretty and a
touching scene.
A great deal of very unreliable and really unveracious “history” has
been written about the inn, the London Apprentice, said to have been a
favourite haunt of highwaymen, among whom our ubiquitous old friend, Dick
Turpin, of course figures; but we may disregard such tales. It was once,
however, a favourite resort for water-parties from London.
The tower of the church is a really beautiful and sturdy pinnacled stone
Gothic building, but the body of the church was rebuilt in 1705, from
designs left, so it is said, by Sir Christopher Wren; and it is, within
and without, typical of the style then prevalent: that well-known type of
exterior of red brick, pierced with tall, factory-like windows, and an
interior modelled after a “classic” type, with galleries, and painted and
gilded more like a place of amusement than a place of worship.
A few much-worn brasses remain from an older building, notably one to
Margaret Dely, a Sister of Sion during the brief revival of the Abbey
under Queen Mary.
[Illustration: THE DOCK AT ISLEWORTH.]
[Illustration: THE “LONDON APPRENTICE,” ISLEWORTH.]
But the most interesting monument is one of ornate design, in marble,
placed in the west entrance lobby, under the tower. This is partly to
the memory of Mrs. Ann Tolson, and partly to Dr. Caleb Cotesworth, and
narrates, in the course of a very long epitaph, a romantic story. Ann
Tolson was the donor of the group of almshouses already mentioned,
for six poor men and an equal number of poor women. She married, as
the epitaph very minutely tells us, firstly Henry Sisson and then one
John Tolson. When he died “she was reduced to Narrow and Confined
Circumstances, and supported herself by keeping School for the Education
of Young Ladies, for which She was well Qualified by a Natural Ingenuity.
A strict and Regular Education, and mild and gentle Disposition. By the
loss of Sight She became unfit for her Employment, and a proper object
to receive that Charity, She was Sollicitous to Distribute.” In the
midst of these misfortunes, Dr. Caleb Cotesworth, a connection of hers
by marriage, died. As the epitaph, with meticulous particularity goes on
to report, he “had By a long and Successful practice at London” amassed
a fortune of “One Hundred and Fifty Thousand Pounds and upwards.” A part
he distributed by his will among relatives, “and the residue, One Hundred
and Twenty Thousand Pounds and upwards he gave to his Wife.
They both died on the 2nd May, 1741
BUT SHE SURVIVED,
and Dying Intestate, her Personal Estate became Distributable among her
three next Of Kin, one of whom was the above Ann Tolson. With a sense of
this Signal Deliverance and unexpected Change from a State of Want, to
Riches and Affluence, She forthwith appointed the Sum of Five Thousand
Pounds to the establishment of Almshouses for Six men and six women,”
and then the giddy old thing went and married a third time, although over
eighty years of age, one Joseph Dash, merchant, of London. She died, aged
89, in 1750; and this monument, for which she had left £500, for the
narration of her interesting story, was soon afterwards duly placed here.
Opposite the monument of this lady is that of Sir Orlando Gee, a factotum
of Algernon, Duke of Northumberland and Registrar of the Admiralty, who
died in 1705. It is a very fine marble monument, with a half-length
portrait effigy of Sir Orlando himself, in the costume and the elaborate
wig of his period. He is represented in the act of reading some document
unspecified.
The Middlesex shore, when once past Sion Park, now grows thickly
cumbered with buildings, and the view of the Surrey side from Middlesex
is distinctly preferable to that of Middlesex from Surrey. For on the
opposite shore stretch the long reaches of Kew Gardens, whose beauties no
one, I suppose, has ever yet exhausted; the grounds are so extensive and
their contents so varied, so rich and rare.
But, after all, I see, the extent of Kew Gardens is not so great,
measured by acreage instead of their riches. I detest mere facts,
and love impressions; but here is a fact, for once in a way books of
reference give the size of Kew Gardens as some 350 acres only.
The Director and his colleagues in botany and arboriculture look across
to the factory chimneys of Brentford with dismay, and write alarming
things in annual reports about the effects of the noxious fumes from
those chimneys upon the trees and plants of the gardens, so Brentford, we
may take it, is a menace, and since the Brentford Gas Company is a highly
prosperous and expanding business, and is certainly in the front rank
as a fume-producer, the menace we may further suppose to be increasing.
The end of these things no man can foresee, but the passing away of Kew
Gardens would be a thing too grievous to contemplate.
Brentford, it is true, cannot by any means be styled a village, and
it owns indeed the dignity of the county town of Middlesex. Thus it
would find no place in these pages, were it not that Brentford sets
up as the rival of Coway Stakes near Walton, for the honour of being
that historic spot where Julius Cæsar crossed the Thames. It is only of
recent years that this claim has been put forward, and until then Coway
Stakes scarcely knew a competitor. But at different times during dredging
operations in the bed of the river, and in the course of building new
wharves and other waterside structures, great numbers of ancient oak
stakes have been discovered, extending with intervals, from about
four hundred yards below Isleworth ferry down to the upper extremity
of Brentford eyot. Near Isleworth ferry they were found in 1881, in
a threefold line, interlaced with wattles and boughs, and continue,
generally in a single line, at intervals, under the river banks, with
advanced rows in the bed of the river, past the places where the river
Brent falls into the Thames in two branches. The stakes, that have been
numerously extracted in these last thirty years, are in fairly good
preservation, and measure in general fifteen inches in circumference.
The criticism, of course, arises here, How could the Britons at such
necessarily short notice have executed so extensive a work to impede
the passage of the Romans, who came swiftly up from Kent and who could
not have been confidently expected at any one point? The stakes extend
for about two miles and appear to have been thoroughly and methodically
arranged. The wattling, too, is evidence of care and deliberation. Doubts
must arise. They may have been already long in existence before Cæsar
came, and have been intended for defence against rival tribes; or again,
they may not really be so ancient as supposed; and their object merely
for the protection of the banks from being eroded by the current.
[Illustration: “OLD ENGLAND.”]
The name, Brentford, refers of course to a ford across the Brent near its
confluence with the Thames, which is broad and deep here; but there was
also, doubtless, a ford across the Thames, at this place, for the present
depth of the river has been produced in modern times by the industrious
dredging works of the Thames Conservancy. But still at low tide between
Brentford ferry and Kew bridge the river has normally only three feet
depth of water, and in summer sometimes much less. Children can at such
times often be seen wading far out into the bed of the stream. There must
evidently have been a ford across the Thames here in ancient days, as
well as across the Brent, and we know from later historic events that
undoubtedly took place here that this junction of rivers was always an
important point.
Thus much may be said in support of the modern contention that it was
here Cæsar crossed on his way to Verulam, and it may be conceded to those
who hold this view that the delta formed by the two outlets of the Brent
is curiously named “Old England.” It will be found so called on large
Ordnance maps, and by that name it has been known from time immemorial.
Much significance may be found in that title in such a place as this.
Nothing is known as to the origin of it. It has just come down to us
from the old, dim ages of oral tradition, and is now fixed by printed
maps. The significance of the name is, however, strangely supported by
that of a spot far indeed removed from it, but (if we accept the theory
that Brentford is really the scene of Cæsar’s crossing) most intimately
correlated in history. This second name has also been handed down in like
manner out of the misty past. We need not wonder at it. Tradition was
everywhere strong in times before the people could read, but their memory
has become gradually atrophied since they have become literate, and the
wisdom and the legends of our forefathers are fading away. Fortunately,
the art of printing, which, in conjunction with the widespread ability to
read, has destroyed much oral tradition, has at the same time fixed and
perpetuated many floating legends and memories.
This fellow traditional name is “Old England’s Hole,” the title given
by many generations of rustics to a hillock on the summit of Bridge
Hill, beside the Dover road between Canterbury and Dover, and adjoining
Barham Downs, where Cæsar fought with and defeated the Britons, July 23,
54 B.C. It is a hillock with a crater-like hollow in the crest, and was
one of the forts in which the Britons long held out. Cæsar himself, in
his _Commentaries_, describes these forts and the storming of them by
his soldiers; and the rustics of the neighbourhood have fixed upon this
particular spot, and say in effect “This is Old England’s Hole, and here
a last stand for freedom was made by your British forefathers.”
“Old England,” on the banks of Brent and Thames, is partly included
within Syon Park and in part extends over the squalid canal outlet
and the sidings, docks, and warehouses the Great Western Railway has
established here; but the name more particularly attaches to the meadow
just within the park. It forms from the Surrey shore a charming picture
not at all injured by those commercial activities of docks and railways
adjoining: perhaps even gaining by contrast. There the earthy banks of
the Thames, in general hereabouts steep and some ten or twelve feet high,
are lower and shelve gradually; and in the meadows a noble group of bushy
poplars stands behind a few willows that look upon the stream. There are
trees, too, in the background, and the spire of the modern church of St
Paul, Brentford, forms a not unpleasing feature on the right.
[Illustration: “OLD ENGLAND”: MOUTH OF THE BRENT, AND BRENTFORD FERRY.]
Brentford Ferry, down below “Old England,” commands an extensive view
down river, towards Kew Bridge and along the northern channel of
the Thames, divided here into two channels by the long and narrow
Brentford Eyot, thickly grown with grass and underwood, and planted with
noble trees. It is acutely pointed out by Mr. Montagu Sharpe that the
boundary-line dividing the counties of Middlesex and Surrey is not at
this point made to follow the stream midway, as customary elsewhere, but
is traced along the northern channel; and he sees in this fact a hint
that the original course of the river was along that branch, and assumes
that the main stream is of later origin; that the river at some time
later than the era of the Romans made this new way for itself.
On the steep bank above Brentford Ferry there was placed in May 1909 a
sturdy granite pillar with inscriptions setting forth the historical
character of the spot. The events known to have taken place at Brentford,
and the crossing here by Cæsar, now boldly assumed, form a very
remarkable list, as this copy of those inscriptions will sufficiently
show:
54 B.C.
At this ancient fortified ford the British tribesmen under
Cassivellaunus bravely opposed Julius Cæsar on his march to
Verulamium.
A.D. 780-1
Near by, Offa, King of Mercia, with his Queen, the bishops, and
principal officers, held a Council of the Church.
A.D. 1016
Here Edmund Ironside, King of England, drove Cnut and his
defeated Danes across the Thames.
A.D. 1642
Close by was fought the Battle of Brentford, between the forces
of King Charles I. and the Parliament.
A.D. 1909
To commemorate these historical events this stone was erected
by the Brentford Council.
This memorial has certainly been placed in a most prominent position, and
challenges the attention of the passer-by along the footpath past Kew
Gardens, on the opposite shore. As you approach by the ferry-boat, the
crazy old stone and brick stairs leading steeply up, beside the broad and
easy incline of the shingly ferry-slip, look most imposing, and group
well with their surroundings.
Where the old original ford across the Brent was situated no man knows,
but perhaps near to its junction with the Thames, at a spot where the
waters from the greater tidal river rendered the ford impassable except
at the ebb. That was the awkward situation of Old Brentford, and one
not for very long to be endured by travellers along the great West of
England road that runs through this place. Thus it gave way at a very
early period to a new ford, somewhat higher up the Brent; and around
it in the course of time rose the town of New Brentford, whose being
and name in this manner derived directly from the needs of travellers
for a ford passable at all hours. The ford was replaced by a bridge in
1280, and that by later stone bridges, or patchings and enlargements
of the original. The present representative of them is a quite recent
and commodious iron affair, built over the stone arch: very much more
convenient for the traffic, but not at all romantic. New Brentford church
stands near by; that of Old Brentford is a good quarter of a mile along
the road, back towards London, but there is nothing old or interesting
about it, seeing that it was entirely rebuilt a few years ago.
The Brent, as it flows through the town, is not easily to be
distinguished amid the several canal cuts, where the close-packed barges
lie, but it may with some patience be traced at the western end of the
broad and retired road called “The Butts,” an ancient name significant of
a bygone Brentford, very different from the present aspect of the place.
“The Butts” is a broad open space, rather than a road, and the houses,
old and new, in it are of a superior residential character that would
astonish those—and they are far the greater number—who know Brentford
only by passing through its narrow and squalid and tramway-infested main
street. “The Butts” would appear to have been an ancient practice-ground
in archery.
The Brent appears at the extremity, down below a very steep bank, and
barges lie in it, on the hither side of a sluice. It goes thenceforward
in a pronounced curve, to fall into the docks, and passes by the backs of
old houses and some still surviving gardens, with the church-tower of St.
Leonard’s, New Brentford, peering over old red roofs and clustered gables.
In an old-world town such as this there are many charming village-like
corners and strange survivals, when once you have left the main arteries
of traffic. Brentford is, of course, a byword for its narrow, congested,
squalid High Street, down which the gasworks send a quarter-of-a-mile of
stink to greet the inquiring stranger; but it is a very long High Street,
and the gasmaking is in Old Brentford; and at the westward end, New
Brentford, you are far removed from those noisome activities and among
the barges instead. It is largely a bargee population at this end; and
the bargee himself, the cut of his beard (when he has one it is generally
of the chin-tuft fashion affected by the Pharaohs, as seen by the ancient
statues in the British Museum), the style of his clothes, and his manner
of living his semi-amphibious life are all interesting. It would need a
volume to do justice to the history, the quaintnesses, and the anomalies
of Brentford, which, although the “county town” of Middlesex, and thus
invested with a greater if more nebulous dignity than London—merely
the capital of the Empire—is not even a corporate town. If I wanted to
justify myself for including it in a book on villages, I should feel
inclined to advance this fact, and to add that, although the traditional
“two Kings of Brentford,” with only one throne between them, are famous
in legend, no one ever heard of a Mayor of Brentford, either in legend
or in fact. When it is added that Old Brentford owns all the new things,
such as the gasworks, the brewery, and the waterworks, and that the
old houses are mostly in New Brentford, the thing is resolved into an
engaging and piquant absurdity. It is to be explained, of course, in the
fact of Old Brentford being so old that it has had to be renewed.
[Illustration: FERRY LANE, BRENTFORD.]
The very names of Brentford’s streets tell a tale of eld. It is only in
these immemorially ancient places that such names as “Town Meadow,” “The
Butts,” “The Hollows” “Old Spring Gardens,” “New Spring Gardens,” “The
Ham,” “Ferry Lane,” or “Half Acre” are met with. They are names that tell
of a dead and gone Brentford little suspected by the most of those who
pass by. No unpleasing place this waterside town when the “Town Meadow,”
that is now a slummy close, was really a piece of common land green with
grass and doubtless giving pleasantly upon the river. And when Old and
New Spring Gardens first acquired their name, perhaps about the age when
Herrick wrote his charming poems, or that era when Pepys gossiped, they
were no doubt idyllic spots where the springs gushed forth amid shady
bowers. To-day they are old-world alleys, with houses declining upon a
decrepit age that invites the attention of improving hands. There was
an ancient congeries of crooked alleys and small cottage property near
the corner of Half Acre known as “Troy Town.” It stood hard by where
the District Council offices are now placed, but tall hoardings facing
the road now disclose the fact that Troy Town is in process of being
abolished. The name is curious, but not unique. It is found frequently in
England, and seems generally to occur as the name of an old suburb of a
much older town; some place of picnicking and merry-making, where there
were arbours, and above all, a maze, either cut in the turf or planted in
the form of a hedge, like that most glorious of mazes at Hampton Court.
Such were the original “Troy Towns”; and whatever once were the clustered
alleys in Brentford that were called by that name, certainly they have
carried out to the full, and to the last, the mazy, uncharted idea.
But this old suburb of Old Brentford must at an early date have been
swallowed up in the growth of New Brentford and at a remote time have
lost everything of its original character except its old traditional
name. Names, we know, survive when all else has vanished or been utterly
changed.
Ferry Lane is one of Brentford’s many quaint corners. There is an old inn
there, the “Waterman’s Arms,” and a stately old mansion, “Ferry House.”
And there is a curious old malthouse, too, which, in the artistic way,
simply makes the fortune of Ferry Lane, so piquant are the outlines
of its roofs and its two ventilating shafts, like young lighthouses.
Buildings of such simple, yet such picturesque lines do not come into
existence nowadays.
And so to leave Brentford, with much of its story untold. To tell it were
a long business that would lose the sense of proportion which to some
degree, let us hope, distinguishes these volumes. So nothing shall be
said of those two mysterious “Kings of Brentford” who shared, according
to tradition, the throne; nothing, that is, but to note that a brilliant
idea has of late occurred to antiquaries, puzzled beyond measure by
these indefinite kings. It is now conceived that the legend originally
was of the two kings _at_ Brentford, and that so far from sharing one
throne happily together, they were Edmund Ironside, the Saxon king, and
Canute the invading Dane (or Cnut, as it seems we are expected to style
him now), who was severely defeated here by Edmund, and driven out of
Brentford across the river.