rather interesting historical observation that it has been more of a
boundary in highly civilised than in barbaric times.
One would expect the exact contrary to be the case. A civilised man
can cross a river more easily than a barbarian; and in civilised times
there are permanent bridges, where in barbaric times there would be
only fords or ferries.
Nevertheless, it is true of the Thames, as of nearly every other
division in Europe, that it was much more of a boundary at the end of
the Roman Empire, and is more of a strict boundary to-day, than it was
during the Dark Ages, and presumably also before the Claudian
invasion. Thus we may conjecture with a fair accuracy that in the last
great ordering of boundaries within the Roman Empire, which was the
work of Diocletian, and so much of which still survives in our
European politics to-day (for instance, the boundary of Normandy), the
Thames formed the division between Southern and Midland Britain. It is
equally certain that it did _not_ form any exact division between
Wessex and Mercia.
The estuary has, of course, always formed a division, and in the
barbarian period it separated the higher civilisation of Kent from
that of the East Saxons, who were possibly of a different race, and
certainly of a different culture. But the Thames above London Bridge
was not a true boundary until the civilisation of England began to
form, towards the close of the Dark Ages. It is perpetually crossed
and recrossed by contending armies, and the first result of a success
is to cause the conqueror to annex a belt from the farther bank to his
own territories.
It is further remarkable that the one great definite boundary of the
Dark Ages in England--that which was established for a few years by
Alfred between his kingdom and the territory of the Danish
invaders--abandons the Thames above bridges altogether, and uses it as
a limitation in its estuarial part only, up to the mouth of the Lea.
With the definition of exact frontiers for the English counties,
however, a process whose origin can hardly antedate the Norman
Conquest by many years, the Thames at once becomes of the utmost
importance as a boundary.
Its higher and hardly navigable streams are not so used. The upper
Thames and its little tributaries for some ten miles from its source
are not only indifferent to county boundaries, but run through a
territory which has been singularly indefinite in the past. For
instance, the parish of Kemble, wherein the first waters now appear,
has been counted now in Gloucester, now in Wilts. But when these ten
miles are run, just after Castle Eaton Bridge, and not quite half way
between that bridge and the old royal palace at Kempsford, the Thames
becomes the line of division between two counties, and from there to
the sea it never loses its character of a boundary.
It is a tribute to the great place of the river in history that there
is no other watercourse in England nor any other natural division of
which this is so universally true.
The reason that the Thames, like so many other European boundaries,
has come late into the process of demarcation, and the reason that its
use as a limit is more apparent in civilised than in uncivilised
times, is simply the fact that limits and boundaries themselves are
never of great exactitude save in times of comparatively high
civilisation. It is when a complex system of law and a far-reaching
power of execution are present in a country that the necessity for
precise delimitation arises. In the barbaric period of England there
was no such necessity. Doubtless the men of Berkshire and the men of
Oxfordshire felt themselves to be in general divided by the stream;
but had we documents to hand (which, of course, we have not) it might
be possible to show that exceptional tracts, such as the isolated Hill
of Witham (which is much more influenced by Oxford than by Abingdon),
was treated as the land of Oxfordshire men in early times, or was
perhaps a territory in dispute; and something of the same sort may
have existed in the connection of Caversham with Reading.
In this old age of our civilisation the exactitude of the boundary
which the Thames establishes is apparent in various survivals. Islands
now joined to the one bank and indistinguishable from the rest of the
shore are still annexed to the farther shore. Such a patch is to be
found at Streatley, geographically in Berkshire, legally in Oxford;
there is another opposite Staines, which Middlesex claims from Surrey.
In all, half-a-dozen or more such anomalous frontiers mark the course
of the old river. One arrested in process of formation may be seen at
Pentonhook.
A boundary--that is, an obstacle to travel--has this further feature,
that the point at which it is crossed--that is, the point at which the
obstacle is surmounted--is certain to become a point of strategic and
often of commercial importance. So it is with the passes over
mountains and with the narrows of the sea, and so it is with fords and
bridges over rivers. So it is with the Thames.
The energies both of travel and of war are driven towards and confined
in such spots. Fortresses arise and towns which they may defend.
Depots of goods are formed, the coining and the change of money are
established, secure meeting places for speculation are founded.
Such passages over the Thames were of two sorts: there are first the
original fords, numerous and primeval; next the crossing places of the
great roads.
Of the original fords we have already drawn up a list. Few have,
merely as fords, proved to be of strategic or commercial value. Oxford
may have been an early exception; and the difficult passage at
Abingdon founded a great monastery but no military post: the rise of
each was connected, as was Reading (which had no ford), with the
junction of a tributary. Wallingford alone, in its character of the
last easy and practicable ford down the river, had for centuries an
importance certainly due to geographical causes alone. Two principal
events of English history--the crossing of the Thames by the Conqueror
and the successful challenge of Henry II. to Stephen--depend upon the
site of this crossing. Long before their time it had been of capital
importance to the Saxon kings, so early as Offa and so late as Alfred.
If the bridges built at Abingdon in the fifteenth century had not
gradually deflected the western road, Wallingford might still count
the fourteen churches and the large population which it possessed for
so many centuries.
Apart from Wallingford, however, the fords, as fords, did little to
build up towns or to determine the topography of English history. Of
more importance were the crossings of the great _roads_.
When one remembers that the south of England was originally by far the
wealthiest part of the country, and when one considers the shape of
Ireland, it is evident that certain main tracks would lead from north
to south, and that most or all of these would be compelled to cross
the Thames Valley. We find four such primeval ways.
One from the Straits of Dover in the south-east to the north-western
centres of the Welsh Marches and of Chester, the Port for Ireland, and
so up west of the Pennines. This came in Saxon times to be called the
_Watling Street_, a name common to other lesser lanes.
Another, the converse to this, proceeded from the metal mines of the
south-west to the north-east until it struck and merged into other
roads running north and east of the Pennines. This came to be called
(as did other lesser roads) the _Fosse Way_.
A third went more sharply west from the southern districts, and
connected them not with the Dee, but with the lower Severn. This track
ran from the open highlands of Hampshire through Newbury and the
Berkshire Hills to Gloucester, and was called (like other lesser
tracks) the _Ermine Street_.
Finally, a fourth went in a great bend from these same highlands up
eastward to the coast of the North Sea in East Anglia. This was called
in Saxon times the _Icknield Way_.
All these can be traced in their general direction throughout and for
most of their length minutely. All were forced to cross the Thames
Valley, which so nearly divided the whole of South England from east
to west.
Of these four crossings the first in point of interest is that which
the _Ermine Street_ makes over the upper Thames at _Cricklade_.
These old roads are of capital importance in the story of England, and
though historians have always recognised this there are a number of
features about them which have not been sufficiently noted--as, for
instance, that armies until perhaps the twelfth century perpetually
used them; for the great English roads, though their general track was
laid out in pre-historic times, were generally hardened, straightened,
and embanked by the Romans in a manner which permitted them to survive
right on into the early Middle Ages; and of these four all were so
hardened and strengthened, except the Icknield Way. Not one of them is
quite complete to-day, but the Ermine Street is perhaps the best
preserved. It is a good modern road all the way from Bayden to
Gloucester, with the exception of a very slight gap at this village of
Cricklade.
It originally crossed the river half-a-mile below Cricklade Bridge, so
that the priory which stood on the left bank lay just to the south of
the old road. How and when the old bridge at Cricklade fell we have no
record, but one of the most important records of the Thames in
Anglo-Saxon history is connected with this passage of the river.
The importance of Cricklade as a station upon the upper Thames does
not only proceed from its being the crossing place of a great road, it
is also the point when the first important tributary stream, the
Churn, joins the Thames. Above this junction the Thames nowadays is
hardly a stream; and even in the eighteenth century and earlier,
before the digging of the Severn and Thames Canal, it must have
depended on the weather whether there were any appreciable amount of
water in the upper part or not. It would probably be found, if records
could be examined, that the mills at Somerford Keynes were not
continually worked throughout the year, even when the supply of water
had been left undiminished by modern engineering. But when once the
Churn (which, as we have seen, has a larger volume of water than the
Thames) had fallen in at Cricklade the two formed a true river, with
depth in it always sufficient to support a boat, and with a fairly
strong stream, as also with a width sufficient for minor traffic; and
it is after Cricklade that you get a succession of villages and
churches dependent upon the river and standing close to its banks.
But though this piece of hydrography has its importance the chief
meaning of Cricklade in history lay in the fact that it was the spot
where this Ermine Street on its way from the south country to the
Severn Valley got over the Thames, and the village connected with it
was entrenched certainly in Roman and probably in pre-Roman times.
This entrenchment may still be traced.
The crossing of the Thames by the Icknield Way, unlike the crossing of
the Ermine Street at Cricklade, presents a problem.
Cricklade, as we have seen, is a perfectly well-established site, and
we owe our certitude upon the matter to the fact that the Romans had
hardened and straightened what was probably an old British track. But
with the crossing of the Icknield Way no such complete certitude
exists, for the Icknield Way was but a vague barbarian track, often
tortuous in outline, confused by branching ways, and presenting all
the features of a savage trail. Doubtless that trail was used during
the four hundred years of the high Roman civilisation as a country
road, just as the similar trail, known as the "Pilgrims' Way" from
Winchester to Canterbury, was used in the same epoch. There are plenty
of Roman remains to be found along the track, and there is no doubt
that all such roads, even when the State was not at the expense of
hardening or straightening them, were in continual use before, as they
were in continual use after, the presence of Roman government in this
island; but the Icknield Way does not approach the river in a clear
and unmistakable manner as would a Roman or a Romanised road. It is on
this account that the exact point of its crossing has been debated.
The problem is roughly this: the high and treeless chalk downs have
been used from the beginning of human habitation in these islands as
the principal highways, and any single traveller or tribe that desired
in early times to get from the Hampshire highlands to the east and
north of England must have begun by following the ridge of the
Berkshire Hills, and by continuing along the dry upland of the
Chiltern Hills, which continue this reach beyond the Thames. But the
spot at which the pre-historic crossing of the Thames was effected
cannot be determined by a simple survey of the place where the Thames
cuts through the chalk range. Wallingford up above this gorge has
certain claims, both because it was the lowest of the continually
practicable fords upon the river, and because its whole history points
to an immemorial antiquity. Higher still, Dorchester, on which every
historian of the Thames must dwell as perhaps the most interesting of
all the settlements upon the banks of the river, has also been
suggested. Just above Dorchester, on the Berkshire side, stands the
peculiar isolated twin height which forms so conspicuous a landmark
when one gazes over the plain from the summit of the Downs. Such
landmarks often helped to trace the old roads. And Dorchester has also
an immemorial antiquity--a pre-historic fortification upon the hills
above, and fortifications, probably historic, on the Oxford bank
below, but Dorchester has no ford.
When all the evidence is weighed it seems more probable that the
regular crossing from the Berkshire Hills to the Chilterns was
effected at Streatley.
Of this there are several proofs. In the first place, the name of the
place suggests the passage of some great way. Place names of this sort
are invariably found upon some one of the principal roads of England.
In the second place, a lane bearing the traditional name of the
Icknield Way can be traced to a point very near the river and the
village. Another can be recovered beyond the river. The name would
hardly have been so continued--even with considerable gaps--both upon
the Oxfordshire and the Berkshire side unless the place of regular
crossing had been here.
Within a mile or two of Streatley this lane begins to descend the side
of the Berkshire Downs. Just before it falls into the Wantage Road and
is lost it has begun to curl round the shoulder of the steep hill; but
there is no way of telling at what precise spot it would strike the
river upon the Berkshire side, because a thousand years or so of
building, cultivation, and other changes have obliterated every trace
of it.
Luckily, we have some indication upon the farther bank. A way can then
be traced here as a lane (and in the gaps as a right of way, as a
path, or sometimes only by its general direction) for some miles on
the Oxfordshire side as it approaches Goring and the river coming from
the Chilterns. And we know the point at which it strikes the village.
This point is at the Sloane Hotel close to the railway; the inn is
actually built upon the old road. Beyond the railway the track is
continued in the lane which leads on past the schoolhouse to the old
ferry, where there was presumably in Roman times a ford. If we accept
this track we can conjecture that the vicarage of Streatley, upon the
Berkshire bank, stands upon the continuation of the Way, and give the
place where the pre-historic road crossed the river with tolerable
certitude, though it is, I believe, impossible to recover the
half-mile or so which lies between Streatley vicarage and the point
where the Wantage Road and the Icknield Way separated upon the
hillside above.
If the ford lay here the site was certainly well chosen, just below a
group of islands which broadened the stream and made it at once
shallower and less swift, acting somewhat as a natural weir above the
crossing.
The third crossing place of a great pre-historic road, that of the
Watling Street, is believed to correspond with the line of that very
ugly suspension bridge which runs from Lambeth to the Horseferry Road
in Westminster. This is, according to the most probable conjecture,
the place at which the great road which ran from the Straits of Dover
to the north-western ports of the island crossed the Thames.
Here, of course, there could be no question of a ford; there can only
have been a ferry. Such a ferry existed throughout the Middle Ages and
up to the building of Westminster Bridge, and produced a large revenue
for the Archbishop of Canterbury. The memory of it is preserved in the
name of the street upon the Middlesex shore. The Watling Street is
fairly fixed in all its journey from the coast to the Archbishop's
palace on the banks of the river. On the Middlesex shore it is lost,
but it may be conjectured to have run in a curve somewhere in the
neighbourhood of Buckingham Palace up on the higher ground west of the
Tybourne, parallel with or perhaps identical with Park Lane until we
find it certainly again at the Marble Arch, whence in the form of the
Edgware Road it begins a clear track across North-Western England.
As for the Fosse Way, it only just touches the valley of the Thames.
It crosses the line of the river in a high embankment a mile or so
below its traditional source at Thames head, but above the point where
the first water is seen. A small culvert running under that embankment
takes the flood water in winter down the hollow, but no longer covers
a regular stream.
Besides these four crossings of the old British ways above London
Bridge there is the crossing of the Roman Road at Staines, which may
or may not represent a passage older than the Roman occupation. We
have no proof of its being older. The river is deep, and, unless the
broken causeway on the Surrey shore is regarded as the remains of
British work, there is no trace of a pre-Roman track in the
neighbourhood.
The crossing at Staines was the main bridge over the middle river
during the Roman occupation; no other spot on the banks (except London
Bridge) is _certainly_ the site of a Roman bridge.
But apart from these there are two unsolved problems in connection
with the roads across the Thames Valley in Roman times. The first
concerns the passage of the upper Thames south of Eynsham; the second
concerns the road which runs south from Bicester and Alchester.
As to the first of these, we know that the plain lying to the north of
the Thames between the Cotswolds and the Chilterns was thoroughly
occupied. We have also in the Saxon Chronicle a legendary account of
the occupation of four Roman towns in this plain by the Saxon
invaders. By what avenue did this wealthy and civilised district
communicate with the wealthy and civilised south?
It is a question which will probably never be answered. There is no
trace remaining of Roman bridges; perhaps nothing was built save of
wood.
The obvious short-cut from the Roman town of Eynsham across the Witham
peninsula to Abingdon bears no signs of a ford approached by Roman
work or of a bridge, nor any record of such things.
As to the second question, the road from Bicester southward runs
straight to Dorchester. At Dorchester, as we have seen, there was no
ford, though just below it a Roman ferry has been guessed at.
There may have been a country road running down along the left or
north bank of the river to the pre-historic crossing place at Goring
and Streatley; but if there was, no trace of it remains, save perhaps
in the two place names North Stoke and South Stoke.
A barrier has yet another quality in history, and that quality is
perhaps the most important of all. In so far as it is an obstacle it
is also a means of defence.
All the great rivers of Europe prove this. They are studded with lines
of strongholds standing either right upon their banks or close by; and
various as is the character of the different great rivers in their
physical conformation, few or none have been unable to furnish sites
for fortification. For instance, the slow rivers of Northern France,
running for the most part through a flat country, were able to afford
fortresses for the Gaulish clans in their numerous islands; the origin
of Melun and Paris, for instance, was of this kind. The sharp rocks
along the Rhone became platforms for castle after castle: Beaucaire,
Tarascon, Aries, Avignon, and twenty others all of this sort.
The Thames, curiously enough, forms an exception; it is an exception
even in the list of English rivers, most of which can show a certain
number of fortifications along their banks.
In the whole course of the great river above London there are but
three examples of fortification, or at any rate of fortification
directly dependent upon the river. Of these the first, at Lechlade, is
conjectural; the second, at Windsor, came quite late in history, and
the only one which seems to have been a primeval fortified site was
Dorchester.
There were, of course, plenty of towns and castles susceptible of
defence. At one time or another every important settlement upon the
Thames was capable of resistance: Oxford was walled, Wallingford was a
fortress, Abingdon or Reading could be defended. But these were all,
so to speak, artificial. The settlement came first, and after the
settlement the necessity of guarding it from attack, and it was so
guarded, not by natural means, but by human construction. The castle
at Oxford, for instance, stood upon a mound of earth raised by human
work. The only considerable place in which the river itself suggested
defence from the earliest times appears to have been at Dorchester.
The curious importance of Dorchester in the very origins of English
history and the still more curious way in which it sinks out of sight
for generations, to revive again in the tenth century, is one of the
puzzles of the history of the Thames.
It is useless to pursue an archæological discussion as to the origin
of the place, and still more useless to try and determine why, though
certainly the most easily defended, it should originally have been the
_only_ heavily fortified spot in the whole of the valley. We know that
it was Roman: we know that it was a place of pre-historic
fortification before the Romans came: we know that a Roman road ran
northward towards Bicester from it, and we also know, or at least we
can make a very probable guess, that though it was continuously
important, and that the interest of early history is continually
returning to it, it can never have been large.
Perhaps the best conjecture upon the origin of Dorchester is that the
stronghold grew up as an out-lier to the great fort over the river at
the top of Sinodun Hill. The exact and regular peninsula between the
bend in the Thames and the mouth of the Thames is obviously suited for
fortification: the tributary flows just to the east of this peninsula,
exactly parallel with the main river beyond, and covers the peninsula
not only with a stream on its east flank, but with a marsh at the
mouth. One can imagine that the conspicuous heights of the Sinodun
Hills were held, from the very beginning of human habitation in this
district, as a permanent fortress, into which the neighbouring tribes
could retire during war, and one can imagine that when the river was
low in summer, and perhaps fordable, the spit of land before it, which
formed an exception to the marshes round about, needed to be protected
as a sort of bastion beyond the stream. This theory will at least
account for the two great ridges of earthwork going from one water to
the other and completely cutting off the peninsula, since it is agreed
these works are earlier than the Roman invasion. Whatever its origin,
the part which Dorchester plays in the early history of England is
most remarkable.