Chapter I: Above Oxford (2)

It is not till you have passed below Tadpole Bridge that the first beds of white lilies challenge attention. The lilies hitherto have been of the small yellow description; but now, in sheltered bays, thick beds of the gorgeous white variety shine gloriously from between the large glossy leaves. They are, fortunately, out of the line of every-day Thames traffic, and are so spared to develop to maturity in waters to which the steam-launch has not yet penetrated. About two miles below Tadpole one's attention cannot fail to be arrested by the high, skeleton-like, weather-worn bridge called Tenfoot Weir. This is another site of a weir long fallen into disuse. The wooden bridge consists of a central arch, or compartment, of staging set twenty feet high, with steep flights of steps on either side, the central division marking the outline of the old weir. A thatched cottage and thickly clustering willows in the bend which is here formed by the course of the river present an extremely picturesque variety to the monotonous character of the previous mile of the Thames. Another object of interest will be found a little lower down, at Duxford Ferry. Alongside a clump of willows lies a "sheer hulk," representing one of the long, narrow canal boats used when barges regularly plied where there is no water to float them now. Close to the blackened, slimy timbers of the wreck a promising family of calves cluster, as if pondering in bovine fancy over the former glories of the defunct craft and the industry it typified. A comfortable group of farm-buildings, thatched and tiled, nestles at the head of the ferry, which is not furnished with the usual horse-boat, for the simple reason that it may be crossed without any such assistance. A child might walk across on the hard gravelly shallow at ordinary times without being more than knee deep. It is, however, more than twenty yards wide, and the stream concentrates immediately afterwards to a width of not more than twenty feet; but it remains shallow.

There are two or three fords in the course of the next few miles, all of the same character. A rather notable one is that at Shifford. The legend runs that in the locality Alfred the Great held one of his earliest Parliaments, and there and then gathered "many thanes, many bishops, and many learned men, proud earls, and awful knights." This was to a great extent Canute's country. A mile or two on the Berkshire side of the river, near Bucklands, is kept the Pusey horn, given to the family by that king. The inscription upon it is, "I, King Knoude, give William Pewse this horne to holde by thy londe." There are some doubts, however, as to whether these letters are not of later date than the time of Canute. At Longworth, another village, there are the remains of an ancient encampment, Cherbury Camp, and here, it is said, a palace of Canute's once stood.

The River Windrush, a more considerable tributary than any previously received by the Thames, flows into the parent river from the north at Newbridge. The point of debouchment might, by reason of the weeds and rushes in the water and overhanging bushes of the banks, be easily overlooked by a casual observer, and the Windrush, in this peculiarity, closely resembles other feeders of the Thames, in looking its meanest where it offers its volume to the parent river. The Windrush is one of the Cotswold brood, and at Bourton-on-the-Water it becomes a valuable trout stream. Great Barrington, whose freestone quarry furnished the stone for Christopher Wren's restoration of Westminster Abbey, is opposite the village of Windrush; the river afterwards enters Oxfordshire, and by the peculiar quality of its waters gives to the town of Witney a special pre-eminence in the whiteness of the blankets produced by its fulling mills. The river is thirty-five miles long from source to inlet to the Thames.

The oldest, and in truth the oldest looking, stone bridge on the Thames is called Newbridge, and this we approach below the place where Alfred held his Parliament. The bridge is an excellent sample of old English masonry. It has been Newbridge for at least 600 years now, yet its groined arches and projecting piers seem as strong to-day as ever they have been. A public-house accommodates the traveller on either side of the bridge, one of them replacing a mill that perished for lack of customers. Strange to say, the river seems immediately to change its character when we have passed through these ancient arches. Not only is the presence of a couple of working barges, with gaily-painted posts of primary colours and vivid figure-subjects painted upon the panelling of the deck cabin aft, evidence that another era in the commercial character of the river is beginning, but the Thames, almost without warning, becomes wider and deeper, and altogether more like the Thames as we know it at the popular stations above the City boundaries, though of course it is still the Thames in miniature. The barges come in these days no farther than this station, and their business is mostly one not unconnected with coal. These boats, moored near the old bridge, seem to remind us that although heretofore we might have cherished the fancy that the Thames was almost an idyllic trout stream, lending grace to a rural district, it must henceforth be considered as being a recognised water highway with a mission that becomes more and more important as the distance to London Bridge is lessened. It is quite a remarkable change, and in a few moments your estimate of the river changes also. It is a thing now of laws and regulations. The very foliage on the banks seems to be of a more permanent character. Hitherto the Thames has been struggling with an indefinite career before it, winding through the meadows, streaming over the shallows, not quite certain whether it was to have a respectable position or not. But after Newbridge it has set up a substantial establishment, wherefore--Isis though it still may be and is called by the good Oxford people--it is to all intents and purposes Old Father Thames. We have seen the Seven Springs rill in its infancy and the Thames in its boyhood and lusty youth; here, however, it enters upon its early manhood.

Opposite Harrowden Hill, and to the west of Newbridge, Standlake Common may be explored by whosoever would benefit by its attractions, which, truth to tell, are very scanty. Snipe undoubtedly enjoy its boggy virtues during the winter; but the common is a marshy tract at best, and those who pass on to the village for the sake of its church of Early English architecture, and the farmhouse said to be built by John o'Gaunt and Joan his wife, do not care to linger there.

We shall pass two weir-pools, long disused, between Newbridge and Bablock Hythe, namely, Langley, or Ridge's Weir, and Ark, or Noah's Ark Weir. These and previous weirs referred to are of the very simplest kind, and, except in the two instances mentioned, perform their service independently of a lock. The object of this simple form of weir is to dam the river to the required height for such purposes as mill heads or navigation. The business is accomplished by the working of flood gates or paddles in grooves, and between rymers, to the sill at the bottom. In winter there may be a swift stream through the weirs, but, the weir paddles being withdrawn, there is very little fall. Shooting the weir stream--one of the adventurous feats of the upper navigation--is an amusement unknown below Oxford, and at times it is not without its risks.

Although Bablock Hythe by road is not much more than five miles from Oxford, the circuitous voyage by Thames is twelve miles. Bablock Hythe is a well-known station on the Upper Thames, albeit it does not boast the rank of hamlet or village, and has for the accommodation of man and beast only one of the small old-fashioned inns of the humblest sort, where the rooms are low, the beams big and solid, the floors flagged, and the apartments fitted up with all manner of three-corner cupboards and antique settles. The great ferry-boat, however, gives it a decided position of importance, and it is known to Thames tourists principally as the starting-point for visiting either Cumnor or Stanton Harcourt. Most people probably go to Cumnor from Oxford, the distance being only about three miles; but many are glad to make it an excuse for halting on the somewhat monotonous ascent of the river. The reader needs scarcely to be reminded that Cumnor Place has been made immortal by the pages of Sir Walter Scott, and that the sorrows of Amy Robsart have been wept over by the English-speaking race in all parts of the world. There is an inn at Cumnor still called after that hostelry over which Giles Gosling firmly ruled, and in the church there is a monument sacred to the virtues of Tony Fire-the-fagot and his family, who are thus handed down to posterity in a far different character from that suggested by Sir Walter as pertaining to the tool of the villain Varney. Cumnor is on the Berkshire side, and on the Oxford side is Stanton Harcourt, visited for the sake of the remains of its ancient mansion, and its fine church. Visitors, probably, would not make the journey exclusively in the interests of either one or the other, nor of the two large upright stones called the Devil's Quoits, which one historian conjectures were erected to commemorate the battle fought in 614 between the Saxons and the Britons.

The real attraction of Stanton Harcourt is historical, and historical in several degrees. It was one of the vast estates which fell as loot to the half-brother of William the Conqueror, and was evidently a considerable possession. For more than 600 years the manor continued in the Harcourt family. Little is left of the grand mansion in which the lords of Stanton Harcourt dwelt. The Harcourt family gave it up as a place of residence towards the close of the seventeenth century, and it fell forthwith to decay. With the exception of the porter's lodge, the arms on each side of the gate, showing that it was erected by Sir Simon Harcourt, who died in 1547, and some upper rooms in the small remaining part of the house adjoining the kitchen, are all that remain. But there is a more recent historical interest attaching to Stanton Harcourt; in a habitable suite of rooms in the deserted mansion Pope passed the greater part of two summers, and to this day the principal apartment bears the name of Pope's study. The little man required quiet and retirement during his translation of the Fifth Book of Homer, and upon one of the panes of glass he wrote, in the year 1718, "Alexander Pope finished here the fifth volume of Homer." The Harcourts, however, removed this pane to Nuneham Courtney, where it is preserved--a piece of red stained glass, six inches by two. The old Stanton Harcourt kitchen, converted to modern uses, was always a curiosity, and Dr. Plott, the Oxford historian, says of it, "It is so strangely unusual that, by way of riddle, one may truly call it either a kitchen within a chimney or a kitchen without one, for below it is nothing but a large square, and octangular above, ascending like a tower, the fires being made against the walls, and the smoke climbing up them without any tunnels or disturbance to the cooks, which, being stopped by a large conical roof at the top, goes out at loopholes on every side, according as how the wind sets, the loopholes at the side next the wind being shut by folding doors, and the adverse side open."

The visitor at Stanton Harcourt should certainly not neglect an inspection of the beautiful church, said to be the finest in the country. It is cruciform in shape, and has a massive tower. The nave is Norman, of about the twelfth century, and according to "a custom established there time immemorial" the men entered through a large, and the women through a small, doorway. A wooden roof to the nave is understood to have been added in the fourteenth century, while the chancel, transepts, and tower arches are of the thirteenth. The oaken rood screen is reputed to be the oldest wooden partition of the kind in the country. The Harcourt aisle or chapel, erected about the same time as the mansion, is an example of the enriched Perpendicular style of Henry VII., and it is still the burial-place of the ancient Harcourt family. In the chapel, as in the body of the church, are several interesting monuments, and one of them is famous. In Gough's sepulchral monuments, where it is engraved, the following description is given:--

"This monument of Sir Robert Harcourt of that place, Knight of the Garter, ancestor of the Earl of Harcourt; and Margaret his wife, daughter of Sir John Byron, of Clayton, Lancashire, Knight, ancestor of Lord Byron. He was Sheriff of Lancashire and Warwickshire, 1445, elected Knight of the Garter 1463, commissioned with Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, and others, to treat of a peace between Edward IV. and Louis XI. of France, 1467, and was slain on the part of the House of York, by the Staffords, of the Lancastrian party, November 14th, 1472. His figure represents him in his hair, gorget of mail, plated armour, strapped at the elbows and wrists, large hilted sword at left side, dagger at right, his belt charged with oak leaves, hands bare, a kind of ruffle turned back at his wrists, shoes of scaled armour, order of Garter on left leg, and over all the mantle of the Garter, with a rich cape and cordon; his head reclines on a helmet, with his crest, a swan; at his feet a lion. His lady, habited in a veil head-dress falling back, has a mantle and surcoat and cordon, and a kind of short apron, long sleeves fastened in a singular manner at the waist, and the Order of the Garter round her left arm; her feet are partly wrapped up in her mantle."

The Thames takes a northerly course from Bablock Hythe, and winds and doubles in such contortions that in one part a strip of not more than twelve yards of meadow separates two reaches of considerable length.

A high, wide wooden bridge, bearing the name of Skinner's Weir, now crosses our course, and soon we come to Pinkhill Lock, so called from a farm of that name in the neighbourhood. The weir is a new one, a great contrast in its severe and formal cut to the weather-worn structures to which we have been accustomed. The lock-house is quite a dainty cottage, and the garden one of the prettiest to be found along the Thames. The lock garden is generally a winsome little preserve, with its kitchen garden, flower-beds, sometimes a beehive, its stack of fagots, and a general air of rusticity; but the lock-keeper, or probably his wife, at Pinkhill Weir has devoted special care and attention to a flower-bed running the whole length of the lock, which I found to be bordered by a blaze of summer flowers, prominent amongst which were white and blue cornflowers. From the lock bridge a commanding view is obtained of the hilly country to the right, and the woods and copses around its base, and straggling to the top.

The telegraph wires along Eynsham Road detract considerably from the rural flavour of the surroundings, and Eynsham Bridge itself does not look so old as it really is. It is a very conspicuous, and, indeed, handsome structure, with eight arches and a liberal amount of balustrading in the central divisions of the parapets. Eynsham, Ensham, Eynesham, or Emsham, has a history which goes beyond the Conquest, and it is by right, therefore, that the bridge is named after the village, though its real name, as decided by the Ordnance Map, is Swinford Bridge. Early in the eleventh century an abbey was founded here by the then Earl of Cornwall, and Ethelred, the reigning king, signed the privilege of liberty with the sign of the holy cross. At the Dissolution the abbey and its site passed into the ownership of the Stanley family, but no ruins have been preserved. Ensham, or Eynsham Cross, stands in the market-place of the village, opposite the church. The bridge, as we now see it, was built about sixty years ago. The village is pleasantly situated on rising ground.

A little below the bridge the picturesque materials of the weir are stored when not in use, and the rymers are piled in a stack close to the spot where they sometimes even now do effective service. Your boat passes through, however, generally without let or hindrance. A little farther on the Evenlode enters the Thames. Like its predecessors, it seems a poor insignificant stream as it delivers its waters through a reedy mouth to the Thames; but it has itself received the River Glyme, which passes through Woodstock and Blenheim Park, and feeds the large lake, now choked with weeds. The Evenlode is the last of the Cotswold offerings thus embodied in verse by Drayton:--

"Clear Colne and lively Leech have down from Cotswold's plain,
At Lechlade linking hands, come likewise to support
The mother of great Thames. When, seeing the resort,
From Cotswold Windrush scrowers; and with herself doth cast
The train to overtake; and therefore hies her fast
Through the Oxfordian fields; when (as the last of all
Those floods that into Thames out of our Cotswold fall,
And farthest unto the north) bright Elnlode forth doth beare."

Woodstock is not more than four miles from Eynsham, but it is generally reached from Oxford. The river winds now round the foot of Witham Hill, and we are on close terms with the outskirts of the immense wood through which one could walk for eight miles before losing its shade. The portion that comes to within a few yards of the Thames consists of oak-trees, with an occasional ash, and as we halt to sit a while under the umbrageous canopy we receive as a salute the cooing of doves, agreeable contrast to the reception, a few miles higher up, conveyed in the harsh squawk of a couple of herons. Longfellow might have sat amongst these identical brackens when he wrote:--

"But when sultry suns are high,
Underneath the oak I lie,
As it shades the water's edge,
And I mark my line, away
In the wheeling eddy play,
Tangling with the river sedge."

The Thames describes a sharp horseshoe curve round the base of the hill. From the bank a fine view across the flat is obtained of Cassington Church spire, and of the last mill on the River Evenlode, making for the Thames midway between the bridge and Hagley Pool. The paucity of pleasure-boats on the river between Lechlade and Bablock Hythe may be attributed to the great weediness of the river, rendering it sometimes almost impassable; also to the prevalence of shallows, and the absence of anything particular to see, and the all-important consideration that there are few hotels to stop at. There is not a riverside house of call between the little cottage inn at Bablock Hythe and Godstow. An occasional steam-launch finds its way from Oxford up the Canal and into the Thames, by way of the Wolvercott Paper Mill; but this unpleasant type of vessel is very rarely seen so far up, since the forests of aquatic undergrowth are the reverse of favourable for the working of the screw.

What the steam-launcher, however, loses is gained by the angler. This mild sportsman I found to be very much in evidence below Bablock Hythe. Here at any rate he was able to pursue his pastime in peace; and the frequency with which he appeared on the bank from Eynsham downwards gives me an opportunity of interjecting a few timely remarks upon the Thames as a resort of fishermen. The professional fisherman, as we know him at Richmond, Maidenhead, or Marlow, with his punt, Windsor chair, and ground-bait, is unknown in the upper reaches of the river; but the fish are there. Although anglers have multiplied a hundredfold within the last half-century, the angling in the River Thames at the present moment is better than it has been at any time during the present generation. It is not to be hoped, with any reasonable confidence, that the efforts now being made by the Thames Angling Preservation Society to convert the Thames once more into a salmon river will be successful; and any one who makes personal acquaintance with the source of the Thames, and marks the character of the contributory streams, will be prudent in entertaining a doubt as to whether there are now breeding-grounds suitable, even if fish could be induced once more to run up through the filth of the Pool from the sea. The alleged scarcity of Thames trout is very often put down to the excessive disturbance caused by steam-launches, and the traffic by pleasure-boats upon all the reaches of the Thames, from Teddington Lock to Oxford. It is somewhat strange, therefore, that the higher you ascend the Thames the fewer become the Thames trout. There are a few large fish in most of the deep wide pieces that were once weir-pools, or that still may be so, between Lechlade and Oxford; but the water is too sluggish to encourage them much, and trout, with the exception of truants from Lech, Coin, or Windrush, are, therefore, few and far between. Pike, on the other hand, are more numerous, if not of so large an average size as those caught lower down. The Thames, from the start, abounds in chub, bleak, barbel, gudgeon, roach, dace, and perch; bream, carp, and tench are partial in their haunts. But the river above Oxford is not so accessible as the great body of modern anglers would require, and hence it comes to pass that these remote waters are little visited except by the local disciples of Isaac Walton. The weeds are, after a fashion, annually cut by the Thames Conservancy where their growth would be a serious hindrance, but otherwise they are not kept down, save by the uncertain operations of winter frosts and floods. The right of fishing is generally, above Oxford, claimed by the riparian proprietors, or their tenants.

Soon after putting Bablock Hythe in our wake, the flat country, varied by only occasional uplands, which had been the rule since leaving Lechlade, is exchanged for a bolder type of scenery, as, for example, the fine wooded eminence rising before us. This is Witham, of which we shall see a good deal, now from one point, and now from another, as we near the City of Learning. It requires no guide or guide-book to inform us that from the summit a widespread view is obtained of the valley of the Thames. Hitherto we have looked in vain for the typical eyot. With the exception of one small islet below Hart's Number Two, or Langley Weir, there has been nothing in the shape of an island until we arrive at Hagley Pool, where the first solitary island appears. The picture from here is exceptionally interesting. A rustic bridge spans a backwater trending towards Witham Mill, and in the direction of Oxford. The thickset woods stand out in prominent relief, and another farmhouse of the higher class, surrounded by ricks, appears to the left. Hagley Pool, which is merely a lake-like widening of the water at the bend, is covered with the yellow water-lilies. Three miles from Eynsham we are at Godstow Bridge. The spire of Cassington Church, a conspicuous landmark on the left hand throughout, is a pleasanter object by far than the tall chimneys on the right, which are not redeemed by the rows of poplars that would fain hide them. It is unfortunate, but true, that the first glimpses we get of the spires of Oxford are in conjunction with the tall red-brick chimney and not elegant University paper-mills. While following the bend at the broad part of the river the public buildings of beautiful Oxford open one by one into view, but again disappear temporarily at the next bend, at the head of which stands King's Weir. This serves as much the purposes of a lock as a weir, its gates opening when necessary to admit the passage of larger craft than those which can be conveyed over the rollers supplied for pleasure-boats. The river from the pool for some distance is almost choked with weeds, very narrow, and of hardly sufficient depth at low water to admit the passage of an ordinary pleasure-boat.

Godstow at once suggests the story, often told and always interesting, of fair Rosamond. The lady gives a flavour also to Woodstock, some eight miles distant. The wrongs and the rights of Mistress Rosamond will never in this world be accurately known, but that she was poisoned by jealous Queen Eleanor at Woodstock, and that she was the mistress of Queen Eleanor's husband, Henry II., are facts which no one dare deny. According to Lord Lyttleton, Henry II. met the frail daughter of Walter, Lord Clifford at Godstow, in 1149, on his return from Carlisle, the lady being at the time, in accordance with the custom of the age, placed amongst the nuns to be educated. The nunnery is still known by the ivy-clad walls which remain on its site. It was a nunnery of the Benedictines, consecrated in the presence of King Stephen and his Queen in the year 1138. The nunnery was dispossessed, and has crumbled to ruins, but the brave river passes by even as in the olden times before Henry VIII., the spoiler, gave the house to his physician, Dr. George Owen. There was another nunnery at the foot of Witham Hill, but that was an older establishment, which existed as early as 690, on the spot where the Earls of Abingdon have their seat, partly built, it is understood, by the stones of Godstow, even as the modern buildings at Stanton Harcourt are supposed to have been erected from the stones with which the original mansion was constructed. The ruins of Godstow Nunnery, such as they are, catch one's eye first from the river. It may be that the pathetic romance touching the silken thread and the bowl of poison is not, as many hold, founded upon fact; but we cannot be equally sceptical with regard to Rosamond's connection with Godstow. She retired to the nunnery to pass the remainder of her days, after the marriage of the king, in seclusion. She died, and was buried in the choir, opposite the high altar, and Henry raised a grand monument to her memory. The nuns forgot the frailty of the lady, remembering rather the manner in which she had enriched the establishment, and the tokens of favour they had received from the king on her account; and we read that her remains were treated with much honour by the sisters, who hung a pall of silk over her tomb, and set it about with lighted tapers. This chronic honour was put an end to by Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln, who, going to the nunnery and requesting to know why one particular tomb should be so much honoured, was informed that it was the tomb of Rosamond, sometime leman to Henry II. In order that the nuns might not be led astray by having her example constantly set before them, and that other women might beware, poor Rosamond's bones were cast out of the church; but they were brought back again by the nuns, and wrapped in perfumed leather.

The farther arch of the old bridge at Godstow has been removed to admit of various improvements being carried out in one branch of the stream, which here divides, and in order to widen the structure; but the two arches of the ascent from the right-hand side remain as they were, and the well-known "Trout" Inn at Godstow retains all its characteristics of creepers, flowers, tiled roof, and pleasant waterside seats. A full view of Oxford, set back beyond the farthest confines of Port Meadow is obtained, while the smell of the roses in the pretty garden of the time-honoured "Trout" Inn still lingers about us. The village of Wolvercott lies to the left, and at the other end of the mill-stream, the entrance to which was noticed just above the King's Weir. Close by the ivy-covered gable of the nunnery a new weir is being erected, and it may be added that in the excavations incidental to the work four old stone coffins were discovered in the summer of 1885.

Passing by the village of Binsey, where in 730 there was a chapel constructed with dark room for the most stubborn sort of sisters, and where the saints caused St. Margaret's Well to be opened, in order that people coming there to ease their burdened souls might be rid of their diseases, one feels that the first stage of a voyage down the Thames is pleasantly terminated by the noble array of pinnacles, towers, and spires across Port Meadow, presented as a free common to the city by William the Conqueror, and so to this day preserved. The towers and spires have an imposing effect, with Shotover Hill behind. The most prominent objects are St. Philip's and St. James's Church, the Roman Catholic Church, the Observatory, the Radcliff, the Sheldonian, St. Mary's, All Saints', Tom Tower and the Cathedral, and, nestling down among the trees, the square grey tower of Oxford Castle. To the right is the "Perch" Inn at Binsey, and as you pass this Binsey Common opens out in the same direction, and there are once more the wooded slopes of the Witham Hills, which we have had in view for the last eight miles. The River Thames round Port Meadow is more disgracefully weedy and neglected than any other portion of its course. Beyond Binsey is Medley Manor House, at one time an oratory attached to Godstow, a place where any of the devotees, in case they were detained from the city or on their journey to Abingdon, could rest for the night, without going on to the nunnery. The flocks of geese in hundreds, just now giving the signal of rain, on the edge of Port Meadow, opposite Binsey Common, may still lead us to think that we are in the rural parts described on previous pages; but down yonder, on the other side of the cut leading to Medley Weir, are a fleet of ugly house-boats. There is also a semicircular iron bridge across the cut, and we are brought face to face with the fact that the next mile and a half of river will be essentially townified and crowded.

The division of the river at Medley leaves the business of practical navigation to the straight cut, and the original Thames, once flowing by the site of Bewley Abbey, will probably be soon choked out of existence. In succession now follow in a prosy catalogue Medley Weir, the Four Streams, the Railway, the Canal, Seven Bridges Road, and Osney Loch and Mill. A hoary gateway and fragment of wall, with its Perpendicular window absorbed in the mill fabric, are all that remain of Osney Abbey, the powerful and magnificent, whose abbots were peers of Parliament. One hastens under the railway bridge, and looks aside from the gasworks, knowing that beyond Folly Bridge a new phase of Thames life will begin for the intelligent voyager.

/W. Senior/.