Charles G. Harper

CASTLE EATON—KEMPSFORD—BY THE THAMES AND SEVERN CANAL TO INGLESHAM ROUND HOUSE—LECHLADE—FAIRFORD—EATON HASTINGS WEIR—KELMSCOTT—RADCOT BRIDGE.

A mile or so below Cricklade, the river Ray flows into the Thames, from the direction of Swindon. Opposite, on the left bank, stands Eisey Chapel, on its little knoll amid the meadows. It is the place of worship of the hamlet of Eisey, a little collection of cottages removed out of sight from the river; and is just a small rustic Perpendicular building, with a bell-cote. Water Eaton, which is not on the water, and Castle Eaton, which does not possess a castle, come next, both deriving the name from ea = “water”; the first named of the two therefore given its name twice over. The “water” of Water Eaton refers perhaps to the old manor-house, rather than the church, the manor-house being in sight of the stream. The prefix to the name must have been added in Saxon times, when the Romanised British were driven out and the descriptive nature of the name “Eaton” forgotten. Although not spelled in the same way as Eton by Windsor, the two mean precisely the same, and have fellows in very many other “Eatons” throughout England.

Water Eaton manor-house, of heavy Georgian architecture and dull red brick, with characteristically prim rows of heavily-sashed windows, is unimaginative but decorous.

Although Castle Eaton has now no castle, and not even the discoverable site of one, here was formerly situated a stronghold of the Zouches. It is a very quiet village, of a purely agricultural type, and generally littered with straw and fragments of hay. Here the Thames was until quite recent years crossed by a most delightful old bridge, that looked like the ruins of some very ancient structure whose arches had been broken down and the remaining piers crossed by a makeshift affair of white-painted timber. “Makeshift” is perhaps hardly the word to be properly used here, for it seems to indicate a temporary contrivance; and this bridge, if not designed in keeping with the huge, sturdy, shapeless stone and rubble piers, was at any rate sufficiently substantial to have existed for many generations, and to have lasted for many yet to come. Alas that we should have to write of all this in the past tense! But it is so. Twenty years ago, when the present writer paid his first visit to Castle Eaton, the old bridge was all that has just been described—and more; for no pen may write, nor tongue tell, of the beauty of that old, time-worn yet not decrepit, bridge, that carried across the Thames a road of no great traffic, and would have continued still safely to carry it for an indefinite period. It was one of the expected delights of revisiting the Upper Thames, to renew acquaintance with this bridge, sketched years before; and it was with a bitter but unavailing regret and a futile anger that, coming to the well-remembered spot, it was seen to have been wantonly demolished, and its place taken by a hideous, low-pitched iron girder bridge, worthy only of a railway company; and so little likely to be permanent that it is observed to be already breaking into rusty scales and scabs beneath its hideous red paint. The ancient elms that once formed a gracious background to the old bridge stand as of old beside the river bank; but the old bridge itself lies, a heap of stones that the destroyers were too lazy to remove, close by, on the spot on which they were first flung. No description, it has been said, can hope to convey the beauty of Castle Eaton Bridge, for the old stone piers were hung with wild growths, and spangled and stained with mosses and lichens. A sketch of one end of it may serve; but it once formed the subject of a painting by Ernest Waterlow, and in that medium at least, its hoary charm has been preserved. Let a photograph of its existing successor be here the all-too-shameful evidence of the wicked ways of the Thames Conservancy with this once delightful spot in particular, and with such spots in general. We cannot frame to use language too strong for a crime so heinous against the picturesque.

Let us recapitulate the facts, and draw the indictment more exactly against that sinning body. We shall thus ventilate a righteous indignation, and help to create a healthy public feeling against all such damnable doings, by whomsoever done. We are, of necessity, in this country of change and of an increasing population, faced with a continuous defacement of places ancient, beautiful and historic; and it behoves us to use our utmost efforts to preserve what we have left. What, then, shall we say of such absolutely unnecessary outrages as this? Shall we not revile the whole body responsible, from the Board and the Secretary down to the chief engineer and the staff of underlings who did the deed? The Thames Conservancy, in fact, has been a most diligent destroyer of the beauty of the river; slaving early and late and overtime in that devil’s work, but remaining supremely idle where the encroachments of private persons, or the uglifications by waterworks companies, and modern mill-and factory-builders are concerned. It is the Thames Conservancy that has repaired the banks of the river and has reinforced the walls of its weirs and lock-cuts, with hideous bags and barrels of concrete, that retain their bag-and-barrel shape for all time, and so render miles of riverside sordid in the extreme. We simply cannot afford these ways with the river.

The church of Castle Eaton is in a modest way a remarkable building. It is a moderate-sized Early English structure, chiefly notable for retaining its original stone sanctus-bell turret on the roof. The interior discloses nave and chancel only, with a shallow elementary north aisle, built out from the original building, and supported upon two wooden pillars on stone bases. This extension—a half-hearted addition—was itself made several centuries ago, apparently for the purpose of affording additional seating accommodation at some period when the population had increased. But it has greatly shrunken since then; and in these times when the towns have superior attractions for all wage-earners, it still continues to shrink.

A very curious old oak post, some seven feet high, and carved with a spiral pattern, stands at the end of one of the pews, and seems to mark what must have been the old manorial pew; bearing as it does on its ornamental head a shield of arms, dated 1704, probably that of some bygone local family. The whole affair looks remarkably like a part of some old four-poster bedstead, but it may be one of the supports of a former western gallery. A half-length fresco figure of the Virgin—the church being dedicated to St. Mary—is to be seen on one of the walls, and a very large, and apparently fine, brass of a knight was once in the church. But this has been at some time destroyed, and the stone indent itself is now to be found, flung out of the building and used as a paving-stone, outside the west door.

Road, river, and canal now all make for the village of Kempsford, which does not derive its name from some ancient, prehistoric Kemp, but from “Chenemeresford,” said to signify “the ford on the great boundary”; that is to say, the river. And Kempsford is situated in Gloucestershire, here divided from Wiltshire by the Thames, which forms the natural frontier of many counties along its course, from Thames Head to the sea.

We shall find the best way from Castle Eaton to Kempsford, little more than a mile distant, to be across the meadows and to the towing-path of the Canal, here and onward to its beginning at Inglesham, a very beautiful stretch of water-way; overhung, as it is, by noble trees in places, and rich in rushes and water-lilies. When the Gloucestershire and other County Councils, together with the local Rural District Councils, procured an Act of Parliament for taking over this neglected waterway, great hopes were entertained of reviving an undertaking which had never been remarkable for its financial success, and it was fondly hoped thereby to break the “monopoly” held by the railway. A trust was formed in 1895 by those public bodies interested, and it was agreed to guarantee £600 annually for thirty years for repairing and working the canal. The Great Western Railway was thus rid of an incubus, and the ratepayers of these various districts find themselves saddled with an utterly unremunerative expenditure that no commercial firm would have had the folly to assume. For not only were the repairs of Sapperton Tunnel exceedingly costly, and the general overhauling of the canal expensive, but no traffic worth the mention has been induced to come this way. Those squanderers of public money were heedless of the facts of modern business, and forgot to consider that in these latter days time is more than ever the essence of the contract in worldly affairs. Less able than ever, therefore, are canals to compete with railways. So once more, after a fugitive period of activity, we see the Thames and Severn Canal returning to its old neglected condition.

Kempsford church-tower is prominent across the meadows, and we find it to be a notable and interesting church, and the village a place of aristocratic appearance, where humble cottages are few and the manor-house imposing. This is as it should be in a place with its history: the manor having once belonged to Edward the Confessor, who gave it to Harold. William the Conqueror conferred it upon one of his knights, and in the course of the centuries the property came to Henry, Duke of Lancaster, whose son-in-law, John o’ Gaunt, Shakespeare’s “time-honoured Lancaster,” once resided here, greatly favouring this one of his many manors, of which the number scattered all over England was so great that it would have been distressingly hard work for him to visit them each and all in the course of a year.

The only son of Henry, first Duke of Lancaster, was drowned here, and his sorrowing father is said never again to have resided at Kempsford. On the north door of the church is nailed a horseshoe, in allusion, it is said, to one cast by his horse on his departure, and immediately nailed up here by the inhabitants. It is, indeed, often said to be the original shoe, but that is an absurdity. A curious other horseshoe legend and observance is to be noted at the town of Lancaster, John o’ Gaunt’s ancient palatine seat. There, where the two principal thoroughfares of the town cross, is “Horseshoe Corner,” so named from the horseshoe let into the roadway, and renewed in every seven years; in memory, says tradition, of a shoe cast there by his horse.

Kempsford church consists of a long and lofty aisleless nave, with tall central tower. The nave is Norman, with Norman doorways and Perpendicular windows, and very beautiful, gorgeous, and impressive.

The ancient manor-house, frequently styled “the Palace,” came at last into the possession of the Hanger family, Earls of Coleraine, one of whom wantonly destroyed it.

The Thames and the Thames and Severn Canal, running almost side by side at Kempsford, now abruptly part company again, and meet only three-and-a-half miles farther on, at Inglesham. The canal is the more easily followed, since the windings of the Thames in those miles add certainly another mile and a half to the distance, and are to be followed only with extreme difficulty by canoe, or afoot through many fields. Hannington Bridge, crossing it nearly a mile and a half below Kempsford, is the first bridge of any importance, and is a solid, stolid modern masonry building, eminently practical and unimaginative, serving to carry the road from Highworth to Fairford across. The remains of an old weir on the way give pause to the exploring canoeist at most seasons; and a small tributary, the river Cole, hailing from Berkshire, is seen on approaching Inglesham.

There are no churches in these surroundings more interesting than the humble little building at Inglesham, one mile from Lechlade, in an almost solitary situation. It is quite a rustic church, chiefly in that best period of gothic architecture, Early English, and it is so far removed from restoration, or even adequate care, that it is almost falling to pieces. Damp and neglect have wrought much havoc here, and the zealous concern of the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings, by preventing any large scheme of repair, seems not unlikely to result, at no distant date, in the entire dissolution of the structure.

The meeting of the canal and river at Inglesham Hound House is marked picturesquely by the grey round tower of the Hound House itself, and by a row of tall poplars. The Round House is nothing but a glorified lock-keeper’s house, situated beside this, the first lock, where the canal sets forth on its way toward Stroud and the Severn. A mile farther downstream lies the town of Lechlade, across the lovely level meadows, with the tall spire of its church glinting whitely in the sun. It is an exquisite view, and so alluring that you are in haste to make acquaintance with Lechlade itself, that promises so romantically. But let us not hurry. Rather that distant view than Lechlade at close quarters; for although it is in very truth an inoffensive town, it is also sufficiently true to remark that it is dulness incarnate, and that this mile-long glimpse will be found the better part.

At Inglesham Round House there are plentiful facilities wherewith to refresh the body and to employ the uncultivated mind; for the lock-keeper’s domain includes a number of apologetic sheds and shanties devised for the benefit of picnic-parties; and anything eatable or drinkable likely to be called for by parties on picnic, or boating, or merely padding the hoof, is obtainable, together with the mechanical music of melodeons or other such appliances that will serve you with pennyworths of minstrelsy, as more or less appropriate sauce. Here also is a greatly-patronised camping-ground, generally plentifully occupied with tents in favourable summers. The river Coln here also flows into the Thames from Fairford.

It is a pretty spot, with its hunchbacked lock-bridge, and the not unhandsome modern foot-and tow-bridge that spans the Thames, helping to compose a picture. It is the Ultima Thule of the Oxford man’s “Upper River”; the farthest point to which it is generally navigable for small boats.

Passing Inglesham Round House, and proceeding over the foot-bridge to the right bank of the Thames, toward Lechlade, we enter Berkshire; crossing over the stone single-span Lechlade bridge into the town and into Gloucestershire.

The town of Lechlade takes its name from the little river Leach which rises at Northleach, fourteen miles in a north-westerly direction, and gives its name to Northleach, East Leach Turville, and East Leach Martin. Although Lechlade—i.e. “Leach-let,” the outlet of the Leach—thus obtains its name, that little river flows into the Thames at a considerable distance away, two and a half miles below the town, at Kelmscott.

The disastrous persons who derived “Cricklade” from “Greeklade,” and invented a university of Greek professors there, made “Lechlade” a rival seat of learning, where Latin was taught, and gave its original name as “Latinlade.” Fuller tells us how this imaginary university—in which he seems to have believed—ended by migrating to Oxford. He is quite poetic about it. “The muses,” he says, “swam down the shores of the river Isis, to be twenty miles nearer to the rising sun.”

Other, and equally weariful, persons made Lechlade, “Leeches-lake,” the home of the College of Physicians (“leeches”) relegated to this obscure town—which, of course, it never was.

It is now hardly conceivable that once upon a time there was a considerable traffic in cheese upon the upper Thames, between Cricklade, Lechlade, Oxford, and London; but such was the case. This was formerly a great cheese-producing district, as it might well be now; and, as roads were bad everywhere and railways were not yet, the only method was to load the cheeses on barges, and so float down-stream.

Lechlade is very well on week-days, in the quiet way of all such decayed townlets, but on Sundays it is not to be recommended. Dulness stalks its streets almost visibly, and the only sounds are the argumentative tones of the preacher in the Wesleyan chapel (a building with black doors and gilded mouldings, after the fashion of a jeweller’s shop) at one end of the street, whose raucous voice can be distinctly heard at the other: not unlike that of a man quarrelling outside a public-house.

But the fates preserve us from a Sunday at Lechlade! It is fully sufficient to skim through the place at such a time, and make for some other that does not so completely figure the empty life. A village is not dull, because it has no pretensions to being a town—and country life is never dull. But at Lechlade the position is so desperate on Sunday that, for sheer emptiness of other incident, a large proportion of the population flock the half-mile that stretches between the town and the railway-station, and hang, deeply interested, upon the bridge, to witness the Sunday evening train depart. It is a curious spectacle, and one that carries the mind of a reminiscent reader back to stories of marooned castaways on desert isles, gazing hopelessly upon the departing ship that has left them to solitude and despair. That must needs be a place of an extreme Sabbath emptiness where the grown-up inhabitants are impelled, by way of enlivening the weary evening, to walk half a mile to witness what seems an incident so commonplace to the inhabitants of places whose pulses beat more robustly.

The “pratie pyramis of stone,” as Leland styles the spire of Lechlade church, is almost the only architectural feature of the townlet, if we except a few mildly-pretty stone-built houses of Tudor gables and mullioned windows; among which may be included the “Swan” inn. None of these are included in the accompanying view of the church, which, although graceful without, and promising interest within, has been miserably treated, and swept clear of anything of note. A few curious carvings are to be noted on the lower stage of the tower exterior, including a singular bearded and capped profile head and a hand grasping a scimitar. Although well done, they look like the idle sport of some irresponsible person or persons, and do not appear to have any particular meaning or local application.

The architecture of the building is of no great interest to archÆologists, being of somewhat late Perpendicular date, but a charming example of tabernacle-work may be noted on one of the piers of the nave-arcade, adjacent to the font. On the gable of the nave, at the east end, is a figure of St. Lawrence, to whom the church is dedicated. He holds a gridiron, the symbol of his martyrdom, in one hand, and the book in the other.

Fairford is the centre of attraction in this district. It lies away north-west, four miles distant, at the end of the little railway from Lechlade, on the river Coln. The Gloucestershire Coln has its name spelled without a final “e” (for what reason no man knoweth), and gives a title of distinction to a group of villages—Coln St. Denis, Coln Rogers, and Coln St. Aldwin’s—that are famed for their beauty. But Fairford has superior claims to notice, chiefly for the celebrated stained-glass windows of its church.

“Fair-ford” may or may not derive its name from its picturesque situation, but the beauty of the ancient ford of the Coln, now and for long past crossed by a bridge, might well warrant an assumption that the name arose from an Æsthetic appreciation of the scenery. Exactly what it is like to-day may be seen by the view shown here, with its noble church placed finely above the meadows.

Fairford is a village that was once a town, prosperous in the far-off days when the wool-growers and the cloth-workers of the Cotswolds made fortunes in their trades and founded families that came in time to a dignified haven in the peerage; and at last declined and died out, or have rejuvenated themselves with American marriages and the dollars incidental thereto. This old process of founding families by way of successful trading we may still see at work, in our own times, under our own intimate observation, encouraged by the institutions of primogeniture and a House of Lords, two most powerful incentives to success.

Fairford nowadays stands aside from all these activities. Its day is done, and except on those occasions when the motor-omnibus between Lechlade and Cirencester plods through, and on the weekly market-day, there is no stir in the place at all. Its fine church and the famous windows alone bring strangers here. The church is due to the munificence of the Tame family. John Tame, merchant, of London, purchased the manor in 1498, and died twenty-seven years later. He must have been a typical “new man,” with plenty yet to spare of the abounding energy that had made his wealth in London, for it was he who began, and nearly completed, the rebuilding of Fairford church. We may well picture him, in our imagination, hopeful of founding a family, as many other successful traders of that expansive age had already done, or were doing. His immediate descendants, however, failed him, and the name is extinct. It was his son, John, who completed the church, and died in 1534. Monumental brasses to the memory of these Tames, and of the third and last, Sir Edmund Tame, are seen here, but their greatest monument is the church itself, a beautiful example of the last developments of Perpendicular architecture, in which the coarsened mouldings, here and there noticeable, the curiously-set pinnacles of the tower, and the character of the grotesques carved on the exterior, alone hint of that new leaven in matters architectural and spiritual, the Renascence, that was presently to overthrow ancient architecture and much else.

But the wonderful windows, twenty-eight in all, the finest and largest set of old stained-glass windows in England, are our chief concern at Fairford.

The question as to the foreign or English workmanship of these windows has always been in dispute; unnecessarily, it would appear to the present writer. They are, for the most of them, obviously of Flemish origin; and a late discovery would seem to have at last settled the point. In the west window of the south aisle will be observed an executioner with a sword, on which is a monogram A. An ape also appears in the window, for no very obvious reason, except that it affords material for a pun; a form of humour greatly favoured by the old craftsmen, as all conversant with ancient churches well know. The monogram and the ape point to the glass being the work of Aeps, a Flemish worker in this sort at the period of the Fairford church-building.

The large figures of the prophets and apostles which fill the windows of the aisles are so unmistakably Flemish that there should never have been the least doubt about them. If there were any room for incertitude, it would be in respect of the great west window, the most remarkable of the series, which appears to disclose no foreign element; but, as it in all other respects obviously belongs to the general scheme, it may perhaps be called Flemish, in common with the others.

A legend long current, accounting for these windows, says that John Tame, asked to pilot a vessel containing them from Nuremberg to Rome, turned his course to England instead, and in fact stole the windows. Now, however fantastic this story, it probably contains this much of truth, that it hands down a foreign origin; but that this glass was acquired in any chance way is altogether unlikely, for it bears every sign of having been designed for this church, and for the exact position and size of the windows it occupies. The designs have been ascribed by some to Albrecht DÜrer, and an old manuscript goes so far as to relate a visit paid by Vandyck to Fairford, when he said the drawing was DÜrer’s work. This, however, would seem to be impossible, as DÜrer was but twenty-three years of age when Fairford church was in course of building.

The great west window affords the chief interest, illustrating as it does the Last Judgment. The upper half, above the dividing transom, displays the company of the blest, assembled round the central figure of Christ in majesty, with St. John Baptist on His right hand, and the Virgin on the left. Three half-circles, somewhat resembling rainbows, surround these figures; the first a deep red band, filled with representations of the seraphim; the second, yellow, with figures of the apostles; the third, blue, filled with the cherubim. Angels fill the outer spaces, quiring before the Throne. These be the glorious surroundings of the good, the constant, and the true.

The Doom, occupying the lower portion of the window, is a striking example of imagination applied to the subject of retribution for sin. The Devil and his infernal host and the flames of Hell were evidently very real to those who pictured these scenes of torment, and to those who first looked upon them, and they could certainly never have thought it possible a time would come when people would either laugh at these ideas of a real personal Devil with attendant fiends, or look upon them as curiosities; certainly without any fear or awe.

Here, in all the grotesque drawing and vivid colouring of which that age was capable, we see the rewards of wickedness. St. Michael the Archangel, in the centre, is shown, holding the scales of justice, wherein the souls of the dead are being weighed. On the left of him is St. Peter, with his key, standing at the gates of Paradise; while on the right are seen the dead rising from their graves, and the flames of Hell, a little subdued by the weathering of the centuries, awaiting them. In the lower right-hand corner is a representation of the Devil himself, with a head like a cottage loaf, in the very opening of his own especial region, holding the red-hot bars, and grinning out between them. Curious auxiliary devils are shown, actively engaged in carrying the dead to torment; among them the remarkable group illustrated here. The tall scaly devil on the right, carrying one of the damned on his back, is a blue fiend; the other, displayed in the act of lashing a woman just rising from her grave, is a strawberry-coloured devil, covered with pips, and glaring with eyes of flame.

Other fiends in green, in red, and in yellow, are pursuing shrieking souls, or, having caught them, are seen flinging them into pits of fire. Some of these places of torment are shown neatly enclosed in masonry, like blast-furnaces. Another fiend, illustrated here, regarding a woman clasping her knees, seems to be rather of an apologetic, gentlemanly type. It is his business to be a tormentor, but he looks genuinely sorry for it.

The other windows are of distinctly inferior interest, displaying as they do mostly saints, but some of the smaller lights repay close attention. In them you see the persecutors of the Church, set forth with every horrific detail of innate malignity; while, hovering over a representation of the Crucifixion is seen a batlike devil, awaiting the last breath of the impenitent thief, to secure his escaping soul.

These remarkable windows owe their preservation to the care taken of them by William Oldisworth of Fairford, during the Puritan upheaval, probably with the aid of Lady Verney, wife of Sir Thomas Verney, lord of the manor. She was daughter and heiress of Sir Edmund, the last of the Tames, and interested, of course, in seeing that the gifts of her ancestors were in safe keeping. The glass was, accordingly, carefully removed and buried in Fairford Park. There it remained until the restoration of order, when it was exhumed and replaced. A tall classic column stands as a monument to this singular history.

It is not always so easy a matter as you might suppose to hire a boat at Lechlade for the thirty-two miles’ voyage to Oxford; which, after all, is not only the best way of seeing the Thames, but the Thames Valley villages also. Unless considerable notice is given, especially if it be the week before Bank Holiday, the boat-proprietor is extremely chary of letting his craft out of sight, and it becomes a matter of favour and delicate negotiation to secure a boat, even though you tender good value in coin of the realm for its hire. The proprietor’s point of view is that it is all very well for pleasuring folk to drop easily down to Oxford with the stream in two days, but it remains for him, or one of his men, to get it back against stream; not so easy a matter, even though the stream be gentle. In fact, the demand for boats for the trip is not sufficiently large for special arrangements for cartage back by road to be made; and that familiar summer sight anywhere between Richmond and Oxford, a slowly-progressing van, laden with boats, rolling along the intervening miles of highway, is not visible here. But, although the hiring is, as already said, somewhat difficult, the explorer has at least the satisfaction of finding the Upper River secluded and unspoiled.

Immediately below Lechlade begins that long and ever-increasing series of locks by which the Thames Conservancy has converted the river into an astounding succession of toll-gates; with this result, that you are not long out of sight of one lock before another comes in view; while lock-cuts in addition grow longer, as well as more numerous, and tend to make the river in many places very formal. But, at any rate, the true river-course, leading to the weirs, or often round by what are now backwaters, is by contrast, and by disuse, rendered often a very paradise of wild, untended life.

The first lock of the forty-two locks on the Thames is that of St. John’s, which, like Lechlade Bridge, often styled “St. John’s Bridge,” takes its name from the Priory of St. John the Baptist that once stood hard by. The Priory was a Hospice as well, and was charged with the care of travellers who came this way. As part of their charge the Black Canons who formed the establishment built the original bridge across the Thames here.

St. John’s Bridge, like some carefully-restored old dowager, by no means looks its age, but all those who care to know are credibly informed that “This bridge, though often repaired and altered on the upper part, is the original structure of great antiquity, having existed prior to the reign of Henry III.” The “Trout” inn, formerly the “St. John Baptist’s Head,” stands beside a backwater, on the site of the Priory that was disestablished so long ago as 1473.

At St. John’s Lock the lock-keeper not only hands you the first of the many threepenny pink tickets that are painfully familiar to those who cruise upon the Thames, but another in addition, for Buscot Lock, one-mile-and-a-quarter onward, where the poor, impoverished (or, perhaps more likely, the mean, parsimonious) Conservancy cannot, or at least does not, maintain a resident lock-keeper; with the result that you have the choice of working your own way through, or of leaving the job to the official hands of the keeper at St. John’s, who in the latter event cycles the distance. But in any case you pay your threepence for each lock.

The Thames from this point becomes singularly lonely. Few roads cross it, and the villages are small and infrequent, and are rarely to be seen from a boat. The ideal method of exploration is to take a bicycle on the boat and to lay it across the bows, where it is out of the way and yet easily within reach when wanted. Then, at some convenient point, where a road or path comes down to the river, and places likely to be of interest are but a mile, or two or three miles, distant, it is your easiest method to have out the machine and explore swiftly and with ease, among little-visited ways.

Buscot, however, on the Berkshire shore, is so close at hand that its church may easily be seen from the boat and visited by the mere effort of pulling to the bank under the hoary willows, and stepping into the meadow beside whose buttercup-spangled grass it stands.

Buscot—formerly Burwardscott, then corrupted into Burscott, and finally into the present rendering—is a place of some note, artistically and agriculturally, for the little parish church has an east window by Burne-Jones, representing the Good Shepherd, instead of the usual ecclesiastical-furnishers’ impossible stained-glass saints. We may perhaps, without offence, congratulate ourselves and all concerned that those stained-glass freaks are, and must ever have been, impossibilities. They have the most unprepossessing countenances, of an impossibly holy type, and generally the vilest taste in coloured robes; while of the Burne-Jones saints we can at least say that, although commonly eight feet high in proportion to their heads, and generally of a consumptive type, they are at least recognisably like human beings. And a saint, you know, was originally, before he or she was given his or her halo and other extraordinary attachments, merely a more than usually good person of just ordinary physical attributes. I don’t think anyone will have the hardihood to deny that. One other prime curiosity the church of Buscot possesses: a very highly enriched pulpit of wood, with panels painted in various religious subjects, by or after artists of the Italian School. A panel representing the Annunciation is more remarkable than ever was intended, for among the attendant Wise Men from the East is shown a negro with black head and arms and white legs! “Can the Ethiopian change his skin?” Partially, it should seem.

Buscot manor-house is as notable for containing the Burne-Jones “Briar Rose” sequence of paintings illustrating the ancient legend of the Sleeping Beauty, as the owner is for his successful shire-horse breeding. It is not often that the love of art and keen interest in shire horses are shared equally by one man, as they are by Sir Alexander Henderson, of Buscot, who is at once the owner of the finest Burne-Jones pictures and the breeder of “Buscot Harold,” champion of three successive London Shire Horse Shows.

It is interesting to know that Buscot manor-house, standing in its park on the ridge above the river, on the way to Faringdon, was built from the stones of the demolished palace at Kempsford, even though we may see only an eighteenth-century solidity and comfort, rather than any hint of beauty or history in the re-edified stones.

Hart’s Weir, or Eaton Weir, as the Conservancy elects rather to style it, is but a mile-and-a-quarter below Buscot, and is one of the few old-fashioned weirs, fitted with paddles and rymers, of which a few are removed for the passage of a boat, that now remain. Beside it stands the “Anchor” inn, with not another house in sight, and the little church of Eaton Hastings—it would be an affectation to speak of the village, unless a few scattered cottages may so be named—two miles away, by the riverside, but so hidden that its existence is not suspected by passing oarsmen.

It is amusing to observe the blank puzzlement that overspreads the faces, and governs the actions, of those occupants of boats from Lechlade who, coming for the first time to this unfamiliar type of weir and lock combined, helplessly steer from one side of the river to the other, in search of the familiar lock-cut and lock-gates, and, failing to find them (as well they may, for such things do not exist here), at last landing and enquiring for them at the inn. Eaton Weir is one of the last now left of the old weirs that served the turn of the river in days of old, and they are therefore now so uncommon that none need feel ashamed of coming unexpectedly for the first time to one, and not comprehending the situation. But those who are taken by surprise here and cannot understand why they can find no way through, do, it is evident by leisured observation, feel a kind of shame at being so completely “sold.” Eaton Weir, and others of its kind, are, in fact, complete barriers across the river, affording a check to all craft until four or five of the paddles are pulled up. The construction is simple, consisting of a sill, generally a heavy beam of wood, laid across the bed of the river, with a similar beam crossing immediately over it, from bank to bank. These form the framework of the weir, which is completed by a number of stout supports going perpendicularly down at intervals from upper beam to lower, and by a continuous row of “paddles” set between them. The “paddles” are, roughly speaking, in the shape of shovels, but much longer in the handle and bigger in the blade. It is obvious that when all the paddles are down in their places the head of water must be considerably raised above the weir, although a volume of water pours through all the while. To admit the passage of a boat, the weir-keeper draws up four paddles or more, and then, if the craft be going down-stream, it is guided by the steersman carefully to the weir, and deftly allowed to be shot through by the force of the waterfall thus created in the opening. A little mild excitement generally accompanies this “shooting the rapids,” even though the fall be only about eighteen inches to two feet when the paddles are first drawn, and reduced to almost nothing if you wait a few minutes while the head of accumulated water runs itself away. The Thames Conservancy will have its dues, and whether it be a lock or a weir you pass, you render threepence for a small boat, and receive a pink ticket in return.

And so one comes to Kelmscott, which owes its name to some Saxon thane, just as Buscot derives from some dim ancient Burward. But of that Kenelm whose “cot” this was, history says no more than it does of Burward. If we adventure into the hinterland at the back of Bampton—whose full name is Bampton-in-the-Bush—we shall find two other “cots,” or “cotts,” Alvescott, and Kencot—and there is Cote (which is merely “cot” spelled in another way, and unappropriated to any personal name) further down-stream behind Shifford.

At Kelmscott the river Leach comes really to its “lade,” or outflow; its “let,” or outlet: a similar word being used at Oaklade (“uisk-lade,” or water outlet), where the Swillbrook joins the Thames, and at Cricklade, where the Churn falls in. In the words of the presiding genius of the place, the late William Morris, Socialist, poet, decorative-artist, demagogue, literary man, and master-printer, this is “a reach of the river where on the side of the towing-path is a highish bank with a thick whispering bed of reeds before it, and on the other side a higher bank, clothed with willows that dip into the stream, and crowned by ancient elm-trees.” Very true. It is also a beautiful and sequestered spot; and although now, since the death of William Morris in 1896, become a much-talked-of new literary shrine, few are those who trouble its ancient peace.

The village lies near the banks of the Thames, with a rough, unkempt piece of common opposite the old Elizabethan, stone, gabled manor-house that was for some years the home of Morris and of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Nothing but the upper windows of the old house can be glimpsed from the road, for a very high wall effectually guards its seclusion.

Morris loved the place with an intense love, and brought back to the house much of its old ways, with much else of his own, in artistic “Morris tapestries” and other hangings, such as were designed by him and Burne-Jones, made at Merton by Wimbledon, and sold at the establishment of Morris & Co. in Oxford Street. We do not commonly look upon Socialists as anything but discontented artisans and weekly wage-earners in general; but Morris performed his share of street-corner spouting with such, and yet dreamed golden dreams of the World Beautiful, and did much to make it so. But, at the same time, his lovely wares in wall-papers, in hangings and carpets, in furniture and stained-glass, were of the most expensive kind that none of those “have nots” could by any means possess. The famous Morris books, too, produced at the Kelmscott Press, Hammersmith, were of those prices that only plutocrats could afford, and were produced strictly after the individualistic and anti-Socialistic theory of “limited edition.”

The only new house in Kelmscott village is one built to preserve the memory of this man who wrought such beautiful things and preached doctrines so impossible; and on the front of it is a very ornate tablet, bearing a portrait-medallion. The work is, however, in such low relief and so elaborated that it is difficult to be clearly distinguished.

Away through the scattered village, and out at the other end, stands the little decayed parish church of St. George: decrepit and surrounded in most melancholy fashion by spindly overhanging lime-trees. The place oppresses the stranger, even on summer days, with gloom, which is increased as he walks up the dank little pathway to the south porch, among the serried graves of a numerous local family, each one within his concrete bed. The quite plain headstone to William Morris is close by.

There is no feeling of this melancholy in the account written by Morris, in his News from Nowhere, of a village church; but which was evidently a description of this:

“We went into the church, which was a simple little building with one aisle divided from the nave by three round arches, a chancel, and a rather roomy transept for so small a building, the windows mostly of the graceful Oxfordshire fourteenth-century type. There was no modern architectural decoration on it; it looked indeed as if none had been attempted since the Puritans whitewashed the mediaeval saints and histories on the wall.”

The building is chiefly of Early English date, consisting of nave, chancel, rudimentary north aisle of a makeshift character, and north and south transepts and clerestory. There is a rough tub-font. Some traces of ancient colouring are found on the round-headed arches of the nave-arcade; while the accompanying illustration will show that the sculptured capitals of the columns are of great, if simple beauty, and doubtless studied in the long ago from the water-plants of the Thames.

KELMSCOTT CHURCH.