Charles G. Harper

IFFLEY, AND THE WAY THITHER—NUNEHAM, IN STORM AND IN SUNSHINE

The way from Oxford by road to Iffley is a terrible two miles of “residential” suburbia. So soon as the pilgrim has come out of Oxford, over Magdalen Bridge, and, taking the right-hand fork of roads, has passed St. Clements, he has entered upon the villa-lined Iffley road, in which the houses are numbered to over nine hundred. I hope I am neither a Prig nor a Superior Person, but I fully confess I should not like to live—or to “reside,” if you will have it so—in a house numbered well on into the hundreds. I do not, broadly speaking, envy our grandfathers of sixty or seventy years ago, for they are dead and we are among the living, but they had at least this advantage, among, of course, many serious disadvantages that we fortunately do not experience—that their towns (always excepting London) had no suburbs. Our ancestors of not so very long ago stepped out of their ancient streets and found themselves at once in the country. We have, commonly, at the threshold of every town, miles of undistinguished modern streets, commonplace, unhistorical, depressing. But, at any rate, there are no tramways, electric or other, along the Iffley road, and that is something to be thankful for, viewed from the Æsthetic standpoint, although it may leave something to be desired on the score of convenience.

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The best way to reach Iffley is undoubtedly by water. The Thames, from Folly Bridge to Iffley Lock, is not, it is true, at its best, but it, at any rate, retains something of the genius of locality, which a suburban road does not, and anything should be preferable to that road.

But, alas! Iffley Mill, once the glory of the river at this point, is at the moment of writing, a blackened heap of ruins, and it is not expected that it will be rebuilt. Even if it be, that will not be the Iffley Mill beloved of artists these many generations past. Thus ends the old manorial mill that has existed, in one form or another, on this spot, since the Norman conquest, and probably earlier still, for the place is mentioned in Anglo-Saxon charters dated 945 A.D., in which it is styled “Giftelei.” It is said that “Iffley” has been spelled in eighty different ways, and Iffley Mill has probably been sketched, painted, and photographed as many thousand times; and, that being so, we will leave the mill, for once, unillustrated.

Enthusiastic local writers have often claimed for Iffley church that it is the finest Norman country parish church in England. It is not really quite that, but it is certainly among the finest. It is a large building, of late Norman architecture, built about 1170, when the gaunt, grim early Norman style had developed into something which, although not less massive, was more ornate and decorative. It is a church without aisles. The West front is imposing, and particularly rich, exhibiting a deeply-recessed door, with circular window above, and three windows above that. The circular window is a restoration, of some fifty years ago, of the original, destroyed in the eighteenth century and replaced by a larger, with the object, sufficiently laudable in itself, but archÆologically lamentable, of admitting more light. The highly-enriched doorway, with characteristic beak, cable, and chevron devices, is protected by a bold hood-mould, finely sculptured with the signs of the zodiac. The low, square central tower is unaltered, but most of the windows in the body of the church have been remodelled at different periods in the long history of Gothic architecture. The chancel, originally apsidal, was lengthened about 1270, in the Early English style. The chancel-arch is curiously carved, and the roof is massively groined in stone. The ancient black marble font is as old as the building itself, and may be compared with a somewhat similar, but more elaborate, series in Winchester Cathedral, East Meon church, and St. Michael’s, Southampton. On the north side of Iffley church is an enormous, widespreading yew, probably as old as the church itself, and still healthy. Beside it stands a restored churchyard cross.

Among the deprived ministers at the time of the Commonwealth was Charles Forbench, vicar of Iffley, who was imprisoned for persisting in reading the Book of Common Prayer when its use was forbidden by the Parliament. “If,” said he, “I must not read it, I am resolved I will say it by heart, in spite of all the rogues in England.” This was a very fine spirit of resistance against tyranny, and we must all resist tyranny, from whatsoever quarter it proceeds; but it may otherwise be doubted if the Book of Common Prayer is, or ever was, worth fighting for, or whether prayers said by rote—which is really what Forbench meant when he said “by heart”—are the kind of supplications that win to the Throne of Grace. For my own part, had I been one of those Parliamentary Commissioners, I suspect I would have made Forbench take a meal off the Book of Common Prayer, as he was so fond of it; but it would not be a very nourishing meal, physically, or spiritually I take leave to say.

Nuneham—every one knows Nuneham; for, by favour of the Harcourts, who own the place, it has for many years past been a popular spot for rustic teas. I raise my hat, or cap, as the case may be, to the Harcourts, past and present—to the memory of Sir William, that doughty political protagonist, and voluminous letter-writer to The Times over the signature of “Historicus,” who, although quite capable of leading a party, chose to be merely the trusty lieutenant of the windiest political wind-bag of any and every age; and to the present Mr. Lewis Harcourt, for the access they have permitted, and still extend, to their lovely domain. Every one, I say, knows Nuneham, for does not Salter, who runs his comfortable steamboats between Oxford and Richmond, drop passengers here, on the banks, and does he not call and pick them up again at the close of the day, conveying them from Oxford and back at the cost of one shilling? Yea; thousands have made that trip; and, given a fine day, there is, experto crede, not any trip more delightful. But if the day turn tearful, then Nuneham is the very last place to which any one who is not a fish or a duck would wish to go. Do I not know the misery of it at such times: the landing on the wet, clayey bank, under the trees of the glorious woods, which shed great spattering drops of rain on one; the half-mile walk, or rather, butter-slide, by the woodland track, to that picturesque thatched cottage in the lovely backwater, where the cottagers in fine weather supply open-air teas to these pilgrims, and in wet weather do the like; refusing, much to the said pilgrims’ disgust, to give them the much-needed shelter in their own dry and comfortable quarters; with the result that those unhappy persons grow cold and shivery and develop colds in their heads, and entertain savage thoughts of Nuneham? Truly, no more miserable experience is possible than that of sitting in one of the picturesquely-thatched arbours by the waterside, and dallying over a lukewarm tea, awaiting the hour for the up-river steamer’s arrival, while the moisture-laden wind comes searchingly in at the open front. And it does not make matters better to know that those disobliging cottagers are, all the while, crouching over their own roaring wood-log fires.

But let us dwell no longer upon these harrowing experiences. It does not always rain at Nuneham—but only when we want to go there. Then it rains all day. But when the sun shines, Nuneham is the ideal place for an idle day, and those draughty arbours the most exquisite of nooks. From them you look out upon a river scene that closely resembles some stage “set.” The trees, right and left, or, to speak in stage conventional language—on Prompt and Off-prompt sides—hang in that almost impossibly picturesque way we expect in the first act of a melodrama of the old Adelphi or Drury Lane type. You know the kind of thing; or, if you do not, go to Nuneham and see it. Anyway, take my word for it that this is sheerly competitive with the stage. Beneath these trees, whose other side, you are quite convinced, is merely canvas and framework, are the usual conventional rocks, on one of which the villain will presently sit and gloat over the impending fall of the hero. And swans come lazily paddling up to the rush-fringed margin of the river; and, really, all you miss is the limelight.

But if this scene seems to have been bodily taken from the stage, the queer timber bridge that here crosses the backwater gives quite another aspect to the place. Looking upon it for the first time, it appears in the likeness of some old friend whom, for the moment, you cannot exactly place; and then at last you have it. It closely resembles that bridge on the time-honoured Willow-pattern Plate, with which Oriental china has long familiarised us. If only we had the pagoda to one side, and the queer little figures, carrying their yet more queer little bundles, crossing it, the scene would be conventionally complete. To emphasise and properly accentuate these remarks, I include a view, taken by that amiable photographic friend and companion to whom the most of the pictures in this book are due. I have not dared to publish a view of the bridge looking upstream, for that and Iffley Mill are absolutely the two most hackneyed views of the river in existence. Instead, therefore, we are here looking downstream.

Nuneham is a curious combination of the ugly and the beautiful. The great mansion, ugliness incarnate, is surrounded by lovely and stately gardens, created about 1765 by the masterful Earl Harcourt, typical among the great landowners of that age. There is something not a little awesome about the megalomaniacal methods of those great ones of that period, who had such autocratic wills, so much money, and such unquestioned power. Earl Harcourt, in common with many others of his class and of his period, could not endure that the village and the church of Nuneham should be within sight of his windows, and so he abolished both, causing a new village to arise fringing the London road, and a new church, which stands as an indictment of the then prevailing want of taste, being in the likeness of a Greek temple, to be built in the woods at the back of the mansion. It is dated 1764. Here lies Sir William Harcourt, who died in 1904.

I will not be so gross as to attempt a description of the loveliness of the natural beauties of Nuneham, or of the views from it: only let it be said that the view from the grassy knoll on which stands the old Carfax conduit, brought from Oxford, is exquisite, commanding, as it does, distant peeps of Oxford in one direction, and of Abingdon in another, with lovely stretches of meadowlands, woods, and water, in between. There is, it may well be supposed, no more beautiful fountain in England than this old conduit from the four cross-roads in the centre of Oxford; but the expansion of population and the increase of traffic have ever banished the beautiful, and thus this fine Renascence building, given to the city of Oxford by Otho Nicholson in 1610, was, so early as 1787, removed as an inscription upon it states, “to enlarge the High Street.” The University, the inscription goes on to state, then presented it to George Simon, Earl Harcourt. If it were worth accepting, it certainly was also worth keeping, and that the University could thus give it away reflects no credit upon that body. The repetitive “O. N.” observed upon the conduit stands for the initials of Otho Nicholson.