Charles G. Harper

SONNING—HURST, “IN THE COUNTY OF WILTS”—SHOTTESBROOKE—WARGRAVE

As Reading can by no means be styled a village, seeing that its population numbers over 72,000, the fact of its not being treated of in these pages will perhaps be excused. You cannot rusticate at Reading: the electric tramways, the great commercial premises, and the crowded state of its streets forbid; but Reading, taken frankly as a town and a manufacturing town at that, is not at all a place for censure. The Kennet, however, that flows through it, has here become a very different Kennet from that which sparkles in the Berkshire meads between Hungerford and Kintbury, and has a very dubious and deterrent look where it is received into the Thames.

The flat, open shores at Reading presently give place to the wooded banks approaching Sonning, where the fine trees of Holme Park are reflected in the waters of the lock—the lock that was tended for many years, until his death, about 1889, by a lock-keeper who also kept bees, made beehives, and wrote poetry. Sonning, and its Thames-side “Parade,” certainly invite to poetry.

To say there is no Thames-side village prettier, or in any way more delightful, than Sonning is vague praise and also in some ways understates its peculiar attractiveness, which, strange to say, seems to increase, rather than decrease, with the years. It might have been expected that a village but three miles from the great and increasing town of Reading would suffer many indignities from that proximity, and would be infested with such flagrant nuisances as wayside advertisement-hoardings and street-loafers, but these manifestations of the zeitgeist are, happily, entirely absent.

Let us, however, halt for a moment to give a testimonial of character to Reading itself, which is far above the average of great towns in these and many other matters. Loafers and street-hoardings are found there, without doubt—and can we find the modern town of its size where they are not?—but they do not obtrude; and, in short, Reading is, with all its bustle of business, a likeable place.

There are reasons for Sonning remaining unspoiled. They are not altogether sufficient reasons, for they obtain in other once delightful villages similarly situated, which have unhappily been ravaged by modern progress; but here they have by chance sufficed. They are found chiefly in the happy circumstances that Sonning lies three-quarters of a mile off the main-road—off that Bath road, oh! my brethren, that was once so delightful, with its memories of a bypast coaching-age; and is now little better than a race-track for motor-cars, and, by reason of their steel-studded tyres, cursed with a bumpy surface full of pot-holes. Time was when the surface of the Bath road was perfection. Nowadays, no ingenuity of mortal road-surveyors can keep it in repair, for the suction of air caused by pneumatic tyres travelling at great speed tears out the binding material and leaves only loose grit and stones. The Bath road on a fine summer’s day has become unendurable by reason of the dust raised in this manner. If you stand a distance away, in the fields, out of sight of the actual road, its course can yet be distinctly traced for a long way by the billows of dust, rising like smoke from it.

Happily, motor-cars do but rarely come into Sonning, although at the turning out of the high road a prominent advertisement of the Bull, the White Hart, or the French Horn—the three hostelries that Sonning can boast—invites them hither.

The other prominent reason for this village being allowed to remain quiet is found in the fact of Twyford, the nearest railway station, being two miles distant.

There are many branching streams of the Thames here, and the hamlet of Sonning Eye, on the Oxfordshire side, takes its name either from this abundance of water, or from the eyots, or islands, formed by these several channels, crossed by various bridges.

Sonning Bridge par excellence is a severely unornamented structure of red brick, obviously built by the very least imaginative of architects, in the eighteenth century. If it were new it would be an offence, but there is now a mellowness of colour in that old red brick, embroidered richly as it is in green and gold by the lichens of nearly two centuries, that gives the old bridge a charm by no means inherent in its originator’s design.

Trees, great, noble, upstanding woodland trees, lovingly enclasp Sonning village and form a background for its ancient cottages and fine old mansions, and against the dark green background of them you see on summer afternoons the blue smoke curling up lazily from rustic chimneys. In midst of this the embattled church-tower rises unobtrusively; and indeed the church is so hidden, although it is a large church, that strangers are generally directed to find it by way of the Bull Inn: a rambling old hostelry occupying two sides of a square, and covered in summer with a mantle of roses and creepers. And it must, by the way, not be forgotten that Sonning in general displays a very wealth of flowers for the delight of the stranger.

I would it were possible to be enthusiastic upon the church, but thorough “restoration,” and a marvellously hideous monument to Thomas Rich, Alderman of Gloucester, 1613, and his son, Sir Thomas Rich, Bart., 1667, forbid. There are brasses on the floor of the nave, to Laurence Fyton, 1434, steward of the manor of Sonning, and to William Barber, 1549, bailiff of the same manor; with others.

Here, too, is a monument of Canon Pearson, vicar for over forty years, and reverently spoken of—or is it the monument that is reverenced?—by the caretaker. I have sought greatly to discover something by which the Canon’s career may be illustrated in these pages, but, upon my soul, the most notable things available are precisely that he held this excellent living for that long period, and that he sometimes preached before Queen Victoria. These things do not in themselves form a title to reverence.

Something of the distinct stateliness of Sonning is due to the fact that anciently the Bishops of Salisbury were owners of the manor, and before them the Bishops of the Saxon diocese of Dorchester. Their manor-house was in the time of Leland “a fair old house of stone by the Tamise ripe”; but of this desirable residence nothing remains. The Deanery, too, has disappeared, but the fine old stone and brick enclosing-walls of its grounds remain, and there a picturesque modern residence has been built. Those walls, of an immense thickness and solidity, are indeed a sight to see, for the saxifrage and many beautiful flowering plants growing in and upon them.

Sonning itself, being a place so delightful, invites those to whom locality has interest to explore into the country that lies in the rear of it. In a work styled Thames Valley Villages we may go very much where we please, and here the valley broadens out considerably, for it includes, and insensibly merges with, that of the river Loddon, which flows down quite a long way, even from the heights of northern Hampshire. The Loddon, the loveliest tributary of the Thames, flows into it by three mouths, from one mile to two miles and a half below Sonning, and its various loops and channels make the four-mile stretch of country in the rear a particularly moist and water-logged district. Here, crossing the dusty Bath road at Twyford, which takes its name from the ancient double ford of the Loddon at this point, the secluded village of Hurst may be found. Its name of “Hurst,” i.e. a woodland, indicates its situation in what was once the widespreading Windsor Forest. The village lies along gravelly roads, scattered about fragments of village green and a large pond; its church, hidden three-quarters of a mile away, forming, with a country inn and some old almshouses, a curiously isolated group. To see the interesting Norman and Early English church, with red-brick tower, dated 1612, crowned with quaint cupola, is worth some effort; for it contains a very handsome chancel-screen, probably placed here circa 1500. The repainting of it in 1876, under the direction of J. D. Sedding, the architect who then restored the church, is, if indeed in accordance with the traces of the original decoration then found, certainly more curious than beautiful; but it should be seen, if only to show that our ancestors were, after all, not a little barbaric in their schemes of decoration. The hour-glass, with beautiful wrought-iron bracket dated 1636, should be noticed. Behind it, on the wall, is painted “As this Glasse runneth, so Man’s Life passeth.” A queer memorial brass to Alse Harison, representing the lady in a four-poster bed, is on the north wall. A large grey-and-white marble monument to others of the Harison family includes an epitaph on Philip Harison, who died in 1683. The sorrowing author of it ends ingeniously:

Surely a mind capable of such ingenious imagery on such a subject cannot have been wholly downcast.

The old almshouses by the church were founded, as appears on a tablet over the entrance, by one William Barker:

This Hospitall for the
Maintenance of eight poor persons,
Each at 6d. pr diem for euer, was
Erected and Founded in ye year 1664
At the Sole Charge of
William Barker
of Hurst, in the County of
Wilts, Esq.
Who dyed ye 25th of March, 1685
And lies buried in the South
Chancell of this Parish.

Note you that, gentle reader, “the county of Wilts,” we being in the midst of Berkshire? A considerable tract of surrounding country is in fact (or was until comparatively recent years) a detached portion of Wiltshire, and was invariably shown so on old maps. Examples of such isolated portions of counties, and even of detached fragments of parishes, are by no means rare: Worcestershire in England and Cromartyshire in Scotland, forming the most notable examples; but the reasons for these things are obscure, and all attempts at explaining them amount to little more than the unsatisfying conclusion that they are thus because—well, because they are, you know! That is the net result of repeated discussions upon the subject in Notes and Queries, in which publication of wholly honorary and unpaid contributions the majority of noters, querists, and writers of replies have during the space of some sixty years past been engaged in chasing their own tails, like so many puppies. The process is amusing enough, but as you end where you began, the net result is no great catch.

Apart from legends and traditions, it would seem that the explanation of the Berkshire districts of Hurst, Twyford, Ruscombe, Whistley Green, and a portion of Wokingham having been accounted in Wiltshire, may be found in the fact, already remarked, that Sonning was a manor of the Bishops of Salisbury. The question appears to have been largely an ecclesiastical affair. The anomaly of a portion of Wiltshire being islanded in Berkshire was, however, ended by Acts of Parliament during the reigns of William the Fourth and Queen Victoria, by which the area concerned was annexed to Berkshire.

Returning from Hurst to Twyford, expeditions to Ruscombe, St. Lawrence Waltham, and Shottesbrooke will amply repay the explorer in these wilds—for wilds they are in the matter of perplexing roads. They are good roads, in so far that they are level, but they would seem to have come into existence on no plan; or, if plan there ever were, a malicious plan, intended to utterly confound and mislead the stranger. But this is no unpleasant district in which to wander awhile.

Ruscombe is notable as the place where William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, died, in 1718. Its church stands solitary in the meadows—a red-brick, eighteenth-century building, as ruddy as a typical beef-eating and port-drinking farmer of Georgian days. The neighbouring St. Lawrence Waltham is entirely delightful. The fine church tower of St. Lawrence, the ancient brick and plaster and timbered Bell Inn, and the old village pound, with an aged elm at each corner of it, composing a rarely-beautiful picture.

The stone spire of Shottesbrooke church is seen, not far off, peering up from among the trees of Shottesbrooke Park, in which it is situated. When we see a stone church spire in Berkshire, where we do not commonly find ancient spires, we are apt to suspect at once a modern church, and our suspicions are generally well-founded; but here is a remarkably fine Decorated building of the mid-fourteenth century (it was built 1337). It stands finely in a noble park for many years belonging to the Vansittart family, and has been well described as “a cathedral in miniature.” Its origin appears by tradition to have been due to the unexpected recovery of Sir William Trussell, the then owner of the estate, who had been brought to the verge of death by a long-continued course of drunkenness. He built it by way of thankoffering, and as he would seem to have been intemperate in all he did, he not only built this very large and noble church, but founded a college for five priests. This establishment went the way of all such things, hundreds of years ago, and the great building, standing solitary in the park, except for the vicarage and the manor-house, now astonishes the stranger at its loneliness. He wonders where the village is, and may well continue to wonder, for village there is none.

A versifier in the Ingoldsby manner narrates the building of it by Trussell:

A legend of the building of the spire tells how the architect, completing it by fixing the weathercock, called for wine to drink a health to the King, and, drinking, fell to the ground and was dashed to pieces. The only sound he uttered, says the legend, was “O! O!” and that exclamation was the sole inscription carved upon his tomb, erected upon the spot where he fell. Many have been those pilgrims drawn to Shottesbrooke by this picturesque story, seeking that tomb. Tombstones of any kind are few in Shottesbrooke churchyard, and the only one that can possibly mark the architect’s grave is a coped stone on which an expectant and confiding person may indeed faintly trace “O, O”; but as the stone is probably not so old as the fourteenth century, and as it is extremely likely that an expectant person will, if in any way possible, find that which he expects, it would not be well to declare for the genuineness of it. But it is at any rate a very old and cracked and moss-grown stone.

Of a bygone Vansittart, who filled this family living for forty-four years, we read some highly eulogistic things upon a monument near by. Born 1779, he died 1847, “the faithful pastor of an attached flock. Meek, mild, benevolent. In domestic life tender, kind, considerate. In all relations revered, respected, beloved.” One is tempted to repeat the unfortunate architect’s exclamation, “O! O!”

The church, serving no village, and standing in a park close by the noble country seat of the Vansittarts, is for all practical purposes a manorial chapel. That it has long been used as such is very evident from the many tablets to Vansittarts which line its walls. The remains of the founder’s tomb are seen in the north transept, in a long stretch of delicate arcading along the north wall, beautifully wrought in chalk.

A singular effigy to William Throckmorton, Doctor of Laws, “warden of this church,” who died in 1535, is on the north side of the chancel. It is of diminutive size, and is what archÆologists call an “interrupted effigy,” showing only head and breast and feet, the middle being occupied by a brass with Latin inscription.

There are several brasses in the church: the finest of them, a fourteenth-century example in the chancel, very deeply and beautifully cut, representing two men; one with forked beard, a long gown and a sword; the other an ecclesiastic. They stand side by side, and are reputed to represent the founder and his brother, but the inscription has been torn away, together with most of the canopy.

A brass in the north transept to Richard Gill, Sergeant of the “Backhouse”—i.e. the Bakehouse—to Henry the Seventh and Henry the Eighth, describes him as “Bailey of the Seaven Hundreds of Cookeham and Bray in the Forest Division.” Near by is a brass to “Thomas Noke, who for his great Age and vertuous Lyfe was reverenced of all Men, and was commonly called Father Noke, created Esquire by King Henry the Eight. He was of Stature high and comly; and for his excellency in Artilery made Yeoman of the Crowne of England which had in his Lyfe three Wives, and by every of them some Fruit and Off-spring, and deceased the 21 of August 1567 in the Yeare of his Age 87, leaving behind him Julyan his last Wife, two of his Brethren, one Sister, one only Son, and two Daughters living.”

Thomas Noke is represented with his three wives, while six daughters and four sons are grouped beneath.

Returning through Twyford to Sonning, the outlet of the Loddon,

is found in that exquisite backwater, the Patrick Stream, where a picture of surpassing beauty is seen at every turn. By a long, winding course, fringed richly with rushes, and overhung with lovely trees, the Patrick Stream wanders through meadow lands and finally emerges into the Thames again, just below Shiplake Lock. By dint of making this long but delightful dÉtour, and thus avoiding Shiplake Lock, it is possible to do the Thames Conservancy out of one of those many threepences for which it has so insatiable an appetite.

Shiplake, on the Oxfordshire bank, is the place where Tennyson was married, but the church has been largely rebuilt since then. The windows are mostly filled with ancient glass brought from the abbey of St. Bertin, at St. Omer. Shiplake Mill, once a picturesque feature, is now, at this time of writing, a squalid heap of ruins.

Wargrave, on the Berkshire side, is said to have once been a market-town, and it is now growing again so rapidly that a town it will soon be once more. Its houses crowd together on the banks, where the George and Dragon Inn stands, giving upon the slipway to the water: all looking out upon the spacious Oxfordshire meadows. The sign of the George and Dragon Inn—a double-sided one—painted by G. D. Leslie, R.A., and J. E. Hodgson, R.A., in 1874, shows St. George on one side, as we are accustomed to see him on the reverse of coins, engaged in slaying the dragon; and on the other, the monster duly slain, the saint is refreshing himself with a noble tankard of ale.

Wargrave church has been restored extensively, and its tower is of red brick, and not ancient; but it forms, for all that, a very charming picture. Here we may see a tablet to the memory of that remarkable prig, Thomas Day, the author of that egregious work for the manufacture of other prigs, Sandford and Merton. He was born about 1748, and died 1789. Of his good and highly moral life there can be no doubt; but moral philosophers are rarely personÆ gratÆ in a naughty and frivolous world. We fight shy of them, and of all instructive and improving persons, and make light of their works; and if nowadays we read Sandford and Merton at all, it is for the purpose of extracting some satirical amusement from the pompous verbiage of the Reverend Mr. Barlow, and from the respective “wickedness” and goodness of Tommy and the exemplary Harry.

Among Thomas Day’s peculiar views was that by a proper method of education (i.e. a method invented by himself) there was scarcely anything that could not be accomplished. He certainly began courageously, about the age of twenty-one, by choosing two girls, each about twelve years of age, whom he proposed to educate after his formula, and then to marry the most suitable of them. He, however, did not carry this plan so far as the marrying of either. It is not clear whom we should congratulate: the girls or their eccentric guardian, who at last met his death from the kick of a horse which resented the entirely novel philosophical principles on which he was training it.

In the churchyard is the grave of Madame Tussaud, of the famous waxworks, and here lies Sir Morell Mackenzie, the surgeon who attended the Emperor Frederick. He died in 1892. Near by is a quite new columbarium for containing the ashes of cremated persons.

A singular bequest left to Wargrave by one Mrs. Sarah Hill is that by which, every year at Easter, the sum of £1 is to be equally divided, in new crown pieces, between two boys and two girls, who qualify for this reward by conduct that must needs meet with the approval of all. The five-shilling pieces are not forthcoming unless the candidates are known never to have been undutiful to their parents, never to swear, never to tell untruths, or steal, break windows, or do “any kind of mischief.” The good lady would appear either to have been bent upon finding the Perfectly Good Child, or to have been a saturnine humorist, with a cynical disbelief in these annual distributions ever being made. But they are made; and we can only suppose that the vicar and churchwardens allow themselves just a little charitable latitude in the annual judging. And, you know, after all, is it worth while being so monumentally good for the poor reward of five shillings a year? Consider how much delightful mischief you forgo.

Hennerton backwater, below Wargrave, is another of the delightful side-streams that are plentiful here, and is now, after a good deal of litigation, pronounced free. The wooded road between Wargrave and Henley skirts it, and is carried over a lovely valley in the grounds of Park Place by a very fine arch of forty-three feet span, built of gigantic rough stones.