Thames

by Peter Ackroyd

  CASTLE EATON: Sometimes known as Eton Meysi or Ettonne, it is the site of a castle, as its name suggests, to the north-west of Eaton, meaning farm or river settlement; ey is the island, and tun is the dwelling or settlement. There was a castle here described by Leland as “Eiton Castelle, wher great Ruines of a Building in Wyleshire…Eiton the Lord Zouches Castelle.” Nothing of it remains. The church is of Norman foundation, with a stone turret for the sanctus bell, and the bank is covered with flowers. Roger North, author of The Lives of the Norths (1890), declaimed of this stretch of the river that “we came nearer to perfection of life there than I was ever sensible of otherwise.” An Iron Age round house has been found here. And the bell rings out: “Holy! Holy! Holy!”

  KEMPSFORD: Originally known as Kynemeresforde, meaning Cynemaer’s ford or perhaps ford of the great marsh. A defensive post was established by the Saxons at this crossing of the river. At the second hour of the night on 16 January 800, as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports, “here the moon grew dark…Ealdorman Ethelmund rode from the Hwicce across at Kempsford; then Ealdorman Weohstan met him with the Wilsoeti or Wiltshire men; and there was a big battle, and both ealdormen were killed there and the Wiltshire men took the victory.” Between Castle Eaton and Kempsford there are still meadows known as “the Battlefield.” This peaceful land was once much given to slaughter. Henry, Earl of Lancaster is said to have stabbed his inamorata and thrown her body into the Thames at this place; her ghost is reported to walk the avenue of yew-trees that leads from the churchyard to the river. Henry’s grandson was drowned by the bank of the Thames here. The boy’s father, in his grief, left Kempsford for ever. As he left, his horse cast off one of its iron shoes; the villagers kept it, and nailed it beneath the latch on the north door of the church. A horseshoe is still there. W. H. Hutton described Kempsford “as almost the most beautiful village on the Thames.” There may be an association with Chaucer. John of Gaunt is supposed to have erected the church here in honour of Blanche, his departed wife. Chaucer was one of Gaunt’s affinity, and wrote The Book of the Duchess as a memorial to Blanche. He also wrote some lines that have a strong association with the Thames itself:

  A gardyn saw I, ful of blosmy bowes,

  Upon a river, in a grene mede,

  Ther as that swetnesse evermore y-now is,

  With floures whyte, blewe, yelowe, and rede;

  And colde welle-stremes, no-thing dede,

  That swommen ful of smale fisshes lighte,

  With finnes rede and scales sylver-brighte.

  Kempsford still marks the boundary between Gloucestershire and Wiltshire.

  INGLESHAM: Inga’s meadowland or, alternatively, the river meadow of Ingen; or it may derive from the Saxon inga, a holy well into which pins were thrown for good fortune; or from King Ine, the “law-giver” and seventh-century monarch of Wessex. The hamlet is remarkable for its tiny church of St. John the Baptist, a Saxon foundation based, curiously, upon a Byzantine model. There is a Saxon preaching cross in the churchyard. It is best known, however, for its ancient bas-relief of the Virgin and Child in the south aisle. There is a plaque upon the wall, stating that “this church was repaired in 1888–9 through the energy and with the help of William Morris who loved it.” It was at Inglesham that Shelley and his companions gave up their attempt to sail to the source of the Thames. This abortive journey also inspired Thomas Love Peacock’s Crotchet Castle.

  LECHLADE: The wharf or crossing by the Lech or Leach, the small river that here joins the Thames. The river was known as lech, the British word for stone, because of its cold or petrifying nature. It is the site where four counties meet. Leland described it in the seventeenth century as “a praty old toune.” It has all the marks of antiquity. On his return from Inglesham Shelley lingered in the churchyard here and wrote “Stanzas in a Summer Evening Churchyard”:

  The winds are still, or the dry church-tower grass

  Knows not their gentle motions as they pass.

  The grass is not as dry as the poet imagined. The churchyard was considered to be so wet from the influence of the river that to be interred there was the next best thing to being buried at sea. The spire of the church of St. Lawrence, once dedicated to St. Mary, can be seen by the Thames traveller for miles and provides one of the most enduring compositions along the river. From some perspectives it looks as if it is rising out of the water. Of this Shelley wrote, in the same poem:

  Clothing in hues of heaven thy dim and distant spire,

  Around whose lessening and invisible height

  Gather among the stars the clouds of night.

  The prospect of the spire is the origin of the ancient saying, “as sure as God’s in Gloucestershire.” It was not always so placid. Lechlade marked the true beginning of Thames commerce. From here the especial commodity was cheese, especially sage cheese, sent down the river to Oxford and to London. The stone that created the dome of St. Paul’s was also loaded here. One Lechlade bargemaster recorded in 1793 that he carried down to London “iron, copper, tin…cannon, cheese, nails, all iron goods and bomb shells.” He took back in return timber, groceries, coal and gunpowder. It has two bridges, St. John’s Bridge and Halfpenny Bridge; the former has the distinction of being (perhaps) the oldest bridge across the Thames, while St. John’s Lock is the first lock. The statue of Old Father Thames, once beside the source of the Thames at Thames Head, has been placed here. The hospice of St. John’s Priory, of the thirteenth century, provides the site for the present Trout Inn. The round huts of the Dobunni have been found in the vicinity, as well as a sixth-century Anglo-Saxon cemetery with some five hundred burials.

  BUSCOT: Or the cottage of Bugsweard. It is named Boroardescote in the Domesday Book. It is famous principally for having a church with no aisle. There is here a sign for “Cheese Wharf,” now disused, and the area was once well known for its brandy distilled from beetroot. The beverage was not popular. From the seventeenth century onwards very little changed, at least until the beginning of the twentieth century. The industrial revolution did not approach this region, and in visual terms it remained unaltered. Hilaire Belloc, in The Historic Thames (1914), claimed that “you might put a man of the fifteenth century onto the water below St. John’s Lock, and, until he came to Buscot Lock, he would hardly know that he had passed into a time other than his own.”

  KELMSCOT: Or the cottage of Caenhelm. Now sacred to the memory of William Morris, whose manor house—spelled as Kelmscott—lies just a few yards from the river. Morris explained to a friend, in a letter of 1871, that “I have been looking about for a house for the wife and kids, and whither do you guess my eye is turned now? Kelmscott, a little village about two miles above Radcott bridge—a heaven on earth.” Rossetti was less enamoured of the area, describing it as “the doziest clump of old grey beehives.” The fact that Morris spelled the place with two ts suggests that he was not aware of its true provenance.

  EATON HASTINGS: This denotes a farm by the river in the possession of the Hastings family. It is called Etona in the Domesday Book, but there are local antiquaries who believe that its name was taken from a big bend in the river known as “Hell’s Turn.”

  BAMPTON: From the Anglo-Saxon bam meaning bean tree, and tun meaning dwelling. This may mean a settlement around a great tree, or around a wooden building. It was also known as Bampton-in-the-Bush, suggesting the former. The church was once well known for having three rectors, and three separate vicarages in the church close. The Bampton morris dancers are the oldest troupes in the country; there are three in existence, bound together by familial ties, and by report they are continuing an indigenous tradition of dancing that has lasted six hundred years. There are many photographs of the Bampton morris dancers from many different eras, with fiddle, bladder, bells and drum. A newspaper account of them in 1877 noted that they “busily tripped the light fantastic toe to the sound of fiddle and tambourine.” The longevity of the pursuit is another indication of the conservatism of the river region.

 
RADCOT: The site of a reed cottage or a red cottage; reed seems to be more likely. Radcot Bridge may be the oldest bridge on the river. Since a Saxon charter declares the presence of a bridge here in AD 958, Radcot may bear the palm. Like many bridges upon the Upper Thames it was the site of various skirmishes and alarms during the Civil War. This was the shipping point for cheese and Burford stone. In the eighteenth century Samuel Ireland remarked upon the decayed state of the tributary. In his Magna Britannia (1720) Thomas Cox reports that there was a great causeway from the bridge that led directly to Friar Bacon’s study in Oxford, but it has long since vanished. The reasons for its existence are in any case obscure. The Thames here was once very deep and was said to abound with fish. Yet in its infancy the river here changes all the time; sometimes it is swift, and sometimes slow; its colour varies from blue to grey in a moment; it meanders, and it rushes forward; in one stretch it seems deep, and in another very shallow.

  SHIFFORD: A sheep ford. Reached from Radcot by way of Old Man’s Bridge, Tadpole Bridge and Ten Foot Bridge, it is now no more than a name. Yet it was here that Alfred called a parliament. “There sate at Siford,” according to the transcript of a contemporaneous Anglo-Saxon poem in the first volume of Reliquiae Antiquae (1841), “many thanes, many bishops, and many learned men, proud earls and awful knights. There was Earl Alfric, very learned in the law, and Alfred, England’s herdsman—England’s darling.” The site is now a large bare field, with a farm and a ruined church that is meant to harbour “Alfred’s stone.” The wind here can be very strong.

  BABLOCK HYTHE: A landing place on Babba’s stream. Camden spells it Bablac. It used to be well known from Matthew Arnold’s invocation, in The Scholar Gipsy, of “crossing the stripling Thames at Bablock-hithe.” But tastes in poetry change. There is still a ferry here, however, run by the manager of the local inn. It was once principally a horse-ferry, for the beasts of the field. Nathaniel Hawthorne came here in 1860, and found an old woman working the ferry. He particularly noticed the circular fireplace in the middle of her cottage, which must have been established on the pattern of the ancient British huts that have been found in the vicinity. Pace Arnold the Thames is no stripling here, but relatively deep and broad. Just to the west of Bablock Hythe are three prehistoric standing stones known as the “Devil’s Quoits” they may be the remains of an ancient monument or, as some local antiquarians believe, the token of a battle between the Saxons and the Britons. A coin thrown into Bablock Hythe is supposed to be returned sevenfold, but this may be a legend of the ferrymen.

  EYNSHAM: Homestead of Aegen. Leland wrote it as Eignes-ham. A Saxon witenagemot met here under the guidance of Ethelred the Unready in 1008. No doubt it was convened at the Benedictine abbey, of which only a few stones now remain. There was once a custom that the inhabitants of Eynsham could cut down as much timber from the manor-lands as they could carry, with their own hands, into the precincts of the abbey. Outside the village is a toll-bridge across the Thames, one of two upon the river. It is Swinford Bridge, named after the ford for swine that once crossed this stretch of water. John Wesley had to swim across on his horse when the ferry here was inundated.

  GODSTOW: The place of God. All that remains is a precinct wall and the ruins of a small chapel. There was once a nunnery here. The amour of Henry II, Fair Rosamund, spent the last years of her life in retreat in this place. It was said that she was eventually poisoned by Henry’s wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Her coffin was one of those later used to build a path across adjacent fields, when once an ancient hazel-tree:

  …lightly throws its humble shade

  Where Rosamonda’s form is laid.

  The Thames gypsies, on the other hand, used to believe that at the time of her death she was turned into a holy briar which bled if you plucked a twig. The Trout Inn, once the hospice of the nunnery, has peacocks. There is a deep and irradiant blue in the depths of the water before Godstow Bridge.

  BINSEY: The island of Byni, once surrounded by a skein of streams and rivulets; or, according to some, derived from bene ea, “island of prayer.” Long considered to be a holy place, its sacred well became the treacle well in Alice’s adventures. Curiously enough the villagers used to refer to the mud-holes, left after the winter rains, as “treacle mines.” The village was also the home of Miss Prickett, the governess of Alice Liddell and the model for the Red Queen. So Binsey is indeed a holy place. The first incumbent of Binsey Church for whom records exist, was Nicholas Breakspear; he became Adrian IV, the only English Pope. The poplars were celebrated in a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

  OSNEY: Island of Osa, or perhaps Oz. This was once an area of many streams, creating small islands of settlement. It was the site of Ouseney Abbey, of which the church contained twenty-four altars. Rewley Abbey occupied the northern part of Osney Island. That, too, has disappeared. The episcopal chair of Ouseney was transferred to the conventual church of St. Frideswide, the local saint, which then in turn became the cathedral church of Christ Church, Oxford. The famous bell of Ouseney Abbey, Great Tom, is now rung in Tom Tower at Christ Church.

  OXFORD: The ford where oxen may cross. The old city seal represents an ox crossing a ford. Yet the name may derive from Ouseford or Ouseney ford, the ford at or near Ouseney itself. Ouse, or Ouze, was almost a generic name for rivers. The neighbourhood is now more famous for its university. According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, Oxford was built in 1009 BC by Memphric, king of the Britons, and is thus one of the most ancient cities in the world. The evidence for his claim has unfortunately been lost, but under the name of Caer-Memphric or Caer Pen Halgoit it was mentioned by many writers as “the glory of cities, the seat of princes and muses” until its destruction by Plautius in the reign of Claudius. It was “much affected” by the Saxons, and then burned by the Danes. Alfred set his halls “infra muros Oxoniae,” so the defensive walls must have been of very ancient date. Alfred is said to have established the university itself. Others believe that it was created at the end of the eleventh century, for sixty students, by Theobald of Etampes. The first chancellor was appointed in 1214. The city, built upon a plateau of gravel, is almost entirely encircled by water. John Wycliff described it as “watered by rills and fountains…it has been rightly called the house of God and the gate of heaven.”

  IFFLEY: Plovers’ wood or glade; or it may derive from the Saxon giftilege, “the field of gifts.” On a hill above the river stands the most perfect Norman church in the country. The thirteenth-century mill burned down in 1908. Keith Douglas, fighting in Normandy in 1940, wrote a poem in which he envisages his spirit returning

  another evening, when this boat

  travels with you alone towards Iffley.

  He died in that year. The village is still much treasured for its quietness.

  ABINGDON: Aebba’s hill, or a settlement owned by Aebba. Leland says that it was originally known as Seukesham, of unknown meaning, which Camden translates as Shovesham. But there was an abbess Aebba in the seventh century, to whom the kings of Kent granted much land. This is the origin of the settlement, which stands on the junction of the Ock and the Thames. There is an alternative story of Aben, a Christian prince who survived a massacre at Stonehenge by Hengist, but this seems little more than a pious legend. Hengist may, however, be connected with nearby Hinksey. Abingdon itself has a worthy monastic history and, according to The Old Booke of Abbendon, “was in ancient times a famous city, goodly to behold, full of riches.” In fact it became too rich. In Piers Plowman Langland berates the abbot of Abingdon for his high living:

  And than shal the Abbot of Abyngdone, and al his issue forever

  Have a knock of a kynge, and incurable the wounde.

  The monks diverted the course of the Thames, so that it would flow past the walls of their foundation. It is also recorded that the master of every barge containing herring was obliged to give 100 of them to the cook of the monastery. In St. Helen’s Church there is a memorial tablet to one W. Lee who “had in his lifetime issue from his loins
two hundred but three.”

  CLIFTON HAMPDEN: A cliff settlement, later given the Hampden family name. At this point the river runs over a stretch of hard sandstone, out of which the “cliff” of the name is made. The change of material has forced the river to swerve westward. The stone church of St. Michael and All Saints stands upon this outcrop of rock. There is a memorial in this church to Sergeant William Dyke, who fired the first shot at the battle of Waterloo—accidentally. The neo-Gothic bridge is the unmistakable work of Sir George Gilbert Scott. Jerome K. Jerome patronised the public house here, the Barley Mow, which he described as “the quaintest most old world inn up the river.” It survives in chastened state.

  DORCHESTER: One of the river’s holy places, nestling beside the famous Sinodun Hills, and the centre of the ministry of St. Birinus. In Celtic dwr means “water.” So we have caer dauri or caer doren, “the city on the water.” Leland therefore calls it Hydropolis. This stretch of the river was deep and swift. There was once a Roman garrison here. There are also traces of an amphitheatre. What was once a great city has now become a small village, with the bare ruined fragments of its Saxon cathedral as an indication of its previous status as the greatest see in England. There still stands the abbey church, in which the relics of St. Birinus are to be found. In the church also is a monument to a lady who “sunk and died a Martyr to Excessive Sensibility.” It is said that no viper can live in the parish of Dorchester.