Where Thames Smooth Waters Glide -
Shifford Lock,
Map: Shifford
For worship Brighthampton ignores Standlake and travels southwest to Shifford. A short way out thither a little white bridge crosses the same tiny brook I once saw beneath wan February sunlight flickering out of a misty hollow in Yelford. Thereafter a sharp turn south brings you into Shifford: Old Shifford as they love to have it. One must needs think, except for the Fens, that this is the flattest country in England; and yet just across the River is Harrowdown Hill; southwest the Clump rises high, and in the north I could see the familiar gradual lift of the and towards Yelford and Witney. These level distances hold for me far more mystery than the hills. From a height you may observe far and wide; discern by a slight change of position all that passes around and beneath. But on the levels you perceive so little ahead; a low hedge or a field of wheat conceals more than ten miles upon a height.
Shifford church looks as isolated from the landward approach as it does from the River. "Alfred's stone" stands now upon the south wall of the churchyard. Pathetic, bare little place; round which, set alone in the meadows, the rude North blustered the grey August day I last entered it. Even in this new building I remarked many ominous cracks; and I wondered whence the insecurity arose; whether from floods or the general shiftiness of the soil. A little later I will tell you more about it.
You may return to New Bridge if you wish through a large farm and across Standlake Common; and will notice the elevated footpaths; that lead, you will also notice, round, and not across, the fields. The motive in each case is obvious; the spectacle unusual.
I have known men row, and use very hard labour, for diversion,
which, if they had been tied to, they would have thought themselves very unhappy.
THE River as you ascend above New Bridge becomes suddenly narrow and winding, and is sometimes badly choked with weed. I remember in the summer of 1906, when the Conservancy had been more than usually busy, that it was as difficult to force my craft through the floating clots of severed growth just here, as I imagine it must be through the famous Nile sudd. You may have noticed, indeed, how considerably deeper and broader the Thames is immediately below the junction of the Windrush. Undoubtedly the inflow of the little stream is a large cause of the remarkable difference; but I think also that the River bed must have received much more preparation for traffic below than above. Just a mile higher is the site of an old weir, perhaps Limbre's or Daniel's, described by Fearnside as having been dangerous for small boats. The stones are still visible on the left bank where the water widens to the pool. The Great Brook, which leaves the River up at Rushey, rejoins about here by two inlets. A mile and a half further Shifford church, of which I have just written, dedicated to Eunice, the mother of Timothy, stands on a little rising ground across on the left bank, as isolated as some great lonely east coast church. As a place name Shifford is very ancient indeed. An old chronicle poem, the Reliquae Antiqua, relates, in Dr. Giles's literal translation, how
At Shifford sat thanes many,
Many bishops, and many book-learned,
Earls wise and knights awful.
There was earl Alfric, of the law so wise,
And eke Alfred, England's herd, England's darling;
In England he was king; them he began learn,
So him they might hear, how they their life should lead.
A characteristic word of laconic old Fuller about Alfred I cannot forbear: "He loved Religion more than Superstition, favoured learned men more than lasie Monks; which (perchance) was the cause that his memory is not loaden with Miracles, and he not Solemnly Sainted with other Saxon Kings who far less deserved it. " This Witenagemot was held in 885; possibly on a spot called Court Close, near the church; and "Alfred's stone" is supposed to be a relic of it. It has been claimed that Great Shefford in Berkshire was the place of meeting, but the burnt Cottonian MS. is said to have been clear for Oxfordshire.
Plot says that this was the "first Parliament held in the County, and doubtless in England. " The present church building dates only from 1863, and is Early English in style, with a small belfry tower. It stands upon the site of two earlier churches which had successively fallen within a period of one hundred years. Skelton says: "the greater part of the solitary old church, very ancient, fell in 1772. " There is a drawing of it in Giles's Bampton. Its successor, the second church, appears to have been completed in 1780.
Within the third and present building there is a far-reaching mural inscription, surviving, you will notice, from the original church:
Here under lyeth interred ye body of Mrs Susan Blithe
ye wife of Mr Adam Blithe Rector of Ogborne St. George, Wilts:
Her father Mr Andreas Sonibanke was an High german
Neere alyed to the Duke of Brunswick
her mother was of the antient familie of the Bradfords of Ludlow in Shropshire
this Gentle woman in her life time
made the folowinge Epitaph to be sett upon her Tombe
Christ birth life Death
And dolefull payne
In life and Death
To mee is Gaine
She departed this life Novemb: the 9th 1645
Aged 75 yeeres
and left issue onely one Daughter
The grassland between the church and the River is said to have been the burial ground. I have walked across these meadows; they are certainly full of mounds and small irregularities. Perhaps you will manage to get across the rhene into the church enclosure; I did not. There was formerly a fine manor house in Shifford, pulled down, apparently, somewhere about 1825. "These are the landmarks at Shifford," says a charter of 1005: "first from the Thames to Chimney-lake: from the lake to the way: along the way to Cynlaf's stone: from the stone along the way to Kentwine's tree: from the tree along the way to the lake; along the lake again to Sumerford: and two weirs, one above the lake, the other beneath"; respectively, perhaps, Shifford upper weir, and the disused one above New Bridge, Daniel's as I conjecture. Lake here means a brook; across in Wiltshire you will be directed to go along till you come to the "lake"; often a mere thread of running water, crossed, as Mr. Bradley says, perhaps by just a plank. What is this recurring proper name Sumerford? You get it in the Cassington-Cumner history, and again at Somerford Keynes. Perhaps it means no more than a summer ford, and so would frequently appear though the derivation may be too natural and obvious to be scientific. Chimney, or Chimley, a hamlet just west of Shifford, has but three houses, those of the farmer and his cowman and carter; four, however, if you make the usual inclusion of Shifford lockhouse.
[Fred, in his Additions and Corrections, adds: Chimney once had a chapel; taken down, says Skelton, in 1758. ]
Just below Shifford lock, on the left bank, there once stood and possibly still stands a heap of gravel upon which was one night enacted a scene at which one scarcely knows whether to shudder or to laugh. My friends lay in their canoe under the opposite bank across the narrow stream, desiring to sleep. But from eleven o'clock until one, beneath a brilliant moon, a herd of cows played Jack-in-the-castle up and down the mound, each in turn ascending and being hustled down by her companions, the whole herd meanwhile keeping up a most hideous bellowing. The spectacle must have been full of a sort of shuddering absurdity; some holiday prank of celestial, deathless, turreted Cybele.
Where Thames Smooth Waters Glide -
Shifford,
Map: Shifford