Where Thames Smooth Waters Glide -
Rushey Lock,
Map: Rushey Lock
Within sight from the crown of the bridge lies well loved Rushey lock, where Tom Weal serves the Conservancy: "it takes him in the knees," says he. Big slow Tom is a character I remember with affection. Many a talk I have had with him on his white-railed lock in the cool of the evening, watching Bampton spire piercing the lemon clearness above the trees; while Buckland woods darkened into ever deeper purple. The extortions of some of the River inns, his son's trophies and adventures in South Africa, local drownings, his eeltraps, the winter floods, the former crazy lockhouse and weir, his own little commerce in rushes and produce: on these he will talk by the hour with many a bit of humour his impeded speech does nothing to diminish. He was born at Perivale; and when the Brent flooded the churchyard and washed away the earth he used with other boys to p-p-poke the coffins with a stick and get the b-b-bones out! He is only "the b-b-boy" to his capable wife and pretty daughter, who are usually busy in the summer with holiday visitors.
My boat lies cosily in a tiny bay in his weir stream beneath the willows; and it has always been with real regret and many a backward look that I have let her float downstream, around the bend and out of sight of this little haven of remoter Thames. The lock is thickly embowered in trees, one a dainty symmetrical little chestnut; and its white fences, and old barn usually decorated with the head of a pike, cling closely in the memory.
Where Thames Smooth Waters Glide -
Rushey Lock,
Map: Rushey Lock