Where Thames Smooth Waters Glide,
Map: Clanfield
By a charming lane into Oxfordshire you may come in a mile and a half from Radcot to the
village of Clanfield. You pass Radcot Grange, an alluring Tudor house. What poet thought
to cut that lovely oval window, with its Perpendicular dripstone, in one of the lofty
gables? Possibly Cromwell's entrenchments, if they still survive, are to be seen in the
meadows just here; there is a mead called "the garrison," bordering upon a side stream,
which is perhaps the very spot. During the siege of the Grange in May, 1645, a grenade
split a tower, and "made fearful work, sending it several ways, and at last, falling into
the cellar, let out all their beer"!
A little way into Clanfield a curious circular erection arrests you, like nothing more than
a Martello or an Irish round tower. It is, however, only a disused windmill stript of its
sails. Next you see a venerable elm against the pathway, whose gnarled and bossy trunk must
be full thirty feet round, but is not upright like the Fyfield tree. Beyond are some
hideous red brick cottages: why will people rear such things amongst the grey Cotswold
stone and the gold-lichened roofs, and label them Coronation Cottages, 1887? They jar
hideously upon the sense; and the crimsons and yellows and blues of the little gardens are
killed with the discord, bloom they never so bravely.
The parish at its creation in the thirteenth century was in the diocese of Lincoln; and the
abbess of Helenstowe was in 1278 granted the care of it, and was to provide the priest.
This Helenstowe was a nunnery founded about the year 690 by a lady named Cilia, sister of
Mr. Belloc's mythical Cissa, on the spot where St. Helen's church at Abingdon now stands.
It got transplanted later to Wytham; under circumstances somewhat obscure.
St. Stephen's church is imposing for so small a village. It is of Early English work,
unless the south inner door, with traces of an old sundial in the tympanum, point to some
surviving Norman strain. Inside it is quite handsome and beautifully kept. There is an
unusually large hagioscope and a good Decorated east window. On the southeastern angle of
the tower is a curious figure nearly life size, surmounted with a Decorated canopy; some
old saint or other I guessed. The landlord of the Bell, at Langford, afterwards told me it
represents St. Stephen, the patron saint. He holds in one hand the stones of his
martyrdom, and in the other a missal, though ever since the Reformation they have called it
a Bible. In the chancel are some interesting brasses newly mounted on oak; and on the west
front is a tablet curiously reminiscent of Stanton Harcourt, inscribed to "James Joy and
Robert Cross killed by lightning while at work side by side in the field Aug. 9, 1843."
There was once a priory here, with a moat fed by a diverted tributary of the Thames. It was
a house of the Knights Hospitallers, with a garden, dovecote and crofts, where resided only
the preceptor with two servants. I could not hear of any remains of it now existing;
though perhaps it stood where the house called Friars' Court now is at the south end of the
village; or it may have been the admirable High House in the village itself. A pleasant
by-lane leads from the back of the church to Langford, if you choose to go that way; a mere
track bordered with a little stream and greensward and thickets, parallel with the Clump and
the Berkshire Ridge.
Where Thames Smooth Waters Glide,
Map: Clanfield