Where Thames Smooth Waters Glide -
Kelmscott,
Map: Kelmscott
[ Fred call it "Kelmscot" - the modern version is "Kelmscott"]
Half a mile of meadows lies between Hart's weir and Oxfordshire Kelmscot,"a delightful and quaint little hamlet," it is true, but always a little ramshackle. William Morris took its name for his printing press; lived in its lovely manor house from 1871 till his death, and is buried under a pathetic long low canopy shaped stone in the southeast corner of its churchyard. All that it tells of him is his name and the years of his birth and departure. At least they might have bitten deeper into the stone. What did he write, with a note characteristic of so much of his poetry, though so little of his strenuous life?
Death have we hated, knowing not what it meant;
Life have we loved, through green leaf and through sere,
Though still the less we knew of its intent:
The Earth and Heaven through countless year on year,
Slow changing were to us but curtains fair,
Hung round about a little room, where play
Weeping and laughter of man's little day.
A grey romantic old place is the manor house, but so surrounded with high walls that the
wayfarer gets but the scantiest glimpses of it. Mr. Leslie has referred to it in his
Letters to Marco: "I never saw an old house so lovingly and tenderly fitted up and cared
for as this one; and the way in which the original beauties had been preserved was indeed a
lesson to be remembered. The floors were beautifully clean, the old boards by no means
disguised or disfigured with stains or varnish, and with right sort of mats and carpets
where wanted. Morris took us up into the attics, where he delighted in descanting on the
old woodwork displayed in the trussing and staying of the roof timbers. We paid a visit to
the garden, and on one hedge, a clipped yew, was the form of a dragon which Morris had
amused himself by gradually developing with the clipper. " I had the great privilege, in
1907, of being conducted over the house by Mrs. Morris herself, the theme of illustrious
painters. Tall and erect, clad wholly in white, with soft and cream white hair, she led us
with the gentlest courtesy through the rooms where the Socialist poet and craftsman lived
and worked. We saw his faded chintzes and the tapestry of his own weaving; his one picture
which, not satisfying him, convinced him that he had no message for the world that way; and
we saw the wonderful old timbers and the white scoured floors in the attics of which Leslie
wrote. The orchard with its gnarled, bent apple trees and ancient turf was as the poet left
it eleven years before; and the clipped yews still retained the forms he gave them. The
venerable, beautiful lady's ambition, indeed, had been to preserve everything, even the very
species of flowers in the garden beds, as nearly as possible as he was accustomed to see
them.
Mr. and Mrs. Morris were both very interested in the Morys brasses in Great Coxwell
church, both names being identical with their own; and a rubbing hangs in one of the rooms.
The house was first built about 1570, and had a new wing added as the Gothic was yielding
to the classical revival, as you may see in the windows. Close by is a grand old barn; and
a house in the village built only in 1906 bears a mural sculpture representing Morris gazing
upon the orchard and gables of his house. The base of a cross still stands in its ancient
place.
The church of St. George is most interesting, of transitional Norman work, with a greater
interior spaciousness than appears likely from without. Some of the windows display the
graceful cinquefoiled inner arches that are so charming at Bampton. The workmen in those
times, so extolled of Morris, had a free scope in the details of decoration, and they have
left some excellent and well varied stiff-stalk foliage on the nave capitals. The font is
of the ancient tub pattern.
You may read in Skelton how that, at the consecration of the churchyard in 1429, people were
invited to the ceremony by a public instrument signed by all the bishops then in England;
and a forty days' indulgence was promised, either for attendance at the time, or for any
subsequent due observance of the festival of St. George.
Penelope Goodenough lies beneath the south transept floor, with her two little children.
Her brass is dated 1671, and is headed with a skull and crossbones for the mother, and a
tiny set for each of the babes.
Here lies her husbands joy, her friends delight,
Her sexes glory overcast with night,
Pattern of motherly love, who loath to leave
Her infants, followd them ev'n to their grave.
But yet the grave her vertues cannot shrowd
They still shine bright like the sun through a cloud.
Think not, fraile brass life to her name to give,
Thou by Her memory must hope to live.
On the outer wall of the south porch are three faintly discernible sundials, evidently
engraved one above another as the trees grew taller and shut out the sun. None of them is
of the least use now, as the shade of the foliage covers them all.
If ever you come hither from Lechlade it is a two or three mile walk through winding lanes
and meadow paths. You will cross the fresh glassy Lech at Lechlade mill; whose neighbour,
a lovely old house, it will be a long delight to you to remember.
Where Thames Smooth Waters Glide -
Kelmscott,
Map: Kelmscott