Where Thames Smooth Waters Glide -
St John's,
Map: St John's
You steer out straight through many a gate,
As down the Stream you fall;
God send you cleanly navigate
The last lone Lock of all.
JUST where the road lies closest to the River above Buscot once stood the old storehouses, whither loads of cheese and corn
were brought from upstream by small craft and shipped into larger barges for London and elsewhere.
Along a few more willowed bends, and perhaps the Buscot windings are the worst on the whole River, you come upon St. John's
lock, just within thirty-two miles from Folly Bridge, the first of all the Thames locks, and the newest up to 1907. It was
rebuilding in 1905 when I was through, and looks bare and prim, and as unlike the picturesque old shanty Hall shews in his
book, standing on the other bank, as it was possible to design it. Yet how little else has changed, in the scenery or the
houses, these hundreds of years; as indeed Mr. Belloc has noted in his Historic Thames. "There are dozens of reaches upon
the Upper Thames where little is in sight save the willows, the meadows, and a village church tower, which present exactly
the same aspect to-day as they did when that church was first built. You might put a man of the Fifteenth Century on to 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. The same steeple of Lechlade would stand as a permanent landmark beyond the fields, and, a long way off, the same
church of Eaton Hastings, which he had known, would shew above the trees. "
The little Lech or Leach brook (Leland calls it Northlech Water), coming down from Hampnett in the Cotswolds, joins the weir
stream along the lower side of the Trout garden, dividing Oxfordshire from Gloucestershire. The commentator on Camden thinks
this little stream gives its name to Lechlade, as being where "the Lech unlades itself" into the Thames. St. John's Bridge,
here by the lock, is much older in foundation than the town or " ha'penny" bridge, dating originally from 1229 and
succeeding, though perhaps not immediately, a British ford. It is said, I know not why, to have been of a singular form and
of great strength, and formed part of the property of St. John's Priory which once adjoined. There is a sketch in Ireland's
book shewing nothing curious except that the three pointed arches were not equidistant from each other. A "hospital" seems
to have stood upon or near it against the priory; if indeed there was in fact ever anything more than the hospital, with
just a Master and an infirm brother or two. The old bridge no longer exists, so far as regards its upper structure, having
been rebuilt, if the books would only say so, somewhere about 1820. Leland has his usual vivid note: "At the very ende of
S. John's-Bridge in ripa ulteriori on the right Hond I saw a Chapelle in a Medow, and greate Enclosures of stone Waulles.
Heere was in hominum memoria a Priory of Blake Chanons" which I have just mentioned, and which was originally founded by Lady
Isabel de Ferrers in 1245, and completed by Richard, Earl of Cornwall and King of the Romans. Being in 1473 fallen into
great decay it was dissolved, and the revenues were applied to the support of three chantry priests in Lechlade parish
church, and to other objects. No doubt the Trout inn had its old name of the St. John Baptist Head from the priory; which,
with the manor, formed part of the dowry of Katherine of Aragon.
I stood here and gazed long around me one grey August morning, under the flying scud and fitful watery sunshine. Faringdon
Clump lay clear and dark in the southeast, there was Buscot church pale against the deep green woods, the emerald River
meadows lay all round half veiled in misty rain, and in the northwest Lechlade spire pierced the clean sweet air, with the
town bridge low beneath it.
Where Thames Smooth Waters Glide -
St John's,
Map: St John's