An Alternative Topography, from Source to Sea

KEMBLE: Once known as Kemele or Camele, meaning boundary. The derivation, however, might be from the ancient British god Camulos. The river collects itself here, so to speak, from a number of little streamlets or rivulets that meander through the fields. Harrison says that the stripling river “first of all receiueth the Kemble water called the Coue.” The early inhabitants of the area were the British Dobunni, whose territory was later occupied by the Romans. A Roman burial site was discovered here. It is mentioned in the charters of the Anglo-Saxon kings, the earliest dating to AD 682. Two Saxon cemeteries have also been found here. There used to be a grove or wood close to the church, which was described by a nineteenth-century antiquary as “the scene of the peculiar sacrificial rites of that race” no particular evidence has been provided for this claim. The church itself was struck by lightning in 1834. The yew-tree in the churchyard is the oldest living organism in the village, which is well known for the ubiquity of the water-crowfoot or Ranunculus aquatilis. The first ducks of the Thames are to be seen here. The Thames used to be known to the locals as “the brook,” which in many respects it resembles. It is diminutive, with an agreeable tinkling sound. Before the advent of modern life the village organised an annual festival known as Jackimans Club; there was also a wake, during which the effigy of an ox was paraded around the village. The neighbourhood is not heavily populated and few, if any, people are to be seen along the banks of the river. The bridge that leads from Kemble to the neighbouring village of Ewen has the distinction of being the first bridge, topographically, on the Thames. The inn at Kemble was kept by one “Damper” Adams, a maker of wooden ploughs. His ale was so notoriously bad that a gang of men stole the casks and poured the beer into the river. The names of the villages in this region of the Upper Thames have a peculiar charm, leading one American essayist to remark that “an atmosphere of legendary melody spreads over the land.” The oldest legends here, however, were of battlefields and border territory. It was once a very bloody place. Camulos himself was a warrior deity, often linked with Mars. Where there is trade there is power, and where there is power there is strife. The whole region has been striated with conflict throughout its human history, and the fields and meadows of the Upper Thames have often been cited as the location of battles between the various British tribes, between Saxons and Britons, between Romans and Britons.

         

EWEN: The name can be derived from Aewilme, meaning spring or source, yet another confusion in the confusing provenance of the Thames. As a source of springs it was deemed to be a holy place. On eighteenth-century maps it is spelled as Yeoing, and was pronounced by the locals as Yeowin. The river here is cleared twice each year, for the unimpeded passage of the water in its infantine state. The area was known for the number of its centenarians, and was thus pronounced to be especially healthful. The inhabitants were known for their appetites as well as their great age. One inhabitant, Cornelius Uzzle, devoured 12 pounds of bacon—6 pounds raw and 6 pounds parboiled—at the Wild Duck Inn. The Wild Duck exists still, and is renowned for its excellent food. The entire area, downriver from Kemble and Ewen, has been very fruitful for archaeologists; there have been sites here from the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic periods as well as their later counterparts. The Upper Thames can in fact make the claim of being the most ancient, and most continuously inhabited, territory of the British Isles. It can be said with some certainty that all the towns and villages of the Upper Thames are based upon British or Saxon originals; they are by fords, or by trackways, or sit defensively upon frontier lands.

SOMERFORD KEYNES: Pronounced Canes. The presence of a ford here, in the summer months, is plain enough. The other part of the name comes from Sir Ralph de Keynes, who held all the land in the vicinity during the reign of King John. There is a Saxon “megalithic” doorway in the church, the relic of the earliest building on the site. There is also a Viking carving of two playful dragons. It is conjectured that the Saxon church was built by St. Aldhelm, who was a landowner here long before the arrival of Ralph de Keynes. The Upper Thames was a relatively heavily populated area in the early centuries of the Christian era. There were once five mills in the locality, indicating that the river once ran faster through these sleeping fields. In fact the village is still sometimes affected by floods. There are small hamlets in the immediate neighbourhood, inspiring William Morris’s line concerning “the little stream whose hamlets scarce have names.” It is, or was, a place of intensive agricultural labour. As one rustic put it, at the beginning of the twentieth century when rural dialects were still preserved, “pleny o’ ’ard graft an’ nat much bezide at Zummerverd.”

         

ASHTON KEYNES: The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon words esc meaning ash and tun meaning place. It might thus have been designated as the settlement by the ash-trees. Neolithic axe-heads have been uncovered in the vicinity. William Cobbett, in Rural Rides (1830), described it as a “very curious place,” principally because it is made up of a number of parallel streets criss-crossed by the rivulets of the Thames. There are twenty bridges in the village, each one leading to a little house. The river is united in the centre of the village, and then runs under several arches before disappearing within a line of beeches. The first fish of the river are to be seen here. It was once of importance as a market town, and there are traces of a monastery. There are extant four crosses along the highways, dating from the fourteenth century; they have been described as preaching crosses, but their true purpose is unexplained. The biography of the village, by Madge Patterson and Ernie Ward, is suggestively entitled Ashton Keynes: A Village with No History.

         

POOLE KEYNES: The name is of unknown origin. But this may be the oldest settlement on the Upper Thames, the remains of Paleolithic habitation having been found here. That would give it a date some 1,750,000 years ago. The church, of fourteenth-century foundation, is therefore a recent development. The neighbourhood has so long a history of human settlement that its momentum has slowed in recent years.

         

CRICKLADE: The first town upon the river, some 10 miles from the source at Thames Head. The name may refer to a river-crossing beside a hill, in this case Horsey Down to the west, while others derive it from the two British words cricw and ladh meaning stony or rocky country. Or could it be a reflection of Cerrig-let, meaning the stony place where the Churn finds an outlet into the Thames? There were some antiquarians who believed it to be a corruption of Greek-lade, or assembly of learned scholars and monks. It was reported in monkish chronicles that in 1180 BC Brutus, the Trojan survivor, came here with a group of his countrymen and established a university among the early Britons. Samuel Ireland and others also believed it to be the site of the first university in England, but one founded by Panda of Mercia in AD 650 and thus predating Oxford downriver. A Saxon burh or enclosure has been found here. We have Drayton, therefore, hailing the town as:

Greeklade whose great name yet vaunts that learned tongue,

Where to Great Britain first the sacred muses sung.

The more these origins are examined, the more ambiguous and uncertain they become. One of the town’s two churches is dedicated to St. Sampson, an ancient Celtic saint. At the southern base of the tower, on the roof of the church, is a sculpture of a dragon and a knight; in the old tradition of the place a dragon did infest this region, until being despatched by Sir Guy of Warwick. There is a fractured stone effigy of an unknown man in the church, said to be the image of one who fell from the tower and was killed; it was not fashioned by hand, but grew on the spot where the man died. St. Augustine held a synod in the vicinity. There was once a community of Nonconformists here, too, and until the end of the nineteenth century baptisms were conducted at a rustic bridge called Hatchetts on the outskirts of the town. The Roman avenue called Ermin Street or the Irmin Way passed through it, before traversing the river, and King Alfred built a wall around the town. The Danes under Cnut eventually sacked it, but a wooden castle was built here in the twelfth century. It once possessed a Mint, and “Cricklade coins” have been unearthed in several vicinities. In recompense for their protection of his mother, Maud, Henry II granted the townspeople a charter allowing them to trade in any part of the kingdom. As an old anonymous verse put it:

Light men laugh and hurry past,

Sentry of the Roman Way;

Shall you live to laugh the last,

Wise old Cricklade? You, or they?

Wisdom may take many forms. The town was well known in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries for the venality of its inhabitants in general elections. Cobbett remarks that “a more rascally looking place I never set eyes upon. The labourers seem miserably poor. Their dwellings are little better than pig beds, and their looks indicate that their food is not nearly equal to that of a pig. In my whole life I never saw wretchedness equal to this.” The inhabitants of Cricklade also had an unusual manner of conducting funerals, whereby the coffin was placed at the front of the post-chaise. The town has now shrugged off its dubious reputation but it still exudes quietness and retirement from the world. By the end of the nineteenth century, according to Charles Dickens junior, “it has not been the scene of any remarkable events.” Its early history was more adventurous. What other small town can boast the legends of Brutus and of Augustine, of Alfred and of Cnut? And a dragon? In the North Meadow here there is a splendid flowering of the rare Thames plant, the snake’s-head fritillary.

CASTLE EATON: Sometimes known as Eton Meysi or Ettonne, it is the site of a castle, as its name suggests, to the north-west of Eaton, meaning farm or river settlement; ey is the island, and tun is the dwelling or settlement. There was a castle here described by Leland as “Eiton Castelle, wher great Ruines of a Building in Wyleshire…Eiton the Lord Zouches Castelle.” Nothing of it remains. The church is of Norman foundation, with a stone turret for the sanctus bell, and the bank is covered with flowers. Roger North, author of The Lives of the Norths (1890), declaimed of this stretch of the river that “we came nearer to perfection of life there than I was ever sensible of otherwise.” An Iron Age round house has been found here. And the bell rings out: “Holy! Holy! Holy!”

KEMPSFORD: Originally known as Kynemeresforde, meaning Cynemaer’s ford or perhaps ford of the great marsh. A defensive post was established by the Saxons at this crossing of the river. At the second hour of the night on 16 January 800, as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports, “here the moon grew dark…Ealdorman Ethelmund rode from the Hwicce across at Kempsford; then Ealdorman Weohstan met him with the Wilsoeti or Wiltshire men; and there was a big battle, and both ealdormen were killed there and the Wiltshire men took the victory.” Between Castle Eaton and Kempsford there are still meadows known as “the Battlefield.” This peaceful land was once much given to slaughter. Henry, Earl of Lancaster is said to have stabbed his inamorata and thrown her body into the Thames at this place; her ghost is reported to walk the avenue of yew-trees that leads from the churchyard to the river. Henry’s grandson was drowned by the bank of the Thames here. The boy’s father, in his grief, left Kempsford for ever. As he left, his horse cast off one of its iron shoes; the villagers kept it, and nailed it beneath the latch on the north door of the church. A horseshoe is still there. W. H. Hutton described Kempsford “as almost the most beautiful village on the Thames.” There may be an association with Chaucer. John of Gaunt is supposed to have erected the church here in honour of Blanche, his departed wife. Chaucer was one of Gaunt’s affinity, and wrote The Book of the Duchess as a memorial to Blanche. He also wrote some lines that have a strong association with the Thames itself:

A gardyn saw I, ful of blosmy bowes,

Upon a river, in a grene mede,

Ther as that swetnesse evermore y-now is,

With floures whyte, blewe, yelowe, and rede;

And colde welle-stremes, no-thing dede,

That swommen ful of smale fisshes lighte,

With finnes rede and scales sylver-brighte.

Kempsford still marks the boundary between Gloucestershire and Wiltshire.

INGLESHAM: Inga’s meadowland or, alternatively, the river meadow of Ingen; or it may derive from the Saxon inga, a holy well into which pins were thrown for good fortune; or from King Ine, the “law-giver” and seventh-century monarch of Wessex. The hamlet is remarkable for its tiny church of St. John the Baptist, a Saxon foundation based, curiously, upon a Byzantine model. There is a Saxon preaching cross in the churchyard. It is best known, however, for its ancient bas-relief of the Virgin and Child in the south aisle. There is a plaque upon the wall, stating that “this church was repaired in 1888–9 through the energy and with the help of William Morris who loved it.” It was at Inglesham that Shelley and his companions gave up their attempt to sail to the source of the Thames. This abortive journey also inspired Thomas Love Peacock’s Crotchet Castle.

         

LECHLADE: The wharf or crossing by the Lech or Leach, the small river that here joins the Thames. The river was known as lech, the British word for stone, because of its cold or petrifying nature. It is the site where four counties meet. Leland described it in the seventeenth century as “a praty old toune.” It has all the marks of antiquity. On his return from Inglesham Shelley lingered in the churchyard here and wrote “Stanzas in a Summer Evening Churchyard”:

The winds are still, or the dry church-tower grass

Knows not their gentle motions as they pass.

The grass is not as dry as the poet imagined. The churchyard was considered to be so wet from the influence of the river that to be interred there was the next best thing to being buried at sea. The spire of the church of St. Lawrence, once dedicated to St. Mary, can be seen by the Thames traveller for miles and provides one of the most enduring compositions along the river. From some perspectives it looks as if it is rising out of the water. Of this Shelley wrote, in the same poem:

Clothing in hues of heaven thy dim and distant spire,

Around whose lessening and invisible height

Gather among the stars the clouds of night.

The prospect of the spire is the origin of the ancient saying, “as sure as God’s in Gloucestershire.” It was not always so placid. Lechlade marked the true beginning of Thames commerce. From here the especial commodity was cheese, especially sage cheese, sent down the river to Oxford and to London. The stone that created the dome of St. Paul’s was also loaded here. One Lechlade bargemaster recorded in 1793 that he carried down to London “iron, copper, tin…cannon, cheese, nails, all iron goods and bomb shells.” He took back in return timber, groceries, coal and gunpowder. It has two bridges, St. John’s Bridge and Halfpenny Bridge; the former has the distinction of being (perhaps) the oldest bridge across the Thames, while St. John’s Lock is the first lock. The statue of Old Father Thames, once beside the source of the Thames at Thames Head, has been placed here. The hospice of St. John’s Priory, of the thirteenth century, provides the site for the present Trout Inn. The round huts of the Dobunni have been found in the vicinity, as well as a sixth-century Anglo-Saxon cemetery with some five hundred burials.

BUSCOT: Or the cottage of Bugsweard. It is named Boroardescote in the Domesday Book. It is famous principally for having a church with no aisle. There is here a sign for “Cheese Wharf,” now disused, and the area was once well known for its brandy distilled from beetroot. The beverage was not popular. From the seventeenth century onwards very little changed, at least until the beginning of the twentieth century. The industrial revolution did not approach this region, and in visual terms it remained unaltered. Hilaire Belloc, in The Historic Thames (1914), claimed that “you might put a man of the fifteenth century onto 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.”

KELMSCOT: Or the cottage of Caenhelm. Now sacred to the memory of William Morris, whose manor house—spelled as Kelmscott—lies just a few yards from the river. Morris explained to a friend, in a letter of 1871, that “I have been looking about for a house for the wife and kids, and whither do you guess my eye is turned now? Kelmscott, a little village about two miles above Radcott bridge—a heaven on earth.” Rossetti was less enamoured of the area, describing it as “the doziest clump of old grey beehives.” The fact that Morris spelled the place with two ts suggests that he was not aware of its true provenance.

         

EATON HASTINGS: This denotes a farm by the river in the possession of the Hastings family. It is called Etona in the Domesday Book, but there are local antiquaries who believe that its name was taken from a big bend in the river known as “Hell’s Turn.”

         

BAMPTON: From the Anglo-Saxon bam meaning bean tree, and tun meaning dwelling. This may mean a settlement around a great tree, or around a wooden building. It was also known as Bampton-in-the-Bush, suggesting the former. The church was once well known for having three rectors, and three separate vicarages in the church close. The Bampton morris dancers are the oldest troupes in the country; there are three in existence, bound together by familial ties, and by report they are continuing an indigenous tradition of dancing that has lasted six hundred years. There are many photographs of the Bampton morris dancers from many different eras, with fiddle, bladder, bells and drum. A newspaper account of them in 1877 noted that they “busily tripped the light fantastic toe to the sound of fiddle and tambourine.” The longevity of the pursuit is another indication of the conservatism of the river region.

         

RADCOT: The site of a reed cottage or a red cottage; reed seems to be more likely. Radcot Bridge may be the oldest bridge on the river. Since a Saxon charter declares the presence of a bridge here in AD 958, Radcot may bear the palm. Like many bridges upon the Upper Thames it was the site of various skirmishes and alarms during the Civil War. This was the shipping point for cheese and Burford stone. In the eighteenth century Samuel Ireland remarked upon the decayed state of the tributary. In his Magna Britannia (1720) Thomas Cox reports that there was a great causeway from the bridge that led directly to Friar Bacon’s study in Oxford, but it has long since vanished. The reasons for its existence are in any case obscure. The Thames here was once very deep and was said to abound with fish. Yet in its infancy the river here changes all the time; sometimes it is swift, and sometimes slow; its colour varies from blue to grey in a moment; it meanders, and it rushes forward; in one stretch it seems deep, and in another very shallow.

SHIFFORD: A sheep ford. Reached from Radcot by way of Old Man’s Bridge, Tadpole Bridge and Ten Foot Bridge, it is now no more than a name. Yet it was here that Alfred called a parliament. “There sate at Siford,” according to the transcript of a contemporaneous Anglo-Saxon poem in the first volume of Reliquiae Antiquae (1841), “many thanes, many bishops, and many learned men, proud earls and awful knights. There was Earl Alfric, very learned in the law, and Alfred, England’s herdsman—England’s darling.” The site is now a large bare field, with a farm and a ruined church that is meant to harbour “Alfred’s stone.” The wind here can be very strong.

         

BABLOCK HYTHE: A landing place on Babba’s stream. Camden spells it Bablac. It used to be well known from Matthew Arnold’s invocation, in The Scholar Gipsy, of “crossing the stripling Thames at Bablock-hithe.” But tastes in poetry change. There is still a ferry here, however, run by the manager of the local inn. It was once principally a horse-ferry, for the beasts of the field. Nathaniel Hawthorne came here in 1860, and found an old woman working the ferry. He particularly noticed the circular fireplace in the middle of her cottage, which must have been established on the pattern of the ancient British huts that have been found in the vicinity. Pace Arnold the Thames is no stripling here, but relatively deep and broad. Just to the west of Bablock Hythe are three prehistoric standing stones known as the “Devil’s Quoits” they may be the remains of an ancient monument or, as some local antiquarians believe, the token of a battle between the Saxons and the Britons. A coin thrown into Bablock Hythe is supposed to be returned sevenfold, but this may be a legend of the ferrymen.

         

EYNSHAM: Homestead of Aegen. Leland wrote it as Eignes-ham. A Saxon witenagemot met here under the guidance of Ethelred the Unready in 1008. No doubt it was convened at the Benedictine abbey, of which only a few stones now remain. There was once a custom that the inhabitants of Eynsham could cut down as much timber from the manor-lands as they could carry, with their own hands, into the precincts of the abbey. Outside the village is a toll-bridge across the Thames, one of two upon the river. It is Swinford Bridge, named after the ford for swine that once crossed this stretch of water. John Wesley had to swim across on his horse when the ferry here was inundated.

         

GODSTOW: The place of God. All that remains is a precinct wall and the ruins of a small chapel. There was once a nunnery here. The amour of Henry II, Fair Rosamund, spent the last years of her life in retreat in this place. It was said that she was eventually poisoned by Henry’s wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Her coffin was one of those later used to build a path across adjacent fields, when once an ancient hazel-tree:

…lightly throws its humble shade

Where Rosamonda’s form is laid.

The Thames gypsies, on the other hand, used to believe that at the time of her death she was turned into a holy briar which bled if you plucked a twig. The Trout Inn, once the hospice of the nunnery, has peacocks. There is a deep and irradiant blue in the depths of the water before Godstow Bridge.

BINSEY: The island of Byni, once surrounded by a skein of streams and rivulets; or, according to some, derived from bene ea, “island of prayer.” Long considered to be a holy place, its sacred well became the treacle well in Alice’s adventures. Curiously enough the villagers used to refer to the mud-holes, left after the winter rains, as “treacle mines.” The village was also the home of Miss Prickett, the governess of Alice Liddell and the model for the Red Queen. So Binsey is indeed a holy place. The first incumbent of Binsey Church for whom records exist, was Nicholas Breakspear; he became Adrian IV, the only English Pope. The poplars were celebrated in a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

         

OSNEY: Island of Osa, or perhaps Oz. This was once an area of many streams, creating small islands of settlement. It was the site of Ouseney Abbey, of which the church contained twenty-four altars. Rewley Abbey occupied the northern part of Osney Island. That, too, has disappeared. The episcopal chair of Ouseney was transferred to the conventual church of St. Frideswide, the local saint, which then in turn became the cathedral church of Christ Church, Oxford. The famous bell of Ouseney Abbey, Great Tom, is now rung in Tom Tower at Christ Church.

         

OXFORD: The ford where oxen may cross. The old city seal represents an ox crossing a ford. Yet the name may derive from Ouseford or Ouseney ford, the ford at or near Ouseney itself. Ouse, or Ouze, was almost a generic name for rivers. The neighbourhood is now more famous for its university. According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, Oxford was built in 1009 BC by Memphric, king of the Britons, and is thus one of the most ancient cities in the world. The evidence for his claim has unfortunately been lost, but under the name of Caer-Memphric or Caer Pen Halgoit it was mentioned by many writers as “the glory of cities, the seat of princes and muses” until its destruction by Plautius in the reign of Claudius. It was “much affected” by the Saxons, and then burned by the Danes. Alfred set his halls “infra muros Oxoniae,” so the defensive walls must have been of very ancient date. Alfred is said to have established the university itself. Others believe that it was created at the end of the eleventh century, for sixty students, by Theobald of Etampes. The first chancellor was appointed in 1214. The city, built upon a plateau of gravel, is almost entirely encircled by water. John Wycliff described it as “watered by rills and fountains…it has been rightly called the house of God and the gate of heaven.”

IFFLEY: Plovers’ wood or glade; or it may derive from the Saxon giftilege, “the field of gifts.” On a hill above the river stands the most perfect Norman church in the country. The thirteenth-century mill burned down in 1908. Keith Douglas, fighting in Normandy in 1940, wrote a poem in which he envisages his spirit returning

another evening, when this boat

travels with you alone towards Iffley.

He died in that year. The village is still much treasured for its quietness.

ABINGDON: Aebba’s hill, or a settlement owned by Aebba. Leland says that it was originally known as Seukesham, of unknown meaning, which Camden translates as Shovesham. But there was an abbess Aebba in the seventh century, to whom the kings of Kent granted much land. This is the origin of the settlement, which stands on the junction of the Ock and the Thames. There is an alternative story of Aben, a Christian prince who survived a massacre at Stonehenge by Hengist, but this seems little more than a pious legend. Hengist may, however, be connected with nearby Hinksey. Abingdon itself has a worthy monastic history and, according to The Old Booke of Abbendon, “was in ancient times a famous city, goodly to behold, full of riches.” In fact it became too rich. In Piers Plowman Langland berates the abbot of Abingdon for his high living:

And than shal the Abbot of Abyngdone, and al his issue forever

Have a knock of a kynge, and incurable the wounde.

The monks diverted the course of the Thames, so that it would flow past the walls of their foundation. It is also recorded that the master of every barge containing herring was obliged to give 100 of them to the cook of the monastery. In St. Helen’s Church there is a memorial tablet to one W. Lee who “had in his lifetime issue from his loins two hundred but three.”

CLIFTON HAMPDEN: A cliff settlement, later given the Hampden family name. At this point the river runs over a stretch of hard sandstone, out of which the “cliff” of the name is made. The change of material has forced the river to swerve westward. The stone church of St. Michael and All Saints stands upon this outcrop of rock. There is a memorial in this church to Sergeant William Dyke, who fired the first shot at the battle of Waterloo—accidentally. The neo-Gothic bridge is the unmistakable work of Sir George Gilbert Scott. Jerome K. Jerome patronised the public house here, the Barley Mow, which he described as “the quaintest most old world inn up the river.” It survives in chastened state.

         

DORCHESTER: One of the river’s holy places, nestling beside the famous Sinodun Hills, and the centre of the ministry of St. Birinus. In Celtic dwr means “water.” So we have caer dauri or caer doren, “the city on the water.” Leland therefore calls it Hydropolis. This stretch of the river was deep and swift. There was once a Roman garrison here. There are also traces of an amphitheatre. What was once a great city has now become a small village, with the bare ruined fragments of its Saxon cathedral as an indication of its previous status as the greatest see in England. There still stands the abbey church, in which the relics of St. Birinus are to be found. In the church also is a monument to a lady who “sunk and died a Martyr to Excessive Sensibility.” It is said that no viper can live in the parish of Dorchester.

         

BURCOT: Bryda’s cottage, or Bride’s Cottage. Perhaps a dowry? Charles Dickens junior reported it to be “of no importance.”

         

LONG WITTENHAM and LITTLE WITTENHAM: The settlement or meadows of Witta by the bend in the river. Originally a single Wittenham, which eventually diverged into two. They are 1 mile apart by road but—because of the bend in the river—3¹/₂ miles apart by water. Antiquities have been found here in abundance, including the skeleton of an Anglo-Saxon. An altar to Jupiter Optimus Maximus was found at Little Wittenham. At Long Wittenham the same burial place had been used continually through the Iron Age, Roman, Saxon and Christian eras. Here the Thame meets the Thames.

         

BENSON: The farm of Baensa, or settlement of Benesa’s people. Previously known as Bensington. Offa’s palace was close to the church here. It was the site of a battle between Wessex and Mercia. Nothing much has since happened, although it was said to have been a refuge for St. Frideswide during one of that saint’s unhappy flights.

         

WALLINGFORD: Ford owned by the tribe of Wealh or the Walingas (unlike Shillingford, close by, which was under the control of the Scillingas). Wealh is the Anglo-Saxon word for foreigner, or slave, or Briton—hence “welsh.” It seems likely, then, that the ford was once protected or defended by a group of indigenous Britons, most likely the Berkshire tribe of the Atrebates. It may then be the chief city known in the Itinerary of Antoninus as Calleva, and may claim a history as old as that of London. Others more prosaically derive the name from “walled ford.” The town was once enclosed by Saxon earth-works, which can still be seen; the river lay on the fourth side, and the streets were laid out in a military grid pattern in the Roman manner. A Norman castle was built here on the foundations of an old Roman fortification. But this great castle was, even by Leland’s time, “sore in ruines, and for the most part defaced.” It was eventually destroyed during the Civil War. The bridge has seventeen arches. There were once fourteen churches, but the town was severely depopulated by the Black Death in the fourteenth century. In the twentieth century it was the home of Agatha Christie.

         

STREATLEY and GORING: “Twinned” towns on either bank of the river, not a unique phenomenon along the Thames. The names refer, in turn, to a grove or clearing by the road and the place of Gara’s people (Goring was once known as Garinges). The “street” of Streatley may be the Ridgeway that passes along the chalk downs, crosses the Icknield Way, and then drops down here to create a ford across the river, or may refer to the Icknield Way itself, the oldest road in Britain, extending from Norfolk to Buckinghamshire. They are both tracks of great antiquity, therefore, and their meeting at Streatley and Goring is a matter of some significance. Certainly there has been a settlement here, as they said in the middle ages, beyond the memory of man. Here the river cuts through the chalk, north to south, to create the “Goring gap.” It inspired a famous verse:

I’d rather much sit here and laze

Than scale the hill at Streatley.

The climb is by no means arduous, however, and the views of the river are rewarding. The Thames now turns fatefully eastward, adopts the Kennet at Reading, and flows on towards the sea. Each town had its own church and its own mill. Oscar Wilde stayed here in 1893, and one of the characters in An Ideal Husband is named Lord Goring.

WHITCHURCH and PANGBOURNE: Another pairing: the place of the white church, and a stream belonging to the sons of Paega. A son of the Thames, Kenneth Grahame, used to live at Pangbourne.

         

MAPLEDURHAM: A settlement by the maple trees. Mapulder is the British name for the maple. The mill here is mentioned in the Domesday Book; it is still in operation, and is thus the oldest working mill upon the river. Mapledurham House, of Tudor construction, is still owned by members of the original family. It has been the fictional home of Soames Forsyte and Mr. Toad.

         

READING: Settlement of Reada’s tribe, Reada being a local Saxon leader who led his people up the Thames and invaded this territory. Other derivations trace it from rhea meaning river and from redin meaning fern; Leland said that fern was “growing hereabouts in great plenty.” There was once a great castle, and an even greater abbey, here. The earliest known English song, “Sumer is icumen in,” was written in its cloisters. In the nineteenth century the town was well known, and somewhat scorned, as the principal manufactory of biscuits. From the ruins of the abbey you can see the prison where Oscar Wilde was incarcerated. The town is now a thriving centre of technology, and has little regard for its past.

         

SONNING: Settlement of Sunna’s people, another tribal division of the Saxons by the river. But there is a previous history of Palaeolithic and Mesolithic settlers. There is a ritual enclosure here dating from 2000 BC. There is also a piece of nineteenth-century doggerel by James Sadler:

Is there a spot more lovely than the rest,

By art improved, by nature truly blest?

A noble river at its base is running,

It is a little village known as Sonning.

SHIPLAKE: The stretch of water where sheep are washed. Tennyson married in the church, and Eric Blair (aka George Orwell) lived here as a boy. Just beyond the village, by the weir, the river Loddon joins the Thames. The confluence provides the setting for Leucojum aestivum: the Loddon lily or summer snowflake. It is also the habitat for the less attractive Loddon pondweed.

         

WARGRAVE: The grove by the weirs, where the Loddon decants into the Thames. There was a village recorded here from the eleventh century. The church was burned down by suffragettes in 1914, on the grounds that the vicar refused to remove the verb “obey” from the marriage service. Madame Tussaud is buried in the churchyard. She lies near Thomas Day, once well known for his didactic novel Sandford and Merton. He died after being thrown from a horse, while trying to prove that animals can best be tamed by kindness. The river at this point is the site of the annual Wargrave and Shiplake Regatta which includes more than 600 competitors, and 350 races, within the space of two days. The boatsmen compete with traditional skiffs, which have been on the river since the nineteenth century.

         

HENLEY: The meaning is contested between “high wood” or “clearing” or “the old place.” If it is the last then the British term—hen-le (on the same principle as hen-dre meaning old town and hen-gwrt meaning old court) would suggest that it is very old indeed. In the ancient records of the corporation it is also named Hanleganz and Hannebury. At the time of the Domesday Book there were three manors and one church in the area. Once largely populated by bargemen, by the eighteenth century it had become a popular resort. It is in large part a Georgian town, and the bridge (1786) is very fine. The site of the famous regatta, the course of water here was chosen for the first university boat races between Oxford and Cambridge. The Cambridge colour was then pink. In the first ever boat race of June 1829 the two boats collided, and the race was started again. Oxford won. The Red Lion inn here inspired the following lines from Thomas Shenstone, who scratched them upon one of its windows:

Whoe’er has travelled life’s dull round,

Where’er his stages may have been,

May sigh to think he still has found

The warmest welcome at an inn.

Along the bank can be found the River and Rowing Museum. The famous boating firm of Hobbs & Sons is close by.

MEDMENHAM: Variously explicated as the middle ham or homestead, a middlesized settlement or the land remaining after the draining of a pool. The manor house or “abbey” once housed a small community of Cistercian monks, but it became more celebrated as the home of the Hell Fire Club whose motto was Fay ce que voudra, or “Do what you will.” Its leading member, Sir Francis Dashwood, decorated the existing house with fanciful arches in the Gothic style. Their misdeeds were somewhat exaggerated, but it has been reported that the devil once appeared among them in the shape of a baboon. By the end of the eighteenth century it had been colonised by poor families who showed around curious visitors. It was restored in 1898, and is now used by the Royal Air Force.

         

HURLEY: A curve in the river. Once known as Esgareston or the town of Esgar, it is an ancient place. The first church was built, during the mission of St. Birinus, in approximately AD 635. During that saint’s mission churches sprang up on both banks of the Thames beside the sites where he preached and baptised; thus the churches at Windsor and Eton, Hurley and Medmenham, Whitchurch and Pangbourne, Goring and Streatley, and so on. This little-known saint can truly be said to have changed the topography of the Thames. The sister of Edward the Confessor, Editha, was buried somewhere beneath the flagstones of Hurley Church. The Domesday Book records the presence of twenty-five villagers and ten slaves. The inn, the Olde Bell, is said to be the oldest public house in the country; it was originally the guest house of the monastery. The wall of the eleventh-century monastery can still be seen in the courtyard, or “paradise,” of a house by the river. There is a plaque here: “The priory of St. Mary, Hurley, founded in the reign of William the Conqueror by Geoffrey de Mandeville and his wife Lecelina, AD 1086. A cell to Westminster Abbey.” A cell means here an extension, not a gaol. In 1391 the prior complained to Richard II that “they are troubled by Thames floods, their houses laid in ruins, and the deaths of their occupants.” There are two twelfth-century barns. Early in his reign Henry VIII granted to the Benedictines “the great wood called Hurley Wood” in exchange for their garden in London “called Covent Garden.” It was a good bargain for the sovereign. On the ruins of the monastery was built Ladye Place, in the cellars of which was plotted the deposition of James II. The house was demolished in 1837, and three bodies in Benedictine habits were found beneath the pavement.

         

BISHAM: Bissel’s ham or homestead, or perhaps hamlet on the river Biss. It is sometimes difficult to disentangle place names from family names, when they were for centuries indistinguishable. Did the territory get its name from the people, or the people from the territory? Most noticeable for the presence of Bisham Abbey, a Tudor manor house built on the remnants of a twelfth-century abbey. Henry VIII granted the original house to Anne of Cleves, after he had ungraciously abandoned her, but she eventually passed it to Sir Philip Hoby. It was he who restored the present house. The princess Elizabeth was “entertained,” or imprisoned, here for three years, during the reign of her sister, but the building is most celebrated for the “Bisham ghost.” Lady Hoby murdered her son, for the sin of blotting his copy-books, by the simple expedient of shutting him up in a room in the house. Some say that she whipped him to death. Of course her spirit eternally regrets the deed, and forever washes its hands in a self-supporting basin. Curiously enough, copy-books were found under the floorboards during a later restoration. Bisham Abbey is now a national sports centre.

         

MARLOW: Low and marshy ground, or perhaps the residue of a lake or mere. Camden derives it from “the chalk commonly called marle,” however, which he believed to be plentiful in the region. The Roman Catholic church of St. Peter’s here harbours the mummified hand of St. James, rescued from Reading Abbey. The fingers are curled into a kind of claw. In the vestry of All Saints hangs a portrait of the Spotted Boy, a young black boy with an unfortunate disfigurement of large white spots; he and the showman who exhibited him are both buried in the same grave within the churchyard. The builder of the suspension bridge here, William Tierney Clark, erected the famous bridge that links Buda with Pest. The town is perhaps most famous for the residence of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley in West Street; a new book about them, published by the Marlow Society, is entitled The Monsters of Marlow. Mary Shelley wrote much of Frankenstein here and, down the road, Thomas Love Peacock wrote Nightmare Abbey. There must be something in the air. The young T. S. Eliot also resided here. Did Marlow inspire part of The Waste Land? There was once a famous question, “Who ate the puppy pie under Marlow Bridge?,” designed to throw the local bargees and boatmen into a fit of vituperative bad temper. The landlord of the inn at Medmenham had received information that certain bargemen were about to raid his kitchen. Having only moments before drowned a litter of puppies, he cooked them and baked them in a pie that he placed in the larder. The larder was robbed, the pie taken and consumed, according to legend, beneath Marlow Bridge. The provocative question is rarely asked now, on the very good grounds that it would not be understood. There may not in any case be much laughter. James Thorne, in his Rambles by Rivers (1847), said of Marlow that “the countrymen hereabouts are not of a mirthful character, and their liveliness is of a very laborious character.”

COOKHAM: Perhaps from cwch-ium, the Celtic for boat-place; or perhaps from cocc-ham, or home on the hill. Could it really mean cook’s home? In Domesday it is spelled as Cocheham. Lower, in his Patronymica Britannica (1860), believes that coke is the old spelling for cook from the Latin coquus. Skeat also believes that the Saxon coc or cook in Cookham is derived from the Latin. Curiously enough the cook of Eleanor of Aquitaine is buried in the local church, as well as the “master spicer” of Henry VI. What’s in a name? Cookham is one of the most famous places upon the river largely because of the residence, and the paintings, of Stanley Spencer. But it has other claims to attention. There are two megaliths here, known as the Cookham Stone and the Tarry Stone. The latter, however, may be a meteorite. On the Cookham floodplain were found a cluster of Bronze Age burial mounds. It seems likely that the earliest inhabitants here had travelled upstream from their first settlements in Kent. Roman and Saxon skeletons have been found in abundance. There is a field of Cookham known as Noah’s Ark, and this name is believed to derive from the story that the first and wholly legendary king of the Anglo-Saxons, Sceaf, was the son of Noah and was born in the Ark. So the Bible came to Cookham before the paintings of Stanley Spencer confirmed the association. The Saxon witenamagot met here during the reign of Ethelred the Unready, very likely by the Tarry Stone. There was an abbey in Cookham by AD 716. It is a place of ancient association and ancient settlement in which the layers of the past are impacted just beneath the surface. The historic and the prehistoric are rarely found in such close connection. The river-bed, especially along the course of the old ferry, has yielded relics of every period. When the modern owners of a cottage wished to install a damp course, the builders found several layers of previous floors—reverting, in the end, to a floor of beaten chalk that could not be dated. A house may always have been there, ever since the arrival of humankind in Cookham.

         

CLIVEDEN: A steep valley in the cliffs. It is now the spectacular setting for a mansion with an eminent if somewhat chequered history. The first house was built in 1666 by George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham. It burned down in 1795, the fatal result of a maid-servant reading by candlelight in bed. The succeeding house also burned down in 1849. The present house was constructed in 1851 by Sir Charles Barry, and was described at the time as resembling three or four large packing-cases. It has housed among others the Duke of Westminster, William Waldorf Astor, the National Trust and Stanford University of California. It is now advertised as a luxury hotel. The gardens, however, are open to the public. Charles Kingsley wrote that it harboured “the most beautiful landscape that I have ever seen or care to see in the vale of the Thames from Taplow or from Cliveden.” The Cliveden woods or “hanging woods” are a remnant of the primaeval forests that once covered the region. The cliff itself rises 140 feet (42 m), and offers harmonies of oak and beech, ash and chestnut, in profusion. They are rivalled only by the Quarry Woods, opposite Marlow, where the beech and oak and ash and evergreen riot. The woods by the Thames are indeed magical places, redolent with intimations of ancientness. The Quarry Woods are the paradigm of the Wild Wood in The Wind in the Willows. Green lichen spreads here in autumn. It is here that the Mole experiences “the Terror of the Wild Wood”: “The whole wood seemed running now, running hard, hunting, chasing, closing in round something or—somebody?” It is the cold touch of the primaeval world.

         

MAIDENHEAD: It was believed by Camden that the town was named after the head of a maiden saint once venerated here as a sacred relic. The head was popularly believed to have once adorned the neck of one of the eleven thousand virgins martyred with St. Ursula at Cologne. Skeat and Ekwall both believed that the word derives from maegden hyth or “landing place for maidens”—in other words, an easy place to land. It has also been deemed to be taken from a hythe by a meadow, a magne or large hythe, a mid-hythe between Windsor and Reading, or a mai dun hythe, meaning a hythe by a great hill. The great hill in question is in fact the burial mound of the Saxon chieftain Taeppa (who gave his name to Taplow on the opposite bank) whose funereal effects are now to be found in the British Museum. In any case, at the time of Domesday, the place was called Elenstone or Ellington. The railway bridge is that depicted by Turner in Rain, Steam, and Speed. It was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel and, at the time, people believed it was impossible that the bridge would stand up; there are two elliptical spans of brick arching, each one of 128 feet, with no support except their own structure. They are still the widest and flattest brick arches in the world. It is also known as the “echo” bridge, to the delight of those who use the tow-path.

         

BRAY: A moist or muddy place, or perhaps the brow of a hill. It was best known for its vicar, who changed his religious affiliation so often, between the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, that he became a by-word for the clerical turn-coat. A famous ballad was written on the subject, of which the chorus goes:

And this is law I will maintain

Until my dying day, sir,

That whatsoever King shall reign,

I’ll be Vicar of Bray, sir.

DORNEY: Or Dornei in Domesday, the island or dry ground frequented by bumble-bees. Presumably once an eyot where honey was harvested. In the gardens of the Tudor mansion, Dorney Court, was grown the first pineapple in England. There is a painting at Ham House of the Dorney gardener, on bended knee, presenting the imposing fruit to Charles II. The king is pointing to it in a relaxed manner.

         

BOVENEY: Above the island, or perhaps above island. The little church of St. Mary Boveney, from the twelfth century, stands alone by the river. It is unused, but is still illuminated by candles. The appeal for its restoration is conducted under the auspices of the “Friends of Friendless Churches.” Just downstream from Boveney Weir lies “Athens,” the place where the schoolboys from Eton used to plunge naked into the river; hence the Grecian name. The bank here has always been known as a bathing place. Karl Philipp Moritz, in 1782, recorded that “the bank here was rather steep, so they had built a flight of steps down into the water for the benefit of bathers who could not swim. A pair of red-cheeked young apprentices strolled down from the town, had their clothes off in a wink, and dived in.”

         

ETON and WINDSOR: Towns united by the river, as well as by their history. Windsor originally Wyndelshora—or, in Leland, Windelsore—seems naturally enough to mean a winding shore, or it might conceivably allude to that part of the river-bank that has a windlass and some, therefore, have said that it is an abbreviation of “wind us over.” Others believe that it is a corruption of “wynd is sore,” referring to the gusty weather. Eton is derived from eyot-tun, or settlement on the island, and not tun by the eau. The castle, and the school, are too well known to detain a determined Thames traveller. The castle itself is of some interest geographically. It is built upon a knoll of chalk that rises precipitately from the thick clay. That is why William the Conqueror decided to site his castle here. It seems to be artificial, and may thus be prehistoric. William may have intuited, or been informed of, some ancient source of power. The castle was effectively rebuilt by Edward III from 1360 to 1374, using for that purpose what was essentially slave labour. Hundreds of men from the surrounding countryside were “impressed” and obliged to work on the castle against their wills. The Saxon palace was located in Old Windsor, 2 miles downstream. In Thames Field, now the site of the Eton Rowing Course, have been found prehistoric barrows, Anglo-Saxon graves, and medieval structures.

         

DATCHET: Etymology very uncertain, but believed to be Celtic or British in origin. It seems to incorporate cet meaning wood, except for the fact that there were no woods in the vicinity. There is a riverine town in France called Dacetia, which is deemed to mean “best place” in Gaulish. In Domesday Datchet is known as Daceta. It was described as “a low and wat’ry place,” and in the 1800s was denounced as “Black Datchet.” It is perhaps most famous for the scene of Falstaff ’s disgrace in The Merry Wives of Windsor, when he was flung into “the muddy ditch at Datchet mead” by the river. The Thames shore here was said, in the same play, to be “shelvy and shallow.” It remains so.

         

RUNNYMEDE: Of uncertain meaning, possibly a running mead. Or place for horse races; it was indeed a race-course at the end of the eighteenth century. Or a rune-mead or place of runes, a site for magical divination. Or it derives from the Saxon runieg (regular meeting) and mede (mead or meadow) and was thus a field of council, or it comes from rhine, meaning river or ditch. It is all beyond conjecture. We live in a landscape for which we have lost the original meanings. Best known for the famous encounter between King John and his barons. There is an island in the middle of the river, now known as Magna Carta Island, which declares that this was the place of agreement. There is even a great stone upon which the precious document was supposed to rest.

         

STAINES: Or stones. What stones? Could it refer to standing stones, now demolished, or to a milestone or Roman milliarium? A group of “negen stanes” or nine stones is mentioned in a twelfth-century charter of Chertsey Abbey, and it is believed that these stones marked the boundaries of the abbey lands. Were they originally part of a megalithic monument? The site is now a roundabout beside Staines Bridge. Curiously enough, London Stone is sited here, to mark what was once the limit of London’s authority over the river. Staines is an ancient place, with the traces of Mesolithic settlement. A Roman town was also constructed here, called Ad Pontes, meaning By the Bridges. The Itinerary of Antoninus suggests that there was a bridge here before the coming of the Romans, however, which would make Staines a very ancient crossing place indeed. There is also evidence of a Roman bridge, and a Saxon bridge, and a Norman bridge, across the Thames, and even a theory that the settlement was called Stones because of the number of broken bridges.

PENTON HOOK: A curious curve in the river, which means that the traveller must walk for half a mile in order to cover a hundred yards in distance. There must be something of impenetrable hardness that deters the river from taking the shortest course. There is now a cut through it.

         

CHERTSEY: Cearta’s ey, or island. The Ceroti insula or island of Cerotus is mentioned in Bede. From the seventh century it was the home of the celebrated Benedictine abbey of St. Peter. It was savaged by the Danes in the ninth century, and rebuilt by King Edgar in 964. It became a great town, as large in extent as Windsor, and its position acted as a fulcrum for the development of the Thames Valley. Henry VIII made a more permanent impression than the Danes, however, and the abbey was razed at the time of the Reformation. Abraham Cowley came to Chertsey to avoid the noise and business of London; much to Samuel Johnson’s delight, however, he suffered a number of illnesses and misadventures, succumbing to an early death while gathering hay in the fields. For Johnson it was a lesson against solitude. At Chertsey are found the last of the Thames water-meadows.

         

SHEPPERTON: The home of the shepherds; Scepertone in Domesday. Part of the bank is known as War Close in which, according to William Harrison, “have been dug up Spurs, Swords etc. with great numbers of Men’s bones; and at a little distance, to the west, part of a Roman Camp is still visible.” A site of ancient battles, therefore, probably between the Romans and the Catuvellauni. Most famous as the home of film and television studios, where there have no doubt been re-enactments of just such battles. There is a ferry service between the Shepperton shore and Weybridge. A foot ferry across the same stretch of water is mentioned in the Domesday Book. Here also is the “Desborough Cut,” a short waterway laid across an island, while the Thames itself continues its sinuous and meandering course. There is some confusion concerning the state of the river at this point. It seems, in the course of recorded history to have altered its course, signified by the fact that the old parishes own areas of land on both sides of the river. The river, in other words, has moved.

         

SUNBURY: In ancient records known as Sunnabyri, Sunneberie, Suneberie. If we take it as the conflation of Saxon sunna and byri, we have the sun town or perhaps a town with a southern aspect. Others believe that it is named after the burgh of a chieftain Sunna.

         

HAMPTON: The farmstead by the bend in the river. In Domesday it is known as Hamntone. Here is to be found Garrick Temple, a folly conceived by the actor, David Garrick, to contain a statue of William Shakespeare. The statue by Roubilliac, modelled on Garrick himself, has for some reason been placed in the British Museum. Capability Brown designed the temple. Samuel Johnson said of Hampton, “Ah, David, it is the leaving of such places that makes a death-bed terrible.” Just downstream is Tagg’s Island, a hotel and pleasure resort designed by the early twentieth-century impresario, Fred Karno. The area is perhaps best known for the propinquity of Hampton Court Palace.

         

KINGSTON: There can be little doubt about the essential derivation of this place-name. It may be the stone of kings or the manor of kings, but the royal association is clear. It was here that many of the Saxon kings were crowned. In 838 Egbert summoned a meeting of nobles and ecclesiastics at “Kyningestun, famosa illa locus.” The King’s Stone, now in front of the guildhall, was originally sited near the church door and is generally regarded as the throne upon which the Saxon kings of Wessex were inaugurated. In a charter of Edred, in AD 946, Kingston is expressly mentioned as the place of coronation. Speed calculates that nine sovereigns were in fact crowned here. The Domesday Book records the presence of three salmon fisheries. The present emblem of Royal Kingston consists of three salmon on a blue background. The first wooden bridge connecting Kingston and Hampton Wick was erected in 1219. The water was once deemed very clear and pure.

         

TEDDINGTON: The settlement of the people of Todda or Totty. In old records it is known as Todington or Totyngton. Some people believe the name to be a corruption of Tide-end Town, on the presumption that the tidal river does indeed come to an end here. The first lock on the river is situated at this point. The first lock-keeper was given a blunderbuss, with bayonet attached, to deter irate fishermen and boatmen. Noël Coward was born here, Thomas Traherne was rector here, and R. D. Blackmore, author of Lorna Doone, lived here.

         

EEL PIE ISLAND: It should really be known as Twickenham Ait. But eel pies, naturally, were once sold here. In the summer seasons of the nineteenth century, large crowds came to partake of the eels; members of benefit societies and trade unions mingled with respectable citizens and decent artisans for a memorable “outing.” In the 1960s the hotel became the venue for acts such as the Rolling Stones and the Who, David Bowie and Rod Stewart. The island is now the insular home of a somewhat eccentric community.

         

TWICKENHAM: Presumably meaning the settlement or enclosure of Twica or, perhaps, land by a river fork. Known previously as Twitnam, Twittanham, Twicenham. The first written reference, in a charter of AD 704, describes it as Tuican hom and Tuiccanham. There was a ferry between here and Richmond by the fifteenth century. It is perhaps most famous by association. Its residents have included Sir Francis Bacon, Godfrey Kneller, Mary Wortley Montague, Alexander Pope, Henry Fielding, John Donne, Horace Walpole, J. W. M. Turner, Alfred Tennyson, Alexander Herzen, the Duke of Orleans and the exiled King Manoel of Portugal. It was memorialised by Pope in a puzzling couplet:

Which fairer scenes enrich,

Grots, statues, urns, and Johnston’s dog and bitch.

The dog and bitch were two statues flanking the lawn of Orleans House, then owned by Mr. Secretary Johnston. In the church there is a monument to Pope, with the epitaph written by the poet himself, “for one who would not be buried in Westminster Abbey” bitter to the last. Daniel Defoe described the neighbourhood as “so full of beautiful buildings, charming gardens, and rich habitations of gentlemen of quality, that nothing in the world can imitate it.” But then a Frenchman said once to Pope: “All this is very fine, but take away the river and it is good for nothing.” This is perhaps accurate. The river is everything here. In the nineteenth century the neighbourhood was described by Dickens in Little Dorrit as “lovely and placid.” Now well known for its rugby stadium.

PETERSHAM: The ham or settlement of Peohtre. The church is also of St. Peter. A nineteenth-century resident of the village recorded a conversation with an old inhabitant: “I remember the time when the people as lived here was people. Now there’s nobody here worth a damn.”

         

RICHMOND: The name has no local derivation, since it was first named by Henry VII after his Yorkshire earldom. An area much painted and much described. Thus in Walter Scott’s Heart of Midlothian (1818) we read that the Thames, “here turreted with villas and there garlanded with forests, moved on slowly and majestically, like the mighty monarch of the scene, to which all of its other beauties were but accessories, and bore on his bosom an hundred barks and skiffs, whose white sails and gaily fluttering pennons gave life to the whole.” The riverscape from Richmond Hill has been a favourite of painters for three centuries. In 1902 it became the first view to be protected by an Act of Parliament. Some lines on the view, written by James Thomson, had even been written on a board and nailed to a nearby tree so that nobody could be in any doubt about the “enchanting vale” and the “smiling meads.” To quote from Defoe, “the whole country here shines with a lustre not to be described…at a distance they are all nature, near hand all art; but both in the extreamest beauty.” It is no exaggeration to state that this was the area that initiated and nourished the English art of the landscaped garden, and thus changed the topography of the European world. Karl Philipp Moritz, in his travels, exclaimed of Richmond that “in its way it was the purest revelation of Nature that I have ever seen in my life.” This was nature mediated through the picturesque, and is a token of the almost hysterical approbation that Richmond once received.

         

SHEEN: The name probably derives from the Old English sceon, meaning shelters, perhaps a reference to shelters for the beasts of the field. An alternative suggestion derives the name from the Old English sceone, meaning beautiful. From that root comes “shine,” perhaps to be interpreted by Defoe’s description of “the beauty with which the banks of the Thames shine on either side of the river.” The castle of the Plantagenets, Shene Palace, once stood in the area now occupied by Richmond Green.

         

ISLEWORTH: The village known to the compilers of the Domesday Book as Ghistelworde. Its name is also found as Yhistleworth, Istelworth, Ysselsworth and Thistleworth. The etymologists have run riot. The most likely derivation, however, is from Celtic uisc for water and the Saxon worth for village. The confluence of Celtic and Saxon names is rare but it is indeed a village by the water, lying beside the river Crane as well as the Thames. It once had a reputation for remoteness, and at the beginning of the twentieth century it was described as “an ancient and almost forgotten village” with a “somewhat squalid waterside picturesqueness.” It is no longer squalid but the dwellings by the waterside are still picturesque—not least among them the famous inn, the London Apprentice. The church beside it is a strange hybrid, a modern building fastened to a fourteenth-century tower. The eyots, or islands, in front of the town were once used to harvest osiers. There was a royal palace in Isleworth, owned by Richard, Earl of Cornwall, brother to Henry III and nominal King of Rome.

         

BRENTFORD: There was indeed a ford across the river Brent here, and also one across the Thames. There is a legend of “Two Kings of Brentford,” but their identity is now unknown. Brentford itself once had a reputation for dirt and squalor. John Gay, in his epistle to the Earl of Burlington (1712), described it as

Brentford, tedious town,

For dirty streets and white-legged chickens known.

Thomson continued the abuse in his Castle of Indolence (1748) with “Brentford town, a town of mud.” George II admired the place because, in its dirty and ill-paved state, it reminded him of his native country. “I like to ride dro’ Brentford,” his majesty is claimed to have remarked, “it ish so like Hanoversh!” It used to be said of a man with a very red face that “he is like the Red Lion of Brentford,” alluding to the sign of the principal inn here. In the eighteenth century it became a great brewing town and in 1805 it joined the Grand Junction Canal, adding to the general noise, dirt and squalor. It is now much improved.

KEW: Known variously as Kayhough, Kayhoo, Keyhowe, Keye, Kayo and Kewe. The name would seem to be a reference to a key or quay by the riverside, or it may mean a place upon a promontory. Erasmus Darwin celebrated the gardens in his couplet:

So sits enthroned, in vegetable pride,

Imperial Kew, by Thames’s glittering side.

The vegetable pride is still very much in evidence. The Botanic Gardens are most famous for the palm house and the pagoda.

CHISWICK: The meaning may be cheese farm, as in Keswick. Hogarth and Whistler were both buried in the local churchyard. Chiswick House is close by. It was for a period in use as a lunatic asylum. Now it is open to the public. Once known for its nursery gardens and its market gardens, the neighbourhood was called “the great garden of London.” Chiswick was also celebrated for its brewing industries, of which there are records from the thirteenth century. Now best known for the Chiswick roundabout.

         

MORTLAKE: In Domesday it becomes Mortelage. The name does not mean lake of the dead. Leland and others believed that it conveyed the Latin mortuus lacus, or the dead channel of a river that has changed its course. Yet that hardly seems appropriate to this stretch of the Thames. It may mean the stream owned by Morta, with lacu as stream. Or it may be related to the Old English mort, the name for a young salmon. The great Elizabethan magus, John Dee, lived in a house by the river. It was here that the angel Uriel appeared to him, and gave him a translucent stone by means of which he might summon the spirits. The first English tapestry factory was established here in 1619. There was also a famous pottery manufactory.

         

PUTNEY: One of the twin towns beside the Thames, Putney on the Surrey shore and Fulham on the Middlesex shore. The churches that stand on opposite sides of the bridge, All Saints and St. Mary’s, were said to have been built by two giant sisters; they possessed only one hammer, and would throw it to each other across the water with the words “Put it nigh!” or “Heave it full home!” hence Putnigh and Fulhome. This is of course mere conjecture. Putney is in Domesday called Putelei, but in subsequent accounts it is spelled Puttenheth or Pottenheth. It may mean the landing place of Putta. The neighbourhood was famous in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for its fishery. Fishing has once again become a popular sport here. There used to be a ferry, but a bridge replaced that service in the early eighteenth century. A London MP declared that “the erection of a bridge over the river Thames at Putney will not only injure the great and important city which I have the honour to represent, not only destroy its correspondence and commerce, but actually annihilate it altogether.” It used to be the custom for travellers to proceed by water to Putney, and from there take a coach. It is still well known for its rowing clubs, and has in fact become the centre for Thames rowing. Once a village, famous as the birthplace of Thomas Cromwell and Edward Gibbon, it spread along the banks until in the nineteenth century it was known for “a succession of factories and small cottage houses, which serve to shelter labourers and artisans” as well as “unwholesome looking swamps” which divide the space with “yards and quays and wagon sheds.” It became known as the manufactory of gin, starch, candles, beer and vitriol.

         

FULHAM: Fullenhanne or Fullenholme, the place of fowls or the place of birds; or, perhaps, the enclosure of a fuller. Others suggest that the name means “foul home” or muddy settlement. Once known for its market gardens, and for being the site of the first gas-works in Britain. It was the home of the Bishop of London until 1973. Samuel Richardson and Rudyard Kipling also lived here. Once considered more genteel than Putney, but the respective status of the two towns has now been reversed. “Fulham dice” was the phrase for false dice.

         

BATTERSEA: The name is a puzzle, with etymologists invoking St. Patrick, St. Peter or batter pudding as its origin. It was written Patrice-cey in Domesday, and then became Batrichsey. Batter pudding is too obvious a derivation. It may, however, mean Badric’s or Batta’s island. The town was once well known for its asparagus, and is now most famous for its dogs’ home. There is an anonymous poem on the subject:

To me, Oh, far dearer,

And brighter, and clearer,

The Thames as it ripples at fair Battersea.

The river is also more tempestuous here; the waves at Battersea Bridge are known for their roughness.

CHELSEA: It is mentioned in the Domesday Book as Chelched, but then amended into Cercehede. In the eighth century, when a synod was called here by Offa, it had become Ceolshythe. It was also known as Cealchythe, which might mean a landing place for chalk or lime, or a landing place on gravel. There has been a church on the site of Chelsea Old Church since the eighth century. The house of Thomas More was situated here, and a memorial to his family is to be found in the church itself. This stretch of the Thames was known ironically as “the Cocknies’ Sea.” The local young men of the early nineteenth century were known as “kiddies” who “wore their hair in close curls on the side of their heads, done upon leaden rollers; hats turned or looped up on the sides; and to their breeches eight, and sometimes ten, small buttons were seen at their knees, with a profusion of strings, after the famed ‘Sixteen-string Jack.’” So Chelsea has always been a centre of fashion.

         

LAMBETH: Loam-hithe or muddy bank; or perhaps Lamhytha, the landing place for lambs. In Domesday called Lanchei. Best known for its palace, home of the Archbishop of Canterbury. In the church here is located the Tradescant Museum of Garden History. The home of various magicians and astrologers, perhaps attracted by the Hebrew connotations of the name as the home of the lamb. Beth-el was in Hebrew the name for a sacred place. But it was always a somewhat rough neighbourhood. Blake moved here in the eighteenth century, among various louche and radical neighbours. It was believed that the swampy air on the south side of the river encouraged enervation and vice, Lambeth being known as one of the “great sinks and common receptacles of all the vice and immorality of London.” It became well known for its potteries and for the prevalence of what were known as “stink industries.” It also became a haven for boat-builders and boat-repairers. In the nineteenth century it was considered to be a “hideous aspect of the foreshore, overladen with dank tenements, rotten wharves and dirty boat houses.” There is a remarkable series of early photographs, showing the whole picturesque and dilapidated riverine settlement that was cleared away for the Albert Embankment and its adjacent roads.

         

WESTMINSTER: The Saxons called it Thornege, meaning the Isle of Thorns. The island may have been formed by an arm of the river, called the Long Ditch, but it was more likely to have been surrounded by low marshy ground from which the higher ground emerged. It was once the site of a temple to Apollo. The present abbey in the west began to rise in the eleventh century, but there had been a monastery here from the early seventh century. Sebert, king of East Saxons, erected the abbey church and named it West Mynstre in distinction to the East Minster, or St. Paul’s, which previously had been founded by his uncle Ethelbert. The remains of Sebert are still within the abbey. The Duke of Wellington insisted that the present Parliament face directly upon the river, so that the building could never be surrounded by irate crowds.

CITY and CENTRAL LONDON: The river is the origin of London. One possible derivation of the city’s name is the Celtic llyn-dun, or the hill fort by the pool. That would of course suggest that the Celts built a settlement here before the Romans. It was the first place upstream from the estuary where a bluff of hard ground was protected by two hills. There are some who claim that the Thames is London—that it is the epitome, the liquid essence, the spirit, of London. When the Illustrated London News was first published, the title page of that paper showed the Thames; the river was the presiding deity. The poet John Masefield described it as “the great street paved with water,” the central highway and principal avenue of the city. It is as closely linked to the city as the blood is to the body, and it can be claimed with some confidence that no other capital in the world has been so dependent upon its river. It was not simply its market and its port and its highway. The Thames gave London the dignity and the grandeur, the aesthetic possibilities, which it would not otherwise possess. That is why most of the city’s great architectural monuments are placed along the river. Yet it is curious that Londoners themselves rarely attend to the Thames. They pass over it hurriedly; they try not to walk beside it, and they rarely venture upon it. It does not lead anywhere. It cannot be used as transport to the cinema or the theatre or the public house. And so it is neglected. It is not deemed to be interesting. In most of London, even in its riverine portions, the Thames can scarcely be seen. It is just glimpsed between buildings. And, for its own part, the river is content to remain aloof. It is not intimate or insinuating. It still seems primaeval, dark, and altogether obscure.

         

SOUTHWARK: Or the south work. A defensive wall was built beside the bank here. Some believe that the “work” was a fortress built by the Romans. At the top of Battle Bridge Lane, going down to Tooley Street, there is a narrow alley still known as “English Grounds.” It was so called on a London map of 1848. On that old map there was also a small hatched area described as “Irish Grounds.” Could this be a memorial of the nineteenth-century pitched fights between Irish and English labourers? There is no point in looking for a more ancient battle on this site; the name of the bridge comes from the fact that it was part of a hostel belonging to the monks of Battle Abbey in Sussex.

         

WAPPING: The settlement of Waeppa’s people. This early tribe or band inhabited the ground now supporting the Hawksmoor church of St. George’s in the East. Once known as Wapping on the Wose, or Wapping in the mud. Samuel Johnson urged Boswell to “explore Wapping” in order thoroughly to understand the London world. It still acts as an example. Once a place of fat fields and pastures, it became a riverside neighbourhood in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, described as a “continual street, with alleys of small tenements or cottages, built by sailors’ victuallers.” It was a place of pubs and brothels, in other words. It became an adjunct to the London Docks in the nineteenth century, then a slum and wasteland in the twentieth; now in the twenty-first century an arena for luxury apartments, estate agents and the headquarters of Times International.

         

BERMONDSEY: The eye or island of Beormund. The word eye is now reserved for the London Eye by the Thames, but it was originally used for a number of small islands upon the marshland or floodplain of the Thames. Bermondsey itself began existence as a causeway across the marsh, leading to a mid-Saxon minster. In the fourteenth century a Cluniac abbey arose in the same place, and became the centre of the commercial as well as the spiritual life of the area. By the eighteenth century, like many settlements beside the river, Bermondsey attracted the more noxious trades such as tanning and glue manufacture. Its various and disagreeable smells became famous. They were not necessarily unwelcomed, however; the smell of tanning was believed to be efficacious against the plague. There are still streets named Tanner Street, Morocco Street and Leathermarket Street. The phrase “mad as a hatter” originates here from the ailments that afflicted the hatters of Bermondsey, when they breathed in the fumes of a highly toxic mercury solution in the course of their work. It also has the honour (if such it is) of containing Jacob’s Island immortalised as Bill Sikes’s lair in Oliver Twist with “every repulsive lineament of poverty, every loathsome indication of filth, rot and garbage.” Sikes’s house was in Eckett Street, long since demolished.

         

SHADWELL: It does not mean “well of shadows,” or “shady wells.” The name derives from Ceadeles’s well, Ceadeles being a pre-Christian water deity. Shad Thames by Bermondsey is supposed to be a corruption of the Street of St. John at the Thames, the Knights of St. John owning mills in the neighbourhood, but there may be a connection with Ceadeles.

         

LIMEHOUSE: The place of lime oasts or lime kilns. There have been lime-workers here from the fourteenth century to the disappearance of the last kilns in 1935. There was a porcelain factory in Limehouse in the eighteenth century and the area was also known for its ship-building. In the nineteenth century it was known as Chinatown, and acquired a reputation for its opium dens and what were known as “dopers.” It never was as dangerous or as heinous as its reputation suggested, although writers as diverse as Oscar Wilde and Sax Rohmer introduced a great deal of romantic intrigue within the neighbourhood. It is no wonder that most Londoners shunned the area. It is now filled with expensive riverside apartments.

         

ROTHERHITHE: Or Redriff; Redriff Road survives. The name is popularly supposed to refer to a red reef, and it is said that just below the entrance to Millwall Dock there is a patch of light red gravel which runs across the river bottom. But it may derive from redhra, the Saxon for sailor, and hythe for haven. In that case it has been connected with sailors and shipping for more than a thousand years. Alternatively it may mean a landing place for cattle. From here the Pilgrim Fathers set sail for Plymouth and the New World. In the eighteenth century it was a village inhabited by seafaring men and tradesmen in the various nautical businesses. Lemuel Gulliver lived here. In the nineteenth century it became the home for various docks, many with a Baltic or Scandinavian connection. Grain and timber were the principal cargoes, although “Sicily sulphur”—sulphur from Palermo—was also an important commodity. The remains of a manor house, built by Edward III, can be seen beside the river-bank just west of the church. Galleywall Road here, once spelled Galley Wall, was popularly believed to mark the edge of the great ditch that Canute built to allow his galleys to circumvent the Thames.

         

DEPTFORD: Deep ford. There was once a Roman bridge here, but it decayed. Deptford Bridge is now on the site. A Saxon settlement has been found. It may have been known as Meretun, meaning the dwelling place in the marsh, and in AD 871 Ethelred defeated the Danes at this place. It is perhaps most famous as the location of Christopher Marlowe’s death. Peter the Great lived for several months at Sayes Court, owned by John Evelyn. His favourite pastime was to be driven in a wheelbarrow, drunk, through Evelyn’s neat hedges. There is still a Czar Street, but the house has long since disappeared. He was especially interested in the Royal Naval Dockyard, established by Henry VII in 1513. Raleigh, Frobisher and Drake all sailed from here.

         

GREENWICH: From the Saxon Grenewic or Grenevic, the green port, wic referring to a place where dry soil meets the river. Or perhaps the name means the village on the green, or even a dairy farm. It has attracted settlers from the Mesolithic period forwards. There was a royal palace here from the time of Edward I, which in the fifteenth century was known as L’Pleazaunce or Placentia. Both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I were born here. Hawksmoor built the church of St. Alphege, named after the Archbishop of Canterbury, Ealpheg, who on the site was beaten to death with ox-bones by the invading Danes in 1012. The setting for the Royal Observatory, and the Royal Hospital which is now the home of the University of Greenwich. It is considered by some to represent the most beautiful view upon the river. Defoe believed that the water of the Thames at this point “is very sweet and fresh, especially at the tide of ebb.” This may no longer be true. Greenwich gin is still manufactured here. Just to the east of the town is Horseshoe Breach, a breach in the river-bank that has never been reclaimed, and Dead Dog Bay. Greenwich has become a World Heritage Site.

         

THE ISLE OF DOGS: It is a peninsula, rather than an island. Once known as Stebunheath [Stepney] Marsh. The origin of the name is unclear. Was it a place where dead dogs were washed on the foreshore? Were the dog-kennels of Edward III situated here? In the eleventh century it was a woody marsh, upon which the Bishop of London kept five hundred hogs. So perhaps it was once the Isle of Hogs? It might also be a corruption of Isle of Ducks, or even Isle of Dykes. There is the story that a waterman murdered a man here, whose dog then swam back and forth across the river until he was noticed and followed. The corpse was discovered and, when the dog began to snarl at the waterman, so was the murderer. Hence the Isle of the Dog. There is yet another legend of a lost hunting party, whose phantom dogs wailed in the night. There was once a primaeval forest here, the remains of which have been uncovered 8 feet (2.4 m) beneath the surface of the water; in the nineteenth century it was described as “a mass of decayed trees, leaves and branches, accompanying huge trunks, rotted through, yet perfect in every fibre; the bark was uninjured, and the whole evidently torn up by the roots.” The West India Docks were built in the early nineteenth century. Until the 1980s it was inhabited by a tightly knit and of course peninsular community. A stone chapel dedicated to St. Mary was found here. Now the home of “Docklands” marked by the huge erection of Canary Wharf.

         

WOOLWICH: Wool farm; or a settlement where wool was traded. The river here was once considered treacherous, with unpredictable deeps and shallows. Harrison described the river at this point as of a “vast bigness.” It is indeed over a mile in width and, on the flood, the water is salt. The whole riverine area was once known as Bugsby’s Marshes. Now Woolwich Reach is preceded by Bugsby’s Reach, containing Bugsby’s Hole. The Hole was a place of execution in the eighteenth century, but now is essentially a small beach where rusty and dilapidated boats are to be found. No one knows the identity of Bugsby. Some say that he was a pirate, others that he was a market gardener or a devil. Woolwich was once the home of the military Arsenal. It is now the site of the Thames Barrier.

         

ERITH: Place where gravel was shipped; or perhaps a landing place of gravel. Seven or eight Saxon skeletons were found on the top of a hill beside the river. Once known as Lesnes or Lessness. The ruins of Lessness Abbey are still to be seen. The area was always low, flat and marshy with a reputation for being unhealthy.

         

GREENHITHE: Or Gretenrcse, meaning green landing place. Once the site of very productive chalk pits.

         

DAGENHAM: Daecca’s ham or settlement. Nearby Barking is named after Berica’s people. The home of the once famous Dagenham Breach when, in 1707, 5,000 acres (2,023 ha) of marshland were submerged by the river. The inundated area was not drained and embanked until 1721. The home of the Ford Motor Company. A large lake to the north of the factory marks the remains of the breach.

GRAYS THURROCK: The manor of Thurrock belonged to Richard de Grays. Thurrock may derive from Thoar’s Oak. Or it may come from the Saxon term thorrocke, describing the bottom part of a boat where the bilge water collects. It may simply mean a dung-heap in a field. The latter seems the most likely. This is where the Black Shelf Sand begins. This area of the river is known as St. Clement’s Reach, because the church of St. Clement in West Thurrock was built for the Canterbury pilgrims and fishermen who congregated along this stretch. The church was once in an isolated and desolate spot, surrounded by marshland, but it is now dominated by modern factories and refineries. The river at this place is also known as Fiddlers’ Reach, as a result of the legend that three fiddlers were drowned here and that their musical improvisations still cause the water to be restless and choppy; alternatively it is believed that seamen once used to call an irregular swell of the water “fiddling.” An early nineteenth-century guide described Grays Thurrock as consisting “principally of one irregular street situated on a small creek navigable for vessels of small burden.” It is now a sizeable town. The area is still occupied by waste-tips and waste-heaps, thus reverting to the meaning of its old name. The Queen Elizabeth the Second Bridge, a cable-stayed bridge, leads the M25 across the Thames Estuary.

         

TILBURY: The fort or burgh of Tilla. West Tilbury was the site chosen for the Camp Royal in 1588, where Elizabeth I delivered her celebrated speech to her army preparing for Spanish invaders. Now the site of Tilbury Fort, built in the 1670s as a defence against Dutch incursions along the river. Perhaps the fort of Tilla was situated on the same spot. There was once a Mint here, and the name appears on a coin from the reign of Edward the Confessor. Defoe reported “the whole shore being low, and spread with marshes and unhealthy ground.”

         

GRAVESEND: It does not mean “end of the grave” where, according to once popular legend, the Great Plague finally stopped. In the Domesday Book it is known as Gravesham, or the town of the Grave, otherwise Graff, the earl or chief magistrate of the neighbourhood. The point of entry to the Port of London, where coastal pilots secede their place to river pilots. In the fourteenth century the watermen here were granted the exclusive right to transport passengers to London. This was once the place of arrivals and departures, where explorers and colonists, transported prisoners and emigrants, were vouchsafed their last glimpse of the land they were leaving. It was at Gravesend Reach that David Copperfield bade farewell to Mr. Peggotty, and where the Micawbers disappeared from sight. A nineteenth-century account of the Thames describes the place as associated with “meetings and partings, with great changes of fortune, with the keenest moments in the drama of life.” The river, from Gravesend and Tilbury to the sea, is known as “the Hope.” So a haunted place, one which Conrad described as having once been “one of the dark places of the earth.” The town pier of 1834 survives still. The town marks the beginning of the Saxon Shore that winds its way to Hastings.

CLIFFE: Called Clive or Cloveshoo or Cliffe-at-Hoo. Also once known as Bishops’ Cliffe, since all the Saxon bishops in the province of Canterbury held an annual synod “in the place which is called Clofeshoch.” It is believed that this represents the first parliamentary system to be inaugurated in England. There was once a thriving port here; from its position upon the cliff, it was a significant location. In 1797 it was reported that “Cliffe seems daily growing into further ruin and poverty, the number of inhabitants lessening yearly and several of the houses, for want of them lying in ruins.” By the nineteenth century it was described as “a lonely, primitive place.” No doubt the ague destroyed the people. So by degrees human settlement disappeared.

         

ISLE OF SHEPPEY: From the Saxon sceapige, in consequence of the great quantity of sheep bred upon it. Known to Ptolemy as Toliapis. Here, at Minster-upon-Sea, is one of the oldest churches in Britain; it was founded by Queen Sexburga in AD 670. There was originally a temple to Apollo on the same site. For many centuries it was a battleground between the Danes and Saxons. In 832 it was overrun “by the heathen men.” It has not been the same since.

         

CANVEY ISLAND: The island of Cana’s people. Some 4,000 (1,620 ha) acres of land, once flat marshland. It may be the Convennos or Counos of Ptolemy and other ancient writers. There are extensive signs of Romano-British occupation. In the second century it was the home of salt-makers, whose settlement was destroyed in some natural disaster when the island was submerged. It has always been at the mercy of the sea. At a later date it was an island of shepherds. Then it became the home for a large community of Dutch, who in the early seventeenth century used their skills at reclaiming land in exchange for rights of settlement. A place, in William Harrison’s words, “which some call marshes onlie, and liken them to an ipocras bag, some to a vice, scrue, or wide sleeve, because they are verie small at the east end and large at the west.” In the early nineteenth century it was reported that “only people who cared little whether they lived or died would undertake the farm work on the island.” But the ague disappeared in the middle of the nineteenth century, largely because of improved drainage and the reduced population of mosquitoes. At the beginning of the twentieth century it was described as “the loneliest place in the Home Counties” but a large urban community was developed in subsequent years. It also became a holiday resort for Londoners. The great flood of 1953 killed eighty-three residents.