CHAPTER 6

Birth

The source is the place of enchantment, where the boundary between the visible and invisible realms is to be found. It is commonly deemed to be a sanctuary, guarded or protected by the spirits of the young water. The water issuing from the dark earth can also be seen as an image of human existence emerging from the unknown. We trace the stream from darkness, from the very place of origin in its blind cavern, until it issues to the light and open day. It is a metaphor of birth and death, of beginning and ending. Water itself represents the beginning of every living thing. The journey towards the source is the journey backwards, away from human history. Force and purity come from the source. Youthfulness derives from the source. So springs the myth of the fountain of youth. It is the fons et origo. It is the Well of Life or, in the Norse phrase, the Well of Wyrd.

In Naturales Quaestiones Seneca declared that “when you have come to understand the true origin of rivers, you will realise that you have no further questions.” The source has always been considered to be the origin of power and of good fortune. When Shalmaneser III of Assyria found the source of the Tigris, “I took victims to sacrifice to my gods, I held a joyful feast.” Caesar told the high priest of Egypt that he would give up his wars if he could find the source of the Nile. Nero sent an expedition to find that same source, without success. In the mythology of Egypt the river was created at the beginning of the world—of the universe—and its origin would remain for ever undisclosed. The source of the Yellow River, or Huang He, a vital presence in China for many thousands of years and the genuine nurse of its culture, was not discovered until 1952.

For many scholars the journey to the origin of rivers was in a literal sense a return to Paradise. It was believed that the waters of the primal Eden circulated in the subterranean regions of the earth, and emerged from the mouths of caverns and abysses to irrigate the upper lands. The source was the place where the mysteries of eternal life might be vouchsafed. In the sermons of Bernard of Clairvaux there is a prayer that “the rivers of grace circle back to their fountain-head that they may run their course anew” nourishing the trinity of the spring, the wellhead and the stream. In this context the closest thing to the soul is the primal spring. Thus Chaucer, living on the Thames at Greenwich, addressed a friend upriver:

Scogan, that knelest at the stremes heed

Of grace, of alle honour and worthinesse,

In th’end of which streme I am dul as deed,

Forgete in solitarie wildernesse…

It is appropriate that the source of the Thames represents in part a mystery. The Elizabethan antiquarian and topographer, William Harrison, complained that people “make as much adoo” about the origin of the river as was once made “in times past of the true head of Nilus which…was never found.” He was referring to the fact that the Thames has two possible origins, one of them known as Seven Springs and the other more pertinently as Thames Head.

Geographically the palm might be awarded to Seven Springs in the parish of Coberley, or Cubberley, north of Cirencester; it is further from the sea than Thames Head by some 12 miles and, at 700 feet (213 m), more than 300 feet (91 m) higher above sea level. There is an ancient stone bulwark, with seven springs issuing from seven small openings in its wall. On the stone has been fixed a plaque with the words Hic Tuus O Tamesine Pater Septemgeminus Fons—“Here, O Father Thames, is your seven-sourced fountain.” There is, however, one large impediment to this claim. The stream that issues from the seven springs has always been known as the Churn, which eventually enters the Thames at Cricklade. No one doubts that it is ancient—its name derives from the Celtic word chwern or “swift”—only whether it is the source of the Thames.

The historical records are, on this matter, in agreement about the claims of Thames Head. In the early sixteenth century John Leland stated that the “Isis,” by which name he called the Thames, rose “not far from a village cawlled Kemble, within half a mile of the Fosseway” in the same century John Stow recorded that “the most excellent and goodly river beginneth in Cotswold, about a mile from Titbury, and as much from the hie way called Fosse,” and William Camden reported that “it riseth not far from Tarlton, hard by the famous Foss-way.” The authorities could be multiplied, but the inference is clear. The Fosse-Way has now been trans-figured into the A 433, but the source of the Thames is to be found in its immediate vicinity.

It rises in a field known as Trewsbury Mead, and lies beside a Roman camp which is now a mound still called Trewsbury Castle. The camp was no doubt located here because of its proximity to the spring, and it is likely that peoples more ancient than the Romans had a settlement here. The name of the neighbouring village of Ewen is derived from the Saxon word for a spring or source. So from earliest times this place has been celebrated, or sanctified, because of its flowing waters. Over the centuries the locale acquires its identity. Thomas Love Peacock expressed this process in his paean to the river, The Genius of the Thames (1810):

Let fancy lead, from Trewsbury Mead,

With hazel fringed, and copsewood deep,

Where scarcely seen, through brilliant green,

Thy infant waters softly creep,

To where the wide-expanding Nore

Beholds thee, with tumultuous roar…

As late as the eighteenth century there was a well at Trewsbury Mead, protected by a circular wall some 8 feet (2.4 m) in height. Then the wall was demolished or eroded, the well eventually filled in. All that remains as the mark of origin is a small group of stones like some basin or ring in the ground, in a hollow beneath a tree; in some respects these oolite stones, known as stone-brash or corn-grate, resemble a cairn or memorial of ancient worship.

The mythical properties converge at this place known as Thames Head. The tree protecting the source is an ash that has stood here for approximately two centuries. It once had “T.H.” carved upon its bark—some still see the letters, and some do not. But the emblem is not important. It is in any case a highly significant tree. In the mythology of the Norse people the roots of the ash-tree went down into the lower world. It connected the three circles of existence, and was known to be the path of spirits. The giant ash was known as the World Tree or Yggdrasil. In that mythology there was always a spring or pool beside it. In that mythology, too, a river ran from the tree of life. What could be more appropriate than that it should guard the source of the Thames? But there are other significant associations. The ash-tree is sacred to Poseidon, and is the tree dedicated to the power of water.

At the source of many rivers are to be found temples, or stones carved with the figures of divinity. Often wooden carvings were placed at the source as votive offerings. A hoar stone was erected at Thames Head as a memorial. The same stone is mentioned in a grant of lands given by King Athelstan in the year 931, when it was used as a boundary. Or it may have marked a place of sepulture, where some principal person was buried beside the origin of waters. It was later used as a horse-block or “upping stock” where traveller and horse could pause to refresh themselves with the clear water. It was replaced in the last century by a marble plinth upon which is carved “The Conservation of the River Thames 1857–1974. This Stone Was Placed Here to Mark the Source of the River Thames.”

Yet there was one problem for the thirsty horse and traveller during certain seasons of the year. Leland states that “in a great somer drought there appereth very little or no water, yet is the stream servid with many springes resorting to one bottom.” In the late eighteenth century John Boydell remarked in his History of the River Thames (1796) that “I do not think you will ever find any water in summertime.” The absence of water is still remarked two hundred years later. It is one of the mysteries of the Thames. There seems to be no nourishment at the source. For most of the year it remains dry ground. The line of the infant Thames can only be followed by a gentle declivity in the surrounding ground, so that it is possible to walk in the middle of the river without becoming wet.

There is of course water beneath the surface. A latter-day water diviner has calculated that there is running water at a depth of 5 or 6 feet (1.5 or 1.8 m), with a channel some 10 inches (254 mm) in width. At times of heavy rain the spring floods upward. There are photographs, taken in 1960 and 2000, of pools where there had been a well. In the photographs of 1960 small boys are to be seen in canoes beneath the ash-tree. There has been a diminution of water, however, and one early-twentieth-century oral historian recorded a local inhabitant as saying that “the springs be wakened in thaay owl ’ills, an ther yent so much water comes down as ’twas when I was a bwoy.” The clearance of woods and forests in the region has meant less condensation but, in addition, human artifice has played its part. A steam engine was placed beside the well to pump water for the Thames and Severn Canal, which ran on higher ground close by, and in 1878 a pumping station was erected for the Great Western Railway works at Swindon.

Yet the lines and buried streams are still here. The path of the infant river in the declivity is marked by a straggling line of ancient thorns. Along that path there is a group of scattered stones that look very much like the ruins of a stone bridge; about half a mile further down is a large pool or basin, much more likely to be filled with water than Thames Head itself. It is known as Lyd Well or, in translation from Old English, “loud” spring. Yet Lyd may have a different connotation. It may be related to Ludd, the divinity of early London. There is an argument that Ludd is also the ancient god of the river. Lyd Well is the beginning of our pilgrimage beside the Thames.