BOOK III

THE UPPER RIVER

THE CASTLE KEEP, OXFORD 236

THAMES HEAD 238

LECHLADE FROM THE FIRST LOCK 240

KELMSCOTT MANOR 242

MAGDALEN TOWER, OXFORD 252

ABINGDON 264

THE GATEHOUSE, READING ABBEY 273

SONNING 280

HENLEY 281

DIAGRAM OF THE THAMES VALLEY TERRACES 283

WINDSOR CASTLE 286

ETON COLLEGE 299

HAMPTON COURT, GARDEN FRONT 306

KINGSTON 322

TEDDINGTON WEIR 324

RICHMOND HILL FROM PETERSHAM MEADOWS 327

FROM THE TERRACE, RICHMOND 330

KEW GARDENS 334

PUTNEY TO MORTLAKE (CHAMPIONSHIP COURSE) 338

FULHAM PALACE 340

RANELAGH 341

THE POWER-STATION, CHELSEA 345

THE LOLLARDS’ TOWER, LAMBETH PALACE 346

CHART OF THE THAMES FROM WINDSOR TO THE NORE _Back end-papers_

FATHER THAMES

INTRODUCTION

_The River and its Valley_

England is not a country of great rivers. No mighty Nile winds lazily across desert and fertile plains in its three and a half thousand miles course to the sea; no rushing Brahmaputra plunges headlong down its slopes, falling two or three miles as it crosses half a continent from icy mountain-tops to tropical sea-board. In comparison with such as these England’s biggest rivers are but the tiniest, trickling streams. Yet, for all that, our little waterways have always meant much to the land. Tyne, Severn, Humber, Trent, Thames, Mersey, Ouse—all these, with many smaller but no less well-known streams, have played their part in the making of England’s history; all these have had much to do with the building up of her commercial prosperity.

One only of these rivers we shall consider in this book, and that is old “Father Thames”: as it was and as it is, and what it has meant to England during two thousand years. In our consideration we shall divide the River roughly into three quite natural divisions—first, the section up to the lowest bridge; second, the part just above, the part which gave the River its chief port and city; third, the upper river.

However, before we consider these three parts in detail, there is one question which we might well ponder for a little while, a question which probably has never occurred to more than a few of us; and that is this: Why was there ever a River Thames at all? To answer it we must go back—far, far back into the dim past. As you know, this world of ours is millions of years old, and like most ancient things it has seen changes—tremendous changes. Its surface has altered from time to time in amazing fashion. Whole mountain ranges have disappeared from sight, and valleys have been raised to make fresh highlands. The bed of the ocean has suddenly or slowly been thrust up, yielding entirely new continents, while vast areas of land have sunk deep enough to allow the water to flow in and create new seas. All this we know by the study of the rocks and the fossil remains buried in them—that is, by the science of geology.

Now, among many other strange things, geology teaches us that our own islands were at one time joined on to the mainland of Europe. In those days there was no English Channel, no North Sea, and no Irish Sea. Instead, there was a great piece of land stretching from Denmark and Norway right across to spots miles out beyond the western limits of Ireland and the northern limits of Scotland. This land, which you will best understand by looking carefully at the map, p. 4, was crossed by several rivers, the largest of them one which flowed almost due north right across what is now the North Sea. This river, as you will see from the map, was chiefly produced by glaciers of the Alps, and, in its early stages, took practically the same course as the River Rhine of these days. As it flowed out across the Dogger district (where now is the famous Dogger Bank of our North Sea fishermen) it was joined by a number of tributary rivers, which flowed down eastwards from what we might call the “back-bone of England”—the range of mountains and hills which passes down through the centre of our islands. One of these tributaries was a river which in its early stages flowed along what is now our own Thames Valley.

In those days everything was on a much grander scale, and this river, though only a small tributary of the great main continental river, was a far wider and deeper stream than the Thames which we know. Here and there along the present-day river valley we can still see in the contours of the land and in the various rocks evidences of the time when this bigger stream was flowing. (Of this we shall read more in