STANFORD HALL
Below South Kilworth, where a windmill crowns the upland, the valley turns southward, and we leave the canal to track the Avon again, that here is choked with rushes. For a mile or two we pursue it, now jumping, now crossing by a timely pole or hurdle, from Northamptonshire into Leicestershire and back (for the stream divides these counties), until it enters the grounds of Stanford Hall, and under the yellowing chestnuts of the park grows suddenly a dignified sheet of water, with real swans.
Stanford Hall (the seat of Lord Bray) is, according to Ireland, “spacious, but wants those pictorial decorations that would render it an object of attention to the traveller of taste.” But to us, who saw it in the waning daylight, the comfortable square house seemed full of quiet charm, as did the squat perpendicular church, untouched by the restorer, and backed by a grassy mound that rises to the eastern window, and the two bridges (the older one disused) under which the Avon leaves the park. A twisted wych-elm divides them, its roots set among broad burdock leaves.
ROMAN CAMP, LILBURNE
Below Stanford the stream contracts again, and again meanders among black cattle and green fields to Lilburne. Here it winds past a congeries of grassy mounds, dotted now with black-faced sheep, that was once a Roman encampment, the Tripontium mentioned by the emperor Antoninus in his journey from London to Lincoln. Climbing to the eminence of the prætorium and gazing westward, we see on the high ground two beech-crowned tumuli side by side, clearly an outpost or speculum overlooking Watling Street, the Roman road that passes just beyond the ridge “from Dover into Chestre.” This same high ground is the eastern hem of Dunsmore Heath, once so dismally ravaged by the Dun Cow of legend, till Guy of Warwick rode out and slew her in single combat. The heath, a long ridge of lias bordering our river to the south for many miles to come, is now enclosed and tilled; but its straggling cottages, duck ponds, and furze clumps still suggest the time when all was common land.
At our feet, close under the encampment, an antique bridge crosses Avon. Beside it is hollowed a sheep-washing pool, and across the road stands a little church. Tempted by its elaborate window mouldings, we poke our heads in at the door, but at once withdraw them to cough and sneeze. The place is given over to dense smoke and a small decent man, who says that a service will be held in ten minutes, and what to do with the stove he doesn’t know. So we leave him, and pass on, trudging towards Catthorpe, a mile below.
A wooden paling, once green, but subdued by years to all delicate tints, fronts the village street. Behind, in a garden of cypress and lilacs, lies the old vicarage, with deep bow-windows sunk level with the turf, a noteworthy house. For John Dyer, author of “Grongar Hill”—“Bard of the Fleece,” as Wordsworth hails him—held Catthorpe living for a few years in the last century; and here, while his friends
“in the town, in the busy, gay town,
Forgot such a man as John Dyer,”