A THAMES-SIDE FARM.
GATEWAY, COTE HOUSE.
There stands in the flat country between Bampton and Northmoor, amid the level meadows, washed, and not infrequently severely flooded, by the Charney Brook, by the Windrush, and by many mazy rills, the picturesque old mansion, now a farmhouse of a superior residential type, of Cote. It was built in the reign of James the First, between the years 1608 and 1612, by one Thomas Horde, and was originally surrounded by a moat. Alterations, apparently undertaken in 1704, the date of the fine wrought ironwork of the old gates secluding it from the road, abolished the moat; but a squat tower at one end of the grey, many-gabled mansion still discloses the old ideas of defence. It was at one time some twenty feet higher. At that period, when Thomas Horde built his house at Cote, times were, in fact, still unsettled, and one never knew into what dangers one might be drawn. The very year when he began building was the year of the Gunpowder Plot; and when such things could be, a man did well to stand upon the defensive.
Beyond Cote, towards the river, lies Shifford, secluded and rarely visited. The old church of Shifford fell down in 1772, and a new building took its place. This was removed in 1863.
Shifford is traditionally the scene of a Parliament, or Witanagemot, held here by Alfred the Great about A.D. 890: “There sate at Shifford many thanes, many bishops, and many learned men, wise earls, and awful knights: there was Earl Elfrick, very learned in the law; and Alfred, England’s herdsman, England’s darling; he was king of England; he taught them that could hear him how they should live.”
There still remain, in the meadows by Shifford, traces of earthworks and the stump of an ancient cross, sufficiently proving that this was indeed anciently a place of considerable importance. But commerce with the world of affairs no longer stirs the pulses of Shifford, or the neighbourhood of it, and the Thames steals softly along, between tall palisades, as it were, of rushes, and past the sentinel willows, with only an occasional farmstead in sight; farms where one might almost suppose the farmers to consume their own produce, so remote from all methods of conveying it away do they seem to be.