CHAPTER VII
WYTHAM—THE OLD ROAD—BINSEY AND THE ORATORY OF ST. FRIDESWIDE—THE VANISHED VILLAGE OF SEACOURT—GODSTOW AND “FAIR ROSAMOND”—MEDLEY—FOLLY BRIDGE.
The river makes a great semicircular bend, as between New Bridge and Oxford, so that although but six miles between the two, measured in a straight line on the map, it is fifteen miles by water. Cumnor stands roughly in the middle of the projecting part of Berkshire enclosed within this bend, and Wytham almost at the farthest northward fling of it, just below where Eynsham Bridge (otherwise styled Swinford Bridge) carries the great highway from Oxford across the Thames towards Witney and Gloucester. Eynsham, a quaint old village, is one mile distant.
EYNSHAM.
Wytham, amid the deep woodlands, on its bold hill-top in the bight of the river, is a sequestered place, the site of the mansion called Wytham Abbey, seat of the Earls of Abingdon. “Abbey” is a fanciful term, as applied here, for no religious house ever stood upon the site, and the existing buildings arose in the sixteenth century, at the bidding of one of the Harcourts, who then owned the property. How it eventually came through several hands and at last by marriage into the Bertie family, Earls of Abingdon, is not, I imagine, a matter of general interest. Wytham village, lying beneath that lordly seat, is one of the most charming villages in Berkshire, which is saying a good deal in the commendatory sort. It is, and has long been, famed for its strawberry-growing, and was once even recommended by the faculty to invalids for a “strawberry cure.” I cannot imagine the ailment for which the eating of strawberries is a likely remedy, but a pleasanter “cure” could hardly be invented.