Between Dorchester and Wallingford, whether we proceed by the Oxfordshire side of the river or the Berkshire, we are in a level district of many springs, to which the place-names of the villages numerously bear witness. Thus in Berkshire there are the two conjoined delightful villages of Brightwell and Sotwell, where a little rill goes rippling by, until early summer dries it up. The name “Brightwell” thus speaks for itself. Sotwell, I presume, means “sweet well.” And in Oxfordshire, beyond the scope of these pages, is another Brightwell, with the family name of “Salome” added to it; while the name of Ewelme, a beautiful and historic village near by, means simply “wells.” Just beyond Wallingford, too, is Mongewell. The river runs between, with the beautiful stone bridge of Shillingford, and the water-side village of Benson on the way: Benson, by common consent lopped of much of its name, being really “Bensington.” So unanimously has the locality agreed upon the shorter form, and for such a length of time, that even map-makers have adopted it. Of the clan of Bensings, whose chief settlement this was, we can know nothing; and the later conflicts between the Saxon kingdoms of Wessex and Mercia, in which Bensington changed hands with great frequency, until Mercia at length assimilated it, are such far-off, remote doings that it is perhaps a little difficult to take even a languid interest in them. Even the old coaching days seem remote, although large and imposing specimens of English coaching hostelries stand in the crooked street of Benson, a little dazed by motor-cars and the noise and the stink of them, wondering whither have gone the mails and the stages of yore.
CHAPTER XII
WALLINGFORD—GORING
And so we come, past the pretty Oxfordshire hamlet of Preston Crowmarsh, into the good old Berkshire town of Wallingford.
Wallingford town has been thrust aside by modern circumstances and altogether deposed from its ancient importance. If we look at large maps, and thereby see how several great roads here converge and cross the Thames, the reason of this former importance will be at once manifest, and likewise the existence of the great castle of Wallingford will be explained. Wallingford derives its name from “Wealinga-ford,” a Saxon term by which the ford of the Wealings—that is to say the British, or the Welsh, whom the Saxons were gradually displacing—was meant.
