Something of the distinct stateliness of Sonning is due to the fact that anciently the Bishops of Salisbury were owners of the manor, and before them the Bishops of the Saxon diocese of Dorchester. Their manor-house was in the time of Leland “a fair old house of stone by the Tamise ripe”; but of this desirable residence nothing remains. The Deanery, too, has disappeared, but the fine old stone and brick enclosing-walls of its grounds remain, and there a picturesque modern residence has been built. Those walls, of an immense thickness and solidity, are indeed a sight to see, for the saxifrage and many beautiful flowering plants growing in and upon them.
HOUR-GLASS AND WROUGHT-IRON STAND, HURST.
Sonning itself, being a place so delightful, invites those to whom locality has interest to explore into the country that lies in the rear of it. In a work styled Thames Valley Villages we may go very much where we please, and here the valley broadens out considerably, for it includes, and insensibly merges with, that of the river Loddon, which flows down quite a long way, even from the heights of northern Hampshire. The Loddon, the loveliest tributary of the Thames, flows into it by three mouths, from one mile to two miles and a half below Sonning, and its various loops and channels make the four-mile stretch of country in the rear a particularly moist and water-logged district. Here, crossing the dusty Bath road at Twyford, which takes its name from the ancient double ford of the Loddon at this point, the secluded village of Hurst may be found. Its name of “Hurst,” i.e. a woodland, indicates its situation in what was once the widespreading Windsor Forest. The village lies along gravelly roads, scattered about fragments of village green and a large pond; its church, hidden three-quarters of a mile away, forming, with a country inn and some old almshouses, a curiously isolated group. To see the interesting Norman and Early English church, with red-brick tower, dated 1612, crowned with quaint cupola, is worth some effort; for it contains a very handsome chancel-screen, probably placed here circa 1500. The repainting of it in 1876, under the direction of J. D. Sedding, the architect who then restored the church, is, if indeed in accordance with the traces of the original decoration then found, certainly more curious than beautiful; but it should be seen, if only to show that our ancestors were, after all, not a little barbaric in their schemes of decoration. The hour-glass, with beautiful wrought-iron bracket dated 1636, should be noticed. Behind it, on the wall, is painted “As this Glasse runneth, so Man’s Life passeth.” A queer memorial brass to Alse Harison, representing the lady in a four-poster bed, is on the north wall. A large grey-and-white marble monument to others of the Harison family includes an epitaph on Philip Harison, who died in 1683. The sorrowing author of it ends ingeniously:
“A double dissolution there appears,
He into dust dissolves; she into tears.”
Surely a mind capable of such ingenious imagery on such a subject cannot have been wholly downcast.
The old almshouses by the church were founded, as appears on a tablet over the entrance, by one William Barker:
This Hospitall for the
Maintenance of eight poor persons,
Each at 6d. pr diem for euer, was
Erected and Founded in ye year 1664
At the Sole Charge of
William Barker
of Hurst, in the County of
Wilts, Esq.
Who dyed ye 25th of March, 1685
And lies buried in the South
Chancell of this Parish.