Note you that, gentle reader, “the county of Wilts,” we being in the midst of Berkshire? A considerable tract of surrounding country is in fact (or was until comparatively recent years) a detached portion of Wiltshire, and was invariably shown so on old maps. Examples of such isolated portions of counties, and even of detached fragments of parishes, are by no means rare: Worcestershire in England and Cromartyshire in Scotland, forming the most notable examples; but the reasons for these things are obscure, and all attempts at explaining them amount to little more than the unsatisfying conclusion that they are thus because—well, because they are, you know! That is the net result of repeated discussions upon the subject in Notes and Queries, in which publication of wholly honorary and unpaid contributions the majority of noters, querists, and writers of replies have during the space of some sixty years past been engaged in chasing their own tails, like so many puppies. The process is amusing enough, but as you end where you began, the net result is no great catch.
Apart from legends and traditions, it would seem that the explanation of the Berkshire districts of Hurst, Twyford, Ruscombe, Whistley Green, and a portion of Wokingham having been accounted in Wiltshire, may be found in the fact, already remarked, that Sonning was a manor of the Bishops of Salisbury. The question appears to have been largely an ecclesiastical affair. The anomaly of a portion of Wiltshire being islanded in Berkshire was, however, ended by Acts of Parliament during the reigns of William the Fourth and Queen Victoria, by which the area concerned was annexed to Berkshire.
Returning from Hurst to Twyford, expeditions to Ruscombe, St. Lawrence Waltham, and Shottesbrooke will amply repay the explorer in these wilds—for wilds they are in the matter of perplexing roads. They are good roads, in so far that they are level, but they would seem to have come into existence on no plan; or, if plan there ever were, a malicious plan, intended to utterly confound and mislead the stranger. But this is no unpleasant district in which to wander awhile.
ST. LAWRENCE WALTHAM.
Ruscombe is notable as the place where William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, died, in 1718. Its church stands solitary in the meadows—a red-brick, eighteenth-century building, as ruddy as a typical beef-eating and port-drinking farmer of Georgian days. The neighbouring St. Lawrence Waltham is entirely delightful. The fine church tower of St. Lawrence, the ancient brick and plaster and timbered Bell Inn, and the old village pound, with an aged elm at each corner of it, composing a rarely-beautiful picture.
The stone spire of Shottesbrooke church is seen, not far off, peering up from among the trees of Shottesbrooke Park, in which it is situated. When we see a stone church spire in Berkshire, where we do not commonly find ancient spires, we are apt to suspect at once a modern church, and our suspicions are generally well-founded; but here is a remarkably fine Decorated building of the mid-fourteenth century (it was built 1337). It stands finely in a noble park for many years belonging to the Vansittart family, and has been well described as “a cathedral in miniature.” Its origin appears by tradition to have been due to the unexpected recovery of Sir William Trussell, the then owner of the estate, who had been brought to the verge of death by a long-continued course of drunkenness. He built it by way of thankoffering, and as he would seem to have been intemperate in all he did, he not only built this very large and noble church, but founded a college for five priests. This establishment went the way of all such things, hundreds of years ago, and the great building, standing solitary in the park, except for the vicarage and the manor-house, now astonishes the stranger at its loneliness. He wonders where the village is, and may well continue to wonder, for village there is none.
SHOTTESBROOKE CHURCH.