A curious story tells how one of the last occupants of Lady Place was a brother of Admiral Kempenfelt, and that he and the Admiral planted two thorn-trees in the garden, in which he took great pride. One day, returning home, he found that the tree planted by the Admiral had withered away, and he exclaimed: “I feel sure this is an omen that my brother is dead.” That evening, August 29, 1782, he received news of the loss of the Royal George.
Hurley church is a long, low building, of nave without aisles, of Norman, or some say earlier, origin. “It was probably ravaged by the Danes towards the close of the ninth century,” say the guide-books. This may have been so, but it could hardly have been worse ravaged by them than it was by those who “restored” it in 1852 “at a cost of £1,500,” and incidentally also at the cost of all its real interest.
THE BELL INN, HURLEY.
The village of Hurley straggles a long way back from the river, in one scattered, disjointed line of cottages, past the picturesque old Bell Inn, apparently of fifteenth-century date, heavily framed with stout oaken timbers.
Below Hurley, leaving behind the ancient red-brick piers of the old-world gardens of Lady Place, the river opens out to Marlow reach, with Bisham on the right hand, and the tall crocketed spire of Marlow church closing the distant view.
“Bisham” is said to have been originally “Bustleham,” but the present form will be preferred by every one. Strangers call it “Bish-am,” but for the natives and the people of Marlow the only way is by the elision of the letter h—“Bis-am”; and thus shall you, being duly informed of this shibboleth, infallibly detect the stranger in these parts.
Bisham village is quite invisible from the river, nor need we trouble to seek it, unless it be for climbing up into the lovely and precipitous Quarry Woods, in the rear. To those who knew Bisham when Fred Walker painted his delightful pictures, and among them, some studies of this village street, there comes, when they think of the Bisham that was and the Bisham that is, a fierce but impotent anger. The humble old red-brick cottages remain, it is true, and their gardens bloom as of yore, but what was once the sweet-smelling gravelly street is now a tarred abomination, smelling evilly, and wearing a squalid and disreputable look. This is the result of the coming of the motor-car, for Bisham is on the well-travelled road between High Wycombe, Great Marlow, Twyford, and Reading, and the village has now the unwelcome choice of two evils: to be half-choked with billows of dust, or to coat its roads with tar compositions.