Afterwards the road descended and was a green-hedged line with a narrow ploughed field between it and the edge of the juniper. Above Chinnor it was for a long way almost straight, broad and green, with elms in the left hedge. Here the Chilterns had beeches on the upper slope and dots of juniper below. Suddenly after this straightness the way had to descend a little over undulating ground, and it wriggled ahead confusedly, narrow and without trees in its hedge, widening where a hump was useless, to the ploughland below. In front now stood the clumped Beacon Hill above Lewknor, which was the end of a long curve of hills carrying the woods of Crowell, Kingston, and Aston, woods reaching from the ridge down to the arable in most parts, but with lawny or chalky intervals. At the crossing to Kingston Blount the railway came up to my road and from there went close and parallel for a mile to the station of Aston Rowant. It was here a broad green track at the foot of the slope, though still above everything lying on its right, and leaving the villages at least half a mile on that side. It rounded Beacon Hill, which was capped with a tree-clump and sprinkled with junipers, and went along under Bald Hill and Shirburn Hill, which was wooded. Before crossing the road from Great Marlow and Fingest to Watlington, it wound round a chalk pit and rubbish heap. Then the telegraph-posts joined it, though it was only a green lane in two terraces going under thorny Watlington Hill, and past cornfields sprinkled with charlock and white campion. At one point ten elm trees, one a triple tree, stood out in the middle of the wide green trackway. Beyond the road from Nettlebed the way was white between high, level green banks, and then long grass, thistles, and thorns in a thicket, before coming to the elm-shaded pond where a lane goes up on the left under more elms to Dame Alice Farm. Then it narrowed and widened again among nettles and elder, and a little farther it became a company of four parallel grooves paved with the pure down turf, a little silver-weed, and thyme. The undulations of the cornland were bolder now towards Britwell Salome, and in a hollow a roof nestled among elms; beyond these were dim, low hills. A line of elm trees, now many deep, now in narrow file, half hid the village of Britwell. Above my road a steam-plough stood idle; the men lay on their faces under the elms; and beyond was their caravan. Crossing the Britwell Salome road I came in sight of the clear heavings of the Sinodun Hills and their clumps of trees, and the dim length of the main downs far past them. Britwell House, looking at its monument and Swyncombe Downs, lay a little to the right. Down the slope of the hill at the north edge of the beeches and firs of Icknield Bank Plantation came a Danish entrenchment.
Icknield Way, near Watlington.
Sinodun Hill.
Emerging from the trees the road was narrow and hard, but sent a green branch southward over Littleworth Hill, and the adjacent land was equally high on both sides, on the left Ewelme Downs, on the right Huntingland. I went along the south side of Ewelme Cow Common, a shallow, irregular hollow of grass, with many thorns and much bird’s-foot trefoil in it, bounded on all hands by roads without hedges. I entered the Henley road a little west of the fourteenth milestone from Oxford, and turned along it to the right, and then almost at once to the left at Gipsies’ Corner, and so went south, avoiding the road on the right to Crowmarsh Gifford and Wallingford. Here was a new land before me, of sweeping corn, big thatched barns on a low ridge above it, and the main Downs beyond. It was a narrow and low-hedged road that kept away from the low, elmy Thames land on the west. Over the hazels and elders of its hedgerows climbed roses and bryony. Between Oakley Wood and Coldharbour Farm it made southward, crossing the Nettlebed and Crowmarsh and Nuffield and Crowmarsh roads within a few yards; the three ways framing a pretty triangular waste of impenetrable thorns, elders, and nettles. Sinodun Hills were always distinct on the right. Then I traversed Grim’s Ditch, where it borders the south edge of Foxberry Wood and of a broad, herbless ploughland; the ditch being on the south side of the bank. In half a mile I crossed another road from Crowmarsh, going south-east. There my way ceased to be a road, but its line was clear along the natural wall of earth between upper and lower fields; and when there was no more wall, along the strip of rough grass between two stretches of ploughland; and when that ended, the course of the way was clearly on a terrace with a central path through the long grass and some thorns on the bank to the right of it, between two fields of sainfoin. Ahead, on the left, stood the little solitary church of Ipsden on an east-and-west road from North Stoke which I crossed. Onwards there was a rough, hedgeless road still going south. After the next cross-road to Ipsden the probable line was marked only by a hedge between grass and arable, and even that gave out for the last fifty yards before entering the Mongewell road. Over this road a gap in the hedge might have been used when the road had dwindled to a footpath going to Glebe Farm, which is on a road now largely used to connect Brazier’s Park with Goring. I thought I saw the ghost of it coming down to Glebe Farm, though amidst corn. This road to Goring is henceforward along the course of the Icknield Way. It is a hard and hedgeless road, winding and undulating through corn that rises on either hand to crested ridges. It passed Icknield Farm, crossed the South Stoke and Woodcote road, and went up as Catsbrain Hill to where I saw below me the red roofs and walls of suburban Cleeve and the Berkshire downs, their woods and pastures, beyond. The road dipped, and at the cross-road below was lost in streets and building land. Therefore I turned west along the cross-road, and then south again to Goring, the ford, and Streatley. Goring and Streatley railway station, and the cutting and the new houses have probably covered up where they have not destroyed all traces of the Icknield Way. But there is a Ferry Lane leading down to the towing-path and river, to where there was a ferry before the bridge, and a “Roman” ford over the gravelly bottom before that. On the opposite side Streatley Vicarage and its lawn lie across the probable way, but beyond them a path continuing the line of Ferry Lane goes straight up to the Reading road a quarter mile south of the “Bull.” I went into Goring Church and churchyard, and was pleased with the names of “John Lammas” and of “James, Ann, and Ruth Thresher” on tombstones. What clear visages of men and women these call up, each perfect in its way, shorn of the uncertain, vague, or incongruous elements of the living! By a kind of art the mere names in the churchyard sketch the characters. I have seen mere names that suggested as much as those two beautiful verses express which Mr. Walter de la Mare, the author, calls “An Epitaph”:—
Here lies the most beautiful lady,
Light of step and heart was she;