CHAPTER VII
FIFTH DAY—IVINGHOE TO WATLINGTON, ON THE LOWER ICKNIELD WAY, BY ASTON CLINTON, WESTON TURVILLE, CHINNOR, AND LEWKNOR
I had to go back to the forking of the Icknield Way and follow the Lower road from Ivinghoe. St. Mary’s Church at Ivinghoe stands pleasantly among sycamores and beeches, and next door to a small creeper-covered brewery which is next door to a decent creeper-covered house with round-topped windows and a most cool and comfortable expression. Some stout and red-faced men stood talking outside the brewery in cheerful mood. On the opposite side of the road was a green enclosed by a low railing. The village was a straggling one, and there were many newish houses, of pale brick here and there, as well as old timbered cottages. I went into a grocer’s shop at the moment when they were killing a pig on the other side of the wall. Neither the shrieking nor the end of it disturbed the stout proprietor cutting up lard and the women talking of the coronation.
Grand Junction Canal.
The road was a dull, straight one going south-westwards over the London and North Western Railway a mile north of the Upper road, and two and a half miles north-west of Tring station. It passed allotment gardens and had the company of heavy-laden telegraph-posts, whose wires cut across the terraces or “linces” of Southend Hill on the right. But if the corn-bunting sang its curst dry monotony on the telegraph-wire a blackbird also sang in an oak. Beyond the railway the road was better and had level green edges up to the roses of the high hedge on the right and the low one on the left, over which I could see across the oats to the Chilterns lying dark under the sun. On the other side of the barley, which was a cold and bluish green, rose Marsworth Church tower to the right. The reservoirs beyond the turning to Marsworth were broad and rough-edged, and with some trimmed poplars at a corner, a straight rank of trimmed elm trees near the further edge, and the line of telegraph-wires on this side, they made a foreign scene, against the background of the Chilterns, of a fascinating dreariness; one man was fishing from the bank. Crossing the canal I was in Hertfordshire, which I left at the far side of the last reservoir. These dreary waters had attracted some thickets which the sedge-warbler loved and sang in, as by the Wilstone Reservoir. The inns (where they provide for anglers) and the houses near the locks had the look of canalside and wharfside settlements, a certain squalor more than redeemed by the individuality. The unpopulated hills on the left of it, and the Vale of Aylesbury on the right, emphasized this half-urban, half-marine character. The road here was very much broken into sharp turns not always by a crossing. Immediately after the last reservoir, before the turning to Drayton Beauchamp, the road was at its best, winding between not too level green edges of unequal breadth, and hedges of thorns and roses and a few ash trees; and on the edges the grass had been cut and was lying across the low clover. Doves cooed and a lark overhead sang “as if he never would be old.” Then, at a bend where a ditch came in and had a willow above it and some meadow-sweet round about, a sedge-warbler was singing, the soul of a little world ten yards across. The crossing of the road to Drayton was one I shall not forget. The signpost pointed back to Ivinghoe, forward to Aylesbury, Buckland, and Aston Clinton, on the right to Puttenham, on the left to Drayton. There was a small crook to the left before my road went forward again. In the midst of the meeting ways the signpost had a green triangle to stand on. Also, each road had green borders which all widened to the crossing; some of the borders had rushes. The road to Puttenham swelled up a little and fell, and over the rim showed the trees of the vale. Ahead and to the left were the wooded downs. As I left the signpost I had a very sweet, gentle-spoken “Good morning” from a traveller coming towards me, a little and rickety dark foreign man, cheerful and old, carrying a thick satchel on his back and looking neither to the right nor to the left.
Instead of going on into Akeman Street and then turning at right angles along it for a mile, I took a path half a mile on this side of it which led towards Buckland Church. Where the path crossed the first hedge, a narrow, low embankment went off to the left along the hedge, followed by the path to the church and entering at last an elmy and nettly lane. Buckland village has many elm trees, plain little houses, twisting lanes, and a “Buck’s Head” in a dim corner of them. Its church is of alternating flints and freestone, but the tower all of stone. It was a very cool place with a slow, muffled, beating clock and a carpet of sun lying across the floor from the netted open door. One of the tablets on the wall was to Judith ——. High on the wall under the tower was an inscription saying:—
“Near this place, together with those of an infant daughter, lie the earthly remains of Frances Russell, relict of William Russell of Great Missenden, daughter of Edward and Frances Horwood of this place. She died October 8, 1793, aged 73 years.
“The fleeting moments of Prosperity, the tedious hours of Adversity, and the lingering illness which Providence allotted, she bore with equanimity and Christian resignation.