CHAPTER IX
SEVENTH DAY—STREATLEY TO SPARSHOLT, ON THE RIDGEWAY, BY SCUTCHAMER KNOB AND LETCOMBE CASTLE
When I was next at Streatley I took the Ridgeway westward chiefly because I like the Ridgeway, partly because I wished to see it again, now that it had to give up the title conferred on it by Bishop Bennet, of the Icknield Way. I went up from the bridge and at the “Bull” turned to the right and northward along the Wantage road, which is probably the Icknield Way. After getting well up on the chalk above the river this road maintains the same level of from two to three hundred feet, and for two miles keeps within a mile of the river on a terrace half-way up the slope of the hills. Streatley had spread itself in red spots along the side of the road, past the fork to Wallingford and up to where the Ridgeway turns off to the left and westward into the long coombe leading to Streatley Warren. At its mouth this coombe was wide and shallow, and was all grass, except on the left hand where there were new houses. In places, as by Rectory Farm, the road, a hard one, had a pleasant green terrace above it with wild roses rambling over it. The coombe deepened and the road ascended above a golf course near Warren Farm. Thus far it was hedged, but soon, still mounting the right wall of the long coombe, it was rough and hedgeless, and old parallel tracks were to be seen above and below it. It was now near the southern edge of Thurle Down Woods on its right. Below, on the left, were the steep walls of the winding coombe, dotted by thorn, juniper, and elder, and here called Streatley Warren. Of the unwooded coombes or inlets into the downs this is one of the most pleasing to me, and I shall always remember it, as I do the great coombe winding into Butser Hill on the north side, and others of those vast turf halls which the sky roofs. As it passed the head of the coombe the road was six hundred feet up, going a little north of westwards between sheep on the left and corn on the right. It was two or three miles or more from the villages on the north, Moulsford, Cholsey, the Astons, and Blewbury, and two or three hundred feet above them; it was almost as far away from the Wantage road, and as far above it. The villages on the south were nearer, but not within a mile—Aldworth, the Comptons, and East Ilsley. It gained a hedge near Warren Farm, but was a rough way, now wide, now narrow, among the hazel, brier, elder, and nettle. Sometimes there was an ash in the hedge, and once a line of spindly elms followed it round a curve. It was high, but not yet free among these hedges. Then it descended, deeply worn and rough, to where a signpost marked roads to Aldworth and Compton on the left, Cholsey and Wallingford on the right. Then all was open country, mostly turf, carved by many trackways and with trees, as a rule, only to shelter the thatched, solitary farm-house and barns, or to make a clump and landmark at a summit where there was a tumulus, as on Churn Hill. The road was scattered in pieces over the open turf among thorn bushes and alongside a Scotch fir clump, as it went down towards Churn station. These tracks were green with a central white one, and that had green banks and a few thorns. On reaching the road from Moulsford to East Ilsley my way seemed to be continued by one passing Chance Farm and keeping on the north side of the hills through an uninhabited hollow among downs which are bare of everything but grass, Churn railway station, and a farm, except when dotted with soldiers’ tents. But there was now a little to the south of this a clear and unbroken high ridge extending westwards into Wiltshire, and this the Ridgeway undoubtedly followed: only the connection between my way over Roden Downs and the higher ridge was no longer a direct one. The connecting road was that from Moulsford to Ilsley, and along it I had to turn round west and even south to gain the ridge, where the Ridgeway left it at right angles to go north-west. Hedges no longer bounded either side of the broad turf track. It was as free as the blue paths in the snowy heavens. It looked down upon everything but the clouds, and not seldom on them in the early morning or in rain. On its left the downward slope was broken and very gradual, so that it was far rarer to see a church tower like Ilsley within a mile than a ridge of woods five miles off or a bare range that might be twenty. It was already higher than the Icknield Way at Telegraph Hill; it had climbed out of choice, and it would descend only of necessity. On its right the slope was far steeper, and sometimes a little way from the foot lay the villages; sometimes the land rose again in several rolls this way and that, and the nearest village would be beyond the last of them, three or four miles away. Either corn or pure turf and scattered furze lay about the road. One piece of furze was called “Poor’s Furze,” and what is more, the poor were gathering it for fuel though it was Midsummer: tall rye came up to the edge of it.
Ridgeway, near Streatley.
Now the Ridgeway had risen up to its perfect freedom, away from the river and the low land, from the glaring roads and the collections of houses. This way men of old came of necessity; yet I found it hard not to think now that the road was thus climbing to heights of speculation, to places suited for exploring the ridges and solitudes of the spirit; it seemed in one mood a hermit road going out into the wilderness to meditate and be in lifelong retirement; in another mood a road for the young, eager warrior or reformer going up and away for a time from cloying companions to renew his mighty youth.
I saw, however, more racehorses than confirmed hermits or aspiring warriors or reformers. Before it was ordained that cricket should be played on billiard tables, there were a pitch and a pavilion here beside the Ridgeway near the Abingdon road. Elevens drove up from Oxford, and a cheerful scene it was, albeit nobody’s fortune was made. It was too good and rustic a custom not to decay. After that, they say, the pavilion became an early-morning rendezvous for men with lurchers after the hares, a refuge for belated soldiers, a convenience for several breeds of idlers, philosophers, and adventurers. These it was decided to centralize as much as possible in prisons, workhouses, lunatic asylums, cemeteries, town “rookeries,” and the like. The pavilion thus became useless and was pulled down. Nevertheless, there it is, still very clear in a number of aging heads. So far as I could learn, it was the nearest approach to a permanent hermitage on the ridge of these downs. In their season there are shepherds’ shelters, and caravans for the steam-plough men or for persons engaged in the writing of books; but nothing permanent except Wayland’s Smithy.
Wayland’s Smithy.