SONNING
With this brilliant mass of colour, the rich dark reds, the glorious pinks, the pale yellows, dead whites and the flaming apricot of William Allen Richardson, the effect may be imagined; and the entry to all this beauty is beneath a trellised arch covered with masses of the Crimson Rambler!
Sonning village itself is very irregular, uphill and downhill, with roads all ways. There are rights of way through the quiet churchyard, where there is a row of magnificent elms, and the villagers are real flower lovers. Almost at any season of the year at which flowers will flourish out of doors, flowers there are to be seen. Earliest of all, the quince, the yellow jasmine, and the dainty almond blossom; then the golden bunches of laburnum and the fresh mauve lilac; later on roses of all kinds, not always climbing, but in bushes and clumps. Window boxes are seen everywhere, and Virginia creeper and ampelopsis cover up all bare corners. The houses themselves are charming. There are many more cottages in the older style than can be found at Wargrave. Many a tiny diamond-paned window is seen high up, almost lost in a straggling creeper. The projecting storeys, the brown lathes imbedded deep in the brick, making rectangles of broken colour, the yellow wash of a deep umber, the high external chimneys, all make up many nooks to be looked at again and again with appreciation. Sydney Smith was staying at Sonning in 1807, and we can but admire his taste.
There is a tradition, very hazy, that Sonning was once the seat of a bishopric. There is no evidence at all as to this, but the fact that the See of Salisbury has held the manor since the time when Domesday Book was made may have led to the error.
The bishops had a house here, and it was at the bishops' house that King John stayed for six days a month before his death. Leland says: "And yet remaineth a faire olde House there of stone, even by the Tamise Ripe longging to the Bishop of Saresbyri, and thereby is a fine Park."
The oldest parts of the church probably date from 1180, but there is very little of this date left. The principal bits are the south doorway and a small window above it. The south aisle was built about 1350, the piers of the nave about 1400, at which date the chancel was added. The north chancel aisle and the north aisle came about 100 years later. The whole church was restored in 1852. There are one or two interesting monuments to be seen in it, and it is a good model of what a well-preserved, dignified parish church should be.
