Then we came to the old mail and turnpike highway from London to Birmingham; this crossed our road at a lonely, bleak, and elevated spot close to which formerly stood the once flourishing "Chapel House Inn"; the building still stands there indeed, but it has been converted into a residence: an inn of wide renown in the old road-travelling days, where the Birmingham coaches changed horses and stopped whilst their passengers dined; an inn far famous for its fare and its wines—so good were the latter that it has been said, and I see no reason to doubt the saying, that "there was a strong temptation to indulge in them which was rarely resisted, even the king's cellars could produce nothing better," and there over their wines our ancestors doubtless made merry as was their wont. At least they enjoyed their lives. It was to this inn that Dr. Johnson and Boswell came in a postchaise during the early summer of 1776, and it was then when posting across country that the former, lover of towns though he was, suddenly exclaimed, "Life has little better to offer than this." It was on the same day, whilst dining at the "Chapel House Inn," that the learned doctor delivered his much-quoted eulogy on inns: "There is no private house in which people can enjoy themselves so well as in a capital tavern," declared he. "You are sure of a welcome, and the more noise you make, the more good things you call for, the more trouble you give, the welcomer you are. There is nothing that has been invented by man by which so much happiness is produced as a good tavern or inn." What road traveller will not re-echo those sentiments?—though I grieve for the one who can honestly say with Shenstone he has found his "warmest welcome at an inn," however warm the welcome at his inn may be.
About Chapel House many stories, astonishing and otherwise, truthful and untruthful, of old days and old ways are told; but though sadly tempted to relate some of these, I refrain, for I find I am always writing about inns. It does not do to keep harping on one subject, to be for ever "spinning your own wheel." I know a man, and a very good-natured, clubbable man is he, but even he gets bored by listening to one tune too long; his sole crime is that he is not a golfer—it is a serious one, I own. Now at his club he frequently meets a golfing friend who will talk golf and nothing else as long as any man will listen to him, just as some fishermen and motorists enlarge about their hobby. Now my friend had listened long times patiently to the golfer's endless stories, but when one day the golfer complained that he was suffering badly from a "golfer's arm," my friend exclaimed, "I have suffered from a worse disease than that, 'golfer's jaw.'" Now I do not wish my readers to suffer from my "jaw" about inns.
From Chapel House we dropped down to Chipping Norton, a quiet, clean, contented-looking little town, and that I think sufficiently describes it. As Clarendon remarked of Aldermaston, it is "a town out of any great road," though near to one. So perhaps on that account it has no special history.
Beyond Chipping Norton the country grew lonely again, delightfully, restfully lonely, and all the way we went to Shipton-under-Wychwood I do not find a single house marked on my excellent and accurate map. We were in a bleak stone country, where stone walls take the place of hedges, and where the landscape bears a Cotswold look. Those who know the Cotswolds know what that look is, a rarely pleasant one to me in the summer time, with a sense of openness about it; and how fresh and free and bracing are the airs that blow over the Cotswold hills. There you can keep cool in the hottest weather. Is there not an old saying that at "Stow-on-the-Wold, the wind always blows cold"? It is a truthful one as far as my experience goes, for I have passed through Stow on the hottest of summer days and found it none too warm there even then.
By degrees we descended into a valley and into a warmer atmosphere, and crossing the little river Evenlode (of which I had not heard before, so does a driving tour extend one's knowledge of one's own country) we found ourselves in the attractive and interesting village of Shipton-under-Wychwood, but of the once wild Wychwood forest, formerly a royal hunting ground, there is not much to boast of left—sufficient, however, to earn for it to-day the title of "The Forest Country of Oxfordshire." There is a story told of a traveller in the pre-railway days whose road took him close by Wychwood, and he asked of a boy the name of the wood. "Wychwood," the boy replied. "Which wood?" the traveller exclaimed. "Why, that wood, you fool," pointing with his finger to it. Again he received the same reply. Once more the traveller repeated his query and received the same reply again; whereupon the traveller grew wroth, and deeming the boy was making fun of him, got down from his horse and soundly boxed his ears. One story calls forth another. This I had from a parson on my journey. It appears that one of his parishioners was over-fond of frequenting the public-house, and one day finding him coming out of it the parson said to him, "Williams, why do you go to the public-house so often?" To which the non-abashed Williams made reply, "Because they sell good ale there," and then he quoted the Bible to the parson. "You know, sir, the Bible tells us 'Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake'—now I cannot afford wine, so I drink ale"; and the parson was hard put how to answer him. It appears that the villagers there employ the expression "Timothying" when they have been drinking. Still another story of a parson I was told occurs to me; this may be an old one, but it is one I have not heard before, nor seen it in print. It appears that this parson had recently lost his only son, to whom he was devoted, and was preaching on the text of Abraham offering up his son Isaac as a sacrifice, and during the sermon his feelings so overcame him that thus unknowingly he delivered himself: "And it was his son, his only son; now if it had only been a sheep or a daughter."
I found so much to interest me in Shipton, for there I noticed some old stone buildings, now forming part of what I took to be a farmyard, buildings with Gothic windows of good design and a graceful Gothic doorway in their walls; these could hardly be mere farm-buildings. That they possessed some history was from their character highly probable, but of that history, if there was any, I could glean nothing; as usual, nobody knew anything about them but that "they be very old." That appears to be the stock reply of the villager when you question him about such things. Then I wandered to the church a little way off, and there, for a wonder, I found the clerk within, "tidying up," as he called it. There was not much of interest in the church except a gruesome brass of a figure in a shroud, dated 1548, and a gloomy priest's chamber above the porch, reached by a dark stone stairway. This chamber, the clerk told me, was eight hundred years old; in truth it had an ancient look. Hanging on the wall, though why it should find a place there I could not understand, was a long-winded and framed account of the life of "John Foxe the Martyrologist born 1517," leaving no particulars of his life untold, I gathered from a hasty glance at it.
DOORWAY OF THE CROWN INN, SHIPTON-UNDER-WYCHWOOD.