As we have seen, the explorer will, at first, experience failure in his endeavour to find, with any satisfactory clearness, either old Father Thames or his oozy bed. Arrived at the ancient Akeman Street, or Fosse-way, “3 myles” from Cirencester, a choice of no fewer than four springs is presented. The village of Cotes, the Roman mound known as Trewsbury Castle, Trewsbury Mead, and the unromantic chimney of the Thames and Severn Canal Engine-house are plain enough, here and there—landmarks, all of them, for the industrious searcher; but there is no sign of flowing water, or, indeed, of water in repose. You will look in vain for semblance of a bed which might be that of a river. It was only after considerable trouble that I obtained any information, and was guided to this well, named by tradition as the original and primary source of the Thames, and reached by proceeding for a quarter of a mile from the high road (where it crosses the railway) along the walk bordering the Canal.
The reader, however, is hereby invited to regard, not Thames Head, but Seven Springs, near Cheltenham, as the natural and common-sense source of the River Thames. Some three miles south of the town, in the parish of Cubberley, or Coberley, to quote the words of Professor Ramsay, “the Thames rises not far from the crest of the oolitic escarpment of the Cotswold Hills that overlook the Severn.”
After pausing on the shoulder of Charlton Hill, and admiring—as who can fail to do?—the magnificent panorama of hill and valley receding into the mist of distance north and north-east, you proceed from Cheltenham along the Cirencester road to the crossways. A short divergence to the right, and a dip in the road brings you to a piece of wayside turf, with, beyond, a corner shaped like an irregular triangle. One side of this might be, perhaps, seven yards in length, another four yards, and the third something between the two. The triangular depression is reached by one of those little green hillocks so often to be found on English waysides. The bottom is covered with water, which, in spite of the place being no-man’s-land, is clear as crystal, and in its deepest part there was not, at the time of my visit, more than six inches of water. The bed of this open shallow reservoir is not paved with marble, or even concrete, but is liberally provided with such unconsidered trifles as the weather or playful children would cast there. When the wind sets that way a good deal of scum will gather in the farther corner, formed by two walls. The turf near the water’s edge is worn away, and the green hillock has been trodden into a mere clay bank by the feet of cattle and men, for it is, as I have said, a patch of common land abutting upon the road. Overhead, stretched from the telegraph posts, you may count nine unmistakable wires parallel with the wall which forms the base of our triangle. On the side farthest from the road the bank is high. A venerable hawthorn has become wedded apparently to an equally venerable ash, whose topmost boughs coquette at close quarters with the telegraph wires. Another ash-tree, at the outer point of the triangle, leans over the water. Between the trees a little sloe bush keeps sturdy foothold. You may mark, moreover, a few straggling briars, bits of silver-weed, a root or two of the meadow cranesbill, a clump of poverty-stricken meadow-sweet, some fool’s parsley, wild strawberry plants, and a good deal of bold and always flourishing dandelion. This is the environment of the true source of the great River Thames. We are at Seven Springs.
Hence multitudinous initials are rudely carved upon the old trees and on the stone walls; hence strangers, during summer, drive hither and pay homage. Clear away the scum from the water at the foot of the wall and a small iron grating explains how the waters, always bubbling clear and cool from the Seven Springs, pass away. On the other side of the wall the inflow forms a pond in private grounds. Thence it descends by a homely fall into a smaller pond, and by yet another insignificant fall into what for some distance is sometimes little better than a stagnant ditch. A lower fall, however, of more determined character than the others, sets in motion a clear rill, which, though tiny in volume and unpretentious in present aims, sets off upon its gravelly course as if it knew that by-and-by it would form an estuary upon which the navies of the world might ride in safety. Just now a child might leap across. It is a mere thread of water, yet the streamlet begins at once to proceed in a business-like way under the solid hedgerows separating the fields, and soon becomes a decided brook. This is a tangible beginning, at all events. The Seven Springs are on evidence in a convenient enclosure; they may be recognised as, silently sparkling, they gush from the bank which gives roothold to the hawthorn and ash; and the infant river is always in sight from the moment it assumes the form of a tiny streamlet.
It is difficult to conceive how it has come about that Thames Head on the one part and Seven Springs on the other have been considered rival claimants for the honour of being the cradle of the Thames. It is true that both streams (for Thames Head eventually, by sundry means, becomes a stream) rise from the eastern slopes of the Cotswolds; but they are many miles apart, and Thames Head is nearly fifteen miles nearer the sea than Seven Springs. The rivulet issuing from Seven Springs, and which presently becomes the River Churn is, in the present day at least, the distinct stream which continues its unbroken course to the Nore, and it is the source which is farthest from the mouth of the Thames.
Leland, nevertheless, writing at the time of Henry VIII., fixes, as we have seen, upon Thames Head as the source. Stow, with less detail, adopts the same locality; Camden does likewise; Atkins declares that the river riseth in the parish of Cotes; Rudder that it has been reputed “to rise in the parish of Cotes, out of a well.” Modern tourists regularly visit both places, and in great numbers, during the summer season, and in the case of Thames Head are probably taken now to the uppermost glade, which I have described, and now to the spring nearer the engine-house of the Thames and Severn Canal, represented by the illustration. The neglect of the alleged sources by the local authorities of both Cirencester and Cheltenham is to be explained, probably, on the old principle, that what is everybody’s is nobody’s business. Since, however, people go in full faith to both Seven Springs and Thames Head, some record, however simple, might surely be upraised at both for the enlightenment of the wayfaring man.
Dealing with this question at more length perhaps than the subject requires, I may be allowed to repeat that in these days there ought to be no manner of doubt that the natural and legitimate source of the Thames is that shallow, neglected, triangular pool formed by the Seven Springs. The Cotswold Hills are, in any case, above dispute as the cradle-ground of the river, and may be happy with either claimant.
“But Cotswold, be this spoke to th’ onely praise of thee,
That thou, of all the rest, the chosen soyle should bee,
Faire Isis to bring forth, the mother of great Tames,