With whose delicious brooks, by whose immortal streames
Her greatnesse is begun.”
Following the fortunes of the Seven Springs, you naturally enter with some degree of zeal into an expedition down the River Churn, and this you are able to do without losing sight of the excellent road between Cheltenham and Cirencester. The pretty little dancing trout stream runs hard by the highway, mostly through a succession of beautiful estates, and generally thickly overhung with alders and other bushes. Drayton hit off the character of the stream most accurately in calling it the “nimble-footed Churn;” and its picturesqueness, and musical flow between the wooded hills and through the fat meadows, as we near Cirencester, appeal to us, even on the score of sentiment. Surely it is more pleasant to identify this as the Thames than that commonplace current proceeding from the Thames Head series of springs. There is no necessity, however, to trace in detail the course of the beck-like Churn, by wooded uplands teeming with game, and through rustic villages and sequestered grounds. It runs through Rendcombe to North Cerney, down by Baunton, and through the once famous and still interesting town of Cirencester. The Fosse-way mentioned in connection with Thames Head was one of three great Roman roads which met here. Mentioned by Roman historians as Corinium and Cornovium, the strongly fortified city of Cirencester, the metropolis of a Roman province was, there is reason for believing, a considerable British town before it became a Roman centre. In the time of Henry VIII. the Roman wall surrounding the city might yet be traced, and, as the histories of Gloucestershire show, many Roman remains have from time to time been discovered here. The Churn sustains its brook-like character alongside the Cricklade road by Addington, South Cerney, and Hailstone Hill, and then within a mile of the town of Cricklade it unites with the other branch issuing from Thames Head, to which it is necessary briefly to return, in order to administer to it the justice already bestowed upon what we have agreed to regard as the rightful heir, namely, the Seven Springs stream, or River Churn.
The Thames and Severn Canal is so intimately associated with Thames Head, and so dominates that particular part of the country, that a few words respecting it may be spared. Indeed, it has dealings, directly or indirectly, with the Churn as well as with the Thames Head stream. Not far from Trewsbury Mead it gives a position to Thames Head Bridge, and the Canal lies within a few yards of the traditional spring. The first tributary is formed by a spring issuing from beneath the aqueduct, and not far from the Canal stands the single-arch watercourse, here illustrated as practically the first bridge over the Thames. The course of the Canal, however, almost immediately bears eastward, until it strikes the Churn, near which it keeps during the remainder of its independent career. The Thames and Severn Canal is an interesting fact which the present generation is in danger of forgetting. For many years the junction of “fair Sabrina” with “lordly Thames” was a burning question in the commercial worlds of London and Bristol. The merchants were much fascinated with the speculations in which they indulged. The Canal scheme was launched in a Bill in the reign of Charles II., and Mr. Hydrographer Moxon was engaged to survey the ground and prove to what extent the project was practicable. Pope, in the grandiloquent language of the time, in a famous letter written at Oakley, Lord Bathurst’s country house at Cirencester, said, “I could pass whole days in describing the future and as yet visionary beauties that are to rise in these scenes: the palace that is to be built, the pavilions that are to glitter, the colonnades that are to adorn them; nay, more, the meeting of the Thames and Severn, which, when the noble owner has finer dreams than ordinary, are to be led into each other’s embraces, through secret caverns of not above twelve to fifteen miles, till they rise and celebrate their marriage in the midst of an immense amphitheatre, which is to be the admiration of posterity a hundred years hence.”
THE FIRST BRIDGE OVER THE THAMES.
The Canal was completed sixty-eight years after this dream was indulged in, and in December, 1790, the first Canal boat, laden with coals, passed through. The Canal is a continuation of the Stroudwater system from the Severn to Wallbridge, near Stroud, and runs in a devious course from that point to Lechlade. It is thirty miles long, forty-two feet broad at the top, and thirty feet at the bottom. Between Stroud and Sapperton the water is raised 241 feet in less than eight miles, by means of locks.
Returning now to the lower spring of the Thames Head group, the course of this branch of the river may be traced from the expanded water giving growth to the ancient watercress bed, and receiving its first modest tributary rill from the spring proceeding from under the Canal aqueduct. Hence the brook meanders through meadows, and, near the railway, passes under the roadway. The village of Kemble lies half a mile back, and the stream passes under and alongside the road from Kemble to Ewen, beneath a considerable culvert, or trio of culverts. The first mill on the Thames was, in former times, at Ewen; but a cosy farmhouse now occupies the site, and the water which in former days set the drowsy wheel in motion is turned aside for sheep-washing purposes. The first mill now is Somerford Upper Mill, with its pretty setting of elm-trees, and charming rural surroundings. Somerford Keynes, on the elevated ground to the left, was bestowed as a marriage gift upon Ralph de Kaineto by Henry I., and an ancient charter granted to the Abbot Aldelm of Malmesbury contains the following incidental reference to the river as the Thames:—“Cujus vocabulum Temis juxta vadum qui appellatur Somerford.”
Throughout the varied and interesting voyage upon which we are embarked the spires and towers of churches will be ever present, graceful and welcome features of many a landscape, now set upon a hill like a city which cannot be hid, now half concealed by mantling ivies, and shunning observation amongst the rugged elms which shelter their roofs and windows. The square tower of venerable All Saints, Somerford Keynes, is one of the earliest to claim attention as a typical parish church of rural England, very dignified in its age, and in its maternal relation to the cottages around the churchyard. The stream not far below this point serves another rustic mill, and a noticeable object later on is a homely foot-bridge supported by upright slabs of stone. At Ashton Keynes there are sundry small bridges spanning the current, soon to be sensibly increased in depth and width by Swill Brook, whose proportions have for the last mile of its course been not inferior to those of the Thames Head stream. The young River Thames was once, as is supposed, navigable to Water Hay Bridge for boats of moderate size; but this must have been before the aqueduct of the North Wilts Canal crossed it, or West Mill was built.