Rivers of Great Britain. The Thames, from Source to Sea. / Descriptive, Historical, Pictorial

by Various

For the University there exist two rivers; one, The River, below Folly Bridge, the other, The Upper River, above Medley Weir. Between the two there is not one stream, but many. The river goes out of itself and returns into itself again. And in this division it suffers various fortunes. It goes far afield and grows forget-me-nots. It turns mill-wheels, and is a servant of breweries. It is locked and sluiced for the passage of barges. It is constrained and laid away in low and discouraged quarters, where it keeps company with people out of repair, with philanthropic enterprises, with aimless smells, with exhausted dust, with retired hansom cabs. It is beguiled into obscure cuts for bathing. It is imprisoned under streets. And when it comes to itself again it is not allowed to have its name, but is called by the vain sound of Isis.

The two main branches of the stream enclose a space rather over a mile in length, and roughly of the shape of a slim ewer, with a handle broken off near the top, that is at Medley Weir. There is a minor junction of the streams by a cut across the narrowed neck of the ewer opposite Worcester Garden. The upper of the two islands thus formed is given up to meadows and the two railway lines. The lower island, Osney, holds the two railway stations, and the continuation southwards of the Great Western. South of the stations, and at right angles to the railway, the Seven Bridges Road runs out towards Botley. South of this again St. Thomas’s Church lies east, and St. Mary’s Cemetery and Osney Mill west of the railway havoc. The rest is meadow and garden land, scored with the streets of old and new settlements, and cracked by lesser dykes and courses of the stream.

The eastern branch, after defining the upper rim of the ewer, turns sharp southwards, and, keeping company with the canal, skirts red Oxford and Worcester Gardens. It is here that its interest begins. A little way above the first, or Hythe Bridge, a fresh division takes place, and a narrow irregular strip of low island is formed, running under three bridges to the Castle Mill, and below that occupied by breweries for some hundred yards. Now it is only on the upper stretch of this island down to the Castle Mill that any attempt is made by the town to come to public and pleasant terms with its river. The attempt is a shy one. The treatment is on a humbler scale than that of the River Witham at Lincoln. The Fishers Row of low houses—some new, some old, and one or two remarkable—straggles along a narrow quay, arched over by the bridges. In the doubled stream, where it fronts the houses, fleets of old punts lie moored to their poles among the choking weeds; not the varnished toys of the Cherwell, but the craft native to these shallow standing waters, as the gondola to the lagoons of Venice. At the back of the houses, their gardens abutting upon it in all variety of confusion and decay, moves a furtive and even feebler stream. There is a wealth of matter here for the artist to rescue from its odours; grey walls that have seen better days and other uses, bricks rough-cast and timber, willow leaves and fluttering clothes, the most old and various dirt. All this is only to be won by glimpses from the bridges, or from the hospitality of back pigsties and the like; and it is only just to add that the tenants of this picturesque quarter—people, pigs, and ducks—show to the curious visitor an unvarying courtesy. The best bit was till lately to be seen from Pacey’s Bridge, the second in order down stream. Just there a house is bracketed out over the water, with windows disposed in graceful bays. But the jealousy that keeps the stream secret has shut away that last easy view, on the one side with a shop astride the water, on the other with a mere wilful screen. Hythe Bridge is a poor new thing; Pacey’s Bridge is defaced with a new top. The next bridge brings us to the Castle and the Castle Mill, the very heart of the old town; the Castle older than the University, the Mill of older foundation than the Castle. Then follow breweries, not without charm, but reticent about the river. Just below the Swan Brewery the streams come together again at a point marked by a summer-house; but it is only for a fresh separation. From a garden in Chapel Place may be seen the point of division; but one branch is now built over. Its name is the Trill Mill Stream, and it runs behind Paradise Square, and round by way of Rose Place, across St. Aldate’s. Then it comes to light again behind the houses, and skirts Christ Church Meadows, to join the river near Folly Bridge. The other branch takes a stealthy course round the low quarter between Paradise Square and the gasworks. They are least ashamed of it in Abbey Place. From that point onward it shows at the end of poor little streets, with meadows and willows beyond. From one of these—Blackfriars Road—a bridge crosses to the bathing-cut, which rounds the base of our ewer, and leads into the navigation stream. At the tail of an island formed by the cut the navigation stream itself comes in, and the united water bends round the gasworks, and so to Folly Bridge, past some broken little gardens and backs of houses in Thames Street. Folly Bridge is as poor as the other Thames bridges in Oxford. It replaces the old Norman Grand Pont with its forty arches, and Friar Bacon’s Study over the further end. A top storey added to the “Study” was the “Folly.” There is another now almost in the same spot, built by a money-lender.

OXFORD, FROM HEADINGTON HILL.

Of the navigation stream in its course from Medley Weir there is less to say. At the neck of the ewer, at the point called Four Streams, it goes so far as to form a regular cross. One of the arms is the cut already mentioned running towards Worcester. The opposite arm is known as the Old Navigation Stream, and runs out in a great loop under the Binsey Road and the Seven Bridges Road at New Botley, and back to the present navigation stream at the base of the ewer. A smaller concentric loop leaves the stream at the first bridge beyond the station, throws off a branch to join the outer loop at the Binsey Road bridge, and returns at Osney Mill. Here, just by the mill, there is a lock on the navigation stream. The island formed by the mill-stream and the lock runs down a hundred yards or so, and on the face of the island, made by the loop above, there is a meaner repetition of the Fishers Row. It may clear the maze a little to think of the two mills and islands, and quays balancing on opposite sides of the ewer.

But this is not all. We have still to account for a stream that left the Thames at Hagley Pool, above Godstow. From that point it describes a yet wider loop, passing first by Witham, then under the Seven Bridges Road at Botley, and on by the two Hinkseys. At Clasper’s Boathouse under the Long Bridges it is reinforced by a fresh offset from the main stream, and does not return again till just above Rose Island by Kennington. The old men on the river have been heard to say that this branch from Clasper’s to Kennington used to be the main stream for barges, and it is quite possible, for the Long Bridges and new towpath only date from the end of last century. The Hinksey Stream is not navigable throughout, because of two mills on its lower reaches. The low Cumnor Heights behind make a limit to the wandering and division of the water; but the whole flat between this boundary on the west and that of the Oxford Canal on the east is an amphibious country, now lake, now labyrinth.