The Thames from Reading to Sonning calls for no marked comment, and I must confess to a habit, when in these parts, of leaving the waterside at Caversham Bridge and travelling to Sonning along the high road that passes Lower Caversham, by farmhouses, corn-fields, and pastures, and one of the osier farms described on a previous page. A road at right angles conducts to the “French Horn” Inn, and to the bridges here spanning the Thames. Arriving at Sonning by river, however, you glide underneath the woods of Holme Park, and so take into calculation the church and village from a point of view highly favourable to their scenic pretensions. No visitor can do justice to the exquisite beauties of this village without leaving the water and exploring the bridges, islands, and waterways which are so lavishly distributed between the widened banks. On the “French Horn” shore, the left branch sweeps round and streams abroad in a skittish shallow under a lightly-built bridge. At first it is difficult to decide whether this is a backwater or the main stream. Looking upwards, you notice that another channel yonder follows a row of pollards and orchard-trees on the “White Hart” side. There are separate streams, apparently, on either side of the bridge; and a shoulder-of-mutton-shaped eyot and other islets create a rapid current in another direction, overhung by a perpendicular bank. This is topographically confusing, but most agreeable in its endless motion and diversity. There are two divisions of the bridge; and beyond the first an independent backwater gallops down from the mill, past which, and its chestnut-trees, is the brick county bridge. The houses of the village, clad with creepers, and often embowered in fruit-trees, and the square tower of the church, as represented in the engraving, constitute one of the most familiar pictures of the Thames. A charming walk, immediately above and below the lock—locally termed the Thames Parade—extends along the skirts of the woods of Holme Park, the projecting boughs of which o’er-canopy the towing-path, and are reflected in the water. The eyot is connected with the shores by the lock and weir, duly illustrated on another page from a favourite point of view. One of the choicest views at Sonning may be obtained by standing on the Parade, say a hundred yards above the lock, and peeping under the boughs of the trees towards Reading, which sometimes looks almost romantic in the dreamy obscurity of an enveloping haze.
SONNING WEIR.
Sonning, or Sunning, was not, in all probability, as some maintain, the seat of a bishopric, though it was a standing residence of the Bishops of Salisbury, who had a palace here through successive generations. Even in Leland’s time it was “a fair olde house of stone, even by the Tamise ripe, longying to the Bishop of Saresbyri; and thereby a fair parke.” The church, without which the charming landscape would lose one of its most harmonious features, contains curious monuments, a celebrated peal of bells, and rich carved work. It is peculiarly rich in memorial brasses, many full-length figures of the Barker family dating from the middle of the sixteenth century. Very different is the view down the river, when the back of the observer is turned upon the graceful trees drooping into the water, the masses of chestnuts and elms interspersed between the houses, and the divided stream and osier-bedded islets. The sinuous course is for a couple of miles between low banks; while in the somewhat distant background appear the towering woods, with which we shall become by-and-by more intimately acquainted. On the lower side of the bridge the river at once collects its scattered forces, and proceeds stately and slow until a chain of islets diversifies the course, and, with the assistance of sundry sharp twists in the left bank, gives increasing strength to the current, and braces itself for the press of business demanded by the mill and lock at Shiplake. The Rev. Jas. Grainger, author of the “Biographical History of England,” was Vicar of Shiplake, and, in his dedication to Horace Walpole, remarks that he had the good fortune to retire early to “independence, obscurity, and content.” The rev. gentleman, who considered Shiplake as synonymous with obscurity, died at the altar of his church while performing divine service, and is buried within its walls; and the tablet which marks his grave refers, as does the dedication, to the obscurity which at Shiplake accompanied the content. The church stands upon a very charming slope. The southern face of the tower is mantled over with ivy, and the sacred edifice does not lose in dignity by the near neighbourhood of farm buildings, rickyards, and orchards. From the porch there is a fine view of the valley of the river. The church, in which Lord Tennyson was married, was restored in quite recent times, but the stained-glass windows are so ancient that they are supposed to have been originally in the Abbey of St. Bertin at St. Omer.
The singular vagaries of the mouth of the Loddon introduce an unexpected variety above Shiplake. It was this tributary, mentioned after the Kennet by Drayton, in the lines previously quoted, which gave Pope a hint for his fable of Lodona, and he stamps the character of the Loddon in the line—
“The Loddon slow, with verdant alders crowned.”
The Loddon is, nevertheless, scarcely a river on its own merits to inspire a poem, though it is in an especial degree the kind of stream which has attracted the consideration of pastoral poets. Almost any portion of the country watered by the sluggish Loddon might have yielded just such scenes as Gray describes in his immortal Elegy. The river rises in the North Hampshire downs, and flows by the site of that Basing house which is famous in the annals of Cromwellian warfare. Fuller, the church historian, resided in the mansion during the siege, and amidst the confusion of the battle is reported to have composed some portion of his “Worthies of England.” Fragmentary ruins of the house are yet shown. Every visitor must bear witness to the debt owed by Strathfieldsaye Park to the Loddon, which divides it into two unequal parts. The quantity and quality of the water gave the late Duke of Wellington an opportunity, of which he perseveringly availed himself, of indulging privately in the pursuit of trout breeding, a project which was abandoned soon after his death. The Loddon in Berkshire passes by Swallowfield, where in his son’s house Lord Clarendon wrote his “History of the Rebellion.” Two centuries earlier than that the manor was the property of John, Duke of Bedford, Regent of France; and it has been in later times of more immediate interest to the admirers of Mary Russell Mitford, as being her home and burial-place. Her ever-delightful book, “Our Village,” is composed of rural word photographs, taken when the lady lived at Three Mile Cross, and all the scenes are faithful pictures of Loddon-side life. On returning from a recent visit to the Loddon, an old friend of Miss Mitford’s, in Reading, gave me, as a memento of the authoress whom we both admired, a note in her handwriting, and after it had been some time in my possession I discovered that the small envelope in which it was enclosed was one which had been previously sent to, and turned by, the industrious old lady. The operation had been performed with wonderful neatness, and it was only by accident that I discovered inside, and in faded ink, the original address, to “Miss Mitford, Three Mile Cross, Reading, Berks.” Arborfield succeeds Swallowfield, and the river here feeds the picturesque lake in Mr. Walter’s park at Bearwood. The Loddon next touches Hurst, and flows in its lazy way to Twyford, so called from the two fords, which are represented in these days by bridges, crossing the two arms of the river. After a north-eastern course of some twenty-four miles, the Loddon here runs into the Thames. It should perhaps be stated, with reference to Pope’s fable of Lodona, that it was not connected with the Loddon proper, but with one of the inconsiderable tributaries of a tributary that ripple through part of Windsor Forest. The poet was, nevertheless, quite accurate in his description of the Loddon as “slow,” and “with verdant alders crowned.” It is an altogether different river from the Kennet, which is bright, and abounding in gravelly shallows, after the fashion of the Hampshire chalk streams, and is a famous trout river. The Loddon, on the contrary, is deep, dark, sluggish, almost troutless, and thickly furnished with the alder, of which it has been written—
“The alder whose fat shadow nourisheth,
Each plant set near to him long flourisheth.”