“But how can that be possible?” someone says. “Here we have the Thames down in a low-lying plain on the north-west side of the hills, and down in the valley on the south-east side. How could a river flowing across a plain get up to the heights to commence the wearing away at the tops?” Here again the geologists must come to our aid. They tell us that back in that dim past, so interesting to picture yet so difficult to grasp, when the ancient, mighty River flowed (see Book I., Intro.), the chalk-lands extended from the Chilterns westwards, that there was no valley where now Oxford, Abingdon, and Lechlade lie, but that the River flowed across the top of a tableland of chalk from its sources in the higher grounds of the west to the brink at or near the eastern slope of the Chilterns; and that from this lofty position the River was able to wear its way down, and so make a V-shaped cutting in the end of the tableland. Afterwards there came an alteration in the surface. Some tremendous internal movement caused the land gradually to fold up, as it were; so that the tableland sagged down in the middle, leaving the Marlborough-Chiltern hills on the one side and the Cotswold-Edgehill range on the other, with the Oxford valley in between. But by this time the V-shaped gap had been cut sufficiently low to allow the River to flow through the hills, and to go on cutting its way still lower and lower.
CHAPTER FOUR
Reading
Reading is without doubt the most disappointing town in the whole of the Thames Valley. It has had such a full share of history, far more than other equally famous towns; has been favoured by the reigning monarch of the land through many centuries; has taken sides in internal strife and felt the tide of war surging round its gates; it has counted for so much in the life of England that one feels almost a sense of loss in finding it just a commonplace manufacturing town, with not a semblance of any of its former glory.
Like many other towns in England, it sprang up round a religious house—one of the string of important abbeys which stretched from Abingdon to Westminster. But before that it had been recognized as an important position.
We have seen that Oxford, Wallingford, and other places came into existence by reason of their important fords across the River. Reading arose into being because the long and narrow peninsula formed by the junction of the Kennet with the Thames was such a splendid spot for defensive purposes that right from early days there had been some sort of a stronghold there.
Here in this very safe place, then, the Conqueror’s son established his great foundation, the Cluniac Abbey of Reading, for the support of two hundred monks and for the refreshment of travellers. It was granted ample revenues, and given many valuable privileges, among them that of coining money. Its Abbot was a mitred Abbot, and had the right to sit with the lords spiritual in Parliament. From its very foundation it prospered, rising rapidly into a position of eminence; and, like the other abbeys, it did much towards the growth of the agricultural prosperity of the valley, encouraging the countryfolk to drain and cultivate their lands properly.
The Gatehouse Reading Abbey