These pages were memoradums I took in a summer’s journey with our friend Mr. Roger Gale. This being my first expedition since I came to live at London, I design as early as possible to commemorate the felicity I enjoyed thereby of your acquaintance, and the opportunity of observing the noble character you sustain, of possessing all the wisdom that ancient or modern learning can give us without vanity, and that the physician, the scholar, and the gentleman, meet in you.
Bibroci.
I observe, in Berkshire, a river called Ock, running in the north side of the county by Abingdon into the Thames, which in the Celtic language signifies sharp or swift, or perhaps water in general: this is in Oke hundred. In the south side of the county is the town of Okeingham. These seem plainly remnants of the old name of the inhabitants of this country, Bibroci, not yet observed. Near Reading is Laurence-Waltham, which has been Roman: there is a field called Castle-field, and vast numbers of coins found. By it is Sunning, once an episcopal see. From London to Maidenhead it is a gravelly soil; then a marly chalk begins.
Reading.
Reading is a large and populous town upon the fall of the Kennet into the Thames; in the angle of which it stands upon a rising ground, overlooking the meadows, which have a fine appearance all along the rivers. There are three churches, built of flint and square stone in the quincunx fashion, with tall towers of the same. Arch-bishop Laud was born here. The abbey stood in a charming situation: large ruins of it still visible, built of flint; the walls about eight foot thick at present, though the stone that faced them be pillaged away: the remainder is so hard cemented, that it is not worth while to separate them: many remnants of arched vaults a good height above ground, whereon stood, as I suppose, the hall, lodgings, &c. there is one large room about sixteen yards broad, and twenty-eight long, semi-circular towards the east end, with five narrow windows, three doors towards the west, and three windows over them: it was arched over, and seems to have supported a chapel, in which we fancy king Henry I. was buried with his queen: he founded this abbey upon an old one, that had been formerly erected by a TAB. XXVI.Saxon lady. There are the remains of bastions, part of the fortifications, when garrisoned by the parliament army in the civil wars: TAB. XXIII.the abbey gate-house is yet pretty intire. Here was a famous old castle, but long since demolished, perhaps originally Roman. Near the trench the Danes made between the river Kennet and the Thames, is Catsgrove hill, a mile off Reading: in digging there they find first a red gravel, clay, chalk, flints, and then a bed of huge petrified oysters five yards thick, twenty foot below the surface: these shells are full of sea sand.[45] Dr. Plot, in Oxfordshire, p. 119. who supposes these appearances only the sports of Nature, solves this matter after a way that will induce one to think his cause reduced to extremity. On the right hand, just beyond Theal, is Inglefield, where king Ethelwolf routed the Danes.
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Ruins of Reding Abby Augt. 14. 1721.
Neustrius Henricus situs hic, Inglorius urna
nunc jacet ejectus, tumulum novus advena quærit
Frustra——
I. Vder. Gucht Sculp.