From Gretna Green to Land's End: A Literary Journey in England.Bates, Katharine Lee
General
From Gretna Green to Land's End: A Literary Journey in England.
Bates, Katharine Lee
England -- Description and travel
The fascinations of Campden held us the summer day long. We must needs
explore the church interior, which has suffered at the hands of the
restorer; yet its chancel brasses, wrought with figures of plump
woolstaplers, their decorous and comely dames, and their kneeling
children, reward a close survey. I especially rejoiced in one
complacent burgher, attended by three wimpled wives, and a long row of
sons and daughters all of the same size. There is a curious chapel,
too, where we came upon the second Viscount Campden, in marble shroud
and coronet, ceremoniously handing, with a most cynical and unholy
expression, his lady from the sepulchre. There was a ruined guildhall
to see, and some antique almshouses of distinguished beauty. As we
looked, an old man came feebly forth and bowed his white head on the
low enclosing wall in an attitude of grief or prayer. We learned
later that one of the inmates had died that very hour. We went over
the works of the new Guild of Handicraft, an attempt to realise, here
in the freshness of the wolds, the ideals of Ruskin and Morris. We
cast wistful eyes up at Dover's Hill, on whose level summit used to be
held at Whitsuntide the merry Cotswold Games. "Heigh for Cotswold!"
But it was the hottest day of the summer, and we contented ourselves
with the phrase.
Other famous Cotswold towns are "Stow-on-the-Wold, where the wind
blows cold"; Northleach in the middle of the downs, desolate now, but
once full of the activities of those wool-merchants commemorated by
quaint brasses in the splendid church,--brasses which show them snugly
at rest in their furred gowns, with feet comfortably planted on
stuffed woolpack or the fleecy back of a sheep, or, more precariously,
on a pair of shears; Burford, whose High Street and church are as
noteworthy as Campden's own; Winchcombe, once a residence of the
Mercian kings and a famous shrine of pilgrimage; Cirencester, the
"Capital of the Cotswolds," built above a ruined Roman city and
possessing a church of surpassing richness. How we longed for months
of free-footed wandering over these exhilarating uplands with their
grey settlements like chronicles writ in stone! But Father Time was
shaking his hour-glass just behind us, in his marplot fashion, and
since it had to be a choice, we took the evening train to Chipping
Norton.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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