In Albury Park is a ruined church. Its history is not very edifying. Mr.
Drummond, the banker, who built the Catholic Apostolic cathedral near
by, obtained permission to shut up the old church if he built a new one
elsewhere. He built the new church, and the old, with its graves and
memories, was abandoned. The footpath leading to it remains open to the
public, and runs under the shade of some superb Spanish chestnuts.
Perhaps half a mile from the park, in the depth of a wood of box, are
the two Sherborne Farm ponds, one of which has come by the name of the
Silent Pool. The Sherborne ponds lie somewhere near the track of the
pilgrims, and I like to think that the journeying men knew them and
drank their clear water. Legend has grown round the deeper, upper pool.
Martin Tupper, in his strange medley _Stephan Langton_, has shaped it
into his story. A lovely peasant girl used to bathe in the pool; King
John, riding by, saw her and drove his horse at her, and she, trying to
escape, fell into deep water and was drowned. That was not enough for
Martin Tupper; he decided that her brother should try to rescue her and
be drowned also. There they lay, the two of them; "the brother and
sister are locked in each other's arms in the tranquil crystal depth of
Shirebourne Pond; and the rippled surface is all smooth once more; and
you may see the trout shoaling among the still green weeds around that
naked raven-haired Sabrina, and her poor drowned brother in his cowskin
tunic." So wrote Tupper; a most moving finish of a chapter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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