Rivers of Great Britain. The Thames, from Source to Sea.: Descriptive, Historical, PictorialVarious
History
Rivers of Great Britain. The Thames, from Source to Sea.: Descriptive, Historical, Pictorial
Various
Thames River (England) -- Description and travel; Thames Valley (England) -- Description and travel
Behind the hill, and a little beyond Iffley, lies Littlemore. Here
is the little church that Newman built, and came to from St. Mary's
for the last two years of the Via Media. Near it is the range of
low buildings that people called a monastery, where Mark Pattison
and others came to be with Newman, and where, on October 8th, 1845,
Newman was received into the "One Fold of Christ" by Father Dominic
the Passionist, the good father making holy puns upon the name of the
place. Now The College, as the building is called in the village, is
given as almshouses to the poor. The largest room is a public library.
In the kitchen lives an old woman who served the Newmans in her youth.
Her husband, an old toy peasant, with smock-frock and silver hair, and
a fine rheumatism that I am sure his country gladly supports, sits by.
She stands up and remembers Newman. He lived there with his pupils
"before he became a Pope. The Pope of Rome, that's the real Pope,
over-persuaded him, and he went away and never came back again. She did
hear that the Church of England gave him some punishment for leaving,
but didn't rightly know. And the clerk's wife had been to see him, and
found him in a bare room with no carpet on the bricks, like any poor
person, and had said that it was to be humble and like his Master that
he did it all."
Meanwhile on the river we have to pass some ornate sewage works, and
the wanton embankment of a railway, that here crosses to Littlemore.
Below lies the Rose Isle, with its "Swan Inn," and on the right the
heights come nearer with the little village of Kennington. A beautiful
tree-planted road runs along the top to Radley, with its school in the
old park of the Bowyers' house, and against the tall trees is a little
grey church and thatched cottages, where women come out and sit with
their sewing machines on the summer evenings. From this the road goes
on through a corn country to Abingdon.
Next on the river comes Sandford Mill, with a leaning chimney, that
has all the interest and all the beauty of the leaning tower of Pisa.
Sandford Church lies away from the river, nearer the Nuneham Road. The
porch proclaims, "Condidit me domina Eliz. Isham. Anno gratiæ 1652,"
and adds--
"Thanks to thy charitie, religiose dame,
Which found me old, and made me new againe."
It is proper, at the same time, to speak strongly of the taste which
found the church Norman, and made it something very new indeed. But it
is worth while going in to see the curious carving in the chancel of
the Assumption of the Virgin.
[Illustration: A PICNIC TO NUNEHAM.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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