The approach to Cricklade from the west by road is a noble introduction to the town. It is a small town, of entirely agricultural character, yet it has been a place of importance in its day; and although that day has long passed, its two churches of St. Sampson and St. Mary prove it to have been once considerable. Cricklade, indeed, standing on the Ermine Way, the Roman road that led from _Spinae_ to _Corinium_—or in modern terms, from Speen by Newbury to Cirencester—could not have been other than important. The invading Danes, making their way up the Thames Valley in A.D. 905, and again in 1016, found it worth while plundering, and it has from very early times been a market-town. It prospered in a quiet way until the opening of the Thames and Severn Canal, in 1789, for it was, after the ancient wharf at Water Hay had been abandoned, at the head of the Thames navigation; but when the canal came past, outside the northern end of the town, the water-borne traffic halted here no more, and Cricklade was, in a minor-tragical way, ruined. Nor have railways served ever to redress the injustice. The Great Western comes no nearer than the small wayside station of Purton, four miles distant, and although the Midland and South-Western Junction Railway comes to Cricklade, and has a station here, the railway management—judging from the fact of its providing only one train a day each way, at inconvenient hours—would much rather you did not use it, you know, if you don’t mind. And the Cricklade people do _not_ use it, and go the four miles to Purton, instead. We have, therefore, not the slightest prospect of Cricklade ever growing. It is quite in keeping with the rural look of the one long broad street of Cricklade, bordered by houses that are, for the most part, of cottage-like appearance, that it has for centuries been known as the “Peasant Borough”: the technical territorial “township” including no fewer than fifty-one surrounding parishes. That it should have been, until the passing of an early Reform Act, also a Parliamentary borough, returning members to Parliament, does not of itself seem remarkable, knowing as we do that places like Gatton and Old Sarum, with no inhabitants at all, shared the same privilege. Cricklade, however, lost its representation through long-continued and shameless bribery. Here, in the long silent streets of Cricklade, the stranger is noted curiously in summer, the local season being in winter; for this is now a hunting-centre of the divided Vale of White Horse country, and the hounds are kennelled here.