At New Bridge the river Windrush falls into the Thames, from its source in the Cotswolds, thirty miles away, after passing through Witney, and by some very beautiful scenes. It is the “nitrous Windrush” of Drayton’s verse: those supposed nitric qualities of its waters having originally led to the establishment of Witney’s blanket-making industry. That the flat, low-lying lands here were in former times under water seems sufficiently evident in the name of Standlake, a village a mile-and-a-half distant from New Bridge. A British village, discovered in 1857, near by, may have been one of those lake-villages in which, for security, our remote ancestors dwelt. The church of Standlake has a quaint semi-detached octangular tower, crowned with a spire. There are some curious and interesting places to be found in these flat, unfrequented lands. Proceeding towards Northmoor, ever and again crossing tributary rills of the Windrush, the moated manor-house, now a farm, of “Gaunt’s House” lies secluded amid meadows. It takes its name from one John Gaunt, who originally built it about 1440, but there is nothing nearly so old here to-day. The place has its own little niche in history, for in the seventeenth century, at the outbreak of the Civil War, it was the property of that Dr. Samuel Fell, Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, who was the subject of the famous undergraduate rhyme— “The reason why I cannot tell, I do not like thee, Doctor Fell.” The Doctor was a Royalist, and his moated house here was held for that side in 1644. After a stubborn defence by its garrison of fifty men, who kept a besieging force of eight hundred at bay for three days, it surrendered on May 31, 1645. The house, greatly injured in this warlike passage, was rebuilt in 1669 by Dr. John Fell, who also was Dean of Christ Church. It is not a picturesque house, and seems to have been greatly modernised about the beginning of the nineteenth century. The woodwork of one of the doors is, however, curiously pierced, as though for musketry defence. But, although the house itself is commonplace, the broad moat, brimming full of water, is beautiful, and in summer-time is so covered with waterlilies that the water itself is not to be seen. Let those who think this the language of exaggeration go and see for themselves. [Illustration: NORTHMOOR: CHURCH AND DOVECOTE.] An old bridge, replacing a former drawbridge, gives access to the house, through two tall gateposts surmounted by worn stone heraldic effigies, blunted by time out of all recognisable likeness; not only to anything in nature, but even to anything in heraldry. Here, serving to keep the wooden gateway open, is an iron cannon-ball found in the moat, which, according to an inscription on the wall, was cleared in 1883.