The design has been variously attributed to Inigo Jones, to Webb, his successor in business, or to Sir Christopher Wren, without any other evidence than that it partakes of the known style of all these. But Inigo Jones died in 1652, and Webb in 1674, and so they are both out of the question. There are at the present time in private possession at Abingdon a few old documents, preserved by merest chance, which abundantly prove who built the Market House, if not precisely who designed it. They detail payments made to Christopher Kempster, whom we have met earlier in these pages.[2] He was, or at this time had been, clerk-of-works and master-mason to Wren, in his rebuilding of St. Paul’s Cathedral and the City churches, and afterwards retired to Burford, where he owned quarries. He would have been forty-eight years of age at the time when this Market House was begun. Unless we are prepared to assume him a transcendental clerk-of-works and a very Phœbus of a master-mason, it seems scarce likely that he designed, as well as built, this exceptionally fine structure; and the inference therefore to be drawn is that he induced Wren to sketch out the design and built to it, either with or without the supervision of that great architect. [Illustration: THE “KING’S HEAD AND BELL,” ABINGDON.] [2] Page 106. CHAPTER X SUTTON COURTNEY—LONG WITTENHAM—LITTLE WITTENHAM—CLIFTON HAMPDEN—DAY’S LOCK AND SINODUN A group of rustic villages nestles undisturbed by any press of traffic on the right, or Berkshire, bank of the river: Drayton, Sutton Courtney, and Appleford; with Steventon and Milton away back in the hinterland, all very charming, and wholly unaltered. At Steventon are to be found the most delightful old cottages. There are no better in Berkshire. This is a sweeping statement, but true. The proof of it lies partly in visiting that coy spot: coy, because the said cottages lie off the high road along the by-lane known as Steventon Causeway. One might say much about Sutton Courtney, the “south town” of the Courtneys, who owned it in the long ago, with Nuneham Courtney, to the north of it. Here is an “Abbey,” but it is in private occupation as a residence, and is not a show-house; and very much the same may be added of the old manor-house and its “Court House,” adjoining the church. The “Abbey” was really a place to which the brethren of the Abbey of Abingdon might occasionally retire for rest and for health’s sake. [Illustration: SUTTON COURTNEY CHURCH.] The manor of Sutton Courtney finally passed from the family in the sixteenth century, when Henry Courtenay, Marquis of Exeter, was attainted and his property seized. The old manor-house, built around a courtyard, still retains its ancient hall, with minstrels’ gallery. The so-called “Court House,” in the grounds, is a late Norman building, with lancet windows, and is thought by competent authorities to be the hall of justice of the original manor-house.