Let us hope that although the spreading tentacles of London town have enfolded Fulham and abolished its old market-gardens and numerous stately mansions in favour of commonplace streets, the evident episcopal wish to be rid of Fulham Palace will not lead to it being alienated. It remains one of the very few things that connect this now populous suburb with the village that many still remember; and the romantic-looking moat, often threatened to be filled up, is a relic of remote antiquity it would be vandalism to destroy. “No one,” as Sir Arthur Blomfield remarked in 1856, “could say that the Bishops of London had constructed that defence. We may well hesitate to believe that any prelate, however rich and powerful, would have in any age undertaken to dig round his house a moat of such extent that, if intended as a means of defence, it would require a very large force to render it effective; still less can we believe that it was ever dug with any other object than that of defence.” The Danes constructed it, and the bishops found it here when they came. It is fed by a sluice communicating with the river, and was until recent times a stagnant, malodorous place, owing to the sluice being rarely raised, the ditch cleansed, or the water changed. On the rare occasions when the mud was cleared away, the cost varied from £100 to £150, owing to the great accumulation of it. Those were the times when lilies grew in the moat. The Fulham people called them “Bishops’ wigs.” In 1886 the then Bishop of London received a communication from the Fulham Vestry, requiring him to fill up the evil-smelling moat, or to cleanse it. He had it cleaned out, and it looks no less a place of romance than before. It is too greatly overgrown with trees and brushwood to make a picture for illustration, but while it lasts, with the woodland park it encloses, Fulham will still keep some vestige of its olden condition of a Thames-side village. INDEX Abingdon, i. 159, 216-33 Ashton Keynes, i. 22-30 Augustine, St., i. 47 Bablockhythe, i. 161 Bampton, i. 121-4 Barnes, ii. 253-8 Basildon, i. 295 Benson, i. 268 Besselsleigh, i. 157-60 Beverley Brook, ii. 258 Binsey, i. 190-92 Bisham, ii. 45-50, 201 Bourne End, ii. 56 Boveney, ii. 109 Bray, ii. 69-81 Brentford, ii. 220-36 Brightwell, i. 268 ⸺ Salome, i. 268 Buckland, i. 118-21 Burford, i. 105-7 “Burlington,” ii. 251 Burnham Abbey, ii. 105 Buscot, i. 89-92 Cæsar, Julius, ii. 157, 221-9 Cambridge, H.R.H. Duke of, ii. 64 Carfax Conduit, i. 215 Castle Eaton, i. 50-58 Caversham, i. 304-7 Chamey Brook, i. 124 Chertsey, ii. 150, 161, 201 Chiswick, ii. 245-53 Cholsey, i. 293 Churn, River, i. 17-19, 45, 94 Cirencester, i. 9-13, 18 Clanfield, i. 107-9 Clewer, ii. 110 Clifton Hampden, i. 247, 252-6 Cliveden, ii. 60-64 Coln, River, i. 66, 73, 74