It is somewhat singular that another exceptionally interesting old manor-house of like type with that of Ockwells should be found within three miles. This is the beautiful residence of Dorney Court, on the opposite side of the river, in Buckinghamshire. The village of Dorney lies in a very out-of-the-way situation, and in fact, although the distance from Ockwells is so inconsiderable, the route by which you get to it makes it appear more than twice that length. The readiest way is through Maidenhead, and over the bridge to Taplow railway station, and thence along the Bath road in the direction of London for over a mile, when a sign-post will be noticed directing to Dorney on the right hand. [Illustration: DORNEY CHURCH: THE MINSTREL-GALLERY.] The village is small and scattered, consisting of the Palmer Arms, some cottages and farmsteads; and the little parish church stands in an obscure byway, divided from Dorney Court only by a narrow lane leading nowhither. The church has ever been, and may still be considered, a mere appendage of the Court, as a manorial chapel. Its red-brick tower, apparently of early seventeenth-century date, is added to the west end of a quite humble building, the greatly altered survival of an early Norman structure, whose former existence may easily be deduced from the remains of a small, very plain window built up in the south wall of the chancel with later work in chalk. Entering by a brick archway in the south porch, you find yourself in one of those little rural churches of small pretensions which in their humble way capture the affections much more surely than do many buildings of more aspiring kind. It is a church merely of aisleless nave and chancel, with a chapel—the Garrard Chapel—thrown out on the north side. A great deal of remodelling appears to have taken place in the early part of the seventeenth century, for not only is there the western tower of that period, and the south porch, but the interior was evidently plastered and refitted with pews at the same time. A very quaint and charming western gallery in oak would seem to fix the exact date of these works, for it bears the inscription in fine, boldly cut letters and figures, “Henry Felo, 1634.” That date marked a new era at Dorney, for the Garrards, who had for some time past owned the Manor, ended with the death of Sir William Garrard in 1607. His monument and that of his wife and their fifteen children is in the north chapel, and is a strikingly good example of the taste of that period in monumental art, with kneeling effigies of Sir William and his wife facing one another, and the fifteen children beneath, in two rows—the boys on one side, the girls on the other. The mortality among this family would seem to have been very great, for about 1620 Sir James Palmer, afterwards Chancellor of the Garter, married Martha, the sole survivor and heiress, and thus brought Dorney into the Palmer family, in whose hands it still remains.