Beside historic associations, Gayhurst has literary memories, for this is the poet Cowper’s country, and he often visited the Mr. Wrighte of that age, travelling from Olney, little more than four miles away, to admire the gardens, the hot-houses, and “the orange-trees, the most captivating creatures of the kind I ever saw.” But he does not enlarge upon the interesting Early Renaissance architecture of the older part of the house, which is very justly admired nowadays. The Queen Anne additions, comparatively recent as they were in his time, were better thought of, and the classic church considered exquisite. It was one of Sir Christopher Wren’s last designs, but the great architect never saw it built, for he died, aged ninety-two, in 1723, and it was not begun until the following year. [Illustration: THE “GEORGE AND DRAGON,” EAKLEY LANE.] [Sidenote: _EAKLEY LANE_] The Ouse, glinting steel-blue amid the green meadows, is seen away to the right of the road, on the way to Eakley Lane, winding placidly and sluggishly along. It is, of course, Cowper’s Ouse: Ouse, slow-winding through a level plain. Passing through the village of Stoke Goldington, where the golden-brown stone of Northamptonshire—the “sugar-stone,” as it is locally styled—is first noticed in the buildings, Inckley, or Eakley Lane is reached. “Eakley,” which appears to derive from “Ea” = water, and “lea” = a meadow, referring to the neighbouring water-meadows of the Ouse, is the proper name, but the spot was known indifferently by either spelling in coaching days, when it was notable for two inns, the “Bull’s Head” and the “George and Dragon.” Both houses are still in existence, but have long since ceased to be inns. Old houses that were once inns are indeed remarkably plentiful in these next few miles. At Horton there stands what was formerly “Horton Inn,” now a handsome country residence. Obviously it was built in two separate periods; beginning business in a modest way and then enlarged to twice its original size. Doubtless further enlargements and improvements were in contemplation when the era of railways came in and doomed all such hopes to failure. A spacious drive once led up to the house, but that was long ago walled in and converted into a garden. Here we come into Northamptonshire, uphill, into the region that was once known as Salcey Forest, which, with the Forest of Rockingham to the east and that of Whittlebury on the west, was in the days of the Plantagenet kings a portion of a vast chase, in which the red deer were of far more account than men. [Illustration: HORTON INN.] [Sidenote: “_SUGAR-STONE_”]