Chapter 30: Wolvercote & Binsey

In pursuit of Tolkien and the Dormouse's Treacle Well.

I have come to Wolvercote Cemetery to visit the grave of one of my favourite writers from my college days--JRR Tolkien, who spent much of his life in Oxford. I remember my first English Literature class at Acadia, when my professor Robert Cockburn announced to us that our first book was, in fact, four: Tolkien's The Hobbit and his trilogy, Lord of the Rings. I fondly recall the story of Bilbo Baggins and his dozen fortune-seeking dwarves who go off to reclaim the stolen treasure from the dragon Smaug. And Gandalf is one of my favourite fantasy characters, especially as he encourages and guides Frodo Baggins in his quest to find and destroy the One Ring.I follow the markers in the verge, which lead directly the cemetery's most illustrious "resident."

Tolkien died in September 1973 and is buried with his wife, Edith. Visitors, likely from Middle-earth themselves, have left numerous small tokens, including a small lantern, a white stuffed toy, an elf or two, pine cones and other items.

(To the uninitiated, "Luthien" and "Beren" are fictional Middle-earth characters, chosen by Edith to represent the couple on their cemetery monument.)

Nearby I see what I first thought was an odd memorial; but then I realised it was just a rack upon which are hung watering cans so visitors can water plants left on family graves.

I leave the cemetery, walk down the Godstow Road, past cattle grazing on the Wolvercote Common--included here to please all my Gaspereau friends--past the Oxford Canal and The Trout Inn.

Once on the Thames Pathway and past Godstow Nunnery and the Lock, I am alongside the Isis again--the Thames is called The Isis through Oxford--and I hear a familiar chant: "Stroke. Stroke. Stroke." Whizzing by are half a dozen shells (or fine boats), followed by their coaches with megaphones. They are from one of the numerous college rowing teams that comprise Oxford University Women's Boat Club.

Watching the rowers pass swiftly past me brings memories of my father, Tony, who was a championship rower back in the 1930s with the Northwest Arm Rowing Club in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. (I have a number of his medals and trophies from rowing regattas in the family trophy cabinet at home.) "Pop" used to try to teach us how to row by facing one another holding a broomstick, pushing our legs out long and hard. Of course, we didn't have sliding seats like these racing shells, but it was obvious that the legs play a major role in rowing competitively and I have never forgotten my father's advice to keep my legs strong--to no avail.

The largest shell is this coxed eight. (The woman in the stern is the coxswain, presuming the term is genderless.)

There is only one coxless pair, sculling, and several coxed fours.

I take the road from the Pathway to Binsey Village. Historians will explain that in ancient times this was probably a large, well populated area, but there is little left and only two dozen residents. The well known pub is called The Perch, its thatched roof carrying a wooden fish. It has a mooring on the nearby river to serve water-borne patrons.

It is only 10:30 a.m. so the pub is not open, although I stand and listen to some local musicians practising their repertoire.

I am here to see St Margaret's Church, a short distance from what's left of the village, cramped by a private working farm on all sides. The current Norman church dates from the 12th century on the site of an earlier Saxon one. A huge fundraising campaign is underway to save the church, in urgent need of repairs. Even the bells have been removed for repair.

The Binsey Church of St Margaret focuses on the legend of the Saint Frideswide, the patron saint of Oxford. An on-line account reports that at one time the following text was hung on the door of the Church.

"When the most Reverend Princess Ffrediswyde, Abbess of Oxford, disdaining the attention of the enamoured prince of Mercia, Algar, had fled to Thornbury, or Binsey, she was pursued there by the Prince, who had the temerity to attempt to take hold of her hand and was forthwith smitten blind by a great clap of lightning which flashed forth from a justly wrathful Heaven. A sentiment of sorrow then pierced the heart of the Maiden Princess when she saw her lover's plight and immediately there appeared before her St Margaret of Antioch with her little dragon and St Catherine of Alexandria with her wheel. Little St Margaret told the saint to strike her Abbatial staff on the ground which when it was done there gushed forth a fount of water. The Princess's Lady Maidens then lavered the eyes of luckless Algar with this healing tide and forthwith his sight was given back and seeing the error of his ways he stooped to the ground and kissed the hem of the Princess's robe thereafter returning to lead a better and a wise life."

The place where her staff struck the ground became St Margaret's Treacle Well and a destination for pilgrims seeking its curative powers. Even Henry VIII came here to pray for a son. In medieval times "treacle" meant "a healing fluid" and, according to the current brochure, "the restored cripples hung up their crutches within the church to testify of their cure."

In more modern times, the well is found in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, in the Mad Hatter Scene, where it is known as the Treacle Well. Carroll was a friend of the Vicar of the time, A. J. Prout, who had the well "brought back into use." The three sisters in the scene are presumed to be the Liddell girls.

`Tell us a story!' said the March Hare.

`Yes, please do!' pleaded Alice.

`And be quick about it,' added the Hatter, `or you'll be asleep again before it's done.'

`Once upon a time there were three little sisters,' the Dormouse began in a great hurry; `and their names were Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie; and they lived at the bottom of a well--'

`What did they live on?' said Alice, who always took a great interest in questions of eating and drinking.

`They lived on treacle,' said the Dormouse, after thinking a minute or two. `They couldn't have done that, you know,' Alice gently remarked; `they'd have been ill.'

`So they were,' said the Dormouse; `VERY ill.'

Alice tried to fancy to herself what such an extraordinary ways of living would be like, but it puzzled her too much, so she went on: `But why did they live at the bottom of a well?' . . .
The Dormouse again took a minute or two to think about it, and then said, `It was a treacle-well.'

`There's no such thing!' Alice was beginning very angrily, but the Hatter and the March Hare went `Sh! sh!' and the Dormouse sulkily remarked, `If you can't be civil, you'd better finish the story for yourself.'

`No, please go on!' Alice said very humbly; `I won't interrupt again. I dare say there may be ONE.'

`One, indeed!' said the Dormouse indignantly. However, he consented to go on. `And so these three little sisters--they were learning to draw, you know--'

`What did they draw?' said Alice, quite forgetting her promise. `Treacle,' said the Dormouse, without considering at all this time. . . .

Alice did not wish to offend the Dormouse again, so she began very cautiously: `But I don't understand. Where did they draw the treacle from?' `You can draw water out of a water-well,' said the Hatter; `so I should think you could draw treacle out of a treacle-well--eh, stupid?'

`But they were IN the well,' Alice said to the Dormouse, not choosing to notice this last remark.

`Of course they were', said the Dormouse; `--well in.'

This answer so confused poor Alice, that she let the Dormouse go on for some time without interrupting it.

In the churchyard are buried many members of the Prickett family, one of whom was Alice Liddell's governess.

I might have a game leg and suffer from back pain, but I decide to pass on sipping the legendary curative waters of St Margaret's Treacle Well: the green slime, the spiderweb and nearby buried corpses rather dampen my enthusiasm.

It is time to leave and it has become a very hot day--about 25 degrees--and I am getting burned. So I stroll along the river into Oxford, with time on my hands to see some other Oxford places, of which I shall write next.

Chapter 29: The Thames Walk: Oxford Double

This spring, The TIMES recommended the walk along the Thames Pathway from Oxford to Wolvercote (and returning along the Oxford Canal) as one of the Best Walks in England. Rated as "Easy" it makes sense to me to take the walk, so I board the bus in Caversfield and go to Oxford. This walk starts at Folly Bridge, at this point a paved, well marked route, in a residential neighbourhood.

There are too many bridges to pass under to remember, but I quickly heard the train coming so I snapped this photo of an incoming train to Oxford Station, nearby.

The concept of a public pathway without needing to pass through private property or rough ground is sensible and perfect for hikers such as me, with poor legs and limited mobility.

A canal boat passes out of Orsney Lock. The pilots tell me as he passes that it is a perfect way to enjoy retirement, and that it is a beautiful way to spend a day, "despite what's coming." He points at the sky and before I can get my rain gear from my backpack it is pouring rain! No way will I give up, so I trek onwards, quite relieved that in ten minutes the sun is shining again.
The canal passes Port Meadow and I meet only one other walker for several miles.

Closer to Wolvercote, the pathway is a well worn track through cattle pastures, with stands of great old trees. The flat lands on the other side of the Thames also provide grazing for cattle.

Many of the old oaks simply lie where they have been felled or have fallen.

The Islip Lock at Wolvercote.

Godstow Nunnery (and Abbey) was built in 1133 for nuns of the Benedictine Order. I drag from my mind the Nunnery Scene from Shakespeare's greatest play, and remember poor Ophelia being verbally assaulted by the mad Hamlet:

HAMLET Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a

breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest;

but yet I could accuse me of such things that it

were better my mother had not borne me: I am very

proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at

my beck than I have thoughts to put them in,

imagination to give them shape, or time to act them

in. What should such fellows as I do crawling

between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves,

all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery.

William Shakespeare

Of course, it was not of Godstow that Shakespeare was thinking. It was here that one found the final burial place of Rosamund Cliford, who died in 1176, the long-term mistress of Henry II. Her tomb, in front of the high altar, became a local shrine, so the local bishop, declaring that Rosamund was a harlot, had her tomb removed to the nuns' cemetery, but it was destroyed with the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII.

Rosamund is immortalised in several literary works, one being this poem from Robert Southey:

Inscription 01 - For A Tablet At Godstow Nunnery

Here Stranger rest thee!

from the neighbouring towers

Of Oxford, haply thou hast forced thy bark

Up this strong stream, whose broken waters here

Send pleasant murmurs to the listening sense:

Rest thee beneath this hazel; its green boughs

Afford a grateful shade, and to the eye

Fair is its fruit: Stranger! the seemly fruit

Is worthless, all is hollowness within,

For on the grave of ROSAMUND it grows!

Young lovely and beloved she fell seduced,

And here retir'd to wear her wretched age

In earnest prayer and bitter penitence,

Despis'd and self-despising: think of her

Young Man! and learn to reverence Womankind!

Robert Southey

The abbey became a private home, Godstow House, but was ruined in 1645 in the Civil War. After that stones were removed by locals for their own buildings, and later the grounds were used when animals from Port Meadow were being rounded up.

Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) used to bring Alice Liddell and her sisters here for picnics, after afternoon boating on the Thames from Oxford.

According to some, the site is haunted by Rosamund, known as the Grey Lady.

I stop at The Trout Inn, the 17th Century Free House in Wolvercote. The TIMES had said it was excellent and popular, and half-way along the Walk. It is better than anticipated, and I thoroughly enjoy a mushroom and bacon spaghetti. The brochure tells of its history:

Famous long time before it was immortalised in Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse novels, The Trout Inn has been wonderfully restored so that it is now the individual pub it always should have been. With a rich literary history, it is easy to see why The Trout Inn is a pub of dreams; from Lewis Carroll to CS Lewis you can understand why so many people have sat on the banks of the Thames staring into the fast moving waters and watching the world drift by [which must be a mixed metaphor!]

There are tourists here, of course, and quite a number of Oxford students. I suspect this is not where the locals come for their draught of Brakspeare.

Leaving The Trout and the Thames, I walk through Lower Wolvercote, find the stairs from the train bridge and walk down to the Oxford Canal. Here I find right off another canal boat passing through a tiny lock--only inches wider than the boat!

The Oxford Canal, which runs 130 km, links Oxford with Coventry. Once it was a major commercial link, the boats drawn by horses or mules, bring goods and coal to Oxford. Now it is exclusively a waterway for recreation, with dozens of canal boats--many seemingly lived in--moored along the banks.

The closer to Oxford, the more walkers and bikers I see. (Plus police who are tying a boat up as I pass by. Minutes later, I pass a rather rough looking couple hiding in a clump of trees nearby, the woman telling her partner, "The cops have got it tied up again." Goodness knows, but I move on.)

The canal runs through the back yards of residential sections of the city. It must be wonderful to have your canoe and other boats moored in the back, the front of your house opening unto the busy main street!

This family even has a full-sized canal boat in their yard.

This last section into Oxford was opened on 1 January 1790. Here it arrives at a dead-end, although it used to open into a large docking and turning "pond" now overbuilt by one of the colleges and parking lots. A memorial marks the spot. Up a set of stairs and I am in the centre of Oxford, just behind Oxford Castle. My legs are tired but I am happy I have done this walk, and intend to walk the Thames section again.