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The Thames Head Cotswold Hills Seven Springs Cirencester Cheltenham Sudeley Castle Chavenage Shifford Lechlade Stanton Harcourt Cumnor Hall Fair Rosamond Godstow Nunnery Oxford Oxford Colleges Christ Church Corpus Christi Merton Oriel All Souls University Queen's Magdalen Brasenose New College Radcliffe Library Bodleian Library Lincoln Exeter Wadham Keble Trinity Balliol St.
Thus we have Shifford, Eynsham, South Stoke, Radley, Cumnor, Witham, Botley, the Hinkseys, Sandford, Shillingford, Swinford, Medmenham, Appleford, Sutton, Wittenham, Culham, Abingdon, Goring, Cowley, Littlemore, Cholsey, Nuneham, Wallingford, Pangbourne, Streatley, Stanton Harcourt; and all this crowd of names upon the upper river is arrived at without counting such properties as attached to the great monasteries within towns, as, for example, to the monasteries of Oxford.
Shifford, for instance, which used to be spelt Siford, may just as well have been named from the crossing of the Great Brook as from the crossing of the Thames. The only other is Duxford. While, however, the upper Thames was thus easy to cross where individuals only or small groups of cattle were concerned, the marshes on either side always made it difficult for an army.
The canal has been almost superseded by the railway, so that passing barges are rare, but the towing-path and the locks remain, with an occasional rustic dam thrown across the gradually widening river. In this almost deserted region is the isolated hamlet of Shifford, where King Alfred held a parliament a thousand years ago.
With the exception of the long and probably marshy piece between Radcot and Shifford the whole of the upper Thames was dotted with such settlements, which, though small, were quite close to the banks. Kelmscott is right up against the river in what one would otherwise have imagined to be land too marshy for building until modern times.
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