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At the southern end of the street are the gates of Aldermaston Park; a picturesque expanse of broken ground with several fine avenues, and populated by herds of deer. The old Jacobean mansion was burnt down in 1843, although a few of the ancient features were saved and incorporated in the new house.
Dined at Duke of Argyll's. 20th, three days at Strawberry Hill. 27th, party at Aldermaston: Otway, Layards, H. Bruce. Having taken Loch Gair House for the season, went there by Greenock on August 2nd. Reeve is a tiny, land-locked bay on the west shore of Loch Fyne. Park-like grounds, with a pretty burn rushing down, skirt this loch. There is a small kitchen garden, and a dairy of six cows.
The high hedges and fences are in places very jealous of the beauties they encircle, but there are charming glimpses here and there of this pleasant countryside. Woolhampton, with a modern church of no particular interest, is passed four miles from Thatcham, and two miles farther comes Aldermaston Station, where we leave the great highway and turn south to Aldermaston Wharf on the Kennet Canal.
Two or three seasons ago I was so unfortunate as to run over a large and beautifully bright grass snake near Aldermaston, once a snake sanctuary.
The wonderful beauty of Orcagna's faces, profile after profile laid together like lilies in a garden border, can only be discovered after long study. It has been my good fortune to examine, through the kindness of Mrs. Higford Burr, of Aldermaston, a large series of tracings, taken chiefly by the Right Hon.
One of the most attractive bits of green and wooded country near London I know lies between Reading and Basingstoke and includes Aldermaston with its immemorial oaks in Berkshire and Silchester with Pamber Forest in Hampshire.
The convention of that age appears again in the following inscription from a tablet in Aldermaston church, in that beautiful little Berkshire village, once the home of the Congreves: Like borne, like new borne, here like dead they lie, Four virgin sisters decked with pietie Beauty and other graces which commend And made them like blessed in the end.
To Aldermaston, with Lord Aberdare, the Samuel Bakers, Herbert Spencer, Franks and others. Pleasant and interesting; but I had the gout and was laid up for a month. This was the day Gladstone published his fatal address to the electors at Greenwich. Parliament was dissolved on the 26th. We all told Lord Aberdare that the party would be smashed, and so it was.
The curfew-bell still rings in many towers; the harvest-bell, the gleaning-bell, the pancake-bell, the "spur-peal," the eight-hours' bell, and sundry others send out their pleasing notice to the world. At Aldermaston land is let by means of a lighted candle. A pin is placed through the candle, and the last bid that is made before that pin drops out is the occupier of the land for a year.
This is a most pleasant spot, and to enhance the charm of the surroundings a large sheet of ornamental water has been formed, close to, and fed by, the channel. Aldermaston village is nearly two miles to the south-west and well-placed among the wooded hills that march with the Hampshire border. The aspect of the village is as unspoilt as any in the old Berkshire by-ways.
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