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Pleasant little country gatherings are these race meetings, albeit the bonâ-fide hunter has little chance of distinguishing himself between the flags in any part of England nowadays. The Lechlade Horse Show, too, is a great institution in the V.W.H. country at the close of the hunting season. Annually at Whitsuntide for very many centuries "sports" have been held in all parts of the country.
"Snowstorm" a small gorse half way between Fairford and Lechlade stations on the Great Western Railway is a favourite draw. If a fox goes away you see men sitting down in their saddles and cramming at the fences as hard as their horses can gallop.
I was always for pushing on in order to experience something or discover something. As Pepys used to say, "I was with child to see something new." Once, by incredible exertion, I managed to get my boatload as far up the river as Lechlade. The place, I need hardly say, was chosen by me not for geographical reasons or because of the painted glass, but solely and simply because of Shelley's poem.
The new canals, entering at Oxford and at Reading, gave a certain lead to both those centres, and even the Severn Canal, entering at Lechlade, did a little for that up-river town. But it is remarkable how evenly spread was even this industrial development.
He regarded his change of opinions as rather an act of will than conviction, and believed that in his inner heart he would be haunted by what Shelley considered the better and holier aspirations of his youth. The summer evening that suggested to him the poem written in the churchyard of Lechlade occurred during his voyage up the Thames in 1815.
John's Lock, and, until he came to Buscot Lock, he would hardly know that he had passed into a time other than his own. The same steeple of Lechlade would stand as a permanent landmark beyond the fields, and, a long way off, the same church of Eaton Hastings, which he had known, would show above the trees.
And out there beyond the terrace the Thames flows quietly, silverly on, seeming to shine with the memory of all the loveliness those gliding waters have reflected, since their ripples played with the long, tremulous image of Lechlade spire.
Scores of holdings, such as those of Lechlade, which was dissolved in Catholic times, Windsor, which was exchanged as we have seen at the time of the Conquest, I omit and confine myself only to the lands held at the time of the Dissolution.
The Coln and the Leche, coming in near Lechlade, swell its waters sufficiently to make it navigable for barges, and the river sets up a towing-path, for here the canal from the Severn joins it. The river passes in solitude out of Gloucestershire, and then for miles becomes the boundary between Oxfordshire on the north and Berkshire on the south.
They were now bound for Faringdon through Fairford; and the night the last night was to be spent, if possible, on the farm of Collins's brother, near Lechlade. At Fairford they had their lunch and explored the church, which is one of the most remarkable in England.
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