Thames Path meanderings

A (mostly) riverside walk through beautiful landscape, passing historic towns and villages

Marlow to Henley-on-Thames

Hambleden Lock

Typical. Glorious sunshine and bright blue skies all week while I’m at work, then when I finally get some time off, I awake to a grey, overcast, dismal day. Ah well, never mind. A relatively easy walk this, mostly on level ground along the towpath on one bank of the Thames or the other, following a section of the 184-mile long Thames Path National Trail. The Trail begins at the source of the Thames in the Cotswolds near Cirencester and passes through some of England’s most attractive countryside, unspoilt villages and historic towns, through the heart of London to the Thames Barrier near Greenwich. I only walked a 10 mile stretch on this walk, but it was certainly representative, including stunning riverside scenery and some fascinating historic buildings. Much of the Thames Trail is accessible by public transport; I’m sure I will be back for more.

Start: Marlow Station SU855865

Finish: Henley-on-Thames Station SU763822

Length: 10 miles/4 hours

How to get there: Both start and finish are termini of branch lines off the Great Western main line between London Paddington and Reading. A small number of First Great Western services run direct from London, but by and large a change of train is required: at Maidenhead for the Marlow branch, and at Twyford for the Henley branch. Even so, the journey to/from Paddington is only about a hour or so.

The journey to Marlow is certainly a varied one: the train leaves Paddington and runs parallel to the heavily graffiti’d Westway flyover, then through industrial West London, past numerous rusting and weed-infested goods sidings leading to who knows where. Gradually the surroundings become greener until the railway passes over the Thames for the first time at Maidenhead (over a bridge built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel no less, and one famed for the flatness of its arches). I change here onto the train along the single track branch to Bourne End; here we reverse and continue at a snail’s pace parallel to the river, through back gardens and marinas, across numerous level crossings to reach the simple one platform station at Marlow.

Marlow Suspension Bridge and All Saints' Church

The town itself is clearly affluent and prosperous. And very pleasant, ‘one of the pleasantest river centres I know of’ according to Jerome K. Jerome. The High Street, busy with shoppers visiting the many bars, brasseries and boutiques, runs south past the ornately spired All Saints’ Church to meet the Thames where the road crosses by an impressive suspension bridge of solid, white-painted wrought iron links. On each of the sandstone towers from which the chains gracefully arch, a plaque explains that the bridge, opened in 1832, is the work of William Tierney Clark, FRS, MICE, designer of the first Hammersmith Bridge (now replaced by one designed by an engineering great and a hero of mine, Sir Joseph Bazalgette). As the bilingual plaque goes on to explain, the only other surviving bridge of Tieney Clark’s design is the Széchenyi chain bridge over the Danube linking Buda and Pest.

I head along the river bank past Higginson Park, which proudly displays its Green Flag, and is the site of Court Garden House, an attractive verandah’d 18th century Georgian mansion with an unattractive 20th century extension. In the park itself: a maze; a statue of local boy and five times Olympic medal winner Steve Redgrave; magnificent London Plane trees; a playground busy with laughing children enjoying half term.

All Saints' Church, Bisham

Beyond the park, watermeadows and willows lie to my right, while across the river, large and expensive detached houses are partly hidden by the trees that line the stone balustraded river bank. More bilingual signs, this time in English and Polish, indicate that along this section of river the fishing is private, ‘prywatny połów’. A pair of Egyptian geese are floating on the reflection of the 12th century tower of All Saints’ Church, Bisham. Slightly curiously for such a church, it has twin ridged roofs, dating from the mid 19th century when the church was ‘improved’ by the Victorians.

The cost of these works to the church were borne in part by Mr G H Vansitartt, owner at the time of neighbouring Bisham Abbey. Sitting proudly on the bank of the river, surrounded by majestic beech and lime trees, the stunning Grade I listed Manor House at Bisham dates from around 1260, built for the Knights Templar. The manor was seized by King Edward II in 1307 on the suppression of the Templars, which began initially in France by order of King Phillip on Friday 13th October – supposedly from where the superstition arises. In 1335 Edward passed the rights of the manor to the William Montacute, 1st Earl of Salisbury, who in 1337 founded Bisham Priory for a congregation of Augustinian Canons. The Priory became the last resting place of many Earls of Salisbury including Richard Neville, 5th Earl of Salisbury and 16th Earl of Warwick, known as Warwick the Kingmaker for his influential role during the Wars of the Roses. Dissolved on 5th July 1537 like so many others by that ecclesiastical vandal King Henry VIII, the Priory was refounded by Henry himself in December that year as a Benedictine Priory but only survived until 19th June 1538 when the buildings were demolished.

Bisham Abbey

The Manor House, where Queen Elizabeth of the Scots (wife of Robert the Bruce) was held prisoner in 1310, was granted to Anne of Cleves by Henry as part of their divorce settlement. But in 1552 Anne was forced to relinquish Bisham to Sir Philip Hoby, a favourite of Henry, who had zealously supported the Reformation. In return, Anne was given Westhorpe in Suffolk, Sir Philip’s former seat. Although he had married Katherine, daughter of Sir Walter Stonor, Sir Philip died childless so Bisham passed to his half brother, Sir Thomas Hoby, whose wife Elizabeth was a great friend of Queen Elizabeth I. As a consequence, the Queen became a regular visitor to Bisham.

Like all good historic buildings, Bisham is reputed to be haunted: by the ghost of Lady Elizabeth Hoby. According to legend, Elizabeth beat her son William to death for blotting his copy book – in 1840 various papers, including one ink-stained book bearing the name William Hoby, were found beneath the floor by builders working for the Vansitartt family. Since her death and burial in All Saints’ Church in 1609, Elizabeth Hoby has mournfully wandered through the house, apparently trying to wash the blood from her hands.

The neatly striped grass of the grounds around the Abbey give a clue to its current use. Since 1958, when Phyllis Vansitartt died heirless, the estate has been in the care of Sport England as one of five National Sports Centre, regularly hosting the country’s top athletes and sportsmen and women.

I continue along Bondig Bank, once an osiery (from osier, Salix viminalis, a specie of willow) once managed by the monks of the Priory to produce withies for basket making and fences. On the floodplain, cows and Canada geese graze placidly, while a red kite circles overhead. At the corner where two fields meet is an enormous and ancient willow tree, its trunk split, wrenched apart by the weight of its many branches which, having been grounded, now curve back up towards the light; it reminds me of a gigantic octopus, tentacles flailing in the air like a mythical sea monster.

On the opposite bank, behind mistletoe-festooned lime trees, more of the buildings of Bisham Abbey: a round conically-roofed Dovecote and rectangular Tithe Barn, topped with a square clock tower.

Geese; near Hurley

With the sound of rushing water getting louder, a group of large detached houses are arranged the marina at Temple, beyond which a rubbery-necked cormorant is perched on a rock beneath the weir, wings outstretched. I reach my first lock, Temple Lock, which is looking very neat and tidy, mooring bollards painted shiny black, steps painted bright white. Adding more colour are bright cerise-flowered crab apple trees and an old-fashioned blue enamelled sign which informs boaters that this spot is 53 miles from Oxford, 58½ from London. Ahead, the gracefully curving timber arch of Temple footbridge, opened in 1989 on the site of the former Temple Ferry which ceased operating in 1953. I cross the river by the bridge, pausing mid-span to look back downstream over Temple Lock towards Marlow. Once on the south bank, the path continues between river and woodland, fresh-leaved horse chestnut branches arcing overhead to kiss the water. The woodland floor is green with pungent ramsons (or wild garlic), lords-and-ladies and glossy celandine leaves, the last yellow flowers of which are just fading.

The woodland ends, grassland opens up. Greylag geese are lined up along the river bank; at my approach they hiss and honk and plop into the water to swim away. The far bank is lined with numerous generic white cabin cruisers, so common on the Thames; but also moored are a beautiful old Dutch barge, and what looks like a steam gondola. More tall lime trees, heavy with enormous globes of mistletoe, and beyond, glimpsed through the trees, the curving redbrick frontage of Grade I listed Harleyford Manor.

St Mary the Virgin, Hurley

A sturdy timber footbridge takes me over the water onto Hurley Lock Island and past Hurley Lock itself, built in 1773 to replace an earlier flash lock. The river is now managed by the Environment Agency, but historically much of the river was the responsibility of the Thames Conservancy, whose name lives on at Hurley, carved in stone on a plaque on the unassuming 1950s brick Lock-keeper’s cottage. To the side of the cottage is a young oak tree, planted, according to the plaque beneath, by Queen Elizabeth II ‘on the occasion of her river progress on the Thames from Hurley to Magna Carta Island on 18th October 1974′.

Past the camping island, another timber bridge beneath the unfurling pink-purple leaves of a copper beech leads back to the south bank. I’m keen to explore the village of Hurley, intrigued by the ‘Dovecote’ and ‘Remains of Priory (Benedictine)’ shown on the OS map, so I head away from the river, past the Freebody family’s boatyard, established for more than 300 years. Alongside the narrow footpath is a brick wall, the precarious angle at which it leans and the decorative coping suggesting it is of considerable age; in fact this is the boundary wall of the Priory. An arched bridge dating back to the 17th century crosses the former moat around the Priory, then I follow the wall past the Chapter House, around Ladye Place – formerly the farmhouse to the Ladye Place Mansion (which was demolished in 1837), but quite mansion-like itself – to Tithecote Manor, an amazing Elizabethan barn now a private house. In the perfectly maintained grounds of Tithecote Manor is a Grade I listed circular Dovecote dating back to 1087, inside which is an original revolving ladder once used for collecting eggs. Opposite is the church of St Mary the Virgin, its north wall forming one side of a courtyard around which are the Priory’s former Cloisters and Refectory. An archway adjacent to the Church gives access to the courtyard, through which I catch a tantalising glimpse of stone monuments on the wall of Refectory, but a sign marked ‘Private’ indicates this is now a garden to which access is not permitted.

Through the arch: the Priory Cloisters and Refectory, now private houses

The Refectory, Chapter House, Cloisters, Church and Dovecote are the substantial and well preserved remains of a Benedictine Priory, rebuilt from an earlier Saxon church in the mid 11th century by Lesceline, second wife of Geoffrey de Mandeville as a memorial to Athelaise, Geoffrey’s first wife. Geoffrey was a trusted supporter of William the Conqueror, who gifted the manor of Hurley (along with a huge number of other lands) to Geoffrey after seizing it during the Norman Conquest from Asgar, Master of the Horse to Edward the Confessor. Like Bisham Abbey, Hurley did not escape the attentions of Henry VIII during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, when parts of the Priory were demolished – the stonework was used by John Lovelace, who had bought the manor for £1500 in 1545, to construct Ladye Place Mansion.

Unlike the other remaining Priory buildings, I find the Church still welcomes visitors. Entering by the south door, framed by a chevronned arch indicating the church’s Norman antiquity, I am greeted by serene silence, broken only by the slow tick…tick…tick of the clock in the tower above. Wooden plaques on the facing wall commemorate ‘Benefactions’; one states:

BENEFACTION There is a piece of ground called Bradley’s Acre containing ^A 0 [acres], ^R 2 [rods], ^P 36½ [perches], fituated in a Common Field called The Clays, adjoining Frog Mill Farm in this Parifh, it’s now let for ^L 1 [pounds] ^S 0 [shillings] ^D 0 [pence] a Year, and the Money is to be diftributed amongst the Poor of the Parifh of Hurley.

Thomas Kebble, Nath^l Guy, Churchwardens 1818

The Lovelace Memorial, St Mary the Virgin

Tiptoeing along the nave, I pass the memorials to numerous long-dead members of notable local families the Clayton Easts and the Micklems. Above the altar, on the east wall, a well-weathered wooden cross, originally erected in the Saxon burial ground in 1040, re-erected on the Priory bell tower, then later on the tower of the present church. To the side of the altar is a brightly painted carved wooden memorial featuring two kneeling figures. On the left, Richard Lovelace (1542-1601), John Lovelace’s son and Constable of Windsor Castle; next to Richard, his son Sir Richard (1564-1634), High Sheriff of Berkshire and High Sheriff of Oxfordshire, upon whom King Charles I bestowed the title 1st Baron Lovelace. Both figures piously look up to Heaven; Richard’s right hand is over his heart, in his left hand a bible.

After some time contemplating the beauty of the church, I leave through the south door and pass through the churchyard, which itself contains many listed monuments and memorials. A gate in the Priory wall leads onto Hurley High Street; clinging to the wall are tufts of delicately flowered ivy-leaved toadflax and Corydalis. Opposite is an enormous flint and chalk mediæval barn with a steeply tiled gabled roof, originally belonging to the Priory and now Grade II* listed. Hurley is a gem of a place, so many historic buildings of interest to the enthusiastic antiquarian, but unfortunately today I just don’t have enough time to explore them all.

Continuing along the river bank is something of an anticlimax after Hurley, as the Thames Path proceeds along the edge of a camping and caravan site, dotted with unsightly blue wheelie bins. Across the river, a heron sits on a dead branch looking miserable, shoulders hunched; beyond, a vertical chalk river cliff hides behind the trees. Overlooking the river and highly defensible, atop the cliff seems a likely place to find a hill fort, so it’s no surprise to learn that it’s the site of Danesfield Camp which dates from the Iron Age. Part of the hill fort has been destroyed by the subsequent construction of Danesfield House, a turn-of-the-20th-century neo-Tudor mansion whose white crenellations are visible above the tree tops. Now a luxury hotel, the House played an important role in the Second World War, as a base for the RAF’s Imagery Intelligence Unit, and as such has been compared to the more celebrated Bletchley Park.

The Thames at Frog Mill

The river gradually curves to the south; moored along the bank, a long, chain-like line of ubiquitous white cabin cruisers (some with cringeworthy names like Oom-Pah-Pah and Relaxez-vous) leading to the village of Frog Mill. A Red Kite flies overhead, mewing repeatedly; on the water, a number of huge Canada geese honk noisily. Willow trees overhang the shores of Frog Mill Ait, the flood water mark defined by a perfectly horizontal line where green leafy twigs give way to bare branches, as though the trees are lifting their skirts daintily.

As at Conyer, I’m reminded of Jerome K. Jerome’s rant against selfish riparian owners by an intrusive blue sign ahead on the footpath: ‘YOU ARE NOW ENTERING PRIVATE LAND PLEASE KEEP TO THE DESIGNATED PUBLIC FOOTPATH. THIS ESTATE IS MONITORED BY CCTV AND MOBILE PATROLS 24 HOURS A DAY. PLEASE KEEP DOGS ON A LEAD.’ Then at the bottom, almost as an after thought: ‘PRIVATE FISHING’.

Willow pollard (no relation to Su)

Keeping closely to the footpath as requested, I follow the Thames Path as it takes a sneaky shortcut along the chord of a bend in the river, crossing a watermeadow in which more Canada geese are grazing. Two ladies walking a Labrador approach; we greet each other in the traditional way, the humans with ‘Afternoon! Lovely day!’ and the dog with a nuzzle and a lick to my hand. Back at the river, on the opposite bank is a monument apparently erected by the 1st Viscount Devonport in 1899 to commemorate his legal success in the fight to keep Medmenham Ferry open to the public, but I’m too far away to read any inscription.

Turning left, I continue along the river’s edge, here lined with mature ash trees in various states of health, some upright and vigorous, others with stag-headed dead branches freckled with cramp balls, and one that’s decided it’s all too much and is having a lie down in the river, thus providing a handy perch for an Egyptian goose. The watermeadow inland is divided and drained by ditches and dykes lined with old willow pollards, maybe a couple of hundred years old, their stumpy trunks gnarled, split and decaying (and providing a home to numerous insects – old pollards are great wildlife habitat) but topped with a green tuft of fresh new growth, giving the appearance of a row of shaving brushes.

The Path leaves the river temporarily, climbing steadily uphill through the grounds of Culham Court. The new owner of this huge mansion, a Swiss financier, clearly values his privacy: along with the blue signs, tall new fences, electric gates and CCTV cameras have been erected that give the estate the feel of a prison camp. High hedges of yew and box have been planted to screen the house from the eyes of those following the footpath, in the process denigrating an otherwise impressive landscape garden. I can’t help thinking that the permissive footpath along the river at the foot of the hillside has been signposted less out of altruism than as a means of keeping the public away from the house.

Still, the view from the footpath is wonderful: from a parkland meadow dotted with yellow cowslips and pimpled with molehills, I can look down over the river valley in which an unseen lapwing calls distinctively; a pair of red kites circles synchronously overhead, and in the middle distance lie the dome-shaped tree-covered hills of the Chilterns around Hambleden to the north west.

Looking north-west from Culham Court

A lane through the pretty village of Aston leads past a smallholding noisy with clucking hens and crowing cocks, some of whom seem to prefer scratching around on the road or beneath the canopy of neighbouring willow woodland in amongst the white flowers of spring snowflake. At the end of the lane is a slipway and jetty, a sign on which invites boaters to moor up and visit the Flower Pot pub in the village. On the opposite bank, a team of foresters, with tractor and buzzing chainsaws, are felling four enormous poplar trees, each at least 75 feet tall.

I turn north west to continue along the river bank, which now describes a graceful curve virtually through a complete U-turn, before the final stretch southwards to Henley which is currently somewhere over my left shoulder. I sit on the grassy river bank for a while, surrounded by delicate apple-blossom pink flowers of lady’s smock or cuckooflower, occasional spots of rain falling, and all is very tranquil. The river drifts by, silent except for the distant shushing of water falling over Hambleden weir; on the water are mallards and great crested grebes, the harsh croaking cry of the latter sounding quite frog-like at times. A mallard and a grebe are arguing over territory: wings slapping the water, they fly at each other aggressively until the mallard takes the hint and swims away. The grebe finds another of its kind and the two begin their elegant courtship dance. Facing each other, they draw themselves up out of the water, heads bobbing as if in genteel greeting. ‘Good day to you madam, how do you do?’ ‘Why thank you, kind sir, I’m perfectly well.’

Past the weir, where a cormorant is diving for fish in the turbulent waters, and to Hambleden Lock, the last one on this walk, with its Lock-keeper’s Cottage sitting in an attractive trim garden on its own little island. Across the river is Greenlands, a dazzling white balustraded and columned mansion, surrounded by majestic cedar and wellingtonia trees, and neatly striped lawns leading down to the river bank. Now the Business School of the University of Reading, it was once owned by W H Smith, which explains Jerome K. Jerome’s disparaging reference to it in Three Men In A Boat as ‘the rather uninteresting-looking river residence of my newsagent’.

Greenlands

Tufted ducks and scullers in skiffs pass by on the water. Henley is of course synonymous with rowing and I soon pass the start of the annual Royal Regatta course, Temple Island, so named for its Italianate folly. Downstream, the island narrows to a point like the prow of a boat which, along with the metal piling protecting the island’s bank from erosion, gives me the impression that the folly is the bridge of a battleship, the nymph whose statue stands under the ionic-columned cupola at its helm. But, wow, what a great place it would be to live.

A church tower on the skyline to the south indicates I’m nearing Henley now. I pass the village of Remenham, with its Norman church, more of a hamlet really. On the opposite bank, a poplar-lined rectangular inlet of water draws the eye to an impressive brick building at its far end. Situated right on the border of Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire, Fawley Court has a long and impressive history: held by Earl Tosti during the reign of Edward the Confessor, the manor was given by William the Conqueror to William Giffard, then passed into the ownership of Giffard’s steward Herbrand de Sackville whose family held Fawley until 1477 when by marriage it passed to Thomas Rokes.

Looking back along the Thames towards Hambleden; on the left, Temple Island Folly

Fawley was bought by Sir James Whitlocke in 1616; upon his death it passed to his son Sir Bulstrode Whitlocke, a prominent parliamentarian during the Civil War that saw fighting between Roundheads and Royalists at Fawley, resulting in the house being ransacked by Royalist forces. Sir Bulstrode’s son James sold Fawley in 1680 to William Freeman, a plantation owner, who had the house completely rebuilt in 1684 to the design of Sir Christopher Wren. Four years later, William of Orange stayed at Fawley during his journey to London after landing at Brixham.

William Freeman’s grandson, Sambrooke Freeman, had the house and estate extensively remodelled in the 1760s and 1770s, employing architect James Wyatt to design a new interior in an early example of the Etruscan style (Wyatt also designed the folly on Temple Island) and Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown to landscape the grounds.

Over the next two hundred years, the house then passed through the ownership of Scottish railway entrepreneur Edward Mackenzie, the Army in the Second World War, and the Congregation of Marian Fathers, a religious order who founded a school for the children of Polish refugees at Fawley, and who sold the house to the present owner on 2008 amid protests from the Polish community.

Most exciting of all, Fawley is believed to be Kenneth Grahame’s inspiration for Toad Hall in Wind in the Willows.

But all that history lies out of reach across the river, so I continue southwards along the river bank, past rowers being urged on by a bicycling coach on the towpath; past ‘Old Blades’, a lovely little redbrick and tile cottage with its own diminutive clock tower; past the clubhouses of the Upper Thames Rowing Club, and the deal-clad and verandah’d Remenham Club, like some colonial relic; past an apologetic dog walker with toddler in pushchair, whose spaniel decides to shake muddy river water all over me; past expensive country houses behind hedges, their boat-houses hiding up creeks; past an emerging white canvas city of marquees being erected for this year’s Regatta; and on the opposite bank, past Phyllis Court, an exclusive members club on the site of a manor house known as Filletts Court once owned by Sambrooke Freeman, and now on the finish line of the Regatta course.

The Thames at Henley

Approaching Henley, the far bank is lined with ornately gabled houses each with a balcony overhanging the river, the criss-cross white balustrades very pleasing to the eye. Over the rooftops, I can make out the chimneys of the former Brakspear brewery.

I follow the path around a building with a pink hippo on its flag, which turns out to be the clubhouse of the Leander Rowing Club, then cross the river into Oxfordshire by way of the graceful 5 arched sandstone bridge. Past the wisteria-clad Red Lion Hotel I come to the church of St Mary; in the tower, which features octagonal castellated corner buttresses, the bells strike 6 o’clock just as I arrive in the town. This late in the afternoon, many of the shops in the town centre are closed or closing, but the walk along the High Street towards the ornate Town Hall is still enjoyable, and I indulge in a bit of window shopping at a number of the many bookshops. There’s a while before the train leaves, plenty of time for a drink at the Angel on the Bridge. Although it’s beginning to get a bit chilly, sitting outside by the river with a pint, a duck sleeping on the next table my companion, is a really nice way to end a great day.