length;" and concerning its origin the following story is told. In the reign of Queen Anne there existed between two of the most influential gentlemen in this neighbourhood a most cordial friendship: Sir Robert Throckmorton, of Weston Underwood, and William Lowndes, Esq., of Astwoodbury, Secretary to the Treasury, and for many years Chairman of Ways and Means in the House of Commons, hence commonly called "Ways and Means" Lowndes. These gentlemen were in the habit of visiting each other alternately and very frequently. There was at this time no bridge at Olney except the one just described; and, consequently, those who would pass from Olney to Emberton were obliged, at the second arm of the river, to take the customary ford. But in consequence of the high floods, even this passage was often impassable; so during much of the year all intercourse was suspended between the two friends. Sir Robert, to whom these isolations were especially distasteful, put up with the inconvenience for several years; but at length, after a flood of inordinate duration, he declared that never again should the river prevent the meeting of him and his friend. So saying, he made for Astwood at his earliest opportunity, and proposed to Mr. Lowndes that they should build a bridge at Olney that should bestride the whole valley. "I will find the materials," said he, "if you will supply the labour." Mr Lowndes acquiesced in his proposal, and that very week was commenced the bridge that has since become so famous. Its appearance was most singular. The arches were at irregular distances; the openings were of various shapes and sizes; one was large and square, others were strikingly diminutive. Some had distinctive names, that, for instance, nearest the old bridge being called the Constable Arch. This causeway, which in the old engravings seems of interminable length, was lined on both sides by wooden railings, but in several places openings were left, so that, by means of stone steps, one could descend into the meadows. The two streams are now separated by a large plot of ground, but I am told by the gentleman to whom I am indebted for several of the particulars here mentioned, that in his childhood there was between them only a narrow strip, the Mill Dam, which was strengthened on both sides by strong timbers that rose sheer from the water. The whole length of this bridge, together with a view of the road at a distance, was, as Cowper observes, commanded by the chamber windows of the vicarage. Having become sadly dilapidated, it was in 1832 taken down, and the same year its successor, which still exists, was erected. Tedious as the road itself may have been, the prospect on either side embraced a hundred pleasant scenes. How beautiful, for instance, must the landscape have looked on that June morning in 1785 when the poet was on his way to Emberton to see the rector's tulips! The meadow-land as well as the tulips could with correctness have been described as "a fine painting, and God the artist." On the right appear the steep of Weston Hill and the wooded slopes of Weston, whilst 66 Ouse, slow winding through a level plain Of spacious meads with cattle sprinkled o'er, on the left, the ancient mill, the aspens by the mill-stream, the great stone-steeple towering above them, and the embattled aisle peeping between; poplars, and willows, and hedges of hawthorn; the Clifton uplands, the elmy fields of Emberton, and tips of far-away spinnies in Bedfordshire. How fair in summer! But how desolate in the dull days of winter, when the distant hills are wrapped in mist, and even the steeple is but faintly seen; when the turbid streams sweep angrily and seethingly; and the meadows are a monotonous lake with naked hedges and melancholy trees! III. THE ANCIENT CHURCH OF OLNEY AND THE "It is not here, it is not here That ye shall build the church of Deer.-Old Rhyme. AT the north end of Olney, near the commencement of the road leading to the railway station, stands the ancient and remarkable hollow-tree that time out of mind has been called "The Churchyard Elm," a tree which, if for no other reason, would deserve to be held in extreme veneration on account of its great antiquity. It is supposed to be at least 600 years old. The Churchyard Elm it was called by our grandfathers and their grandfathers, and as every precaution, we may be sure, will be taken for its preservation, the Churchyard Elm it will continue to be called for many years to come; for the branches, which were too heavy for the trunk, having recently been lopped off, it has sprouted again, and its venerable head is crowned with a rich profusion of vigorous green. Its name, perhaps, to the casual visitor may cause some surprise, seeing that Olney churchyard is half a mile away, at the other end of the town. But the apparent mystery is easily explained. In Saxon and Norman times this tree stood on the boundary of the graveyard of an ancient church, the first church of Olney, erected when Canute was king, and possibly about the time he fought his famous duel with Edmund Ironside, on the island of Olney, in the river Severn. It is not because the island and the town have anything in common, except the name, that we notice this little coincidence, which after all may be mere conjecture, but because the island in the Severn is one of the only two places in England, besides our town, that are called Olney.1 The other is a moated field ni Warwickshire, which Mr. Storer suggests may be the site of a mansion belonging to the Olney family of Bucks, "a branch of which was perhaps transferred to Warwickshire through the 1 The origin of the first syllable of the word Olney is unknown; the second, the Saxon ei = water. There is now a small town (population about 3000) called Olney in Illinois, United States. patronage of the Beauchamps, Earls of Warwick, of whose extensive domains the Buckinghamshire Olney so long formed a part." That the ancient church previously alluded to was erected about the time of Canute has been inferred from an inscription discovered on a beam when the present church was repaired in 1800; and if such be the case, the diminutive island in Gloucestershire and the unpretending town in Bucks commenced their slender chronicles at one and the same timeslender, at any rate, as regards the latter, until the commencement of the eighteenth century. The ground near the tree, as we have already said, has long been called the old churchyard, and this designation occurs in the deeds of "the Castle," an adjoining public-house. On three or four different occasions human bones have here been discovered in great quantities. In 1881, at the time the foundations were being laid for the new cottages on the Feoffee Estate, several complete skeletons were unearthed. Of the ancient church nothing is known; the building itself disappeared long ago, though its site probably continued to be used as a burying-ground until the Reformation, and the only name preserved that appears to have had any connection with it is that of the spring in the Home Close called "Christen Well." Probably, like most other Saxon churches, it was mean in appearance, and consisted of very little besides four thick walls; probably, too, it was dedicated with rejoicings out of all proportion to the magnitude of the building; and we have not the least doubt that, according to the inevitable custom of our ancestors, the incipient services were followed by substantial feasts and ales of extra strength. About the year 1325, this old church having fallen out of repair, it was resolved by the inhabitants of Olney not only that a new church should be erected, but also that it should occupy a different site; and the one eventually decided upon was the field near the river, still called the Lordship Close. The foundations were laid accordingly; but imagine the surprise of the builders one morning on finding them not in the close where they had been placed, but in the adjacent field. |