There are dozens of reaches upon the upper Thames where little is in
sight save the willows, the meadows, and a village church tower, which
present exactly the same aspect to-day as they did when that church
was first built. You might put a man of the fifteenth century on to
the water below St. 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.

There is another method of judging the comparative smallness of the
change, and it is a method which can be applied to many other parts of
England whose desertion or wildness in the Dark and early Middle Ages
has been too confidently asserted. That method is to note where human
settlements were and are found. 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. Buscot, on the other bank, is not only
close to the river, but was a royal manor of high historical
importance in the eleventh century. Eaton Hastings is similarly placed
right against the bank; so was in its day the palace of Kempsford
above Lechlade, and so is the church of Inglesham between the two. All
the way down you have at intervals old stonework and old place names,
indicating habitation upon the upper Thames.

A proper system of locks is comparatively modern on any European
river. The invention is even said (upon doubtful authority) to be as