Horace Woollaston Monckton

“ The climate of a country or district is, briefly, the average weather of that country or district, and it depends upon various factors, all mutually interacting, upon the latitude, the temperature, the direction and strength of the winds, the rainfall, the character of the soil, and the proximity of the district to the sea. ”

“ From this, beautiful weapons and other articles were made, and from the time of the discovery we date what is known as the Bronze Age. Doubtless the ores of iron had long been known, but how to smelt them was another matter. At length the method was discovered, and mankind was in possession of hard metal implements having great advantages for all purposes over those previously employed. Thus the Iron Age began, and the early inhabitants of Britain had arrived at this stage of civilisation when the Romans came to our land. ”

“ The production of beds is of great importance to geologists, for by means of these beds we can classify the rocks according to age. If we take two sheets of paper, and lay one on the top of the other on a table, the upper one has been laid down after the other. Similarly with two beds, the upper is also the newer, and the newer will remain on the top after earth-movements, save in very exceptional cases which need not be regarded by us here, and for general purposes we may regard any bed or set of beds resting on any other in our own country as being the newer bed or set. ”

“ When the Romans came to the district they found it occupied by a tribe of Britons named the Atrebates; and Silchester, just over our county boundary in Hampshire, was their chief town or settlement.
The written history of the district does not go further back than the Atrebates, but we find many relics of man of a much earlier date. There are in our museums human bones found in old graves, but it is not possible to give them a date or to name the tribe or tribes to which they belonged. ”

“ The peregrine falcon often visits us, but the buzzard, which used to live and breed in the county, is now but a rare visitor. The great bustard was a resident up to the end of the eighteenth century but is now no longer to be counted as a British bird. The swans which we see on the rivers and on many lakes and ponds are for the most part private property, but there are often wild birds amongst them. ”

“ Great Britain possesses, by reason of its position, a temperate insular climate, but its average annual temperature is much higher than could be expected from its latitude. The prevalent south-westerly winds cause a drift of the surface-waters of the Atlantic towards our shores, and this warm-water current, which we know as the Gulf Stream, is the chief cause of the mildness of our winters. ”

“ Probably the one most definitely connected with our county town Reading is the making of biscuits, an industry of quite modern growth. Printing, too, is carried on at important works at Reading belonging in many cases to London firms, and there are also more or less active printing presses at nearly all our towns and in country places too. Printing in Berkshire goes back certainly to 1528, when John Scolar set up a press in the Abbey of Abingdon and printed a breviary, a copy of which is preserved at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. ”

“ We naturally infer that the conditions under which the divisions arose cannot have been the same, and that while in America these formal square blocks of land, like vast allotment gardens, were probably the creation of a central authority, and portioned off much about the same time, the divisions we find in England have no such simple origin. ”

“ The earliest signs of the existence of man in Berkshire are, as we have said, the implements of stone, mostly flint, found in the gravels; and the implements of the Palaeolithic Period take us back to a very old time, so old that the surface features of our district were then quite different from what we see now.
There is a fine series of Palaeolithic implements in the Reading Museum, and most of them have been found in gravel-pits near the river Thames in the Reading and Twyford district, or in the Cookham and Maidenhead district. ”

“ Brewing has been carried on from the days of the monks, and no doubt plenty of good ale was brewed in the Abbeys of Abingdon and Reading. There is a record of malting mills in Wallingford Castle in 1300. At the present time there are large breweries at Reading, Windsor, and other places. Tanning is another very old industry which is still carried on with activity. The bark of the oak was formerly used to a large extent in tanning, and there has always been an abundance of oak trees in the county. ”

“ Palaeolithic man lived in the days when the mammoth, reindeer, and hyaena roamed over our country; made leaf-shaped roughly-flaked flint weapons which were never ground or polished; cultivated no plants and tamed no animals; and built no monuments, graves, or houses. Neolithic man, on the other hand, learnt how to grind and polish his implements; was both a farmer and a breeder of stock; had many industries; and built megalithic monuments, houses, and graves—the remains of which survive to the present day. ”

“ This is far the most important geological formation in Berkshire, for it occupies a large portion of the surface of the county, and in the eastern part, when not at the surface, it is to be found underground. It is a light-coloured limestone, usually soft and earthy, but in parts very hard. Its full thickness is over 700 feet, and being a porous rock, the rain which falls on its great surface sinks in and furnishes a water-supply over its whole area whether the chalk be at the surface or underground. ”

“ It has already been mentioned that Berkshire probably came into existence as a county in the time of King Egbert, who brought the long struggle between the kingdoms of the Heptarchy to a close and established the ascendancy of Wessex over much of the south of England. It is probable that there was still a population living on the chalk downs and in occupation of the old forts, and the fertile Vale of White Horse was gradually coming under cultivation. In any case there was a royal residence at Wantage, where Alfred the Great was born in 849, and a religious foundation at Abingdon. ”

“ The shelter of a range of hills, a southern aspect, a sandy soil, will thus produce conditions which may differ greatly from those of a place—perhaps at no great distance—situated on a wind-swept northern slope with a cold clay soil. ”

“ There is in the British Museum a volume of maps and plans of Windsor by John Norden, made in the early part of the reign of James I, and the map of the forest shows that it was at that time bounded by the Thames on the north, by the Loddon on the west, by the Blackwater on the south, and that it extended to the east into Surrey as far as the Hog’s Back, Guildford, and the river Wey. ”

“ The silk industry too, once of some importance, has left the district. At the end of the sixteenth century silk-stocking making was quite an important industry at Wokingham, and many mulberry trees were planted in and near the town. Silk manufactures were also active at Reading, Newbury, Kintbury, Twyford, and other places.
Seed-growing is an important industry at Reading and employs a large number of people.
Iron and brass foundries of some importance are established at Reading and many other places, and there are large engineering works at Wantage. ”

“ A municipal borough in the Abingdon division of the county. It is situated at the junction of the river Ock with the Thames, 61 miles from Paddington by railway, and 56 miles from London by road. It was incorporated by Charter granted by Philip and Mary in 1555. Its trade is mainly in agricultural produce, and its manufactures are carpets, woollen [158] goods, and sacking. We have already referred to the remains of its great Benedictine Abbey as well as to its churches, Christ’s Hospital, and the Town Hall. The Earl of Abingdon is the High Steward of the borough. ”

“ Berkshire is, however, essentially an agricultural county, and some of the most fertile corn land in England is found in it. Until quite modern times great tracts were waste, or woodland and moorland. But these, though of no agricultural value, are for the most part very good to live in and are now being rapidly built over. ”

“ Berkshire is an inland county separated from the English Channel by the full width of Hampshire. The river Thames, however, gives a waterway to the sea, and the county town, Reading, is especially well served by railways and has mainly on that account become the centre of trades of great importance. Reading biscuits and Reading seeds have a world-wide celebrity, and printing is now extensively carried on in the town. ”

“ A good deal of the district is stiff clay, and there is difficulty in getting a supply of good water, hence we find a number of towns and villages, like Wantage for instance, close to the chalk downs, where there are many springs.
The second or central division of Berkshire is the district of the chalk land. The downs of Berkshire are separated from the Chiltern Hills, which are the chalk hills of Oxfordshire, by the valley of the river Thames, whilst on the west the chalk downs run on into Wiltshire without any natural break. ”

“ Many of the tributaries of the Thames are excellent trout streams, the Lambourn being a particularly good one.
The pike is found in the rivers and in many a lake and pond throughout Berkshire. Grayling occur in the Kennet and are occasionally caught in the Thames. The gudgeon is a well-known Thames fish; and perch, roach, dace, barbel and minnows abound. The little ruff or pope is fairly common in the Thames, and the miller’s thumb, another small fish belonging to the cooler parts of [56] the world, is to be seen in most of our streams darting from place to place with great rapidity. ”

“ Express trains to the west of England pass over both the Didcot and the Newbury line, and in these days they are frequently run from Paddington to far beyond the Berkshire border without a stop.
The Great Western has branch lines to Windsor, to Cookham for High Wycombe, to Henley, to Wallingford, to Abingdon, and to Faringdon, and also a rather important line from Reading to Basingstoke, giving a communication from Oxford to the south coast. There is also a light railway with auto-cars running between Newbury and Lambourn which belongs to the Great Western. ”

“ Reading is situated on the river Kennet close to its junction with the Thames. There are large municipal buildings with a free library and an excellent museum, a county hospital, a university college, a grammar school, and many other schools and charitable institutions. The Berkshire County Hall and the Assize Courts are at Reading and are close to the old gateway of Reading Abbey. The few remains of the abbey are now the property of the Corporation and are laid out as gardens adjoining the public Forbury garden. ”

“ The Ridge Way is one of the oldest roads in England. It enters Berkshire on the chalk downs above Ashbury at a level of 600 feet above the sea, and runs in an easterly [129] direction by Wayland Smith’s Cave and Uffington Castle; thence by Hackpen Hill to Letcombe Castle, along the top of the ridge north of West and East Ilsley. From here, turning to the right across the little valley on Compton Downs, the road probably reached the river Thames at Streatley. ”

“ The midland position of the county is against any long list of foreign visitors, and there are no fens or broads to tempt the special birds affecting such localities. The heron is often to be seen, and there is a heronry at Virginia Water, and others at Coley Park, Buscot, and Wytham Abbey. Woodpeckers, as might be supposed, are more especially common in the forest districts of eastern Berkshire. The carrion crow is a resident but is very local in occurrence. The hooded crow is a rather uncommon winter visitor. ”

“ The London Clay is a marine formation of very uniform character, a stiff clay, blue underground, but becoming brown near the surface, owing to the action of surface water. It contains layers of cement-stones. The thickness in the east of the county is nearly 350 feet, but the formation thins to the west, and is under 50 feet thick at Inkpen. Fossils are not uncommon, and there is a fair collection of Berkshire London Clay fossils in the Wellington College Museum. It is not a water-bearing formation. ”

“ All the clay formations in Berkshire have been used for brick and tile making. The works at Katesgrove and other places on the banks of the Kennet at Reading are very old and certainly go back to the sixteenth century. In 1901 there were 1029 men and 35 women engaged in brick, cement, pottery, and like works in Berkshire.
The limestone rocks of the Corallian formation have been much quarried in the district between Faringdon and the river Thames near Oxford, and the stone has been used in buildings of all ages.
Chalk has also been extensively quarried for building purposes. ”