Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/643

234 stone every house, most of them old, a good many mediæval. The bridge fifteenth century, with a queer little toll-house on it. The church a very big and fine one, but scraped to death by G. Scott, the (happily) dead dog. Close by, the Saxon chapel, a very beautiful little building, but shamefully vulgarized by restoration, cast iron railings, and sixpence a head. Out in the meadow, awkwardly near the Railway Station, Barton Farm with old house and farm buildings, the big fourteenth-century barn one of them. It is very fine, but I think Great Coxwell is bigger, and I like it better."

At Kelmscott again on Midsummer day "haymaking is going on like a house afire; I should think such a hay-time has seldom been; heavy crop and wonderful weather to get it in. For the rest the country is one big nosegay, the scents wonderful, really that is the word; the life to us holiday-makers luxurious to the extent of making one feel wicked, at least in the old sense of bewitched.

"We went to Great Coxwell yesterday, and also to Little Coxwell, where there is a funny little church with a 14th-century wooden roof over the nave, the church much smaller than Kelmscott. We were delighted with the barn again. The farmer turned up and seemed a nice sort of chap; he said his family had been there for hundreds of years. William Morris was, it seems, lord of the manor there: we saw his brass again, it is really a very pretty one. The harvest being now out of the barn, we saw the corbels that support the wall pieces: they are certainly not later than 1250, so the barn is much earlier than I thought. The building of the walls and buttresses is remarkably good and solid.

"The roses are not at their best, yet I shall bring