PORT MEADOW.
THERE is an old story that Freeman, in the days of his Professorship, being visited once by an American who was eager to see the oldest thing in Oxford, sent him to Port Meadow, that spacious and noble pasture that stretches to the north-west of Oxford City on the eastern bank of the Upper Thames. The story fitly clings to one whose memory recalls the old-world English usage, for the meadow is the cherished possession of the freemen of Oxford, who, here as elsewhere shorn of other privileges, hold fast to this last remnant of their greatness. There they can feed their cattle and their geese, and once a year there is a " drift" or cattle drive before the Sheriff of the city, when all beasts belonging to non. freemen are impounded. The "Sheriff's Crossing" at the south end of the meadow ia a reminder of his guardian rights. The very name Port Meadow has a mysterious charm, sug- gesting memories of the Middle Ages and of the great Port. way over the breezy downs.
In the last forty years a fringe of red houses has sprung up between the north road to Woodstock and the great town. meadow, and a big bridge has taken the place of the old railway crossing that once led into it from Walton Well. The well, like the brook of Walbrook, is now but the shadow of a name. But the more intimate approach to Port Meadow is further north. Go through the red suburb half a mile northward, turn sharp to the west by an old-fashioned inn, the 'Anchor,' whose roof still bears the grey slates that are now so rare in Oxford—for Stonesfield quarries seem little used—cross a couple of bridges that lead over railway and canal, and you are in the heart of this incomparable common of the Oxford freemen. In May it is too soft for walking, for the floods are often late in retiring, but in June it is springy as the turf of the Berkshire Downs ; the grazing cattle keep it close cropped, and at midsummer there are few flowers to be seen; but if you stoop and look close you see the turf is as compact of varied vegetation as a Swiss Alp. Right in front is the river with the wooded slope of Wytham rising beyond. As we look the white sail of a centre. board sweeps round the curve from Godatow. Come to the riverside and look across : below us to the left lie the familiar barges where the Beesleys and the Boaa0ms, good old Oxford names, keep their boats for hire, all among the rush- ing waters that fall over Medley Weir and go swiftly southwards to join thetributary stream that pours inthrough Tumbling Bay. From the weir for a mile northwards runs the towing-path that has watched a thousand first ventures with sail or oar, and been trodden by multitudes of pilgrim feet. For here, hardly more than a stone's-throw from the riverside, between it and Wytham, but parted from Wytham by baffling waterways, is the old hamlet of Binsey, where once, they tell us, were more than.a score of inns, the haunts of religious folk who came to visit St. Margaret's Well and the holy image of St. Frideswide in the church. There you may read the story of the well inscribed in Latin, thanks to the pious care -of Thomas Prout,, the late vicar. Some have cavilled at the si /crier of the inscription that seems to suggest a pious doubt of the miracle, but no lover of the countryside will quarrel with Prout, for he knew every corner of it, riding and walking, and loved it as be loved all good things. The pink blossom of the creeping toad-flax that has a fancy for our Oxford walls hung over the well-side when last the present writer saw it, and the little churchyard in its still retirement—for it is literally the end of all things—was indeed "a green thought in a green shade" on that hot May morning. Only as we turned river. ward the red-brown of the poplars on the towpath struck a new note of colour and recalled us to the river. Crossing the damp meadow by ita neat flagged causeway, one faced Port Meadow, with the northern suburbs garish red behind it, only relieved by the grey tower of the Radcliffe Observatory..., that stately bit of eighteenth-century building which dignifies the view. But a screen of trees, if the freemen would plant them, would cover the red glare of the houses : and even as it is, you may get glimpses, from the towpath and the meadow itself, of St. Mary's and the central towers, and convince yourself that you are still within the "liberties" of the city. The towpath, too, has its memories for Oxford men, one at least calla it to mind as his first Oxford walk, taken in the pause of a scholarship examination which was to decide his fate. A schoolfellow, since famous in Elizabethan scholar- ship, brought him down the riverside from Wytham and Godstow one autumn afternoon, and he had his first taste of the romance of the Upper Thames, with its manifold murmur- ing streams, its waving sedges and flags, which flower when June oomes, and, above all, its distant glimpses of the city of dreams. But we must borrow a boat from Binsey and return to Port Meadow, which has its own memories: of sailing or skating on the floods in merry company, of glorious gallops on the turf (is not one stretch of it marked "the racecourse" on the map F), of dreaming out a summer afternoon by the riverside and watching the tranquil world of river and sky. For there are two sides of Oxford where you may still find peace without going far afield, in the meadows across Mesopotamia, and here in the large and liberal paradise by the Upper Thames. For Marston Meadows remain un. touched, though Marston village itself has fallen into the rough restorer's hand, for Fairfax's old headquarters in the Civil War, "Cromwell Castle," has more than once suffered sor- rowful changes from brick and plaster patchinga; but here i-, this wide world of green beside the river you need only turn your back to the city and there is nothing to hurt the eye.
The freemen, lately assembled in Common Hall (the old Portmannismote), were inclined to complain, it would seem, because they do not get much out of their privileges : they have had negotiations with the City Council, as they had seventy years ago, but they do not come to terms. Let us pray that for many a long day this wild pleasure-ground will be left tranquil. Aeroplanes have flown over it, the Officers' Training Corps has exercised on it, and the City Fathers have been allowed to raise its level with their rubbish; but hitherto • it has resisted all sophistication, and refuses to be turned into a city park with ordered drives and flower-beds and police- men. From Walton Well to Wolvercot it still stretches, a wilderness of green turf, the joy of rider and walker, and the airiest meadow in the valley of the Thames. So be it, and so • shall it be.
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