28 DECEMBER 1951, Page 15

COUNTRY LIFE

BETWEEN the Wycombe-Oxford road and Abingdon occurs a slightly elevated belt of open corn-country overlooked by the twin mounds of Whittenham Clumps or, as the Celts called them, the Paps of Sinodun. This breezy plateau of long views is still old-fashioned enough to do without the combine-harvester and so to build corn-ricks. By a charm- ing survival of regional custom, these ricks in the main conform to a single architectural design: they are round and steeply conical, not rectangular and gabled with a zootridge.