COUNTRY LIFE
PERIODICALLY I make a pilgrimage to Great Tew in the nondescript country between the Cherwell and Evenlode Valleys. My reason is threefold—the singularity of its richly secluded landscape, the, aberrant charm of its vernacular building, so distinctive from the grey or tawny limestone of its neighbourhood, and the memory of a great man of little fame. The low eaves`of the-cottages, their thatched roofs, the windows with their bushy eyebrows, the embowered porches, the warmly golden hue of the stone pencilled with the shadows of great trees, these characters belong to Dorset and Somerset and seem a sport in the Midlands. Yet the widely spaced fronts, the window-mullions and drip- stones (some of whose ends have the cross in lozenge motive) are of Cotswold paternity. The naturally terraced slope descends from the manor into a deep cleft in the hills, as full of thistles in the fields as trees on its flanks, a wild and remote spot, a melancholy-sweet reversion from domesticated England. It reminds jne of the landscapes in Richard Jefferies's powerful After London.
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