lii FLORA OF BERKSHIRE 



he wrote the greater part of his History of the Rebellion, it receives another 

 Hampshire stream, the Blackwater, which is in part derived from 

 a Surrey source. The Blackwater reaches Berkshire at the village of 

 the same name, and separates the county from Hampshire as it 

 flows under the beautiful Finchampstead Ridges, the large Hampshire 

 commons of Bramshill and Risely, and the smaller but still interesting 

 Finchampstead Leas, and after draining the sandy hill of Farley, 

 passes through Swallowfield into the Loddon. From this point the 

 Loddon pursues its course past the pleasant village of Arborfield in 

 a reach of great beauty, bordered, as Pope says, with verdant alders, 

 to Loddon Bridge and Sandford Mill, where it drains the once 

 celebrated botanical locality called Coleman's Moor, and receives the 

 Emme brook, which on its way from its source in the Bagshot Sands 

 passes through the intei-esting district of Wokingham, once a part of 

 the great forest of Windsor. Shortly below Sandford Mill, near 

 Twyford, the Loddon receives the Broadwater, as it is euphemistically 

 called, which, in its devious course, drains a portion of the Old Forest 

 district of Windsor, and creeps slowly by Binfield, Waltham, and 

 Ruscombe. At Shiplake the Loddon entei-s the Thames, which then 

 flows past the beautiful grounds of Park Place, situated on a chalk 

 hill nearly 300 feet above the river, and reaching Hambledon, receives 

 a small stream from Buckinghamshire ; and passes by Hurley ' in 

 that beautiful valley through which the Thames, not yet defiled by 

 the precincts of a great capital, nor rising and falling with the flow 

 and ebb of the sea, rolls under woods of beech round the gentle hills of 

 Berkshire.' From Hurley, the Thames pursues its course to the 

 Priory of Bisham, where Elizabeth spent three years in enforced 

 retirement, and where the conventual barn, built of Spanish chestnut, 

 is still to be seen ; and thence past Great Marlowto the most beautiful 

 reach overshadowed by the far-famed woods of Cliveden or Cliefden, 

 once the home of the historic Duke of Buckingham, and to Taplow's 

 fine demesne and the picturesque village of Cookham. Between 

 Cookham and Maidenhead it receives the White brook, a small Berk- 

 shire watercourse, whose slow anastomozing streams can scarcely be 

 said to drain the meadows about Cookham. Beyond Maidenhead, 

 only 84 feet above the sea, two similar streams, one from Buckingham- 

 shire, the other from Berkshire, enter the Thames, the latter near 

 Boveney. The Thames then approaches the regal pile of Windsor and 

 the classic walls of Eton, and bending round Windsor's stately park, 

 and passing Datchet Mead, it flows by Old Windsor, and at length 

 leaves the county of Berks, after a devious course of no miles. 



The only remaining portion of Berkshire to be mentioned is a small 

 bit of Bagshot Heath and the beautiful country near Virginia Water, 

 which, with some parts of Windsor Forest, are drained by a small 



