30 AUBREY'S NATURAL HISTORY OF WILTSHIRE. 



The North Avon riseth toward Tedbury in Gloucestershire, and runnes to Malmesbury, where it 

 takes in a good streame, that comes from Hankerton, and also a rivulet that comes from Sherston,* 

 which inriching the meadows as it runnes to Chippenham, Lacock, Bradford, Bath, Kainsham, and 

 the city of Bristowe, disembogues into the Seveme at Kingrode. 



The silver Thames takes some part of this county in its journey to Oxford. The source of it is 

 in Gloucestershire, neer Cubberley (in the rode from Oxford to Gloucester), where there are severall 

 springs. In our county it visits Cricklad, a market towne, and gives name to Isey, a village neer ; 

 and with its fertile overflowing makes a most glorious verdure in the spring season. In the old 

 deeds of lands at and about Cricklad they find this river by the name of Thamissis fluvius and the 

 Thames. The towne in Oxfordshire is writt Tame and not Thame ; and I believe that Mr. 

 Cambden's marriage of Thamc and Isis, in liis elegant Latin poem, is but a poeticall fiction : I meane 

 as to the name of Thamisis, which he would not have till it comes to meet the river Thame at 

 Dorchester. 



[The true source of the river Thames has been much disputed. A spring which rises near the 

 village of Kemble, at the north-western extremity of Wiltshire, has been commonly regarded, during 

 the last century, as the real " Thames head." It flows thence to Ashton Keynes, and onward to 

 Cricklade. At the latter place it is joined by the river Churn, which comes from Coberly, about 

 20 miles to the northward, in Gloucestershire. Aubrey refers to the latter stream as the source of 

 the Thames ; and, on the principle of tracing the origin of a river to its most remote source, the same 

 view has been taken by some other writers, who Consequently dispute the claims of the Kemble 

 spring. J. B.] 



The river Thames, as it runnes to Cricklad, passes by Ashton Kaynes ; f from whence to Charleton, 

 where the North Avon runnes, is about three miles. Mr. Henry Brigges (Savilian professor of 

 Geometrie at Oxford) observing in the mappe the nearnesse of these two streames, and reflecting on 

 the great use that might accrue if a cutt were made from the one to the other (of wliich there are 

 many examples in the Low Countrcys), tooke a journey from Oxford to view it, and found the 

 ground levcll and sappable and was very well pleased with liis notion ; for that if these two rivers 

 were maried by a canal between them, then might goods be brought from London to Bristow by 

 water, wliich would be an extraordinary convenience both for safety and to avoid overturning. 

 This was about the yeare 1626. But there had been a long calme of peace, and men minded 

 notliing but pleasure and luxury. 



" Jam patimur longae pacis mala, ssevior armis 

 Luxuria incumbit." LUCAN. 



Knowledge of this kind was not at all in fashion, so that he had no encouragement to prosecute this 

 noble designe : and no more done but the meer discovery : and not long after he died, scilicet Anno 



* [The Sheraton rivulet, and not that which rises near Tetbury, is generally regarded as the source of the North, or Bristol 

 Avon. J. B.] 



( [If Aubrey was right in the preceding paragraph in regarding the stream which rises at " Cubberley " in Gloucestershire as the 

 source of the Thames, he is wrong in stating that " the Thames " passes by Ashton Keynes. It is the other brook, from Kemble, 

 which runs through that village ; and the two streams only become united at Cricklade, which is some distance lower down, to the 

 eastward of Ashton Keynes. J. B.] 



