CHAPTER XV 

 A TYPICAL VILLAGE 



HITHERTO, like Ezekiel, we have been wandering in 

 a " valley of dry bones," the dry bones of statistics and 

 legal details. " Can these dry bones live ? " Possibly 

 the spirit of imagination may put life into them, and enable 

 us to form some idea of the state of our English villages at 

 the end of the eleventh century. 



Those who have travelled by rail from Oxford to Cam- 

 bridge will remember that a few miles out of Oxford they 

 cross a bridge over the river Cherwell, and a little further 

 on pass through a cutting some 30 feet in depth ; and then, 

 after stopping at a little station, go for miles over a flat 

 country without a hill. This ridge of high ground separates 

 the valley of the Cherwell from that of its tributary the Ray, 

 and affords a dry foundation for the village of Islip. 



There are few villages whose position is more absolutely 

 fixed by geological reasons than Islip. The ridge of high 

 ground through which the railway passes has its counterpart 

 in an exactly similar ridge on the south of the Ray, which 

 gradually rises until it is lost in the hills where, in the eleventh 

 century and far later, were the royal forests of Stowood and 

 Shotover. Between these two ridges the Ray cuts a gorge of 

 some 30 yards wide and 500 yards long. 1 From the heights 



1 The height of Islip Bridge above sea-level as shown on the map, is the height 

 of the bench-mark on the bridge, which is at least 8 feet above the level of the 

 top of the river-bank. 



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