s added on a
similar eccentric edge to the north and east so that it may share in
the bank; but perhaps the best example of all in this connection is
the curious extension below Reading. Here land which is of no use for
human habitation--water meadows continually liable to floods--runs out
from the parish northward for a good mile. These lands are separated
from the river during the whole of this extension until at last a bend
of the stream gives the parish the opportunity it has evidently sought
in thus extending its boundaries. On the Oxford bank Standlake and
Brighthampton do the same thing upon the Upper Thames and to some
extent Eynsham; for when one thinks how far back Eynsham stands from
the river it is somewhat remarkable that it should have claimed the
right to get at the stream. Below Oxford there is another most
interesting instance of the same thing in the case of Littlemore.
Littlemore stands on high and dry land up above the river somewhat set
back from it. Sandford evidently interfered with its access to the
water, and Littlemore has therefore claimed an obviously artificial
extension for all the world like a great foot added on to the bulk of
the parish. This "foot" includes Kennington Island, and runs up the
meadows to the foot of that eyot.

The long and narrow parishes in the reaches below Benson, Nuneham
Morren, Mongewell, and Ipsden and South Stoke are not, however,
examples of this tendency.

They owe their construction to the same causes as have produced the
similar long parishes of the Surrey and the Sussex Weald. The life of
the parish was in each case right on the river or very close to it,
and the extension is not the attempt of the parish to reach the river,
but the claim of the parish upon the hunting lands which lay up behind
it upon the Chiltern Hills. The truth of this will be apparent to
anyone who notes upon the map the way in which parishes are thus
lengthened, not only on the western side of the hills, but also upon
the farther eastern side, where there was no connection with the
river.

There are many other proofs remaining of the chief function which the
Thames fulfilled in the early part of our history as a means of
communication.

We shall see later in these pages how united all that line of the
stream has been; how the great monasteries founded upon the Thames
were supported by possessions stretched all along the valleys; how
much of it, and what important parts, were held