od which can be applied to many other parts of
England whose desertion or wildness in the Dark and early Middle Ages
has been too confidently asserted. That method is to note where human
settlements were and are found. With the exception of the long and
probably marshy piece between Radcot and Shifford the whole of the
upper Thames was dotted with such settlements, which, though small,
were quite close to the banks. Kelmscott is right up against the river
in what one would otherwise have imagined to be land too marshy for
building until modern times. Buscot, on the other bank, is not only
close to the river, but was a royal manor of high historical
importance in the eleventh century. Eaton Hastings is similarly placed
right against the bank; so was in its day the palace of Kempsford
above Lechlade, and so is the church of Inglesham between the two. All
the way down you have at intervals old stonework and old place names,
indicating habitation upon the upper Thames.

A proper system of locks is comparatively modern on any European
river. The invention is even said (upon doubtful authority) to be as
late as the sixteenth century, but the method of regulating the waters
of a river by weirs is immemorial.

We have no earlier record of weirs upon the Thames than that in Magna
Charta; but some such system must have existed from the time when men
first used the Thames in a regular manner for commerce.

There is but one place left in which one can still reconstruct for
oneself the aspect of such weirs as were till but little more than a
century ago the universal method of canalising the river. Modern weirs
are merely adjuncts to locks, and are usually found upon a branch of
the stream other than that which leads up to the lock. But in this
weir the old fashion of crossing the whole stream is still preserved.
There is no lock, and when a boat would pass up or down the paddles of
the weir have to be lifted. It is, in a modern journey upon the upper
Thames, the one faint incident which the day affords, for if one is
going down the stream but few paddles are lifted, and the boat shoots
a small rapid, while to admit a boat going up stream the whole weir is
raised, and, even so, a great rush of water opposes the boat as it is
hauled through. Some years ago there were several of these weirs upon
the upper river. They have all been superseded by locks, and it is
probable that this last one will not long survive.

Such weirs did cer