ern industrial development in the valley, will
be considered later. We will take each of the three strongholds in
their order down stream.

What determined the importance of Wallingford is not easy to fix
nowadays. The explanation more usually given to the great part which
this crossing of the Thames played in the early history of Britain is
the double one that it was the lowest continuously practicable ford
over the river, and that it held the passage of the great road going
from London to the west.

Now it is true that any traveller making from London to Bath, or the
Mendip Hills, and the lower Severn would, on the whole, find his most
direct road to be along the Vale of the White Horse, but the
convenience of this line through Wallingford may easily be
exaggerated, especially its convenience for men in early times before
the valleys were properly drained. Though the ford at Abingdon was
more difficult than the ford at Wallingford, yet the line through
Abingdon westward along the Farringdon road was certainly shorter than
the line through Wantage. Whether the old habit, inherited from
pre-historic times, of following the chalk ridge had produced a
parallel road just at the foot of that ridge and so had made
Wallingford, Wantage, and all the southern edge of the Vale of the
White Horse the natural road to the west, or whether it was that the
great run of travel ran, when once the Thames had been crossed at
Wallingford, slightly south-west towards Bath, it is certain that the
Wallingford and Wantage line is the line of travel in early history.

There is no record, and but very little basis for conjecture, as to
the origin of the fortifications at Wallingford. Not much is left of
them, and though there is some Roman work in the place it is work
which has evidently been handled over and over again. It is certainly
somewhat late in English history that this "Walled Ford" is heard
of--with the tenth century. Its first castle is, of course, Norman,
and contemporary with that of Oxford--or rather a year later than that
at Oxford, and from the Conquest onward it remains royal. From that
time, also, it is perpetually appearing in English history. It was the
place of confinement of Edward I. when, as Prince Edward, he was the
prisoner of Leicester. It was the attempt to succour that prisoner
which led to his removal to Kenilworth, and finally to that escape
which permitted him to fight the battle of Evesham. Wallingford passe