On 12 October, via Zoom, Mark Davies (local historian and author of Alice in Waterland) described and illustrated the adventures in Oxford of some of the Pre-Raphaelite artists, and their encounters with Thomas Combe, Printer to the University, philanthropist, and art collector; and Charles Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

In 1850 John Millais and Charles Collins were experiencing what Millais described as ‘Bottleyonian privations’, receiving poor fare at a boarding house near Wytham Woods. Through James Wyatt, an Oxford art dealer and picture framer, they met Thomas and Martha Combe. Martha supplied them with a meat pie; and Thomas assisted Millais in locating the shoes of the child model for The Woodman’s Daughter, so that Millais could paint them accurately. Collins later painted the flowers for Convent Thoughts in the garden of the University Press in Jericho, where the Combes lived.

The Pre-Raphaelite ‘Brotherhood’ in Oxford expanded to include Holman Hunt, Rossetti, Morris, and Burne-Jones. They attempted, without proper preparation, to paint murals of Arthurian legends in the Union Society’s  library. The daughters of Mrs Lipscombe, landlady of the Trout Inn, Godstow, were noted ‘stunners’. Rossetti persuaded Morris to journey to Godstow to ask one to model for Isoude. He met with a heated refusal, and returned crestfallen to Oxford.

Charles Dodgson was also in the Combes’ circle. His photographs are particularly valuable because he carefully identified and dated them: for example Holman Hunt and Thomas Combe in 1860, Millais in 1865, and Rossetti in 1863.

St Frideswide’s well at Binsey, which would probably have been known to the Pre-Raphaelites from sketching and walking over Port Meadow, was the inspiration for the treacle well in Alice. And the ‘Drawling-master’ is said to be based on John Ruskin. He and others, especially the Pre-Raphaelite sculptor Thomas Woolner, advised Dodgson not to use his own drawings, which led to him engaging Tenniel as his illustrator.

Martha Combe inherited Thomas’s collection, and bequeathed much important Pre-Raphaelite art to the Ashmolean Museum. Search for ashmolean.org to look at it online, and check about visiting.

Reports of earlier meetings

On 21 September, appearing via Zoom and resplendent in a luxuriant pandemic beard, Club member Martin Buckland related the history, and hoped-for future, of the Wilts & Berks Canal.

That, including the ampersand, was always its official name, starting with its enabling Act of Parliament of 1795. Canals were then prospering, because for bulky or fragile cargoes they were better than the rough – and often impassibly muddy – roads. The Wilts & Berks opened in 1810, offering a new 52-mile route from Semington (on the existing Kennet and Avon Canal) to Abingdon. This route was (and one day could again be) much shorter than via Newbury, Reading, and the Thames. The Wilts & Berks had branches to Chippenham, Calne, and Wantage; and later a link to the upper Thames at Cricklade.

The Oxford Canal had brought the price of coal (from Coventry) in Oxford down to £1.60 a ton, undercutting sea coal from Newcastle at £2.60 a ton, brought via London and the Thames. The Wilts & Berks hoped for lucrative traffic from the Somerset coal fields. It also carried grain for the Abingdon breweries. But there was little return traffic from Abingdon to the west.

The route passed through what were, in 1810, fields near the small market town of Swindon. From 1840, the canal briefly prospered, carrying materials for the building of Brunel’s Great Western Railway and the new Swindon railway works and town. But the canal thus brought on its own decline, because the railway captured much of its traffic. The canal bore increasingly unsustainable losses. Traffic had largely ceased by 1901, and the canal was formally abandoned by Act of Parliament in 1914. Its land was transferred to the adjacent landowners, although the local authorities retained responsibility for the bridges. Many stretches were built on or filled with rubbish, and some lock structures were used for demolition practice by the army.

In 1971 Jack Dalby’s pioneering book ‘The Wilts and [sic] Berks Canal’ was published, and awakened enthusiasts’ interest in restoring the canal to navigation. This is now being energetically taken forward by the Wilts & Berks Canal Trust, in cooperation with the local authorities and the national Canal & River Trust. Several short stretches are open to navigation, and there are credible plans for new routes past Swindon and through Melksham.

2006 saw the triumphant opening of the first stretch of a completely new section of canal leaving the Thames nearly opposite the Culham Cut, and planned to replace the original route from Abingdon through Caldecott. That is now irretrievably built over: only a pretty bridge at the mouth of the Ock remains as a memento of the Canal’s wharf there. A free downloadable leaflet is available to guide you on a fascinating walk around the old and new routes from Abingdon.

Reports of earlier meetings

After each speaker meeting a short report is produced for submission to the local parish magazine, Radley News, and to circulate to members in the monthly Club newsletter. The reports for September 2019 to March 2020 have now been published on the Club website. Unfortunately the COVID-19 crisis has meant that the meetings planned for April to July 2020 had to be cancelled.

Read the reports

On 9 March, Nick Millea, Bodleian Map Librarian, presented a fascinating selection of old and new maps of Oxford. They will be collected and described in the British Historic Towns Atlas Volume VII: Oxford, to be published in autumn 2020.

The famous early map by Ralph Agas (1578) gives a detailed ‘bird’s flight’ view of the city from the north. The original is darkened and worn, but the Bodleian also has Robert Whittlesey’s clear re-engraving made in 1728. On Agas’s map, the city centre still includes many gardens, and there is open country north of Broad Street.

David Loggan’s beautiful map of 1675 shows the city centre more crowded. Every building is depicted, again viewed from the north. Loggan included minute details, such as a (still existing) kink in the wall of Trinity College.

The noted antiquary Anthony Wood had in his collection an anonymous (and unexplained) map of ‘Oxforde as it now lyeth / Fortified by his Ma[jes]ties forces an. 1644’. It shows the Thames running southwards to ‘Abbington’, but flips the north and south of the city. Wood annotated it as ‘made very false’.

The Atlas will include specially prepared new maps, showing for example the halls which preceded the colleges, medieval inns, the (very complicated) city parish boundaries, watercourses, turnpike roads around Oxford, and the growth of the suburbs.

Answering questions after his talk, Nick Millea confirmed the existence of a very detailed map of Oxford prepared secretly by the General Staff of the Soviet military. Mysteriously, it identifies a sub-post office in Marston, and University College, but no other colleges or university buildings.

Before welcoming the speaker, Richard Dudding reported to members that the Berkshire Family Historian has recommended the Club’s latest book, Radley Manor and Village, as a ‘must for anyone with interests in Radley or indeed in manorial history generally’.

Sadly, but inevitably in the light of the advice about avoiding gatherings, the Club has cancelled the speaker meetings booked for 14 April and 11 May.

On 10 February, Dick Richards described the history and achievements of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. It was founded, as the Imperial War Graves Commission, through the vision and determination of one man, Sir Fabian Ware. Working for the Red Cross, he arranged the recording of soldiers’ graves during the First World War. In 1917 the Imperial War Conference accepted his proposals for a permanent Commission.

Guided by distinguished professionals, including architect Edwin Lutyens, garden designer Gertrude Jekyll, and poet Rudyard Kipling, the Commission established its core principles:

• burial close to the place of death
• equality irrespective of rank or religion
• uniform headstones
• memorials giving the names of those with no grave
• headstones, graves and memorials to be maintained in perpetuity.

Every CWGC cemetery aims to evoke the grass, flowers and peace of an enclosed country churchyard. The headstones are in straight lines in a standard size and format. Bereaved relatives could, initially for a fee of threepence halfpenny per letter, choose a short personal inscription. There is a Christian ‘cross of sacrifice’, a Stone of Remembrance to acknowledge those of other faiths or none, and a shelter containing a cabinet with a list of the graves and a visitors book.

The Commission is also responsible for individual graves in many parish graveyards (including Radley), and for memorials to those with no known grave, most notably the Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial.

The Commission undertakes to maintain every cemetery in perpetuity, including, for example, the one in Hong Kong now surrounded by modern development, and, when it becomes possible, the restoration of its cemeteries in Iraq.

On Tuesday 19 May, at 6.30 pm, Dick Richards will give RHC members a guided tour of the CWGC cemetery at Botley. This includes the graves of soldiers who died in military hospitals in Oxford, many Polish and German soldiers, and, poignantly, the graves of two women: staff nurse Mabel Murray and aircraftwoman Glenys Harris.

On Monday 9 March Nick Millea will talk about the forthcoming Atlas of Historic Maps of Oxford.