Day 14: Henley on Thames to Marlow

Thursday 22 June

Today we set off with Em's Dad Philip, he joined us on this stretch of the Thames Path, he is Henley born and bred, and spent the first 3 decades of his life in Henley as the eldest brother of two other boys Michael and Bob.

Henley Bridge was built in 1786 by William Hayward of Shrewsbury. The keystones on either side of the central arch were sculpted with the faces of Old Father Thames looking downstream, and Isis looking upstream, by the sculptor Anne Seymour Damer.

(one of my favourite current artists Kirsten Jones, lives and paints in Henley)

This photo will have been taken in the mid 1940s, I wish I knew which section of the River Thames it was!  Dad is second in from the right hand side.

His parents Fred and Mary Payze (Granny & Grandad) ran a local car showroom and garage and the petrol pumps that used to be opposite the Red Lion Inn (a little spot where Charles I slept in 1632!) and St Mary's Church, by the bridge.

Here they are in 1936, the year before Dad was born, in a little boat with a swan close by.  (couple on the right).

Dad used to help wash boats for pocket money, learnt to play golf and cricket here, was an active member of the Henley Amateur Dramatic & Opera Society at the Kenton Theatre (Britain's 4th oldest working theatre) and began his career in the Motor Trade from Henley, an industry he worked in for the rest of his working life.  He still sees some Henley chums from time to time, the Henley golfing gang are very fit and mobile into their 80s and 90s!

The above photo is Henley Bathing Pool Area in 1934.

As you can imagine, we went down memory lane with lots of interesting and funny stories shared.  And I must now leave those black and white years and head into the present and tell you about our walk!

A walk which happened to take place on the hottest day of the year in the south east, with no breeze!

Henley was preparing for the Henley Royal Regatta 2023, the most prestigious rowing regatta in the world, visited by over 300,000 people over the 6 days it runs across each year in July, it boasts over 300 races.

 There are so many tents, marquees, seating, privately hired boats to watch from, beautiful houses overlooking the 1 mile and 500 yard course, which is the longest naturally straight stretch of river in Britain, we were able to walk right through the middle of it up to the start line, with teams practicing alongside us, in their team colours with their cox's shouting out their instructions.  It was a lovely sight.

Since Lechlade the left hand bank of the river has remained Oxfordshire, half way down the Regatta course it becomes Buckinghamshire.

With the patronage of Prince Albert in 1851 the event enhanced it's prestige and that is when it became a Royal Regatta.

In 1829 the first Oxford and Cambridge race was rowed from Hambledon Lock (a little further up our route) to Henley Bridge.

Below is Temple Island, an eyot  (a small island in the river)

Temple Island is an elegant ornamental folly designed by the 18th century English architect James Wyatt commissioned by the Freeman Family and constructed in 1771. It was designed as a fishing lodge for Fawley Court, a nearby historic house also owned by the Freeman family.

In 1952 the Regatta committee asked the then owners for first refusal if they were to sell the Island, they tried again in the early 1980s, and in 1986 it was placed on the open market. 

In 1987, the future of the island including the Temple was secured through the generosity of local couple Mr and Mrs Burrough. Their donation made it possible for Henley Royal Regatta to acquire a 999 year lease of the island from the owners, the freehold being vested in The Trustees of Temple Island. 

The downstream section of the island was retained as a nature reserve and was extensively replanted with trees.  The Victorian balcony which had decayed was replaced and the wall paintings inside which had deteriorated were repaired and brought back to the colours originally intended by Wyatt.

At other times of year you can hire Temple Island for private or corporate events between April and October, 40 people inside or 120 in a marquee outside, it's a stunning spot! 

In an effort to prevent damage to the Temple or to its garden, visitors are barred from mooring or setting foot on the island without written permission from the Henley Royal Regatta Committee.

Interesting Fact: The location was featured in the music video of "Never Turn Away" by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. 

The lovely boat above, The Hibernia, was one Dad had been wined and dined on just the previous week for one his friend's 90th birthday lunches.  It can be hired from Hobbs of Henley.  Hobbs have been running for over 150 years, it is a family business with a great fleet of boats, from self hire to skippered boats, party boats, event boats , jazz cruises and disco cruises!

Here is the starting platform, looking down to Henley, if you squint or click on the photo to enlarge it!

Farewell Henley and Regatta area and out into the peaceful (and HOT!) countryside.

Almost immediately you see this huge White House across the river, this is Greenlands, the Estate of Lord Hambleden.  It was built in 1853 on the site of a much earlier house (1604, whereby the house was under siege for 6 months during the Civiil War) for WH Smith (1825-91), the newsagent who in 1848 opened the first railway bookstall at Euston Station in London, who became Viscount Hambledon.  These days, since 1946, it has become part of the Henley Business School (University of Reading) and a very popular wedding venue.

We came across Hambleden Lock, situated at the far side of the river with a backwater, a Mill and small islands.  The Mill here was driven by a water turbine and only ceased working in 1955, it's now divided into flats.

(following on from the previous blog post, this is where my great great Grandfather Percy worked as an 'improver apprentice' before buying Tidmarsh Mill). 

Hambleden is a beautiful picture postcard village, full of pretty brick and flint cottages, with a church and manor house, it has been used in countless films such as; Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Dance with a Stranger and the opening scenes of the recent remake of The Avengers starring Ralph Fiennes and also some scenes of 101 Dalmatians.  There's also been some Poirot, it makes a perfect spot for some murder and mystery.

Hambleden was also used in the Emmy Award Winning HBO miniseries Band of Brothers to depict Easy Company's training in England. 

The Tim Burton film Sleepy Hollow, starring Johnny Depp and Christina Ricci, included a month-long location shoot in Hambleden.

The Thames Path took us away from the river for a brief spell, we headed towards Aston and The Flower Pot pub.  Dad had had recent foot trouble, so it was a spot that we thought we could stop and reassess. But no the foot was fine and determination had set in, his pace was not diminishing!

This is the first time on the entire walk we've spotted a warning sign, for Peacocks Crossing!

Here is the Flower Pot pub, perfectly located for a break along the trail ...

... before you head out into the Culham Estate.

Wow, this is a place, a quintessential and beautiful english estate, it has almost 4000 acres of woodland, pastures, parkland and chalk valleys, we walked through beautiful wild flower meadows.  And as we walked, we were walking through South Oxfordshire, Windsor & Maidenhead counties split by the Thames.

Going back to the Domesday Book, the Estate has now amalgamated with Hambleden Estate and Henley Park.

A little bit of not too far back history, in the 1940s Viscount Hambleden gave protective covenants over land on both sides of the river to the National trust, to permanently protect the landscape.

In 1997, the house was bought for £12 million by Sir Martyn Arbib for his daughter.  In 2006, they sold it to Swiss-born British billionaire Urs Schwarzenbach for £35 million, £10 million over the asking price.

Readers of this blog may note that we have already walked past one of his other vast properties, Thames Side Court, with the miniature railway going round it's garden!

As we looked down towards the river, there was a beautiful cricket ground which was picture perfect.  It hosts local and county sides as well as being available to be hired out, it's such a stunning spot! 

Above is the house, a handsome red bricked house sat elevated on the hill, looking down towards the river.  Apparently George III was once a guest, the tale goes that the King had a passion for particular hot breakfast rolls made by a London baker, and so that he should not miss them whilst staying at Culham, his host had them brought early each morning, wrapped in warm flannels, by a relay of horses!

We were really surprised to come across a herd of beautiful white fallow deer!

I found an interesting article in House and Garden regarding the private garden at the house, the part that members of the public can't see as they walk through.

Mr Schwarzenbach is a well known art collector and walking through the gardens there was a rather interesting sculpture of which I thought I could research once home ...

Rene Magritte (1898-1967)

L'art de la conversation

This was a gouache painting created by Magritte in 1955, it was one of a series of works in which he pursued his exploration of the relationship between words and images, here - depicting letters as natural objects appearing in nature.  If you look carefully you can see 2 small figures in the foreground, and the word REVE which translates as dream.

How this painting ended up as a sculpture in Culham Estate, I do not know.  Interesting!

Something else to look at was positioned right at the back on the skyline, elevated, yes it was a building but we couldn't quite work out what it was ...

I have since discovered it is Culham Chapel, there are some great photos HERE

I found a lovely photo of it in situ on the Estates facebook page.

Mr Schwarzenbach started planning the chapel in 2007 and acquired planning permission from the council in 2012 and support from the National Trust.  It replaced Culham House, which was a sixties brick style building which sat on top of the hill. 

Culham Chapel was built by a mainly British team of traditionally skilled craftsmen including stonemasons, metalworkers, joiners, mosaicists and plasterers.

The interior has a Graeco-Romanesque theme with a central seated figure of Christ by Professor Alexander Stoddart, who was the Queen’s sculptor in ordinary for Scotland. Professor Stoddart will create ongoing pieces for the chapel over the coming years.

"The chapel falls within the diocese of Portsmouth and is a chapel of ease, meaning local Catholic residents may visit to worship".

So as we leave through the gate of Culham Estate, I must share that I lived in one of their lodge houses in the early 1990s with my friend Elly who was a farm hand, looking after the cows on the Farm, I was working in Marlow at the time.  She had the lodge as part of her 'package', it had no heating, it was damp, there were bats flying around in the night, it was an experience!  We kept the wood burner going throughout the day and night, between her shift patterns of milking and my regular 9-5 job in an office.  We lived on hot ribena to keep warm.

I will root round for some photos!

* hold this space! *

I found it on google maps and could not believe that it is the same lodge now!!  It has been renovated beyond belief!  Smart driveway, gate, hedges cut back, wow!  You couldn't see it from the Henley Road when we lived there, nor see that beautiful view across the fields.

I found this photo on the web by Shaun Ferguson in 2009, you can see the transformation!  And that's smarter than when we were there!  Ahhh memories!

We walked back towards the river, past lots of canada geese

and took time for a snack break in the shade.

Some ducks below also having a little late morning rest.

We now approach Medmenham, with it's rather obvious mock-ruined preserve, but you get the gist, it was founded here by the river in 1201 for Cistercian monks, during the reign of King John and was attached to the Abbey of Woburn.  By the time of Henry VIII it had dwindled into insignificance 

Census: "Monks 2; Servants 0; debts 0; woods 0; movable goods worth £1 3s, 8d".  So in 1536 it closed.

Medmenham Abbey became best known as The Hellfire Club.

(or the Society of the Monks of St Francis after it's President)

In the 18th century the Abbey was owned by Sir Francis Dashwood of West Wycombe Park, he was a wealthy London merchant who also happened to be the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and it's been said the only CotE to admit delivering his budget speech whilst drunk.

They would hold secret meetings at the Abbey, to which ladies of a "cheerful and lively disposition" were invited.  Villagers would lock their doors when they knew the Hellfire Club were having one of their 'get togethers' and put out their lights in fear of attracting any attention.

A tale is told of Sir Henry Vansittart, the Governor of Bangal, who bought along as his guest in 1763, a baboon that accompanied him back from India.  It is said that he had been rejected for membership, so decided to take his revenge - another member John Walkes, MP for Aylesbury decided to dress the baboon up as the Devil and conceal it in a box, which then sprang from the box onto the Earl of Sandwich, and the baboon and earl fled into the night.

I love this paragraph from Christopher Winn's book "The baboon was never seen again, while the Earl of Sandwich retired into private life to work on his new invention, the sandwich".

It was for sale in 2015 for £10 million

Walking alongside Frogmill Spinney towards Hurley, the greens and blues were so beautiful.

This english dogwood, sweet mock-orange, smelt heavenly.

In the photo below you can see Danesfield House, gleaming white as it stands proudly on the chalk hill of the Buckinghamshire side.

Danesfield was built in 1901 as a family home for Robert William Hudson (he of Hudson's soap the first dry soap powder invented in 1837) designed by Romain Walker.  The house stands amidst 65 acres of formal gardens with outstanding views over the River Thames and the Chiltern Hills beyond.

Between 1941 and 1977 Danesfield House was owned by the Air Ministry and known as RAF Medmenham, it then became headquarters of the Carnation Milk Company before becoming a luxury hotel in 1991.

It's a lovely spot and full of history.

I was lucky enough to have a stay there a couple of years ago with one of my oldest school friends, Catherine, to celebrate our 50th birthdays.  This is the view down to the river from the hotel.

If you are staying at the hotel, you can walk down through the garden, the woods and the hill and join a pathway to Marlow, going through Harleyford Golf Club, which is full of amazing driftwood sculptures.

We arrived at Hurley Lock, the small village is a little half mile walk or so from here, but makes a great lunch stop.  There is a nice little cafe here by the riverside too, open between April and September, if you don't want to divert away from the river.

Hurley lies halfway by river between London and Oxford, being 55 miles from each.

We spotted a team here from Swan Lifeline, a charity that takes care of sick and injured swans in the Thames Valley.

They have rescued and treated over 30,000 swans since 1986.

In 1992 they were leased their own place, Cuckoo Weir Island, from nearby Eton College, where they have a dedicated treatment centre and intensive care unit with nine heated pens.  These house up to 180 swans on average, the team are called out to rescue over 700 swans admitting over 300 for treatment on average per year.

As we walked into Hurley, we spotted a blue plaque, this showed us that here stood Hurley Manor, which was requisitioned by the United States Office of Strategic Services as the HQ for OSS Station Victor, a clandestine radio station communicating between London and secret agents operating throughout occupied Europe 1943-1945.

I found this book, if you want to read more about it.

Hurley is such a quiet hidden idyllic village it's hard to believe that all this secret work was happening and that they played a large part in D Day.

There were 150 Americans stationed here receiving and analysing intelligence from France ahead of the invasion.

The men at Hurley were told they would be shot if they told anyone what their job/role was. Amazingly many of the truths of what happened between 1945 and 1945 was only uncovered a few years ago by a retired police detective called Phil Mullins.  The real names of the huts on the hill (Station Victor) only emerged when Mr Mullins found a message from a US Nay veteran.  There used to be 8 masts up on the hill alongside the radio huts. 

In the centre of Hurley is Ye Olde Bell Inn thought to be England's Oldest Inn, it dates from 1135!

During secret ops time, only US officers had use of the bar!  It was the venue for at least one convert meeting between Winston Churchill and Eisenhower!  Two bomb shelters were built to protect the leaders in the event of an air raid.  Churchill's was demolished in the 1970s but Eisenhower's still stands.

The large houses in the village were requisitioned for officers and other ranks lived in barracks that in what is now a farmyard.  Two barns were turned into small arms factories, producing bullets with a labour force of Hurley ladies.

We were starving at this point, and also melting in the heat, so we stopped for at the more affordable 

The Rising Sun

We had walked 18,323 steps, 7.93 miles at this point, so needed a rest, food and a large jug of water.

Interesting Hurley Fact: Henry VIII gave Hurley Wood to the Abbey of Westminster in exchange for Covent Garden!

Below is St Mary the Virgin Church, sat within a beautiful setting

After the Conquest, William I confiscated all the lands at Hurley and gave them to his trusted supporter, Geoffrey de Mandeville, for services rendered.

In 1086, at the request of Geoffrey de Mandeville's second wife Leceline, Bishop Osmund of Old Sarum dedicated the rebuilt church at Hurley as a Benedictine Priory, a cell to Westminster Abbey.

Domesday Book, compiled during this time, states that the village of Hurley consisted of a church together with a mill, 2 fisheries, 25 villagers, 12 cottagers and 10 slaves.

Tithecote Manor is a lovely house from the 14th century building believed to date from about 1350 and to have been built by the Benedictine monks of Hurley Priory and the monks used it as a second barn for storage for grain and other farming produce.

The Manor was used as location that is taken over by the Terileptils in the 1982 Dr Who episode, called The Visitation.

Thanks to Paul Dykes on Flickr for his photo of the Manor that led me down the Dr Who rabbit hole!

Back to the river feeling suitably refreshed and ready to take on the last few miles to Marlow, we already knew about the diversion taking place due to the bridge at Temple Lock being temporarily closed so stayed on the south side of the river and entered Marlow via the village of Bisham.

Temple Bridge has a 150ft span and is Britain's longest hardwood footbridge.

(At Temple Lock, there was once a mill run by the Templar Knights of Bisham Abbey, it then incorporated a copper foundry to take advantage of cheap copper brought from Swansea along the Thames and Severn canal.  At one time the Mill here had the biggest Mill Wheel on the Thames, it closed in 1969, and guess what - it's now converted into apartments with a marina). 

Temple Lock is one of the Thames rare ‘double’ locks, where two chambers exist side by side. The first pound lock was built here by the Thames Navigation Commissioners in 1773. Later in 1890 the Thames Conservancy built a new lock alongside, but they left the old one in place, slightly modified to handle skiffs, punts and other light pleasure craft.

We passed by Bisham Abbey National Sports Centre, one of 3 national sports centres used by Sports England, it provides world class sporting facilities for individuals and teams, as well as community sports.  

Bisham Abbey is steeped in history. The Manor as it was then, was used as a place of confinement for Queen Mary of Scots throughout the wars of Scottish succession and in 1540 Henry VIII owned it and gave it to Anne of Cleve as part of their divorce settlement. 

Bisham's main street, has beautiful little cottages, with teeny doors!  It's such a busy road going through though, thank goodness for pavements.  

Susan had lost the power of speech at this point, and was desperate for the Marlow Bridge to appear ......

Marlow Bridge is the only suspension bridge across the non-tidal Thames.

Built in 1829-1832 by William Tierney Clark.  His bridge here at Marlow was a prototype for his much larger bridge linking Buda and Pest across the Danube, a Szechenyl Chain Bridge.

When the bridge was 100 years old, a scheme was prepared to replace it with a ferro-concrete one, but there was so much local opposition in 1930 that the idea was abandoned.  

On the far side is All Saints Church and on the right the Compleat Angler Hotel with its beautiful lawn going down to the river and a large weeping willow (said to have been planted by the Duke of Wellington).

Our journey was nearly done.

Our Thames Walk section finished over the bridge at over 11 miles.

We traipsed up the High Street, first time I've done that without popping into shops!

This was so we could catch the bus at the top to take us back to Henley, where Dad then drove us back to Newbury, and still buzzing on an 86 year old energy life source, he then carried on the drive home to Chichester!

I could barely move my feet!  They were on fire.  And melted this ice pretty rapidly!

Susan meanwhile got her feet elevated straight away as this walk gave her a painful bout of Walkers Rash, this is when small blood vessels leak blood under your skin's surface.

It can be found under many names; Walkers Rash, Golfers Rash, Hiking Rash, exercise-induced vasculitis and Disney Rash! (named Disney due to the rash being common with visitors to Disney World and other major theme parks, as visitors usually end up walking long distances in warm weather).

It affects the lower parts of the legs after strenuous exercise or activity for a long time, especially in warm weather.  It is more commonly seen in women aged over 50 (yes thanks, another thing to hit us over 50 year old women with, haven't we got enough going on!?)

It's harmless and often disappears on its own within 2-3 weeks. 

What a walk!

Great to have Dad join us, and perfect to stop in Marlow ...

Which is where I worked in the early 1990's and met Graham .... 😀

Graham the lovely man who has just said I walked this route quicker than I wrote this blog post!!