Dark Water

A half dozen or more streams that drain the south-east side of the Cotswold ridge - the area beneath the famous-for-its-battle Edge Hill - all converge on the village of Broughton, west of Banbury. Broughton has a proper castle with a proper moat with proper water in it. It is the seat of Baron Saye and Sele - the title of the Fiennes family, the one that produces actors, explorers and the 'Fine (Fiennes) Lady upon a white horse' who is still represented in statue form at Banbury Cross

This is the Sor brook, the largest of the streams, rising on Edge Hill itself; the one that retains its name after all the confluences, and flows east, skirting south of Banbury, to join the river Cherwell, which joins the Thames st Oxford (or, according to Oxford pedants, joins with the Isis at Oxford to form the Thames). It occurs to me that some of the blood shed on that October day in 1642 must have flowed past the Parliament that ignited the conflict a few days later. The same Parliament that learned today that its leaders think the solution to our country's problems, one of which is a climate-heightened risk of flooding, is another aircraft runway

Soon after Oxford, the Thames flows within a few yards of the graveyard in which an unassuming stone is marked with the name Eric Blair - better known as George Orwell. I wouldn't blame him if his corpse wore a wry smile tonight, and the wind through the graveyard trees whispered "I told you so" 

To be fair, I expect this meadow has been flooding since 1642, and many years before. The young trees line the actual brook; the rest of the water is temporary, and will drain in the next week or so. His lordship is to be praised for allowing this to continue - not dredging the channel or constructing levées to pass on the flood to other villages down river. The fact that the castle itself is also downstream might have influenced the decision