The Royal County of Berkshire is not particularly beautiful,\u00a0 for much of the land is flat and uninteresting.\u00a0 There are,\u00a0 however,\u00a0 pockets of beautiful scenery along the reaches of the Thames and a few delightful villages.\u00a0 The principal city,\u00a0 Reading,\u00a0 is rather depressing with all its heavy industry,\u00a0 but nearer to London is Royal Windsor with its great castle and delightful walks and gardens,\u00a0 and across the river,\u00a0 Datchett with Eton College and quaint shops.\u00a0 Today,\u00a0 most of the cities and towns in the Country are unremarkable,\u00a0 and one tends not to stop while driving along the A4 to the West Country or down the A30 to Southampton or to Salisbury.\u00a0 There are though the rolling hills near the Wiltshire border.\u00a0 In summer,\u00a0 regular coach tours deposit sightseers armed with cameras,\u00a0 transistor radios and bags of chipped potatoes to \u201csee the sights\u201d.\u00a0 Windsor Castle is more popular than the White Horse.<\/p>\n
For generations the maternal forbears of Ben lived in the villages about Faringdon and within view of the great animal carved in the chalk above Uffington and from which the Vale of the White Horse takes its name.\u00a0 Of the many animal figures cut into the English hills this is the oldest,\u00a0 and best known,\u00a0 and Berkshire folk are very proud of this fact.\u00a0 Three hundred and fifty-five feet long and twenty feet from head to hoof it is periodically cleared of weeds and in former times this work was done every seventh year and great festivities took place while the work was in progress \u2013 even maypole dancing and singing,\u00a0 which were believed to keep evil spirits away.<\/p>\n
Alfred\u2019s hill,\u00a0 named for the famous King Alfred,\u00a0 is near the village of Longcot,\u00a0 and along the ancient Ridgeway is the Smithy of Wayland the Smith,\u00a0 who is mentioned in Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.\u00a0 The smithy is an erection of stones in a ring of beech trees and according to legend Wayland \u201cmade swords which none could resist and winged armour which carried its wearer like and eagle\u201d.\u00a0 Wayland would shoe a horse if the owner left money on the top stone,\u00a0 tethered his horse,\u00a0 and did not return until morning.\u00a0 No doubt Ben Smith\u2019s people would like to be able to claim descent from such a legendary person,\u00a0 but alas the earliest Smith mentioned in the Longcot Parish Register is a mere John Smith,\u00a0 a stranger and Gypsy,\u00a0 whose sons,\u00a0 John and Thomas,\u00a0 were baptised in 1671 and 1688 respectively.<\/p>\n
When Ben sailed for Australia,\u00a0 his father,\u00a0 William Smith,\u00a0 was working as a farm labourer.\u00a0 Temperance,\u00a0 his mother,\u00a0 was still alive and his brother John had married Mary and was the father\u00a0 of two small daughters,\u00a0 Elizabeth and Salome.\u00a0 His other brothers,\u00a0 Henry Smith Stotter,\u00a0 William,\u00a0 Ezra and Jasper had married and scattered.\u00a0 The family was intensely religious and the children\u2019s names were frequently selected from the Bible and from the Virtues \u2013 as was fashionable.\u00a0 Ben eventually named three of his sons after his brothers \u2013 William,\u00a0 Ezra and John.<\/p>\n
The Biblical Salome (St Matthew X1V),\u00a0 she who demanded of Herod that the head of John the Baptist be served to her in a charger,\u00a0 is the subject of a famous and very old wall painting in the Norman Church at Kingston Lisle,\u00a0 on the southern edge of the Vale of the White Horse.\u00a0 There is rather a fine scene\u00a0 as,\u00a0 dressed in the costumes of a Norman King and Queen,\u00a0 Herod and Herodias watch Salome,\u00a0 daughter of Herodias,\u00a0 dance and turn a somersault.\u00a0 Below this painting is one of Salome without her head,\u00a0 showing that her head was cut off when she fell into a frozen river.\u00a0 One cannot help but feel sorry for an eight year old Salome Smith gazing up at such a dire warning.\u00a0 Let us hope that she was at the very least a graceful child.<\/p>\n
John and Mary Smith remained at Longcot and their son,\u00a0 Albert,\u00a0 was born in 1842.\u00a0 Although a mason by trade,\u00a0 John Smith became the owner of the Bricklayers\u2019 Arms,\u00a0 and it was here that his father,\u00a0 William Smith,\u00a0 lived after the death of his wife.\u00a0 He was to live long enough to look upon some of his grandchildren and to see Ben return and to meet his daughter-in-law,\u00a0 Martha.<\/p>\n
The family and environmental backgrounds of Ben and Martha were very different.\u00a0 It is indeed doubtful if Martha,\u00a0 prior to her first visit to Berkshire in late 1839 and early 1840,\u00a0 ever knew the peace of country living in a nineteenth century English village.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Royal County of Berkshire is not particularly beautiful,\u00a0 for much of the land is flat and uninteresting.\u00a0 There are,\u00a0 however,\u00a0 pockets of beautiful scenery along the reaches of the Thames and a few delightful villages.\u00a0 The principal city,\u00a0 Reading,\u00a0 is rather depressing with all its heavy industry,\u00a0 but nearer to London is Royal Windsor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensmith.falkor.gen.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/38"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensmith.falkor.gen.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensmith.falkor.gen.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bensmith.falkor.gen.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bensmith.falkor.gen.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bensmith.falkor.gen.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/38\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":124,"href":"https:\/\/bensmith.falkor.gen.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/38\/revisions\/124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bensmith.falkor.gen.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}