Cotswold Ways walk around Kempsford in Gloucestershire

An Anglo-Saxon love story in Kempsford, and the imaginative tales of Adin Williams, schoolmaster

The River Thames marks the border between Gloucestershire and Wiltshire where the river snakes close to Kempsford. Today, all it means is that different authorities collect the bins and mend the roads, but this was once the border between two kingdoms – Mercia to the north and Wessex to the south. Back in the eighth and ninth centuries, the two kingdoms often skirmished with one another. It’s no surprise that it’s thought there was a Saxon fortification at Kempsford because of the ford that gives the village its name.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells us that there was a battle at Cynemseres forda – meaning either ‘the ford of the great marsh’ or ‘Kynemere’s ford’ – in about A.D. 802. At that battle the ealdormen of the Hwicce (kings of Gloucestershire) and of the Wiltsaetum (kings of Wiltshire) both fell, but Wiltshire had the victory. What was going on? Is it likely there was some prosaic jockeying for power after the death of King Beohtric of Wessex. Did the battle give King Kenulf of Mercia – father of the famous St Kenelm – the opportunity to annex Wessex?

In steps Adin Williams, with an imaginative tale of love conquering all. Williams was a local lad, born in Lechlade in 1852. He became a schoolmaster at Kempsford at the young age of 21 in 1873. He wasn’t, it seems, a good teacher; reports came back from the school inspectors that standards were ‘very bad indeed’. Nevertheless, he clearly loved history and literature. In 1878, when a teacher in Lechlade, he published his Lays and Legends of Gloucestershire, in which his Kempsford tale of blighted then reunited love can be found.

The George at Kempsford. Photo: thegeorgekempsford.co.uk Imagine a wooden stronghold built on the bank above the ford where it’s still possible to see – if you can get to them – some of the 17th century work from the lost manor house that replaced a medieval fortified manor. The warriors who lived there were on constant look-out for the dastardly Wilsaetae – men of Wiltshire – trying to invade Gloucestershire. Lord of the manor was Oswyn, who had gathered this group of fighting men. He had even recruited a mercenary all the way from Norway, a strapping tawny-haired fellow called Hengstan. The place wasn’t just a fortress; it was Oswyn’s family home, where he’d brought up his young ward, Ina, now grown to a golden-haired beauty.

In the springtime of 801, Hengstan and Ina fell in love. They would walk together, Williams says, ‘where the waters shallowing ran, where the river, kissed by trees, as a sandy ford began’. No footpath now runs along where the ford once was. The landscape is once more a mosaic of shifting streams, willow trees, and waving reeds. But when Williams lived in Kempsford in the 1870s, it would have been much more workaday, since the now-vanished Thames and Severn Canal cut right through the village.

Kempsford church. Photo: Kirsty HartsiotisOne day the lovers were spied by Oswyn. He did not approve of his ward – a noblewoman – loving a hired hand, and a foreigner to boot. Angry words were spoken. Hengstan lost his temper and struck Oswyn. No sooner had he done so than Oswyn’s retainers turned on him and beat him to a pulp. They bound his senseless body to ‘a wild unridden steed’, gave the animal a slap, and off the colt bolted, over the ford and away across the marshes. Ina wept, thinking her lover dead. But Hengstan was lucky. A band of Wiltshire warriors found him, unconscious, still strapped to the colt as it cropped the grass near one of their forts. They took him back to Weohstan, their ealdorman.

A year passed, and old King Beohtric of Wessex died. Kenulf of Mercia seized his chance and sent Aethelmund, the ealdorman of the Hwicce, to march on Wiltshire. Word came to Oswyn that the Wiltshire men were marching towards his ford, and there battle would be met – but Aethelmund and his force had not yet arrived. Oswyn feared for Ina. She said she would trust in God – but was it actually God in whom she trusted? Word had come to her that her lover lived and was encamped with the enemy across the border. That night, knowing there’d be battle in the morning, the foes slept, but one figure crept from each camp to meet each other under the shelter of the swaying willows by the ford. Hengstan begged Ina to run away with him. But it was too late. Aethelmund’s army had arrived in the night, the men were stirring, the drums of battle sounding. Ina fled to the little church by Oswyn’s stronghold where the other women waited, and Hengstan went to battle.

Much death was dealt that day in the field still known as ‘Battlefield’. Hengstan was in the thick of it, until Oswyn appeared before him and saw recognition then shame leap in his old friend’s eyes. Hengstan turned away, but another warrior cut Oswyn down. It was a dark day for both kingdoms. Both Aethelmund and Weohstan fell, but the men of Wiltshire held the field and Wessex was triumphant. Hengstan lived, too. He went to the little church where the women sheltered. Ina flew into his arms and wept for gladness that her love was spared and grief that the only father she’d known was dead. The new ealdorman of Wiltshire gave the manor to Hengstan and Ina, and there, ‘in the house at Kimmersford, live they after kind and true’. Centuries later, in 1670, the debris of battle – spearheads and iron bits – were found in the field, a bloody reminder soon after another war had wracked the land.

The effigy of the monk or cleric in Kempsford church. Photo: Kirsty Hartsiotis Williams, still only 26 when Lays and Legends came out, and the introduction says that ‘for several years the collection of curious local legends and histories, so far as old books and old people can help to that end, has been the employment of his spare time’. He tells other tales of Kempsford, some drawn from history and, as Williams says, ‘village tradition’, such as the tale of the young son of Henry of Lancaster, who was drowned in the river and whose horse’s horseshoe is still nailed to the church door. The boy’s sister, the Lady Maud, was thrown in the river by her husband who thought her untrue. Her ghost still walks the terrace by the riverbank near the church. Her husband is said to have become a monk in penance for his mistake, as an old effigy in the church attests. Hengstan, too, is said to prowl down to the old ford. Another story, according to Williams, is ‘literally true’ and ‘occurred within the memory of living men’; it’s about a girl who meets a wraith by the misty canal and gives up the ghost in despair. Yet another tale tells of a young girl who foresees the beheading of Charles I. All of this shows the game of chance that folktales and traditions play. Just by dint of Williams’s being there, Kempsford remains a much-storied place – and perhaps another place, just as full of stories a century and a half ago, may have none today because they were not written down.

The horseshoe on the door of Kempsford church. Photo: Kirsty Hartsiotis ESSENTIALS

Parking: Road parking by the church in Kempsford.

Toilets and refreshments: The George, Kempsford.

Transport: Stagecoach bus 76 between Cirencester and Lechlade.

Walk: Very few footpaths go through Kempsford, but if you want to capture the feel of the landscape, the Thames Path runs close by, and the RSPB reserve Whelford Pools has recreated the once-marshy landscape from old gravel pits.

Further reading: Lays and Legends of Gloucestershire, by Adin Williams; Gloucestershire Folk Tales, by Anthony Nanson, for the story of Lady Maud; Gloucestershire Ghost Tales, by Anthony Nanson and Kirsty Hartsiotis, for the story of the woman’s wraith.

LINKS

Kempsford history: kempsford.net/history

Ghost stories of the area: highworthhistoricalsociety.org.uk/ghost-stories

Kirsty Hartsiotis is based in Stroud and available for hire as a storyteller and speaker. She is an accredited Arts Society lecturer. Her books include Wiltshire Folk Tales and (with Anthony Nanson) Gloucestershire Ghost Tales and Gloucestershire Folk Tales for Children. She is also a curator at Swindon Museums.