Peter Pan played Cricket and CS Lewis punted... THURSDAY JULY 22

   One of the buildings LaGard Smith pointed out to us today was in the village of Stanway—which is still a working manor.  He was showing us the use of staddle stones—these are mushroom-shaped stones that were used as the foundations of buildings to keep rats out.  The rats could not climb around the cap of the stone (wonder if this would work on government buildings?)  This particular building was the pavilion on the manor's Cricket pitch, and I was surprised to discover when I googled Stanway tonight that it was a gift from J.M. Barrie [author of Peter Pan], a Cricket-playing guest at the manor in the 1920's.  It is unusual to see these staddle stones holding up a building these days—most of them have become expensive garden ornaments for Cotswold cottages.
   Those of you who are fans Tolkien and a penchant for trivia (like me) might remember that a village in Bree was named Staddle... as we drove home through the quaintly named villages of the Cotswalds I could not help but notice that several of them bore a resemblance to place names in Tolkien's Shire and Bree—and I have to think that this is the countryside that inspired his description of those hobbit lands.  Some of those colorful Cotswold village names we passed included Buckland (where LaGard lives), Chipping Camden and Chipping Norton, Bourton-on-the-Water, Moreton-in-Marsh, Shipston-on-Stour, Wotton-under-Edge, and my favorite, Stow-on-the-Wold.
   When we returned to the Kilns, I took advantage of the remaining daylight to do some exploring in the CS Lewis Nature Preserve that contains the majority of what was the Kilns property.  As you can tell from the old picture I posted earlier this week, the largest pond there once dominated the view from the house, and Lewis used to go punting on it.  His old punt, no longer pondworthy, still sits in the yard.  The pond which was in the open when Lewis bought the Kilns is now in the forest he planted.  And I suspect that his Narnia landscape was at least partly inspired by his walks through his land and over Shotover Hill.
   To see the staddle stones double-click the picture above. Below is the walking path up Shotover Hill, the pond, and the punt in the front yard of the Kilns.