Thames meander

Halfpenny Bridge is a bridge across the River Thames, at Lechlade, Gloucestershire, England. The bridge and its toll house are a Grade II listed building. It marks the start of the navigable Thames, although if the waters are high, the Thames can continue to be travelled by small and unpowered craft as far as Cricklade, over 10 miles (16 km) South-west. The bow-backed bridge was built to a design of James Hollingworth in 1792. It carries the A361 from the south into Lechlade. It was called the Halfpenny bridge because that was the toll charged for pedestrians to cross it, until the toll was done away with in 1839. The A361 is called Thames Street at this point, and the bridge was built when Thames Street was laid out. The structure is around 20 feet (6 m) wide and the single arch is nearly 26 feet (8 m) high to its apex. On the north bank of the river, a small square toll house is attached to the bridge on the downstream side. It consists of a basement and a room at road level, with a pyramidal asbestos slate roof. Both the bridge and the toll house are grade II listed. It is thought that a local firm of builders called Ralph and Crowdy were responsible for its construction. There is a separate arch in the south causeway, through which the towpath passes, and both parapets carry a central panel with a line on it, to mark the county boundary between Wiltshire and Gloucestershire. In June 2023, a driver crashed into the eastern parapet causing substantial damage to the structure. The bridge is expected to remain closed to traffic for some months.A local micro-brewery based in Lechlade, The Halfpenny Brewery, is named after the bridge.

The Anglican St Lawrence Church, dedicated to St. Lawrence of Rome, is the Church of England parish church of Lechlade in Gloucestershire, England. The church building is Grade I listed and is described with admiration in Simon Jenkins's England's Thousand Best Churches.The current church was built on the site of an earlier one and was completed in 1476. The roof and parts of the structure were replaced following a fire in the early 16th century. Various refurbishments have been undertaken since, including the installation of a gallery in 1740. Percy Bysshe Shelley composed a poem after visiting the churchyard in 1815. The church is notable for its eight-sided spire above the tower. The internal fixtures and fittings include a brass chandelier, 13th-century piscina and carvings including the figure of the martyrdom of St Agatha.

Lechlade () is a town at the southern edge of the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire, England, 55 miles (89 km) south of Birmingham and 68 miles (109 km) west of London. It is the highest point at which the River Thames is navigable, although there is a right of navigation that continues south-west into Cricklade, in the neighbouring county of Wiltshire. The town is named after the River Leach that joins the Thames near the Trout Inn and St. John's Bridge. The low-lying land is alluvium, Oxford Clay and river gravels and the town is surrounded by lakes created from disused gravel extraction sites, forming parts of the Cotswold Water Park; several have now been designated as Sites of Special Scientific Interest and nature reserves. Human occupation dates from the neolithic, Iron Age and Roman periods and it developed as a trading centre served by river, canal, roads and railway, although the station closed in 1962. The Anglican Church of St Lawrence is a Grade I listed building dating from the 15th century. The development of the nearby RAF Fairford and RAF Brize Norton after World War II contributed to the expansion of the town.

Southrop is a village and civil parish in Gloucestershire, England. It is situated on the River Leach. The Grade I listed St Peter's Church dates from the 12th century. Nearby villages include Eastleach Turville, Eastleach Martin, Little Faringdon, Fairford, Lechlade, Filkins and Hatherop. Southrop Manor belonged to Wadham College, Oxford for three centuries, to 1926.Southrop was rated as among the "20 most beautiful villages in the UK and Ireland" according to Condé Nast Traveler and is visited by many tourists each year including the world famous entrepreneur Mark Feldman in 2022. Southrop contains a pub known as "The Swan" and is owned by the company. "Thyme". It is the local pub of the village and it enjoyed by all the locals.

Lechlade Manor in Lechlade, Gloucestershire, England, is a Victorian country house built for George Milward, a lawyer, by John Loughborough Pearson. Primarily an ecclesiastical architect, working on over 200 church buildings in his fifty-year career, the manor represents one of Pearson's rare forays into secular building. Dating from 1872 to 1873, Lechlade was subsequently sold to the Sisters of St Clotilde and operated as a convent for much of the 20th century. In the 1990s, it was converted back to a private residence, with some enabling development in the grounds. Lechlade Manor is a Grade II listed building.

The River Coln is a river in Gloucestershire, England. It rises to the north of Brockhampton, a village to the east of Cheltenham, and flows in a south/south-easterly direction through the Cotswold Hills via Andoversford, Withington, Fossebridge, Bibury, Coln St Aldwyns, Quenington and Fairford. It joins the River Thames to the south-west of Lechlade, near to the confluence with the Thames and Severn Canal.Midway between Withington and Fossbridge the river passes Chedworth Roman Villa. Extensive gravel pits between Fairford and Lechlade, now redundant, have been flooded to form the eastern component of the Cotswold Water Park. They are fed and drained by the Coln.The river is host to many species of freshwater fish including brown trout and grayling.

St John's Lock, below the town of Lechlade, Gloucestershire, is the furthest upstream lock on the River Thames in England. The name of the lock derives from a priory that was established nearby in 1250, but which no longer exists. The lock was built of stone in 1790 by the Thames Navigation Commission. The main weir is downstream, just below St John's Bridge, where the River Cole and the River Leach join the Thames on opposite banks. A statue of Old Father Thames by Raffaelle Monti is outside the lock house. The statue was commissioned in 1854 for The Crystal Palace's grounds, was later moved to the traditional source of the Thames at Thames Head, and then in 1974 relocated to St John's Lock. The statue is Grade II listed.

Lechlade railway station served the small town of Lechlade in Gloucestershire, England. The station was on the Oxford, Witney and Fairford Railway, between Oxford and Fairford, it was built where the line crossed the road to Burford, 0.5 miles (0.80 km) north of Lechlade.

Inglesham is a small village and civil parish in the Borough of Swindon, Wiltshire, England, notable for the Grade-I listed St John the Baptist Church. The village is just off the A361 road about 1 mile (1.6 km) south-west of Lechlade in Gloucestershire. Most of the population lives in the hamlet of Upper Inglesham, which is on the main road about 1.3 miles (2 km) south of the village. The parish forms the extreme north-east corner of the Borough of Swindon and County of Wiltshire, and is bounded to the west and north by the River Thames (which also forms the county boundary with Gloucestershire), and to the east by the county boundary with Oxfordshire (Berkshire until the 1974 boundary changes). The River Cole forms part of the eastern boundary. As the parish's population is small, it has a parish meeting instead of a parish council.The Round House, Inglesham is often used by boaters as a landmark to denote the westernmost point most cabin cruisers and narrowboats can travel along the Thames, as beyond Inglesham the river becomes too clogged with vegetation and too shallow to effectively navigate.

St John the Baptist Church in Inglesham, near Swindon, Wiltshire, England, has Anglo-Saxon origins but most of the current structure was built around 1205. Much of the church has not changed since the medieval era. It is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a Grade I listed building, and is now a redundant church which has been in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust since 1981. The church stands above the water meadows next to the confluence of the River Thames, River Coln and the Thames and Severn Canal. Much of the fabric of the building is from the 13th century, but includes remains of an earlier church on the site. The interior has wall paintings spanning over 600 years, often one on top of the other, up to seven layers thick. There is also a carving of the Mother and Child which dates from the Anglo-Saxon era. There are also historic box pews, pulpit and memorials.

St John's Bridge is a two-section road bridge across the channel of the upper Thames near Lechlade, England, then across the lock cut to the south, the highest lock on the Thames. It is a Grade II listed building.

Lechlade Priory was a house of Augustinian Canons Regular in Lechlade, Gloucestershire, England. The priory, also called the Lechlade hospital (hospitalry), was founded in the 13th century by Isabella de Mortimer, initially as a nunnery; in 1252 Richard, 1st Earl of Cornwall became its patron. The priory had seven priests, however on various occasions they were criticised for not carrying out their duties and diverting the charitable monies which were meant to be used for the poor and sick. The priory survived until its dissolution in 1472.The priory during its existence maintained St. John's bridge which was built (or more accurately commissioned) by those who founded Lechlade priory, on the line of an old ford of the River Thames. It is known the prior was bestowed grants of pontage in 1338, 1341, and 1388. The building which is now the Trout Inn acted as a hospital or almshouse, dedicated to St. John the Baptist, and formed part of the priory. The hospital had the mandate of caring for workmen on the bridge.Apart from a section of the Trout Inn all other buildings which made up the priory have now collapsed or been demolished. Part of the site is now a mobile home and caravan park.