]
The Academy at Banbury was famous as the place where Dean Swift began
to write his famous satire entitled _Travels of Lemuel Gulliver_, the
reading of which had been one of the pleasures of our schoolboy days. He
was said to have copied the name from a tombstone in the churchyard.
There were several charming old gabled houses in the town, and in "Ye
Olde Reindeere Inn" was a beautiful room called the "Globe," a name
given it from a globular chandelier which once stood near the entrance.
This room was panelled in oak now black with age, and lighted by a lofty
mullioned window extending right across the front, while the plastered
ceiling was considered to be one of the finest in the county of Oxford.
In the High Street stood a very fine old house with, three gables
erected about the year 1600, on which was placed an old sun-dial that
immediately attracted our attention, for inscribed on it appeared the
Latin words, "Aspice et abi" ("Look and Go"), which we considered as a
hint to ourselves, and as the Old Castle had been utterly demolished
after the Civil War, and the fine old Parish Church, "more like a
cathedral than a church," blown up with gunpowder in 1740 "to save the
expense of restoring it," we had no excuse for staying here any longer,
and quickly left the town on our way to Oxford.
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