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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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The cache is set in the vicinity of Tom Brown's Island, a place that features in the book Tom Brown's Schooldays. It is a place where one of The Ferrets used to play as a child.
Tom Brown's Schooldays, a novel, was originally published as being "by an Old Boy of Rugby", and it is immediately apparent that much of it is based on the author's experiences. In fact, Tom Brown is based on the author's brother, George Hughes, and George Arthur is based on Arthur Penrhyn Stanley.
Tom Brown was tremendously influential on the genre of British school novels, which began in the 19th century, and is one of the few still in print. A sequel, Tom Brown at Oxford, was published in 1861 but is not as well known.
Tom Brown is energetic, stubborn, kind-hearted, and athletic more than intellectual. He acts according to his feelings and the unwritten rules of the boys around him more than adults' rules.
The early chapters of the novel deal with his childhood at his home in the Vale of White Horse (including a nostalgic picture of a village feast). Much of the scene setting in the first chapter is deeply revealing of Victorian England's attitudes towards society and class, and contains an interesting comparison of so-called Saxon and Norman influences on England. This part of the book, when young Tom wanders the valleys freely on his pony, serves as a sort of Eden with which to contrast the later hellish experiences at school.
His first school year was at a local school. His second year started at a private school, but due to an epidemic of fever in the area, all the school's boys were sent home, and Tom was transferred mid-term to Rugby School, where he made acquaintance with the adults and boys who lived at the school and in its environs.
On his arrival, the eleven-year-old Tom Brown is looked after by a more experienced classmate, Harry "Scud" East. Soon after, Tom and East become the targets of a bully named Flashman. The intensity of the bullying increases, and, after refusing to hand over a sweepstake ticket for the favourite in a horse race, Tom is deliberately burned in front of a fire. Tom and East eventually defeat Flashman with the help of a kind (though comical) older boy. In their triumph they become unruly.
In the second half of the book, Dr. Thomas Arnold (the historical headmaster of the school at the time) gives Tom the care of a new boy named George Arthur, frail, pious, academically brilliant, gauche, and sensitive. A fight that Tom gets into to protect Arthur, and Arthur's nearly dying of fever, are described in loving detail. Tom and Arthur help each other and their friends develop into young gentlemen who say their nightly prayers, do not cheat on homework, and are on the cricket team.
The geography of Rugby has changed greatly since the period in which the book was set. The town has expanded enormously, industrialising in the late nineteenth century. For example, most of the pools along the River Avon that the boys used for swimming were obliterated when the British Thomson-Houston factory was built. Tom Brown's adventures in countryside in the Avon river valley happened in what is now Rugby's industrial area.
In the book, Tom's first year at the school mentions no transport to Rugby except stagecoach, but the end part of Tom's last year mentions "the train". Therefore the Midland Tom Brown's Schooldays is a novel by Thomas Hughes first published in 1857. The story is set at Rugby School, a public school for boys, in the 1830s. Hughes had attended Rugby School from 1834 to 1842.
Railway was built along the Avon valley past Rugby while he was at the school. But none of his adventures around the river Avon mention the railway or its working, or the large rowdy noisy navvy-camp which would have been in the area while the railway was being built.
County boundaries have been changed so that most of the Vale of White Horse is now in Oxfordshire, not Berkshire as the author says several times.
Parking for the cache is suggested at N52 22.728 W001 17.681. This is a residential street-Townsend Lane. Please park here and not in Thurnmill Rd, as being a small Cul De Sac, it may cause nuisance.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Arne pbeare bs srapr. Abg haqre oevqtr.