The ale and beer
"Marlow ale has a local celebrity, though to a stranger who may not be exactly accustomed to it's flavour, it possesses a herby taste" - Belgravia Magazine, Vol 14. Alfred Rimmer 1881
The Suspension Bridge
"Has deducted from the beauty of the landscape" - Belgravia Magazine, Vol 14, Alfred Rimmer 1881
All Saints Parish Church
On the question on whether further money should be spent on improving the structure:
"..It is a question whether it would not have been better to have accepted it's ugliness and employed the very large sums which must be expended before the work can be completed to other and more directly useful purposes." -
The Royal River - The Thames from Source to Sea (Cassell 1885)
"The church is ugly without and bald within" - Dickens Dictionary of the Thames. (1889)
" The church, only about 30 years old, is atrociously ugly" - Temple Bar, a magazine for Town and Country Readers, vol 15 (Ward & Locke 1865)
"It's certainly does not reflect much credit upon the architect nor does it say much for the taste of those who accepted a design so bald, meagre and ugly in every respect" - Bucks Herald 18 September 1875
"Great Marlow comes into sight, the steeple of it's modern church looking far better in the distance than it does close to...the details are poor and weak and all too suggestive of the modern builder". James John Hissey, A Drive Through England For A Thousand Miles. (Richard Bentley 1885)
"It is no doubt that the materials used in the church are distinctly ugly but the steeple goes some way to redeeming it, and if it can be seen silhouetted so that the materials are lost in dimness, and only the outlines are present, it becomes at once more than passable." Mortimer Menpas & Geraldine Mitten, The Thames (A&C Black, 1906)
The town as a whole
"In the town itself there is little of interest, the quaint old houses have nearly all given place to stark brick or vulgar stucco erections" - Dickens's Dictionary of the Thames (1889 edition)
"A negative sort of place" - Temple Bar magazine, 1865 as above.
"Notoriously one of the most depraved towns in Bucks" - Daily News 1848.
"An every day sort of second-rate agricultural town..the countrymen hereabout are not of very mirthful cast and their liveliness is of a very laborious character" James Thorne, Rambles by the River, Vol 2 1847. (He was however impressed by the range of goods exhibited at the October fair, and the quality of the horses sold there, as well as the riverside scenery!)
Little Marlow
"A place possessing but few claims to notice" - Isaac Slater, Slater's Royal National and Commercial Directory 1852
Bisham
"A quiet place, not especially interesting. " - Photo Journal, Vol 7. (1895)
Related posts - more Marlow praise and slights here and here
©Marlow Ancestors