Wanderings in Wessex Part 6

Fordington is usually described as a suburb of Dorchester; this is not strictly correct. It had always been a dependent village and was not simply an extension of the town. Its church is a fine one, with tall battlemented tower and a goodly amount of Norman work. A quaint old carving over the Norman south door is of much interest. It represents St. George as taking part in the battle of Antioch in 1098. Some of the Saracens are being mercilessly dispatched while others are pleading for quarter. The stone pulpit bears the date 1592 and the initials E.R. The late Bishop of Durham, Dr. Moule, was born at Fordington Vicarage.

Stainsford, about a mile from the Frome bridge, is the original of the scene in _Under the Greenwood Tree_. Several members of the Hardy family lie in the churchyard here, and the novelist was born at Higher Bockhampton, not far away. The carving of St. Michael on the face of the church tower should be noticed. Within the building are memorials of the Pitt family.

Above the short tunnel through which the Great Western line runs to the north, and about half a mile along the Bradford Peverell road, is Poundbury Camp. "Pummery" is an oblong entrenchment enclosing about twenty acres, variously ascribed to Celts, Romans and Danes, but almost certainly Celtic, with Roman improvements and developments.

There is a fine view of the surroundings of Dorchester from the bank.

It is only by the most strenuous exertions that the railway engineers were prevented from burrowing right through the camp. The cutting of this line brought to light many relics of the past, a great number of which are in the Dorchester Museum.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAIDEN CASTLE.]

On the south-west side of the town, two miles away near the Weymouth road, is the greatest of these prehistoric entrenchments; Mai-dun or "Maiden Castle" is the largest British earthwork in existence. It is best reached by a footpath continuation of a by-way that leaves the Weymouth road on the right, soon after it crosses the Great Western Railway. The highest point of the hill that has been converted into this huge fort is 432 feet; the apex being on the east. The marvellous defences, which follow the lines of the hill, are two miles round and the whole s.p.a.ce occupies about 120 acres. From east to west the camp is 3,000 feet long and about half that measurement in breadth. On the south side there are no less than five lines of ditch and wall. On the north the steepness of the hill only allows of three. Over the entrance to the west ten ramparts overlap and double so that attackers were in a perfect maze of walls and enfiladed so effectually that it is difficult to imagine any storming party being successful. On the east the opening, without being quite so elaborate owing to the steepness of the hill, is equally well defended. The steep walls on the north are no less than sixty feet deep and to storm them would be a sheer impossibility. What makes this splendid monument so interesting is the a.s.sertion made by nearly all authorities on the subject that these enormous works must have been excavated without spade or tool other than the puny implement called a "celt." Probably wall and ditch were elaborated and improved by the Romans, and while in their occupation the name of the hill became Dunium. Blocks of stone from Purbeck, used at certain points of the defence, were no doubt additions during this period.

A pleasant journey may be taken through the Winterbourne villages that are strung along the line of that rivulet, which, as its name proclaims, flows only in the winter months. It is on the south side of Maiden Castle. The first village with the name of the river as a prefix is Came, two miles from Dorchester. Here Barnes was rector for the last twenty-five years of his life. His grave is in the quiet churchyard quite close to the diminutive tower. Within the church is a fine carved screen and several effigies. Proceeding westwards we come to Herringstone where there is an old house once the seat of the Herrings and, since early Jacobean days, of the Williams family. Then comes Monkton, close to Maiden Castle. The church is Norman, much restored. St. Martin follows; a picturesque hamlet with a fine church, the last in the west of England to dispense with clarionet, flute and ba.s.s-viol in the village choir. On sign-posts as well as colloquially this hamlet is known as "Martinstown." Steepleton boasts a stone spire, rare for Dorset, and a curious and very ancient figure of an angel on the outside wall declared by most authorities to be Saxon.

The last of the villages is Winterbourne Abbas, seven miles from Winterbourne Came. The whole of the low hillsides around the hamlets of the bourne are covered with barrows, some of which have been explored with good results, though indiscriminate ravishing of these old graves is to be deplored.

Another short excursion from Dorchester is up the valley of the Cerne.

About a mile and a half from St. Peter's Church, proceeding by North Street, is Charminster, a pretty little place in itself and well situated in the opening valley of the sparkling Cerne. Here is a church with a n.o.ble Perpendicular tower, built by Sir Thomas Trenchard about 1510. The knight's monogram is to be seen on the tower. Within the partly Norman church are several monuments of the family, which lived at Wolfeton House, a fine Tudor mansion on the site of a still older building. Its embattled towers, beautiful windows and ivy-clad walls make up an ideal picture of a "stately home of England."

Wolfeton was the scene of the reception in 1506 of Philip of Austria and Joanna of Spain, who were driven into Weymouth by a storm. (The incident is referred to in the next chapter.) This occurrence may be said to have founded the fortunes of the ducal house of Bedford. Young John Russell, of Bridport, a relative of the Trenchards, happened to be a good linguist, which the host was not. He was sent for, and so well impressed the royal couple that they took him with them to Windsor. Henry VII was quite as much interested, and young Russell's fortune was made. He stayed with the court until the next reign, and at the Dissolution got Woburn Abbey, a property still in the hands of his great family.

Continuing up the Cerne valley, G.o.dmanstone, a village of picturesque gables and colourful roofs, is about four and a half miles from Dorchester. Here the valley narrows between Cowden Hill and Crete Hill. The Perpendicular church has been restored, and is of little interest. Nether Cerne, a mile further along and two miles short of Cerne Abbas, also calls for little comment, but "Abbas" (or, according to Hardy, "Abbots Cernel") is of much historic interest.

Cerne Abbey was founded in 987 by Aethelmar, Earl of Devon and Cornwall. Legend has it that the monastery originated in the days of St. Augustine, but of this there is no proof, though it is certain that a religious house nourished here for nearly a century before the Benedictine abbey was established. The first Abbot Aelfric was famous for his learning, and his Homilies in Latin and English are of much value to students of Anglo-Saxon. Canute was the first despoiler of Cerne, though he made good his plunderings tenfold when peace, on his terms, came to Wess.e.x. Queen Margaret sought sanctuary here in 1471 with her son, the heir to the English throne. At the Abbey, or on the way thither from Weymouth, the courageous Queen learned of the defeat of the Lancastrian army at Barnet. From Cerne she went to lead a force against the Yorkists at Tewkesbury. There she was defeated, her son brutally murdered and all hope lost for the cause of her imprisoned husband, the feeble and half-witted Henry VI.

A most beautiful relic of the Abbey is the Gatehouse, a fine stone building that has weathered to the most exquisite tint. The grand oriel window and panelled and groined entrance are justly admired. The remaining ruins, however, are almost negligible. The Perpendicular church is remarkable for its splendid tower, on which is a niche and canopy enshrining an old statue of the Virgin and Child. Within is a good stone screen and a fine oaken pulpit dating from 1640. Cerne town seems never to have recovered its importance after the loss of the Abbey. For its size, it is the sleepiest place in Dorset and its streets are literally gra.s.s grown. The surroundings are beautiful in a quiet way, and the town and neighbourhood generally provide an ideal spot for a rest cure. North-east of the town is a chalk bluff called Giant's Hill, with the figure of the famous "Cerne Giant," 180 feet in height, cut on its side. "Vulgar tradition makes this figure commemorate the destruction of a giant, who, having feasted on some sheep in Blackmore and laid himself down to sleep, was pinioned down like another Gulliver, and killed by the enraged peasants on the spot, who immediately traced his dimensions for the information of posterity" (Criswick). An encampment on the top of the hill and the figure itself are probably the work of early Celts. The "Giant" is reminiscent of the "Long Man of Wilmington" on the South Downs near Eastbourne. An interesting experiment in the communal life was started in 1913 near the town. After struggling along for five years it finally "petered out" in 1918, helped to its death, no doubt, by the exigencies of the last year of war.

A return may be made by way of Maiden Newton, about six miles south-west of Cerne, pa.s.sing through Sydling St. Nicholas, where there is a Perpendicular church noted for its fine tower with elaborate gargoyles. The old Norman font and north porch are also noteworthy.

Close to the church is an ancient Manor-house with a fine t.i.the barn.

This belonged in 1590 to the famous Elizabethan, Sir Francis Walsingham. Maiden Newton is a junction on the Great Western with a branch line to Bridport.

The beautiful churchyard is the best thing about Maiden Newton. The village had seen, prior to the late war, a good deal of rebuilding; relative unattractiveness is the consequence. This seems to be the almost inevitable result of the establishment of a railway junction.

The church stands on the site of a Wrest Saxon building, and is partly Norman with much Perpendicular work. Cattistock, a long mile north, is unspoilt and pretty both in itself and its situation. It has a fine church, much rebuilt and gaudily decorated, with a tower containing no less than thirty-five bells and a clock face so enormous that it occupies a goodly portion of the wall.

If the railway is not taken one may return by the eight miles of high road that follows the Frome through Vanchurch and Frampton to Charminster and Dorchester. The first named village though pleasant enough, calls for little comment, but Frampton (or Frome town) is not only picturesquely placed between the soft hills that drop to the wooded banks of the river, but has also other claims to notice. The church, though it has been cruelly pulled about, has an interesting old stone pulpit with carvings of monks bearing vessels. A number of memorials may be seen of the Brownes, once a renowned local family, and of their successors and connexions, among whom were certain of the Sheridan family, of which the famous Richard Brinsley Sheridan was a member. Near Frampton in the closing years of the eighteenth century a Roman pavement was discovered, bearing in its mosaic indications of Christian designs and forms.

The straight and tree-lined Roman road that runs west from Dorchester is, except for fast motor traffic and a few farm waggons bringing produce to the great emporium of Dorset, usually deserted, for it has no villages of importance on the fourteen miles to Bridport.

Winterbourne Abbas is more than four miles away and Kingston Russell, exactly half-way to Bridport, is the only other village on the road.

This was once the home of the Russells who became Dukes of Bedford.

Here was born Sir T.M. Hardy and here died J.L. Motley, author of the _History of the Dutch Republic_. The poor remnants of the old manor house are to be seen in the farm near the hamlet.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WEYMOUTH HARBOUR.]

CHAPTER V

WEYMOUTH AND PORTLAND

The fashionable Weymouth of to-day is the Melcombe Regis of the past, and quite a proportion of visitors to Melcombe never go into the real Weymouth at all. The tarry, fishy and beery (in a manufacturing sense only) old town is on the south side of the harbour bridge and has little in common with the busy and popular watering place on the north and east. Once separate boroughs, the towns are now under one government, and Melcombe Regis has dropped its name almost entirely in favour of that of the older partner.

How many towns on the coast claim their particular semicircle of bay to be "the English Naples"? Douglas, Sandown and even Swanage have at some time or other, through their local guides, plumed themselves on the supposed resemblance. It is as inapplicable to these as it is to Weymouth, though the latter seems to insist upon it more than the rest. Apart from the bay, which is one of the most beautiful on the coast, boarding-house Weymouth is more like Bloomsbury than anywhere else on earth, and a very pleasant, mellow, comfortable old Bloomsbury, reminiscent of good solid comfortable times, even if they were rather dowdy and dull. Not that Weymouth is dull. In the far-off days of half-day excursions from London at a fare that now would only take them as far as Windsor, the crowds of holiday-makers were wont to make the front almost too lively. But away from such times there are few towns of the size that make such a pleasant impression upon the chance tourist, who can spend some days here with profit if he will but make it the headquarters for short explorations into the surrounding country and along the coast east and west, but especially east.

The first mention of Weymouth in West Saxon times is in a charter of King Ethelred, still existing, that makes a grant of land "in Weymouth or Wyke Regis" to Atsere, one of the King's councillors. Edward Confessor gave the manor to Winchester, and afterwards it became the property of Eleanor, the consort of Edward I. The large village slowly grew into a small town and port.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WYKE REGIS.]

Wool became its staple trade, and in 1347 the port was rich enough to find twenty ships for the fleet besieging Calais. At this time Melcombe Regis began to a.s.sume as much importance as its neighbour across the harbour. The only communication between the two was then a ferry boat worked hand over hand by a rope. Henry VIII built Sandsfoot Castle for the protection of the ports, and while Elizabeth was Queen the harbour was bridged and the jealousy between the towns brought to an end by an Act pa.s.sed to consolidate their interests. Soon after this the inhabitants had the satisfaction of seeing the great galleon of a Spanish admiral brought in as a prize of war, the towns having furnished six large ships toward the fleet that met the Armada.

During the reign of the seventh Henry a violent storm obliged Philip of Castile and his consort Joanna to claim, much against their will, the hospitality of the town. The Spanish sovereigns, who were not on the best terms with England, were very ill, and dry land on any terms was, to them, the only desirable thing. They were met on landing by Sir Thomas Trenchard of Wolveton with a hastily summoned force of militia. King Philip was informed that he would not be allowed to return to his ship until Henry had seen him, and in due course the Earl of Arundel arrived to conduct the unwilling visitors to the presence of the king. As we saw while at Charminster, this incident led to the founding of a great ducal family.

It is to George III that Weymouth owes its successful career as a watering place, although a beginning had been made over twenty years before the King's visit by a native of Bath named Ralph Allen, who actually forsook that "shrine of Hygeia," to come to Melcombe, where "to the great wonder of his friends he immersed his bare person in the open sea." Allen seems to have been familiar with the Duke of Gloucester, whom he induced to accompany him. So pleased was the Duke with Melcombe, that he decided to build a house on the front--Gloucester Lodge, now the hotel of that name--and here to the huge delight of the inhabitants, George, his Queen and three daughters came in 1789. An amusing account of the royal visit is given by f.a.n.n.y Burney. The King was so pleased with the place that he stayed eleven weeks, and by his unaffected buorgeois manner and approachableness quickly gained the enthusiastic loyalty of his Dorset subjects. Miss Burney's most entertaining reminiscence of the visit is the oft-repeated account of the King's first dip in the sea. Immediately the royal person "became immersed beneath the waves" a band, concealed in a bathing machine struck up "G.o.d save Great George our King." Weymouth is in possession of a keepsake of these stirring times in the statue of His Hanoverian Majesty that graces(?) the centre of the Esplanade. It is to be hoped that the town will never be inveigled into sc.r.a.pping this memorial, which for quaintness and unconscious humour is almost unsurpa.s.sed. A subject of derisive merriment to the tripper and of shuddering aversion for those with any aesthetic sense, it is nevertheless an interesting link with another age and is not very much worse than some other specimens of the memorial type of a more recent date. It has lately received a coat of paint of an intense black and the cross-headed wand that the monarch holds is tipped with gold. The contrast with the enormous expanse of white base, out of all proportion to the little black figure of the King, is strangely startling.

Not much can be said for St. Mary's, an eighteenth-century church in St. Mary's Street which carries the Bloomsbury-by-Sea idea to excess.

The church has a tablet, the epitaph upon which seems quite unique in the contradictory character it gives to the deceased:

UNDETH LIES YE BODY OF CHRISR. BROOKS ESQ. OF JAMAICA WHO DEPARD. THIS LIFE 4 SEPR. 1769 AGED 38 YEARS, ONE OF YE WORST OF MEN FRIEND TO YE DISTRESD.

TRULY AFFECTD & KIND HUSBAND TENDER PART. & A SINCR. FRIEND

The artist was unfortunate in his choice of abbreviations and strangers are sometimes sorely puzzled; some, indeed, never guess that "worst" has any connexion with "worthiest." The altar piece, difficult to see on a dull day, was painted by Sir James Thornhill, a former representative of the borough in Parliament. Sir Christopher Wren was also for a time member for Weymouth, and portraits of both, together with the Duke of Wellington and George III, adorn the Guildhall, a good building at the west end of St. Mary's Street. The twin towns were unique in their choice of members; in addition to the great architect and famous painter, a poet--Richard Glover, author of _Leonidas_--of no mean repute in his own day, was chosen and the _original_ Winston Churchill, father of the great Duke of Marlborough, also sat for Weymouth.

[Ill.u.s.tration: OLD WEYMOUTH.]

Within the Guildhall is to be seen a chest from the captured Armada galleon and an old chair from Melcombe Friary, of which some poor remnants existed in Maiden Street almost within living memory. On the other side of the harbour is Holy Trinity Church, built in 1836. This has another fine altar painting of the Crucifixion, thought by some authorities to be by Vandyck.

Certain portions of old Weymouth are very picturesque, with steep streets and comfortable old bow-windowed lodging-houses patronized almost exclusively by the better cla.s.s of seafarer; merchant captains, pilots and the like. A few of the lanes at the upper end of the harbour may be termed "slums" by the more fastidious, but it is only to their outward appearance that the word is applicable. Some of these cottages are of great age and a number have been allowed to fall to ruin. In Melcombe Regis at the corner of Edmund and Maiden Streets may be seen, still embedded in the wall high above the pavement, a cannon ball shot at the unfortunate town during the Civil War, in which unhappy period much damage was done, the contending parties successively occupying the wretched port to the great discomfort of the burgesses.

Radipole Lake is the name given to the large sheet of water at the back of Melcombe, formed by the mouth of the Wey before it becomes Weymouth Harbour. The name is actually "Reedy Pool," so that "lake" is a tautology reminding one of a similar blunder, often made by folks who should know better, in speaking of "Lake" Winder_mere_. Radipole is spoilt by an ugly railway bridge and some sidings belonging to the joint railways that lie along the eastern bank for some distance. The water is enlivened by a large colony of swans and also in the summer by boating parties, who prefer the quietude of the pool to the possible discomforts of the bay. But the bay is the reason for holiday Weymouth, not only for the beauty of its wide sweep and the remarkable colouring of the water, but for the firm sands with occasional patches of shingle that lie between sh.o.r.e and sea from the harbour mouth almost to Redcliff Point.

The chief excursion from Weymouth is to Portland, and of course every one must take it, but there are other and finer ways out of the town, most of which show the "island" at its best--as an imposing ma.s.s of rock in the middle distance.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PORTLAND.]

A ferry plies between the steamer quay, just beyond Alexandra Gardens and the Nothe, the headland extremity of the peninsula upon which old Weymouth is built. This is one of the best points from which to view the bay. Portland is also well seen "lying on the sea like a great crouching anumal" (Hardy). The commanding parts of the Nothe are heavily fortified and the permanent barracks are always occupied by a strong force. On the south are Portland Roads, usually interesting for the number of warships congregated there. There are exceedingly powerful defences at the ends of the breakwaters and the openings can be protected from under-water attack by enormous booms. The first wall took twenty-three years to build by convict labour and it explains the origin of the prison at Portland, which was not established as some think, because of the difficulty of escape, but solely for the convenience of "free labour." It is said that the amount of stone used in the oldest of the breakwaters was five million tons.

If the road is taken into Portland the village of Rodwell, at which there is a station, is at the parting of the ways, that to the left leading to the sh.o.r.e at Sandsfoot Castle, one of Henry's block houses that played a part in the Civil War. It is not a particularly picturesque ruin, though its purchase by the Weymouth corporation will prevent any more of the wanton damage it has suffered in the past. The other route goes direct to Wyke Regis, upon the hill above East Fleet and the Chesil Bank. Wyke is the mother church of Weymouth and is a fine Perpendicular structure in a magnificent position. Its list of rectors starts in 1302, so that the church must be on the site of an earlier building. The churchyard is the resting place of a large number of shipwrecked sailors who have met their death in the dread "Deadman's Bay," as this end of the great West Bay is termed.

The road into Portland is across a bridge built in 1839, the first to connect the island-peninsula with the mainland. Then follows a long two miles of monotony along the eastern end of Chesil Beach, and the most ardent pedestrian will prefer to take to the railway at least as far as Portland station if not to the terminus at Easton. The lonely stretch of West Bay, in sharp contrast to the animation of the Roads, cannot be seen unless the high bank of shingle on the right is ascended. Portland Castle is on the nearest point of the island to the mainland. This also was built by Henry VIII and is in good repair and inhabited by one of the officers of the garrison.

The road ascends to Fortune's Well, as uninteresting a "capital" as could well be imagined and for the sheer ugliness of its buildings and church probably unsurpa.s.sed. Its only claim to notice is the extraordinary way in which its houses are built on the hillside, one row of doorsteps and diminutive gardens being on a level with the next row of roofs, so steep is the lie of the land. Above the village is the great Verne Fort occupying fifty acres on the highest point of the island and commanding all the approaches to the Roads.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ON THE WAY TO CHURCH OPE.]

The route now bears right and soon reaches a high and desolate plateau littered with the debris of many years quarrying. The only saving grace in the scenery is the magnificent rearward view along the vast and slightly curving Chesil Bank which stretches away to Abbotsbury and the highlands of the beautiful West Dorset coast. The prison is still farther ahead to the left. There would be fewer visitors to Portland were it not for a morbid desire to see the convicts. Parties are often made up to arrive in time to watch the men as they leave the quarries in the late afternoon. Soldiers and warders mount guard along the walls and the depressing sight should be shunned as much for one's own sake as for that of the prisoners. Good taste, however, is a virtue that usually has to give way before curiosity.

The road now descends to Easton, a place of remarkably wide streets and a number of well-built churches, not all of the Establishment, however. The solid old houses, consisting entirely of the local stone, are not uninteresting and are in keeping with the dour and bleak scenery of the island. The mistake of importing alien red bricks of a most aggressive hue has not been made here. Those that flame from the hill slope above Portland station only succeed in emphasizing the general bleakness of their surroundings. At Easton clock tower a street called "Straits" turns left and east and presently a broad road leads downhill to the right to the gates of Pennsylvania Castle, built, it is said, at the suggestion of George III by John Penn, Governor of Portland, and a descendant of the great Penn in whose honour it was named. A narrow pa.s.sage by the castle wall brings us to Rufus, or "Bow and Arrow" Castle, to which the third name of "Red King's Castle" has been given by Hardy in _The Well Beloved_. Its picturesque ivy-clad sh.e.l.l is perched on a crag at the head of Church Hope Cove, really "Church Ope" or opening. In the grounds of Pennsylvania Castle, shown on application, are the ruins of an ancient church, destroyed by a landslip. The disaster brought to light the foundations of a far older building. Near the ruins is a gravestone with the following mysterious epitaph:

"IN LIFE I WROATH IN STONE; NOW LIFE IS GONE, I KNOW I SHALL BE RAISED BY A STONE AND B SUCH A STONE AS GIVETH LIVING BREATH AND SAVETH THE RIGHTEOUS FROM THE SECOND DEATH."