Dorchester, Dorset

“ A decade later Miss Burney (Mme. D’Arblay) gives a lively picture of Dorchester as she saw it when travelling in [Pg 151] the suite of George III. to Weymouth: “The city had so antique an air, I longed to investigate its old buildings. The houses have the most ancient appearance of any that are inhabited that I have happened to see; and inhabited they were indeed! There was an amazing quantity of indigenous residers—old women and young children,” who, as she shrewdly remarks, could not have come in from a distance, and so formed an index of population. ”

“ It would be night before he reached Dorchester; but there was a moon, and he knew every yard of high road, every grassy ride across the wide barren heath between Cheriton and the old Roman city. He knew the road and he knew his horse, which was as good of its kind as there was to be found in the county of Dorset. He was not a rich man, and he had to work hard for his living, but he was the son of a well-to-do father, and he never stinted the price of the horse that carried him, and which was something more to Theodore Dalbrook than most men’s horses are to them. ”

“ In Edward the Confessor’s reign one hundred and twenty houses stood in this Dorset town, which, in comparison with the other towns of the county, came next to Dorchester and Wareham. Bridport, too, had a mint of its own, and its mint-master paid well for the privilege of coining.
The Norman Conquest does not appear to have been an unmixed blessing in these parts. In Domesday Survey the town is shown to have gone back considerably. Twenty houses are stated to be desolate, and the people impoverished. ”

“ It is said that he tore down the walls, but this, almost for certain, was not so; they were too massive to be wrecked without long labour, which the rovers would not care to spend; and there is large evidence for their existence far into the seventeenth century. However, Danish fire and sword must have left the town black and blood-stained within its ramparts. Half a century later, under the Confessor, Dorchester counted 172 houses; the number is recorded in Domesday Book (1085-6) as large, in contrast to the eighty-eight at the date of the survey. ”

“ Hardy’s most inalienable possession is not [Pg 290] the town but the wild, the “obscure, obsolete, superseded country,” a “tract in pain,” which, with one form but many names, stretches from Poole in the east to almost within sight of Dorchester on the west, from near Bere Regis in the north to Winfrith in the south, where it joins the heathland of the Isle of Purbeck. ”

“ Dorchester is not only the capital of Dorset: it is also the chief town of the Hardy Country. The ancient capital of Wessex was Winchester: the chief seat of this literary domain is here, beside the Frome. Four miles distant from it the novelist was born, and at Max Gate, Fordington, looking down upon Dorchester’s roofs, he resides.
The old country life still closely encircles the county town, and on market-days takes the place by storm ”

“ But in addition to these more obvious relics of a bygone age, the subsoil of Dorchester is full of treasures that emphasise the Roman occupation. It would be impossible to describe in these pages even the most interesting of the objects that have been brought to light in recent years, but it is fortunate that they find their way very frequently to the County Museum, of which the people of Dorset are justly proud. It must suffice at the present time to mention that in its cases may be seen a fine collection of objects made of Kimmeridge shale ”

“ In the wars between Stephen and Maud, Dorset was often the battle-ground of the rival claimants for the throne. Wareham, unfortunate then, as usual, was taken [Pg 9] and re-taken more than once, first by one party, then by the other; but lack of space prevents the telling of this piece of local history.
King John evidently had a liking for Dorset. He often visited it, having houses of his own at Bere Regis, Canford, Corfe, Cranborne, Gillingham, and Dorchester. In the sixteenth year of his reign he put strong garrisons into Corfe Castle and Wareham as a defence against his discontented barons. ”

“ Work of the Early English period (thirteenth century) is not very common in Dorset. We meet with it, however, in the east end of Wimborne Minster, in the churches of Knighton, Cranborne, Corfe Mullen, Portesham, and Worth, among others.
Nor is the Decorated style more fully represented. The best examples are Milton Abbey Church, which is almost entirely in this style, and the aisles of Wimborne Minster; but it may also be seen in Gussage St. Michael, Tarrant Rushton, and Wooton Glanville, and at St. Peter’s, Dorchester, a well-preserved arch for the Easter sepulchre of this period may be seen. ”

“ Beautiful is the prospect, near and far. Below us lies the spacious churchyard, a burial-place, in parts, ever since the Roman period. Westward you see Dorchester, tower, spire, and bowery Walks, with Poundbury beyond them. South-westward lies expanded the vast field of Fordington, [Pg 155] which till 1870 was unbroken by fence, and was tilled by the farmers on a system of annual exchange, older, probably, than the Christian era. ”

“ Although there is scarcely any portion of the county that does not figure in one or other of Mr. Hardy's novels or poems, yet by far the greater number of scenes lie in the portion called South Dorset, around and below an imaginary line drawn from a little to the west of Dorchester to Poole Harbour, and it is mainly with this portion of the Hardy country that it is proposed to deal in this volume.
Like all the true beauty spots of England, increasing familiarity with these south-country landscapes deepens their ineffaceable impression as it multiplies their alluring charms ”

“ In most cases, the birthplace of a novelist has no particular significance in relation to his work. Very often a writer’s county is like Matthew Prior’s, exchanged for Middlesex. But in the case of Mr. Hardy it is different. The fact that he was born in a “mere germ of a village” near Dorchester, and within sound of a heath; that his life has been spent, for the most part, in Dorset ”

“ Our American cousins, who make their pilgrimage to the Hardy country in ever-increasing numbers, may be glad to be reminded that it was in the environs of this Dorset Dorchester that John Lothrop Motley, the celebrated historian, made his English home, he having been born, curiously enough, in the younger Dorchester of Massachusetts. ”

“ But it is interesting to find that the “Saxons,” to use the familiar term, took a century and a half to master Dorset; our fathers must have made a stubborn fight against endless raids. It is at least possible that the victory of Badon Hill—in which, says the Arthurian legend, the Saxon hordes were ruinously beaten by the “Britons,” led perhaps by a Rome-trained chief—was won in Dorset; Badbury, near Wimborne, in the belief of Edwin Guest of Cambridge, was Badon. But Wessex in due time absorbed Dorset and Dorchester ”

“ The great variety of the formation coming to the surface in the area under consideration has given a striking variety to the character of the landscape: the chalk downs of the North and centre, with their rounded outlines; the abrupt escarpments of the greensand in the neighbourhood of Shaftesbury; the rich grazing land of Blackmore Vale on the Oxford clay; and the great Heath (Mr. Hardy’s Egdon) stretching from near Dorchester out to the east across Woolwich, Reading, and Bagshot beds, with their layers of gravel, sand, and clay. The chalk heights are destitute of water ”

“ The "hands across the sea" between the two Dorchesters have never been separated, but the pilgrims now come in the opposite direction, thousands of Americans visiting Dorchester and its antiquities; we heard afterwards that the American Dorset had been presented with one of the tessellated pavements dug up from a Roman villa in what we might call "Dorchester, Senior," in England, and that a memorial had been put up in the porch of Dorchester Church inscribed as follows:
In this Porch lies the body of the Rev. ”

“ Frampton, six miles north of Dorchester; Preston, near Weymouth; Creech, near Wareham; Fifehead Neville, north-west of Blandford; Hemsworth, five miles north of Wimborne; and in Dorchester itself no less than twenty different pavements, either complete or in portions, besides one on the upper area of Maiden Castle. It is difficult to assign a date, even approximately, to these villas, for the coins found amidst the débris cover practically the whole period of Roman occupation, and the other objects generally discovered on the site are not of much assistance. ”

“ Mary Redcliffe at Bristol, or St. Mary Magdalene’s at Taunton; it has no Perpendicular towers to rival those of Shepton Mallet, St. Cuthbert’s at Wells, or Huish Episcopi; but it has some fine examples, nevertheless, distinctly traceable to Somerset influence. The parent design in Dorset may perhaps be seen in Piddletrenthide, 1487; Fordington St. George, the top of which tower has not been very wisely altered of late, is a little more in advance; St. Peter’s, Dorchester, and Charminster are still further developed; the two last probably are the finest individual towers in the county. ”

“ DORSET FOLK-LORE.
MR. HENRY J. MOULE, of Dorchester, has kindly sent me the following "Jottings." I venture to append a few comments thereon, pointing out, for the most part, where parallel superstitions are recorded in the earlier publications of the Society. J. J. Foster.
He says: "We Dorset are not without our odd beliefs and queer tales of past time. But most likely many of both are common to us and other shires. I can but jot down what comes to mind, leaving to others to pick and choose."
"Pigeon feathers should never be used for beds. Folks die hard on them." ”

“ After some stay here, they made a tour through Somerset and Dorset to Hampshire, where they paid a visit to an uncle of our hero’s living then at Dorchester, near Gosport, who was a clergyman of distinguished merit and character ”

“ Peter’s with its “peremptory clang,” the signal for shop-shutting throughout the town. The brick bridge over the Frome, and the stone bridge over a branch of the same stream in the meads, have their well-defined peculiarities in Dorchester as in “Casterbridge.” The neighbourhood of “Mixen” Lane (Mill Lane) , the “mildewed leaf” in the sturdy and flourishing Casterbridge plant, is recognisable at the east end of the town, near the town bridges.
Lucetta’s house, “High Place Hall,” at the corner of Durngate Street, has a modern shop-front inserted ”

“ By the circumstances of birth and lifelong residence the background of his novels, Wessex, has become mainly limited to Dorset (South Wessex) , and especially to the neighbourhood of Dorchester.
The interest of Mr. Hardy’s backgrounds is twofold. There is their purely artistic interest as intensifying action and character; there is also their topographical interest. Mr. ”

“ The more we reflect on the remains which crowd this region—the numerous tracks, the countless tumuli, the frequent dykes—the clearer grows the resemblance between the Yorkshire Wolds and the Downs of Wilts and Dorset. On opening the tumuli we discover similar ornaments, and from whatever cause, consanguinity of race, or analogy of employments and way of life, the earliest people must be allowed to have been very much the same along the dry chalk hills from the vicinity of Bridlington to the country of Dorchester. ”

“ No, modern Dorchester is not like that, and its chief features—the noble elm avenues, that struck the traveller by road into and out of the town with admiration—have had their exquisite nobility qualified by time and change. ”

“ Of all the statesmen of the day, not one has left a more blameless character than the Earl of Dorset. Dorset took the opportunity of leaving upon record in his will, which would not be read till he had no longer injury or favour to expect in this world, the very high admiration in which his colleague was held by him. ”

“ Attendant modern churches and chapels, and the Town Hall, with spires, act as satellites. To the right hand, rising bulky from the huddled mass of houses, is a grey building which but a little experience of touring in England identifies without need of inquiry as the gaol.
Dorchester, figuring as the “Casterbridge” of that mayor whose surprising history is set forth in that powerful story, bulks large in the whole series of Wessex novels—as how could it fail of doing, seeing that the novelist himself was born at Upper Bockhampton, only three miles away? ”

“ As the tourist must have a centre, a starting-off place for his various excursions, the visitor to the Hardy country cannot do better than make his headquarters at Dorchester, the Durnovaria of the Romans and the "Casterbridge" of the novels.
Alighting at either of the railway stations, for the town is well served by both the Great Western and the South Western Companies, the visitor who has learned that Dorchester occupies the site of an important town of the Romans will probably receive a shock at the prevailing note of modernity that confronts him on every side. ”

“ It is doubtful if any town in England has so many remains of the remote past in its vicinity as Dorchester. Probably the Roman settlement of Durnovaria was a parvenu town to the Celts, whose closely adjacent Dwrinwyr was also an upstart in comparison with the fortified stronghold two miles away to the south; the "place by the black water" being an initial attempt to establish a trading centre by a people rather timidly learning from their Phoenician visitors. ”

“ From Wallingford up to Dorchester the neighbourhood of the river grows more hilly, varied, and picturesque. Dorchester stands half a mile from the river. It can be reached by paddling up the Thame, if you have a small boat; but the best way is to leave the river at Day’s Lock, and take a walk across the fields. Dorchester is a delightfully peaceful old place, nestling in stillness and silence and drowsiness. ”