Dorset

“ The magnificent panorama from the high land above Studland embraces nearly the whole of the eastern half of Dorset, the far-famed Isle of Purbeck, and as we turn from the amphitheatre of rolling downs the eye ranges to the blue sea breaking at the base of the chalk cliffs of the Isle of Wight, or foaming round the near promontory of Peveril Point. ”

“ Almost each mile we travelled gave us some thought of Hardy, and acquainted me with the character of Dorset, which is just what I expected from his books: giant trees; tall, secretive hedges; high brick walls, mellow with age and curtained with ivy; stone cottages, solid and prosperous and old, with queer little bay-windows, diamond-paned; Purbeck granite bursting through the grass of meadows, and making a grave background for brilliant flowers; heaths that Hardy wrote about in the "Return of the Native"—heaths, heaths, and rolling downs. ”

“ After a general sketch of the history of Dorset by the late Editor, the traces of the earliest races which inhabited this county are discussed by Mr. Prideaux, who tells of the ancient barrows in Dorset, and the details of the Roman occupation are shown by Captain Acland. Dorset is rich in churches, and no one was more capable to describe their chief features than Mr. Perkins. His chapter is followed by others of more detail, dealing with the three great minsters still standing—Sherborne, Milton, and Wimborne, the monastic house at Ford, and the memorial brasses of Dorset. ”

“ Dorset, by the way, married a son of the vicar of Walberton and Burlington, whose curious head-dress gave to an odd-looking tree on Bury hill the name of Parson Dorset's wig—for the parson was known by his eccentricities far from home. The old story of advice to a flock: "Do as I say, not as I do," is told also of him. ”

“ Moule, writing in 1893, says: “Roman work of one kind and another has been found here in Dorset in eighty places, and that for the most part casually.” But year after year this number is increased, and, truth to tell, so frequent are the discoveries that in Dorchester the ordinary labourer, when excavating in the streets, or elsewhere, is ever on the alert, and many a treasure rewards his watchful care ”

“ Dorset did not take part in the expedition to England, for Richmond, who still mistrusted him, left him behind at Paris with John Bourchier as surety for a loan of money. After the victory of Bosworth Henry VII redeemed his pledge, and recalled Dorset to England, In 1485 Dorset's attainder was reversed, and in November 1486 he received confirmation of his titles. ”

“ But despite the fact that Dorset is architecturally much poorer at the beginning of the twentieth century than at the beginning of the nineteenth, there is still much that the archæologist may take joy in, though his joy may be mingled with regret at treasures of old time that have vanished for ever. ”

“ 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. ”

“ HE County of Dorset is exceedingly rich in the prehistoric burial-places commonly called barrows. At the present time considerably over a thousand are marked on the one-inch Ordnance Map, and, considering the numbers which have been destroyed, we may surely claim that Dorset was a populous centre in prehistoric times, owing probably to its proximity to the Continent and its safe harbours, as well as to its high and dry downs and wooded valleys. ”

“ Dorset is indeed a greatly varied county in the character of its soils. The sheep-grazing districts may be said to be this of the north-east border, and those other stretches of lofty, almost waterless chalk downs, running due east and west, parallel with the coast, with a similarly lengthy, but broader, stretch in a like direction, from where the downs rise from the Stour at Sturminster Marshall, past Milton Abbas and Cerne Abbas, on to Beaminster. ”

“ Dorset is fairly rich in monumental effigies in stone and alabaster. One of the most beautiful and best preserved of the latter is that erected in Wimborne Minster by the Lady Margaret, in memory of her father and mother, John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, and his wife. ”

“ To the most careless observer a good proportion of the country people of Dorset are unusually swarthy and "Welsh" in appearance, though of the handsomer of the two or three distinct races that go to make up that mixed nation, which has among its divergent types some of the most primitive, both in a physical and mental sense, in Europe. ”

“ It will be seen then, that Dorset is what Professor Freeman calls a “ga”—the land in which a certain tribe settled—and differs entirely from those divisions made after the Mercian land had been won back from the Danes, when shires were formed by shearing up the newly recovered land, not into its former divisions which the Danish conquest had obliterated, but into convenient portions, each called after the name of the chief town within its borders, such as Oxfordshire from Oxford, Leicestershire from Leicester. ”

“ The hamlet of Holworth is, indeed, worthy of being a portion of the parish that is acknowledged to be one of the most beautiful places in Dorset. The village of Milton lies enfolded between richly-wooded hills, at the foot of a wonderfully picturesque descent. Sir Frederick Treves, in his Highways and Byways in Dorset, says that “there is nothing like to it in any part of England.” He calls it a “surprising” village, “a toy town.” ”

“ Many may think that such aspects of nature could never be met with in the sunny southern county of Dorset; but the writer speaks of what he has seen on several occasions, when snow has been piled up to the cottage eaves, when the morning letters have not reached the town till after sunset, when even a wagon and its team have been buried for hours in a snow-drift, and the horses rescued with difficulty. ”

“ The southern part of Dorset, especially in the neighbourhood of Poole Harbour, suffered much during the time that the Danes were harrying the coast of England. There were fights at sea in Swanage Bay, there were fights on land round the walls of Wareham, there were burnings of religious houses at Wimborne and Wareham. Then followed the victories of Ælfred, and for a time Dorset had rest. But after Eadward was murdered at “Corfes-geat” by his stepmother Ælfthryth’s order, and the weak King Æthelred was crowned, the Danes gave trouble again. The King first bribed them to land alone ”

“ Kimmeridge in Dorset, Kimmeridge in Dorset,
Though I may not see you more thro' all the years to be,
Yet will I remember the little happy homestead
Hidden in that Paradise where God was good to me.
* * * *
So they turned to London, and with mind and soul he laboured,
Flos Mercatorum, for the mighty years to be,
Fashioning, for profit—to the years that should forget him!—
This, our sacred City that must shine upon the sea. [Pg 406]
London was a City when the Poulters ruled the Poultry! ”

“ Dorset, on the other hand, holds a high place in the annals of lace-making, three separate towns, in their day—Blandford, Sherborne, and Lyme Regis—disputing the palm of excellence for their productions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But whatever the difficulties of navigating the tortuous channel which leads up to Poole Quay, past pretty Brownsea (to which custom has added the superfluous word “Island,” the determination “ea” or “ey” meaning island) and its imposing castle dating in part from the time of Henry VIII, maybe there is such a charm about what has been called “the Lake Land of Dorset,” that few lovers of the picturesque will pass the Haven mouth and leave it unentered. ”

“ It is an exceedingly beautiful church, and the few houses in its immediate neighbourhood, with stone mullioned windows, are all in keeping with the church. The straggling cottages, the winding lanes, render it one of the most picturesque villages in the county. It was a distinct loss to Somerset and gain to Dorset when this parish was transferred from the former to the latter county. ”

“ Dorset, or Dorsetshire, a maritime county in the south of England, having on the south the English Channel; area, 627,265 acres, over 490,000 being under crop. The general surface of the county is undulating; its principal elevations being chalk hills known as the North and South Downs, upon which immense flocks of sheep are pastured. On the south, on the borders of Hampshire and along part of the sea-coast, is a heathy common. A great part of the county is in grass, and dairy husbandry is extensively carried on. ”

“ In his “Praise o’ Dorset” the poet is very modest, with a kind of humorous modesty, about the county. Though we may be homely, is the beginning, we are not ashamed to own our place; we have some women “not uncomely,” and so on. Homeliness, in fact, is characteristic of Barnes and of his Dorset. He became in some ways a learned man, but when he wrote in his mother tongue and from the heart, he was the Dorset farmer’s son and nothing else. ”

“ The Rainbow country of Dorset is, in fact, a country innocent of railways. It is comprised within a rough circle made by tracing a course from Bere Regis to Piddletrenthide, Cerne Abbas, Minterne Magna, Holnest, Sherborne, Milborne Port, Stalbridge, Sturminster Newton, and Blandford, and is not only in parts extremely hilly, but includes Bulbarrow, one of the highest hills in Dorsetshire, 927 feet above sea-level, and Nettlecombe Tout ”

“ We are perfectly delighted with Dorset; the sweet seclusion is most soothing, and the house is very pleasant. Mr. and Mrs. F. are intelligent, agreeable people, and do all they can to make us comfortable. The mountains are so near that I hear the crows cawing in the trees. We are making pretty things and pressing an unheard-of quantity of ferns. We go to the woods regularly every morning and stay the whole forenoon. In the afternoon we rest, read, write, etc.; sometimes we drive and always after tea George walks with me about two miles. I hope the war is not impeding your movements. ”

“ Although Dorset has a host of literary associations other than those furnished by the Wessex novels, and notwithstanding that William Barnes sang of its charms to deaf ears as sweetly as ever Burns piped of the North Country, it was left to Thomas Hardy to reveal Dorset to those who knew it not; although he was writing for a great many years before his novels began to draw people to the land of Gabriel Oak, Tess, and Ethelberta. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Dorset. The Anglo-Saxon Dwrset, or water settlement, so called from the British tribe the Dwr-trigs, “water dwellers,” who peopled it.
Dorset Square. After Viscount Portman, the ground landlord, who, before he was raised to the peerage, was for many years Member for Dorsetshire.
Dorset Street. From the mansion and grounds of the Earl of Dorset of the Restoration period. Here stood also the Dorset Gardens Theatre.
Doss. Slang for a sleep, a shakedown. From the old word dossel, a bundle of hay or straw, whence was derived Doss, a straw bed.
Doss-house. A common lodging-house. See “Doss.” ”

“ And, moreover, Dorset Perpendicular is not equal to that which is to be found in the neighbouring county of Somerset. We look in vain for the splendid fifteenth century towers which are the glory of the [Pg 46] Somerset churches; here and there in isolated places, and, strange enough, not on the Somerset border, we find traces of the Somerset influence; but for the most part the Dorset towers are utilitarian appendages, not structures carefully designed with a view to beauty of outline and richness and appropriateness of ornament, as the finest of the Somerset towers are. ”

“ The old town was one of the most ancient in Dorset. It grew up with the Abbey, and was known as Middleton (of which Milton is a contraction) , because it was the middle town of the county. It contained shops of all kinds, four inns, a pre-Reformation Grammar School, almshouses built in 1674, and a brewery, which helped to supply Weymouth, Poole, and other large towns in Dorset. Milton Abbey ales were at one time among the most famous in the county; they could also be obtained in London. The tradesmen of old Milton were prosperous, but the “working classes” were very poor. ”

“ 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. ”