The Hardy Country: Literary landmarks of the Wessex Novels

by Charles G. Harper

Bere Regis in its decay is a storehouse of old Dorset speech and customs. To its cottagers vegetables are “gearden-tackle,” sugar—at least, the moist variety—is “zand,” and garden-flowers all have quaint outlandish names. The rustic folk have a keen, if homely philosophy. “Ef ’twarnt for the belly,” said one to the present writer, in allusion to cost of living, “back ’ud wear gold.” “Bere,” said another—an ‘outlandish’ person he, who had only been settled in the village a decade or so and accordingly was only regarded as a stranger, and so indeed regarded himself—“Bere, a poor dra’lattin twankyten pleace, ten mile from anywheer, God help it!” which is so very nearly true that, if you consult the map you will find that Dorchester is ten miles distant, Corfe Castle twelve, Wimborne twelve, Blandford eight, and Wareham, the nearest town, seven miles away.

“Kingsbere-sub-Greenhill,” as Mr. Hardy elects to rechristen Bere Regis, owes the ultimate limb of that compound name to Woodbury Hill, a lofty elevation rising like an exaggerated down, but partly clothed with trees, on the outskirts of Bere Regis. The novelist describes this scene of an ancient annual fair, now much shrunken from its olden import, rather as it was than as it is. “Greenhill was the Nijni Novgorod of South Wessex; and the busiest, merriest, noisiest day of the whole statute number was the day of the sheep-fair. This yearly gathering was upon the summit of a hill, which retained in good preservation the remains of an ancient earthwork, consisting of a huge rampart and entrenchment of an oval form, encircling the top of the hill, though somewhat broken down here and there. To each of the two openings, on opposite sides, a winding road ascended, and the level green space of twenty or thirty acres enclosed by the bank was the site of the fair. A few permanent erections dotted the spot, but the majority of the visitors patronised canvas alone for resting and feeding under during the time of their sojourn here.”

The place looks interesting, viewed from beneath whence two forlorn-looking houses are seen perched on the very ridge of the windy height. But it is always best to remain below, and so to keep romantic illusions; and here is no exception. Climbing to the summit, those two houses are increased to fifteen or seventeen red-brick, storm-beaten cottages, some thatched, others slated, mostly uninhabited; all commonplace. The fair is still held in September, beginning on the 18th, the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Formerly it lasted a week, and, at the rate of a hundred pounds a day in tolls to the Lord of the Manor, brought that fortunate person an annual “unearned increment” as the Radicals would call it, of £700. Nowadays those tolls are very much of a negligible quantity.

Here it was, during the sheep fair, that Troy, supposed to have long before been drowned in Lulworth Cove, but living and masquerading as Mr. Francis, the Great Cosmopolitan Roughrider, enacted the part of Dick Turpin in the canvas-covered show, and, looking through a hole in the tent, unobserved himself, observed Bathsheba, who had thought him dead.

The villagers of Bere look askance upon the dwellers on this eyrie. They tell you “they be gipsy vo’k up yon,” and hold it to be the last resort of those declining in worldly estate. Villagers going, metaphorically, “down the hill” in the direction of outdoor relief, move to the less desirable cottages in the village, and then, complete penury at last overtaking them, continue their moral and economic descent by the geographical ascent of this hill of Woodbury, whence they are at last removed to “The Union.”

Below Woodbury Hill, on the edge of Bere Wood, the scene of an old Turberville attempt at illegal enclosure, is rural Bloxworth, whose little church contains the fine monument of Sir John Trenchard “of the ancient family of the Trenchards in Dorsetshire,” Sergeant-at-Law and Secretary of State in the reign of William and Mary. He died in 1695, aged 46. Ten years before, he had been an active sympathiser with the Duke of Monmouth, in that ill-fated rebellion, and it is told, how, when visiting one Mr. Speke at Ilchester, hearing that Jeffreys had issued a warrant for his arrest, he instantly took horse, rode to Poole and thence crossed to Holland, returning with the Prince of Orange three years later.

Above all other interest at Bere is the beautiful church, standing a little distance below the long-drawn village street, and clearly from its character and details, a building cherished and beautified by the Abbey of Tarent, by the Turbervilles, and by Cardinal Archbishop Morton, native of the place.

The three-staged pinnacled tower is very fine, the lower stage alternately of stone and flint, the three surmounting courses diapered: the second and third stages treated wholly in that chessboard fashion. The beautiful belfry windows, of three lights, divided into three stages by transoms, are filled with pierced stonework. The exterior south wall of the church is of alternate red brick and flint, in courses of threes. There is a remarkable window in the west wall of the north aisle, and in the south wall the exceptionally fine and unusual Turberville window, of late Gothic character and five lights, filled in modern times by the Erle-Drax family, of Charborough, with a series of stained-glass armorial shields, displaying the red lion of the Turbervilles, all toe-nails and whiskers, and ducally crowned, ramping against an ermine field, firstly by himself and then conjointly with the arms of the families with which the Turbervilles, in the course of many centuries, allied themselves. The Erle-Draxes have not, in honouring the extinct Turberville, forgotten themselves, for some of the shields display their arms and those of the Sawbridges, Grosvenors, Churchills, and Eggintons they married.