The village stands upon a steep bank above the Frome at the eastern extremity of Porchester, and looks picturesquely out upon the water-meadows.
Comparatively few are those who explore from Dorchester along the old Exeter road to Bridport, for the scenery is wild and the road lonely and steep. Well, then, what of that? Those places are few indeed where level roads accompany rugged scenery. Explore those fourteen miles. Truly they will reward the amateur of scenery: the lofty ridge whose summit is reached three parts of the way revealing widespreading views out to sea on the left, and over wonderful hills and vales inland on the right. You have a taste of what this route is like immediately after leaving Dorchester and its western avenue behind, for cresting the sky-line of the downs on the left are the giant prehistoric earthworks of Maiden Castle, glooming darkly upon the road. Who delved the deep and lofty ditches and embankments, the amazing concentric and overlapping circles enclosing the vast camp on yonder height? Nay, who among the ancient peoples that warred in Britain from the earliest prehistoric times until the dawn of history did not have a hand in that immense fortification and camp of refuge? It was old when the Romans came and added their quota of spade-work to it. But this at least we may deduce from those cyclopean earthworks: that those who made them and added to them must have been horribly afraid, thus to seek the defensive so diligently, instead of going out to battle in the open. Unquestionably, ancient warfares must have raged along this way, for prehistoric tumuli are plentiful along the downs as we progress.
Passing Bridehead Park, a road leads steeply down on the left to Longbredy, where will be found the deserted old manor-house of Kingston Russell, whence the Russells, Dukes of Bedford, sprang from obscurity in 1502, in the person of the courtly and ingratiating John Russell. Admiral Sir Thomas Masterman Hardy was also born here, and under the same roof died John Lothrop Motley, historian of the Dutch Republic, some thirty years ago. Approaching Bridport, a stone at the corner of the hedgerow in Lee Lane on the right commemorates what Fuller styles the “Miraculous Divergence,” the escape of Charles II., September 23, 1651, when he baffled his pursuers by turning out of the main road at this point.
Blackmore Vale.
“This fertile and sheltered tract of country, in which the fields are never brown and the springs never dry.”—Thomas Hardy.
Bridport town stands upon its sponsorial little river, Brit, about one and a half miles from the sea, at West Bay. There, on the exposed seashore of what is often styled “Deadman’s Bay,” the river slides into the Channel. West Bay is the queerest of places. It has a small harbour, formed by locking up the river behind lock-gates, and two parallel wooden jetties start hazardously out from the beach. In and out of this harbour small sailing-vessels make their way; and certain scattered cottages, the Bridport Arms Inn, and some few recent houses, all standing in the sands and minute gravel of the Chesil Beach, which ends here, make believe that West Bay is a seaside resort. On either side of it the cliffs rise to great heights, and are partly of a friable, earthy nature, yellow in hue.
CHAPTER V
CERNE ABBAS—THE VALE OF BLACKMORE—SHERBORNE—SHAFTESBURY
Northwards out of Dorchester we come by favour of the long straight old Bristol road into the heart of the great Wessex dairying district of Blackmore Vale; but before reaching that region of green fatness we pass through the country associated in the minds of all readers of the Wessex novels with The Woodlanders. The road goes through the village of Charminster and in the valley of the little river Cerne, under the chalk downs that gradually rise as the decayed town of Cerne Abbas is approached. Just where the shoulders of those lofty chalk hills are at their highest and steepest, the stranger will see with that gasp of astonishment which is the proper meed of such a thing the gigantic figure of a man outlined upon the grass. This is the “Giant of Cerne,” who well deserves that name, for he is 180 feet high. He is represented wielding an immense club, which he flourishes over his head. The history of this singular figure is, like that of the several “White Horses” cut on hillsides in various parts of England, and like the famous “Long Man of Wilmington,” on the downs near Eastbourne, unknown. Whether the monks of the Benedictine Abbey of Cerne traced his outlines, or whether, as legends declare, this was a work of the early pagan Saxons, and intended by them to represent their god, Heil, to whom human sacrifices were offered here, must ever be matters for conjecture.