Fordington is a large suburb adjoining Dorchester. The Church of St George is a fine old edifice, with a tall battlemented tower which is a landmark for those approaching the town by road. Within is a stone pulpit dated "1592, E.R." Over the top of a doorway of the south porch there is a carving of great antiquity representing a vision of St George at the battle of Antioch. The saint, mounted, has thrust his spear into the mouth of a Saracen soldier with great force and unerring aim. He looks very bored and might be saying: "This is very tame sport to one who is accustomed to slaying dragons." No doubt the semi-prone Saracen, who is trying to pull the spear out of his mouth, feels very bored too!
Away to the east of Fordington is the little village of Stinsford, which is reached by leaving Dorchester by the road leading east to Puddletown and bearing to the right soon after leaving the town. This is the "Mellstock" of the idyllic tale, Under the Greenwood Tree. In the churchyard of the ivy-covered church there are tombstones of members of the Hardy family, and on the face of the tower there is a bas-relief of St Michael. The parish school is one in which Fancy Day is introduced as the new teacher at Mellstock in Under the Greenwood Tree. "The Fiddler of the Reels," Mop Ollamore, whose diabolical skill with the fiddle produced a "moving effect" on people's souls, lived in one of the thatched cottages of this village.
To the south of Dorchester are the Winterborne villages, all places of rural content, in the shallow valley of a stream which only becomes visible in the winter. The church of Winterborne Steepleton possesses an ancient stone steeple. In the porch—a cool grey place on the hottest day—there are stone seats and flagstones of hoary antiquity, and on the outer wall is an angel carved in stone which is said to date from before the Conquest. The most interesting of the Winterbornes is Came. Barnes, the Dorset poet, was rector here for the last twenty-five years of his life. The church is a thirteenth-century building, hidden in a hollow among flowers, winding paths, outbuildings and cottages of an unattractive mansion. Barnes is buried beneath a simple cross in the churchyard. Herringtone adjoins Came, and its chief feature is the old manor-house, the seat of the Herring family, and, since James I.'s reign, of the Williamses. Winterborne Monkton and Winterborne St Martin are both contiguous to Maiden Castle. The old church of the former has been much restored; that of the latter contains a Norman font and some old stone shafts near the altar.
The pilgrim who shall elect to reach Abbotsbury will find a road, which forks by a picturesque old pond, about half-an-hour's walk towards Winterborne Abbas.
It will be noticed in some of Hardy's novels that the name of a village or town will often crop up in the name of a character, as, for instance, Jude Fawley living in Marygreen, which may be identified with the village of Fawley Magna, in Berkshire; and the name of the schoolmaster of Leddenton, really the village of Gillingham, near Shaftesbury, is Gillingham. It was at Fawley Magna church that Phillotson and Sue were married after she had parted from Jude: "A tall new building of German Gothic design, unfamiliar to English eyes, had been erected on a new piece of ground by a certain obliterator of historic records who had run down from London and back in a day. The site whereon so long had stood the ancient temple to the Christian divinities was not even recorded on the green and level grass-plot that had immemorially been the churchyard, the obliterated graves being commemorated by ninepenny cast-iron crosses warranted to last five years."
The unusual way in which the town of Dorchester met in one line with the open country is picturesquely described by Hardy: "The farmer's boy could sit under the barley mow and pitch a stone into the office window of the town clerk ... the red-robed judge, when he condemned a sheep-stealer, pronounced sentence to the tune of Baa, that floated in from the remainder of the flock browsing hard by; and at executions the waiting crowd stood in a meadow immediately before the drop out of which the cows had been temporarily driven to give the spectators room."
The intermixture of town and country life is again touched upon in a sketch of Fordington: "Here wheat ricks overhung the old Roman street, and thrust their eaves against the church tower; great thatched barns with doorways as high as the gates of Solomon's Temple opened directly upon the main thoroughfare. Barns, indeed, were so numerous as to alternate with every half-dozen houses along the way. Here lived burgesses who daily walked the fallow—shepherds in an intramural squeeze."
The original manuscript of The Mayor of Casterbridge, which is described in the Dorchester Guide by Harry Pouncy (published by Longman, Cornhill Press, Dorchester), as "an example of rare beauty of penmanship and of absorbing interest, especially in regard to the alterations" is now in the Dorset County Museum. The leaves of the manuscript have been bound in book form, and Captain Acland, the Curator, informs me the binding has resulted in the edges of the paper being cut, and the top edges being gilt. Let us hope that the marginal notes have not been maimed by the binder's guillotine—that is, if any marginal notes were added. However, the "absorbingly interesting alterations" are not yet for the public gaze, and Captain Acland was immovable before my entreaties to be allowed to make notes on them.
A most interesting jaunt from Dorchester is along the Sherborne Road northward for eight miles to Cerne Abbas. The road from Dorchester bears to the left not far from the Great Western Railway and follows the River Frome. A mile along the road on the right, lying back and surrounded by trees, is Wolverton House, which figures in Hardy's Group of Noble Dames. This was formerly the seat of the knightly Trenchards, and is an interesting fifteenth-century house which has obtained a niche in history thus: "In this house John Russel, Esq., of Berwick, laid the foundation of the honours and fortunes of the illustrious family of the Duke of Bedford. Having resided some years in Spain, he was sent for by his relation, Sir Thomas Trenchard, to attend and entertain the Arch-Duke of Austria, King of Castile, who recommended him to the notice of King Henry VII., who took him into favour, and appointed him one of the Gentlemen of his Privy Chamber; and afterwards recommended him to his son Henry VIII." (Hutchins). The Russels were seated at Kingston Russel, where their old manor-house still remains. Wolverton was in later days the scene of a dread omen recorded by credulous Aubrey. The chief feature of the hall was a screen carven with the effigies of the kings of England; and "on the third of Nov., 1640, the day the Long Parliament began to sit, the sceptre fell from the figure of King Charles the First, while the family and a large company were at dinner in the parlour." No wonder, when the Trenchard of that day proved a sturdy rebel, and did yeoman service for the Parliament in the county.