“Napper’s Mite”
With Fordington Church, St. George’s, let me close. As I write[51] it is about to be largely rebuilt, for Fordington has grown fast; and the north aisle of 1833 is, indeed, very far from beautiful. But, whilst I rejoice that space and form should be added to the church, my mind must still and always see it as it was, with its simple chancel of 1750; its rude, partly Norman, north aisle; its pulpit of 1592, now approached by a rood-stair re-opened in 1863; its remarkable eleventh century tympanum at the south door, which shows (probably) St. George routing the Saracens at Antioch, in armour of the Bayeux type; and its very noble fifteenth century tower, a model of proportion. Let us climb that tower, by the stairs familiar to me all my days, and from it bid farewell to Dorchester. 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, 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. Beyond it stretches the green, massive rampart of Maiden Castle, and, more distant still, the aerial dome of Blackdown, crowned by the monumental tower which commemorates Nelson’s Hardy. North-westward we can almost see beautiful Wolfeton House, cradle of the greatness of the Bedfords. Northward, we look down on the roofs and lanes of dear old Fordington; and eastward lie the long, fair levels of the Swingbridge meadows, where Frome is sluiced into hundreds of channels, bright with living water. The bowery slopes of Stinsford and Kingston flank the meadows; and then, eastward, the broad valley leads the eye away to the vanishing yet abiding line of the Purbecks, a cloud of tenderest blue. South-eastward, over the village and its bartons, the woods of Came appear, and the sea-ridge runs above them with its long line of Danish burial-mounds. Almost in sight are Max Gate, the home of Mr. Hardy, our renowned novelist, and the thatched roof of Came Rectory, once the home of our poet, William Barnes—deep student, true pastor, clear and tender seer of nature and of man.
O fields and streams, another race
Already comes to take our place,
To claim their right in you,
Our homes to hold, our walks to rove—
But who shall love you with our love,
Shall know you as we knew?
WEYMOUTH
By Sidney Heath