Memorials of Old Dorset

by Unknown

It is needful, before finishing this chapter, to explain the old saying about the churchyard being higher than the steeple. There was once a church dedicated to St. John the Baptist that stood at the south-west point of the hill on which Shaftesbury is built; this has long ago passed away, but its graveyard still remains. Its parish was amalgamated with that of St. James, whose church stands below the hill, and for some time the old churchyard of St. John’s served as the burial-ground for the united parishes. Hence arose the saying quoted. Speaking of St. James leads us to notice the interesting fact that part of this parish lies outside the municipal boundaries, and is situated in the Liberty of Alcester,[59] so called because this land belonged to a monastery at the town of Alcester, in Warwickshire, and was free from the payment of local tithes. Some have supposed that the word Alcester was the name of a Roman town, on the ruins of which Shaftesbury was built; but this is not the case.

In the early part of the eighteenth century a free school was founded by one William Lush, merchant, of Shaftesbury, for the education of a small number of boys and girls. A new scheme was drawn up about thirty years ago by the Charity Commissioners: new buildings were erected to the east of the town close to Cann Church, but within the boundaries of the parish of Shaston St. Peter, and in 1879 Shaftesbury Grammar School, as it is always called, was opened, the writer of this chapter holding the office then, and for fifteen years afterwards, of headmaster of the re-organised school, which, though never likely to be a large one, has already done, and is still doing, useful work in its own quiet and unobtrusive way.

Despite the fact that strangers may call Shaftesbury a sleepy place, and far behind the times in enterprise; despite the fact that it has fallen from its former importance, and may by some be looked on as a mere derelict—yet those who have known it and dwelt upon “The Rock” cannot but keep a tender spot in their memories for this quaint Dorset town.

Beautiful it is under many atmospheric conditions. One who has risen, and stood in the neighbourhood of the Grammar School, before the dawn of a summer day, and has looked eastward at the long ridge of the downs silhouetted against the sunlit sky, and then a little later has turned to the south-west to look at the line of the houses that run along the crest of the Rock, ending in the two towers of St. Peter’s and Holy Trinity, flushed with the rose of morning, while the soft blue shade holds the valleys below, has seen a sight of surpassing loveliness. Sometimes the hollows are brimmed with thick, white mist, from which the tops of the surrounding hills rise like islets from the sea. Again, the view is splendid when, at noon on a wild, gusty day, heavy masses of clouds are blown across the sky, and their shadows and glints of sunshine chase each other over vale and down. But possibly the most lovely view of all may be obtained by going to Castle Hill on a summer evening when the sun is sinking behind the Somerset hills to the north-west, for the sunsets are “mostly beautiful here,” as Mr. Hardy makes Phillotson say, “owing to the rays crossing the mist of the vale.”[60] But there are other aspects of nature that may sometimes be observed in the hill town and around it—grand and wild when the north-east blast roars over the hill-top, driving before it frozen snow, sweeping up what has already fallen on the fields, and filling the roads up to the level of the hedge-tops, cutting the town off from all communication with the outer world, until gangs of labourers succeed in cutting a narrow passage through the drifts, along which a man may walk or ride on horseback, with the walls of snow rising far above his head on the right-hand and on the left, and nothing to be seen save the white gleam of the sunlight on the snow, the tender grey of the shadows on it, and the bright blue of the sky above—if, indeed, the snow has ceased to fall and the winds to blow, and the marvellous calm of a winter frost beneath a cloudless sky has fallen on the earth. 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.

PIDDLETOWN AND ATHELHAMPTON

By Miss Wood Homer

HE parish of Piddletown, or Puddletown, is said by Hutchins to take its name from the river Piddle, which flows to the north of the village, though it is supposed to have been formerly called Pydeletown after the Pydele family, at one time owners of much property in the neighbourhood.

It was once a large parish, and the capital of the hundred; but it now numbers only about nine hundred inhabitants, having fallen from fourteen hundred during the last forty years. About the year 1860 the village contained as many as twenty boot-makers, twelve blacksmiths, twenty carpenters and wheelwrights, five pairs of sawyers, two coopers, and some cabinet-makers. Gloves and gaiters were tanned and made there, as were many of the articles in common use. Beer was brewed in the public-houses; and there were three malt-houses, about one of which we read in Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd. Naturally, these trades employed much labour, and a great decrease in the population resulted when they were given up, after the introduction of the railway at Dorchester, about the year 1848. Two business fairs were formerly held in the village—one on Easter Tuesday, the other on October 29th—when cattle, materials, hats, etc., were sold. The October fair still exists, but it has dwindled to a small pleasure fair only, though pigs were sold as late as 1896.

Piddletown possesses a very fine church, dedicated to St. Mary. It is a large and ancient building, consisting of a nave and a north aisle of the same length, covered with leaden roofs, and a small south aisle, called the Athelhampton aisle, the burial-place of the Martyns of Athelhampton. This aisle is under the control of the vestry of Athelhampton Church. The chancel has a tiled roof; it was built in 1576. The embattled tower contains six bells.