Shapwick
Clive Hannay takes a stroll around a lovely Stour Valley village
Published in November ’17
Monica Hutchings describes Shapwick as ‘a little, lost, unfrequented place’. Her description underrates Shapwick slightly, but also has an element of truth: the village is not on the way to anywhere and gives the impression that it is getting on with its business unmolested by the outside world. Two millennia ago, its significance was much greater as it marked where the Roman road from Dorchester crossed the Stour on its way to Badbury Rings, just to the north.
In many ways, the river defines Shapwick. It was the highest navigable point on the Stour – hard to believe today as one crosses either of Wimborne’s bridges and sees the shallows and the vegetation – and the river feeds the fields on its banks. The very name of the place comes from Anglo-Saxon sceap-uuic, ‘sheep village’, but today it is more likely to be cattle enjoying the lush pasture. Not that the river is always friendly: at a funeral in 1870, the coffin was carried away by the rising Stour and presumably out to sea.
Even today, embankments in the fields and heavy floodgates at the entrance to the car park next to the church are reminders that the placid summer stream can turn into something very different and much more threatening after heavy winter rains. The village has endured not only flood, because like Blandford, Wareham and other larger Dorset towns, it suffered its own Great Fire – this one in 1881, when sixteen cottages were destroyed.
This apparent backwater has had two famous sons. The first was William Wake, who became Archbishop of Canterbury from 1716 to 1737. His birthplace is often quoted as Blandford, but actually he was born at (appropriately) Bishops Court Farm in Shapwick.
The second was Charles Bennett, who became the first British athlete to be awarded an Olympic gold medal by winning the 1500 metres at Paris in 1900. He was a train driver by occupation, and there were stories of him training by running across ploughed fields and subsisting on a diet of boiled rice and raw eggs. If that is true, the fields were not those of Shapwick, since the family moved to Woodyates when he was a boy and he later lived in Kinson, Bournemouth, where he was for a time landlord of the Dolphin Inn, now Gulliver’s Tavern. He gave up running when he married, but his athletic prowess remained undimmed as he fathered five children. During the Sydney Olympics in 2000, a commemorative mile race around the village helped raise funds for the village green.
In the parish church of St Bartholomew, two arches in the north wall and the north porch doorway date from the late 11th and early 12th centuries. The tower is 14th-century. In 1880, major restoration was completed largely through the help of the villagers, who gave their services after work. The late Norman Purbeck hexagonal marble font was moved to its present position under the tower during the restoration. The magnificent iron cover, described by Sir Nikolaus Pevsner as ‘exuberant’, dates from this period. The east window and reredos were given by Augusta Bankes; it is integral to the village’s recent history that it has been part of the Kingston Lacy estate for 500 years.
Folklorists have slandered Shapwick with the story of ‘the Shapwick monster’. The story goes that a crab fell off a fishmonger’s cart as it was travelling through the village, much to the consternation of the villagers, who had never seen one. The oldest inhabitant was brought out to inspect it and announced that it was a monster. The various versions have so many inconsistencies and improbabilities as to be quite unbelievable, but it remains a mystery who decided to paint the inhabitants of Shapwick as comically ignorant and naïve, and why.
The centre of the village, around the cross-roads, may be explored in a few minutes. Here is the war memorial, which is based on the steps of the Saxon village cross (‘destroyed in a brawl’ in 1880) and is unusual in listing all those who served in the two world wars separately from those who died. The village’s millennium memorial is here, too: simply a list of those living in Shapwick on 1 January 2000.
Not a few of the names are echoed in the churchyard of St Bartholomew’s and pre-eminent among them must be the Kerleys, who first came to the village in 1115. There is also a beacon filled with flowers, forged to commemorate the Queen’s Golden Jubilee in 2002.
THE WALK
This three-mile walk goes into the adjoining countryside and gives a sense of why the village’s relationship with the Stour has been so important. It is also a pleasant country walk: you will be unlucky not to see a heron, both white and grey, and you may catch a flash of blue as a kingfisher darts over the water.
Park in the car park next to the church, which is at the end of – unsurprisingly – Church Lane. At the end of the car park is a stile. Cross it and bear left to a footbridge. On the other side turn right along a track. The instruction for the next mile or so of the route is simple: stay as close as you can to the river on the right.
After about a mile, it is necessary to move away from it by 100 yards, in order to cross a bridge with a stile at either end. After this, continue in the same direction to pick up the right-hand field-edge at an inside corner. Follow it until it bends to the right, where continue straight across, heading for the tower of Sturminster Marshall church, to another stile. Here the main stream of the river re-appears on the right.
As it begins to bend quite sharply to the right, go over a stile and through a gate and follow the river round to reach another stile alongside a gate. Soon the path moves away from the river, uphill, to reach a stile onto a lane; looking to the right, you can see the stonework of White Mill Bridge, whose footings date from the 12th century.
Turn left on the lane, cross a road joining on the right, and walk carefully along the lane for a mile to the next turning on the right, by the village sign. This is Piccadilly Lane and leads up to a T-junction with the High Street, where turn right.
In about 150 yards, turn left on a path between numbers 8 and 9 and follow it to a stile. Bear left to a stile equidistant between two bushes, then cross the next field in the same direction to a gate and stile. Bear left towards a barn with a grey roof.
At an inside corner of the left-hand field-edge, bear slightly more left and head down towards the other buildings of Bishops Court Farm. Cross a stile and a small patch of grass to a stile on the right. Beyond it, turn left on a lane and walk along to the cross-roads. Church Lane is on the right.
• Food and drink available from the Anchor pub (www.anchorshapwick.co.uk), which is village-owned, but run by professionals.
