Stoborough
Clive Hannay explores the village, green and heath
Published in February ’18
Looking towards Wareham and the South Causeway with the town’s Lady St Mary church visible next to the pub sign
Ask what marks the southernmost point of Stoborough, and most people would probably name the roundabout at the bottom of the Wareham by-pass. In fact, Stoborough technically finishes only about 350 yards from the end of the South Causeway from Wareham and everything beyond that is Stoborough Green. For the purpose of this article they will be lumped together, but to drive through the village with an observant eye is to appreciate that at its northern end, most of the houses are much older than the 20th-century infilling that has happened in Stoborough Green. Worthy of note among the latter is Stoborough Meadows, a 1990s development that shows how well modern mixed housing in a traditional idiom can work; with housing requirements what they are, it is a useful model for the future.
Stoborough is mentioned in Domesday, and in 1579 is described as having been a borough with its own mayor. But it fell on hard times; in Coker’s Survey of Dorsetshire in the early 17th century, Thomas Gerard acknowledges that Stoborough is a more ancient settlement than Wareham, but ‘The borough been gone to Wareham,’ he writes. He goes on: ‘Stowborough is a place scarce worth remembering for it consists of very few houses…the men in this place be commonlie mean.’ Even when Frederick Treves came calling 300 years later, he thought it ‘a poor hamlet of a few houses, which was once so great a place as to boast a mayor and corporation.’
Looking southeast from West Lane one sees one of two village pumps in Stoborough. This one is housed in its own brick shelter and shows the village’s war dead, the other is on the side of the road and is halfway along Corfe Lane between this one and the Kings Arms.
Most of those ‘commonlie mean’ inhabitants would have worked in agriculture, often farming at subsistence levels, or in the clay industry. Potsherds found at Stoborough date back to the 1st century, and in 1952 a vat of puddled chalk with a clay lining, four feet in diameter and two feet deep, was excavated; it would have been used for ‘puddling’ clay. It was carefully transported to the County Museum in Dorchester, but in 1970 fell to pieces while being moved.
Evidence of even older settlement is King’s Barrow, just the other side of the by-pass. Once twelve feet high, it was halved in height in 1767, when material was needed for road-building. At that time a headless skeleton was found, wrapped in deerskin and placed in a hollowed-out tree trunk; nearby was an oaken drinking cup.
The road that was being built was a new turnpike through the village, now Corfe Road. To balance that rather prosaic name, Stoborough offers two of the most evocatively named roads in Dorset: Nutcrack Lane and Melancholy Lane. The definitive reasons for these are lost in the past, but Nutcrack Lane was the start of a route to the other end of Purbeck that by-passed Corfe Castle; some of the villagers, eking out a living by fair means or foul, preferred to avoid the local seat
of authority.
Stoborough suffered in the Civil War. The Kings Arms claims to have been built in the 17th century and to have been a billet for Parliamentarian troops, although some architectural historians date it to a hundred years later. Certainly in 1655 the village presented a petition to Parliament, pointing out that ‘in 1643 we willingly permitted our town of 100 families to be burned to preserve the Parliamentary garrison of Wareham.’ Presumably the Roundheads feared that the Royalists might take over the place, which was too close for comfort to their main base in this part
of Dorset.
Stoborough’s barrel-roofed village hall getting a bit of decorating TLC
If there were 100 families then, by the time of the first census 150 years later, it had shrunk to about 50. There were further fires in 1816 and 1817. In 1871 Stoborough Elementary School, the forerunner of today’s thriving Stoborough Primary School, was built.
A walk of a little under 3 miles takes in the village and explores Stoborough Heath. A National Nature Reserve in its own right, it is run by the RSPB from their base at Arne. You may hear the song of the Dartford warbler, nightjar and skylark, see dragonflies and damselflies darting over the ponds or even come across the intriguingly named wartbiter cricket. Wildflower enthusiasts may find a host of species, from the mossy stonecrop to the heath dog violet. Parts of the heath can be damp, so stout-ish shoes are a good idea.
Park considerately on the road between the Kings Arms and Melancholy Lane, or in the car park of the pub if you are planning to patronise it at the end of the walk. Walk down the road, away from Wareham, and turn left into Melancholy Lane. Go through a gate onto a path that runs along the backs of the houses of Stoborough Meadows. Follow it to a kissing gate.
Cross the field diagonally to another gate and turn right onto a lane. Walk down to the main road and go straight across into a no through road. Pass The Drove and almost immediately turn left, then in 10 yards fork left on a narrow path towards a telegraph pole. Follow this path, with a ditch on the left, to reach the Wareham by-pass.
Turn left for 20 yards, then cross carefully to a gate. Bear left on a path that runs down the edge of Stoborough Heath, eventually with the bottoms of the gardens to the houses on Furzebrook Road on the left. Reach a T-junction of paths at the end of the houses and turn right through the gorse. Emerging onto the open heath, within a few yards there is a three-way split: take the middle of the three options. Follow it as it winds its reasonably well-defined way across the heath, eventually meeting a much wider path. Turn left, uphill, on this path until it bends to the left, with Furzebrook village hall visible ahead. Here turn right on a narrower path which runs across the heath towards two fences, between which is a cutting carrying a railway line. About 30 yards before the near fence, turn right and parallel it until a crossing-point comes into view. Cross carefully here – since the Swanage Railway completed the link to Wareham, this line is in use – and continue on a clear path which eventually bends to the right round a hillock and joins the Purbeck Way. Follow this across a footbridge, round to the right and across two more bridges to a gate.
Turn left on the track beyond and follow it past the houses of Creech Bottom, bearing left in front of Kings Orchard, up to another railway crossing. Cross the line and continue along the track until it swings right into a private property. Here bear left through a gate and walk straight ahead. Reaching a fork, follow the Purbeck Way waymark to the right and continue across heathland, following
the main path. At a T-junction of tracks, turn
right, then bear immediately left, still on the Purbeck Way.
The path leads up to a gate onto the Wareham bypass. Cross to a stile, immediately after which fork left on a path that runs through woodland. When it emerges, continue in the same direction on a track that leads up to Corfe Road. Turn left to return to your car.
