Dorset village – Fontmell Magna
Joël Lacey takes his camera to a proper village community in North Dorset
Published in July ’18
The entrance to St Andrew’s Church
Fontmell Magna may have come in second to Ryme [spelt Rime] Intrinseca in the opening stanza of the poem Dorset by John Betjeman, but it is certainly that village’s equal in beauty and interest if not in euphony.
The unusual ziggurat-style chimney of Blandfords Farm House is one of dozens of wonderfully idiosyncratic adornments to Fontmell Magna’s homes
The village’s name derives from the Celtic words funton and mailo- (or brook by the bare hill), while the Magna is merely the Latin suffix to indicate great or larger (as compared with Fontmell Parva [little or smaller] in Child Okeford).
Even the speed limit sign gets its own hedge in Fontmell Magna
That bare hill from which Collyer’s Brook springs is at Springhead – just up the lane that is across the main road from the village pub: the Fontmell – and there is a dam at Middle Mill which was built roughly 100 years ago originally to supply fresh water to Ashmore, seven miles away. As the stream crosses the road it changes name to Fontmell Brook, which name it keeps as it meanders 4 ¾ miles until it joins the Stour at the Hammoon end of Fontmell Parva, three miles away as the crow flies.
This terrace of three cottages was once an inn, and its internal cruck beam suggests the centre was once an open hall.
Sir Frederick Treves called Fontmell Magna ‘beautiful’, a rare compliment. Arthur Mee complemented the village church’s ‘comely tower’ with its ‘elegant steeple’ and almost everywhere that one looks there is evidence of people taking care of their properties and of the village in general.
Holbrook is a splendid brookside house with a tri-gabled end of North Dorset vernacular brick and flint banding and the rest of the property in ashlar, both with stone window surrounds
I cannot, for example, think of too many other villages that have a fully leaded roof to their village noticeboard. It’s a tiny detail, but indicative of the care that the villagers have for their things. That extends to Fontmell Magna’s people too. When Jan & Rick, the couple who run the village shop, post office and café, marked five years since taking it on, they did so with a surprise celebration thrown by grateful patrons and residents. Dozens and dozens of cards, letters and keepsakes festooned a table inside the shop showing the strength and depth of local feeling for the couple.
This landscape is taken looking south from Mill Street at the strip lychetts above Springhead
This is not a new phenomenon in Fontmell however, just down the road next to Fontmell Magna’s pub (perhaps, unimaginatively as it straddles the brook running through the village, called the Fontmell) is a bus shelter that was completed sixty years ago this year and which was built entirely by village volunteers.
Collyers Brook (shot on Mill street) as it is known, before it crosses the A350 and becomes known as Fontmell Brook
