Powerstock
Clive Hannay visits a West Dorset village whose inhabitants wanted it called something else
Published in November ’18
Powerstock’s village pub: the Three Horseshoes
The civil parish of Powerstock stretches out to include West Milton in the west, Eggardon Hill in the east, North Poorton in the north and Mappercombe in the south. The village itself is much more compact; as with so many of its neighbouring settlements – Loders, West Milton, Askerswell, Litton Cheney, for example – its
shape is dictated by the steep hills and narrow valleys that make up this part of the West
Dorset landscape.
For most of its existence, the village has been known not by its present name but as Poorstock, probably from Hugo le Poer, who had the estate in the early Middle Ages. When the railway arrived in 1857, GWR disliked the implied slur on its carriages and other rolling stock and went for the less common variant of Powerstock. The two versions existed side by side until as late as 1956, when Dorset CC made Powerstock the official name – and even then, the parish council voted to retain Poorstock.
Powerstock was initially the only intermediate railway station on the Bridport branch from the Castle Cary-Weymouth route (now the Heart of Wessex line) at Maiden Newton. Being GWR, the track was laid as broad gauge, converted to standard gauge in 1874. The line closed in 1975, by which time the station had been developed as a private house by Brian and Diana Read; in 1995, Diana Read published a delightful book, Powerstock Station – All Change, about the railway, their adventures in converting the station, and the ghosts with whom they shared it.
To the east of the village lies the hill that was the site of Powerstock Castle, which Hutchins claims to have been the winter palace of Athelstan, grandson of Alfred the Great and the first king of all England (927-939). Certainly a Norman motte and bailey stood here, used by King John as a hunting lodge. John did much of his hunting over Powerstock Common, which would have been clear-felled by the Forestry Commission in the 1960s had it not been for the efforts of writer and broadcaster Kenneth Allsop. Today, at almost 300 acres, it is one of the largest and most important of the Dorset Wildlife Trust’s nature reserves.
The Reading Room
By 1341, Powerstock was a place of some significance. In that year, Edward III granted the village a charter for a market on Thursdays and a horsefair on the ‘eve, day and morrow of St Philip and St James [1 May] and two days afterwards.’
Two of the outstanding features of the parish church of St Mary the Virgin are separated by 800 years. At one extreme is the 12th-century chancel arch, with patterns on its capitals, one of the finest and most elaborate to be found in Dorset; at the other is the 1939-45 war memorial, designed and carved with customary elegance by Reynolds Stone. The font is 13th-century and a Purbeck stone coffin lid of the same vintage was found in the churchyard in the 1960s. The church was heavily restored in the 1850s by the vicar, Thomas Sanctuary. He held the living for 40 years and it was said that he was appointed because, as a former boxing Blue at Oxford, he could ensure good behaviour among the navvies building the railway! Although there had been a school of sorts in Powerstock since 1818, Sanctuary can claim to be the founder of the present village school, arranging for stone to be brought from an old chapel at West Milton to create the building which is still at the heart of the school today.
Nine years before Sanctuary arrived in 1848, a visitor wrote of ‘the miserable cottages and filthy heaps before the doors, and the pig-sties and the ill-kept farmyards’. As well as Sanctuary’s efforts, the prospering netting industry in Bridport and its dependence on outworkers helped to change things and by the 1890s, according to the wife of the vicar at that time (Thomas Sanctuary’s son): ‘In nearly every cottage nets were made and it was a common sight to see women with bundles on their backs walking over Hine’s Hill into Bridport.’
An early 20th-century postbox embedded in a wall
A good impression of the village and its surrounding countryside may be had from a walk that is something of a switchback, but has the compensation of passing two pubs in its 2¼ miles! Park alongside the churchyard wall, just down from the Three Horseshoes, or in the pub’s car park if you plan to patronise it at the end of the walk. With the church behind you to the left, walk past the pub on the right and start downhill. Opposite a bench engraved ‘20 EIIR 06’, turn right down an enclosed path.
At the bottom, go through a gate and bear left to walk along a narrow field. Leave by a gate in its far right-hand corner and follow the path up to another gate. Continue straight ahead, uphill, to cross the shoulder of the field near its left-hand edge. Follow this to the end of the field, cross a stile and walk up to a lane next to the Marquis
of Lorne.
Turn left, downhill, and follow the road through Nettlecombe and round to the right. When it reaches a T-junction, go straight ahead on a rough track. In 250 yards, the track bends to the left, but continue ahead and in a few yards take the first turning on the right. At the end of this track, continue along the bottom of an open field. Next, cross the top of two narrow fields. In the next field, bear slightly left to a gate a little more than halfway down the far side. Go through the gate and turn right to the first corner, where continue ahead, up a bank, to reach a grassy track.
Turn right and follow the track alongside the wall of Mappercombe Manor and through a farmyard to reach a lane. Go straight across and down the left-hand side of two fields. At the end of the second, turn left on a grassy track and in a few yards right. Stay on the track to the bottom of the hill, where walk straight across a lane and into Powerstock. Just after crossing a stream, turn left on a path that passes to the left of Bridge Cottage.
Follow this path until it curves to the right to meet a track running close to the top hedge. Here double back to the right to reach a gate. Turn left in front of the gate on a narrow path which at first runs through undergrowth, but then opens out with a splendid panorama of the village to the right. Go through a metal gate and down a rough track to a road, where turn right opposite Myrtle Cottage
and walk up to the cross-roads. Turn right,
then immediately fork left to your car and the Three Horseshoes.
