Dorset: a farmed landscape
The influence of millennia of agriculture on the Dorset landscape is immense. We look at some examples of how our vision of the county is seen through a prism of the population’s efforts to feed itself.
Published in December ’18
Barley interspersed with poppies near Sixpenny Handley and featuring probably the most photographed barn in the county. Credit: Christine Sinclair
Dorset may be famed for its geology in terms of its palaeontological impact on the Jurassic Coast, but what really makes Dorset look like Dorset is the effect of centuries of farming. To the untrained eye, the landscape is just that, a vista of land. But that view has been shaped and framed from the earliest settlers to make it able to grow crops and sustain animals.
First there were ledges scraped on hillsides to make terraces that took most advantage of the sun to grow strips of crops near defensible positions. Enclosures, be they laid hedges or walls, kept livestock feeding in the appropriate place while other grazing recovered. Flatter areas of richer soil were ploughed, harrowed and seeded for arable crops, while the clay valleys, particularly in the north and the north-west of the county were made over into pasture for dairy herds.
One of the most striking things one notices as one enters Dorset from the north-east is the way the field sizes shrink drastically as one leaves Wiltshire and enters Dorset. The landscape is better suited to smaller fields and Dorset has been less affected by the grubbing up of hedgerows than many other counties.
Here and there one sees remnants of the short-lived experiment in water meadows in the 18th and 19th ce nturies. We walk or ride along deep tracks between hedgerows battered down by the hooves of untold numbers of cattle on droves around the county. Hilltops with accessible water still have plantations of trees to provide shelter to animals, while denser growths of trees were coppiced for charcoal in times gone past.
Almost everything you see when out in the country is as a result of a deliberate shaping of the landscape to assist with agriculture and to this day it is the farmers who manage and steward the landscape, balancing environmental impact with optimum production. Capability Brown may have made an impact at Sherborne and Milton Abbey, but it is generations of Dorset farmers who have provided the backdrop to one of the most beautiful counties in England.
Lines of wheat straw in a field at Kimmeridge.
Credit: Richard Price
Evidence of a former watermeadow near Dorchester. Credit: Paul Brewer
An aerial view shows A round barrow in a recently harrowed field breaks the otherwise wholly rectangular field structure. Large fields are needed for modern arable farming unlike the smaller pastures of yesteryear. Credit:Joe Dunckley
Every available square foot of land is used for grazing, even when it’s right by the coast, like here at Hounstout Cliff. Credit: Nigel Purdey
Holloways are thought by some to have been carved by millennia of cattle moving along a track, but this one was likely hewn out as a through route
Credit: Martin Dolan
Sometimes man’s influence on the landscape is more obvious than others, as with this discarded threshing attachment at Durlston. Credit: Steve Maskell
Dorset’s downlands provide perfect grazing for sheep and cattle.
Credit: Joe Dunckley
