The gardens and house at Hinton St Mary in Edwardian times. www.flickr.com/photos/alwyn_ladell/

The manor house at Hinton St Mary, just north of Sturminster Newton, has for four centuries been the property of the Pitt and Pitt-Rivers families, and is the heart of an estate of major importance to the surrounding area. The story begins with two wayward sons called William, each of whom played a part in the arrival of the Pitt family at Hinton St Mary and their assumption of an estate that included most of what is now the neighbouring town of Sturminster Newton.
The first was William Stourton, son of the 7th Lord Stourton, whose seat was at Stourhead. Lord Stourton had been given eight manors, including Hinton, after the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1535, that event marking the end of the Shaftesbury Abbey lay brothers’ settlement that had previously occupied the site on which the manor house at Hinton now stands. William Stourton, despite being Lord Lieutenant of Wiltshire, Somerset and Dorset, was so dissolute and extravagant that he earned the nickname, ‘the wicked nobleman’. He swore vengeance on the steward of the Stourton estate, who was trying to protect it from William’s worst excesses. The poor man was forced to seek sanctuary in Stourton church, from where he was dragged by William and four of his servants and killed on the very steps of the church. William was found guilty of murder and exercised the right of a nobleman to be hanged by a silken rope when he was executed at Salisbury in 1556.

The entrance to the Hinton St Mary estate. www.flickr.com/photos/alwyn_ladell/

The manor and estate were taken away from the Stourtons and granted to the Freke family. Their fortunes were founded by Robert Freke, Auditor and Teller of the Exchequer under Henry VIII. Such posts provided ample opportunities for wealth and advancement, and Robert acquired substantial holdings of land throughout. A descendant, William Freke, was born in 1662 and moved to Hinton St Mary in 1696. He took an interest in theology and published a book giving his views on the Trinity that caused an uproar. The book was burnt by the public hangman, while William Freke was fined £500 (the equivalent of at least £50,000 today) and forced to recant publicly outside Westminster Hall. As a result, he was disinherited by his father, who left all the Freke estates to his daughter-in-law and her younger sister. The older sister died young so the younger, Lucy, inherited. She was married to George Pitt and so it was that her son, also George Pitt, came into the Freke estates, including Hinton St Mary and Cranborne Chase, early in the 18th century.

The manor house with the church partially hidden to the left in the trees. www.flickr.com/photos/alwyn_ladell/

The Pitts themselves were a family very much on the rise, their story reflecting in some respects that of the Frekes. Sir William Pitt had been Principal Officer in the Exchequer under Elizabeth I and Comptroller of the Household for James I and Charles I. Becoming MP for Wareham, he bought land throughout Dorset and Hampshire, including Stratfield Saye, which the family retained until it was sold to the Crown following the battle of Waterloo and presented to the Duke of Wellington in gratitude for his victory.
Although William Freke had been debarred from inheriting Hinton, he and his descendants continued to live there as tenants until 1799, apparently enjoying a cordial relationship with the Pitt family, their landlords. Part of the wider Pitt land holdings, the whole Hinton estate at that time comprised some 8000 acres of the Blackmore Vale and after the Frekes, the house became in effect the estate office. The main family residence was now Rushmore, near Tollard Royal, which had been built in 1776 as a hunting lodge but which in the 1880s formed the base for General Augustus Pitt-Rivers’s famous archaeological investigations on Cranborne Chase.
The Rivers part of the surname was added comparatively late. A 17th-century Pitt was married to the daughter of the 2nd Earl Rivers. The title died out, but was revived by a later Pitt when he was raised to the peerage with a barony in 1776. Under the terms of the will made by his son, who died a bachelor, Pitt-Rivers was the name that had to be taken as a condition of inheriting the estate. For many years there was a pub in Sturminster Newton called the Rivers Arms, whose name lives on in the cottages which stand on its former site.

A typical country house scene at Hinton St Mary

Hinton St Mary became a family home again in 1927 when George Pitt-Rivers, the General’s grandson, moved there, having decided not to live at Rushmore. Today George’s son, Anthony, lives in the manor and is responsible for the estate. Although reduced from the original 8000 acres, it still includes much of Sturminster Newton and surrounding villages. Anthony Pitt-Rivers has served on both North Dorset DC and Dorset CC and his wife, Valerie, is currently the county’s Lord Lieutenant.
The family and the management of the estate do not involve themselves much in the detail of everyday life in Sturminster Newton but are well thought of for being receptive to ways in which as landowners they can help in its development. For example, the recreation ground was leased to the town as a war memorial following World War I, but the estate has recently given the freehold to the Town Council. A family charitable trust provides important support to selected local causes. The house and its tithe barn – a survival from its time as a lay brothers’ settlement – are used for charity events, and the estate has a good reputation for maintaining a strong relationship with the families of former tenants. Anthony Pitt-Rivers is the patron of the living of St Mary’s, Sturminster Newton but, curiously, not of  St Peter’s, Hinton St Mary, right next door to the manor house; it was an out-chapel of Iwerne Minster and its patron is the Rector of the Iwerne Valley benefice.

Sturminster Mill, one of three in the Pitt-Rivers' family possession. bobsmallphotograpy.co.uk

A practical example of the estate’s involvement with the town is its mills. The estate owns three mills near Sturminster Newton: Fiddleford, Sturminster and Cutt. The last of these was burnt down by vandals in 2003 and remains derelict despite various attempts to find a future for it. Sturminster Mill might have become similarly disused but was preserved as a working mill by various enthusiasts and eventually came under the care of Sturminster Newton Museum, which changed its name to the Sturminster Museum and Mill Society, of which Anthony Pitt-Rivers is President. The estate lets the mill to the society at a peppercorn rent and also allows it limited cannibalisation of the mill at Fiddleford, which is of a similar design.
With pressure to find land for development, the estate has an important part to play in shaping the future face of Sturminster Newton. It forms a sort of unofficial green belt to the north of the town which, with the Stour to the west and south, limits the opportunities for unwelcome urban sprawl. Some might say that such an estate, with its connotations of feudalism, is an anachronism in the 21st century, but not only is it a modern, efficient farming and property business, it continues to be
of quiet but effective benefit to the Sturminster Newton area.

Hazel and Peter Hartle

They had worked out that in order to be a viable operation, they would need a herd of eighty cows and, for three years, they lived in a caravan as they sought to build up their herd. After three to four years of milking, the government imposed a milk quota based on, not the sixty cows they had, but thirty; it was a level on which they could not survive and so they appealed. They got the quota raised to 45 cows – an improvement, but still not enough for them to be able to make a living out of farming; the dream was over. As Hazel recalls: ‘Peter looked at all the possible alternatives to dairy farming but, after considering worm farming, deer farming and raising water buffalo, we decided to stick with Plan A: dairy farming, and to consider other ways to survive the quota restriction. The only milk-related items which were outside of the milk quota were flavoured milk, yoghurts and ice cream… and we loved ice cream.’
Hazel and Peter went off to take a course on ice cream making with Celia Haynes – who, with her husband (also Peter), had been making ice cream since 1984. ‘We got lost on the way there and arrived late,’ Hazel remembers, ‘and I was still nursing [her son] Ben, so he came with me. Celia was very helpful and as we were hours away, we weren’t in competition. Peter and I decided to sink some money into making ice cream and bought a batch freezer and invested in a small walk-in cold store, an ex-Bejam freezer and a van.’ Purbeck Ice Cream was born.
Philosophically little has changed as to how the Hartles produce their ice cream in the intervening decades: ‘We wanted the ice cream first and a hint of flavour later.’ There were practical and financial reasons, too, Hazel says, for the purity of the product: ‘we wanted to use all the excess milk we could and we had no money for the kind of additives that other makers used. We were really careful to make ice cream as well as possible.’
Once again, though, a milk production volume issue had to be resolved: ‘we were generating quite a lot of skimmed milk, which we couldn’t sell and couldn’t dispose of, so we bought a whole load of pigs which, while solving the skimmed milk problem did raise others!
Although Purbeck Ice Cream now has a double-digit work force, the business is still very much a family one, but at first this was through necessity rather than choice. ‘The kids had little freezer coats by the time they could walk,’ says Hazel. ‘At first Peter was working full-time and I was nursing full-time at Swanage hospital. We started off knocking on doors and we got a lot of lucky breaks.’
One of these was coming into contact with a Business Link adviser who asked: ‘What is your plan?’ That simple question changed the way the Hartles did business, and also their dream. ‘One of the things that came out of the planning exercise was that we had to come out of farming; it was incredibly hard for Peter,’ Hazel recalls, ‘we sold the cows and the quota and a bit of land. We had two consecutive five-year plans, which we actually achieved within six [rather than ten] years, so we now do three-year plans. They are on a single piece of paper as, if you don’t keep things simple, you lose sight of them.’
The simplicity extends to their sourcing policy: ‘All our milk is guaranteed from Purbeck, all our cream and clotted cream is from Dorset, the water for our sorbets comes from Encombe. The first product was traditional ice cream; we looked for a nice additive-free vanilla, but in the end we just put ice cream in it and called it “Traditional”. Our first flavoured ice cream was blackberry, then raspberry, even without any artificial flavours and preservatives, our product has a shelf life of a year.
Ten years ago, the Hartles had a breakthrough when they attended a trade show at the NEC. Hazel remembers they were not alone: ‘We saw there were a dozen or so ice cream makers there so we decided to do something to make us stand out from the crowd and made 24 litres of a chilli ice cream which had been developed for a party of firemen at Springbourne fire station; much to our surprise, it went down really well and took the show by storm. Both Somerfield and Tesco placed orders at the show and there was great feedback from chefs attending the show so we then launched a “spice-rack” range for use by chefs.’

Purbeck Ice Cream's ChilliRED

So with the twenty-fifth anniversary on the horizon, it is worth looking at what has changed and what has remained the same at Purbeck Ice Cream: the range has grown to ten sorbets, eight ‘spice rack’ flavours and over a dozen flavours available in 125ml and 500ml tubs; the philosophy has remained unchanged, but the workforce has grown to fifteen – sixteen if you include ‘Colin’ the thirty-year-old freezer – half of whom come from farming. Staff retention is high, thanks to events like the annual conker competition, ‘talk like a pirate’ day, hoedown and other one-offs which – like the GMO-free, artificial additive-free, gluten-free, added-colour-free and above all delicious products the staff help to produce – combine a child-like sense of fun, with an emphasis on improving quality and quality of life.

Preparing the 500ml tubs by stamping their sell-by dates on

One of the unbeatable views from Portland

Today, many of them are still worked, and in those that are not, the massive jumbled blocks stand as a memorial to the men who earned the hardest of livings there. Some of the disused quarries have found a new life as nature reserves where wild flowers, butterflies and reptiles in particular can thrive comparatively undisturbed. Unique is Tout Quarry, which has become a sculpture park and in which carvings are scattered in an apparently random manner that makes a wander round it a rewarding exercise in serendipity.
For many people, the Isle of Portland is Dorset’s Marmite – they either love it or hate it. It is true that on a dank, cold day, the old quarries have an inhospitable, almost threatening air about them and there is a sense of the land thrusting belligerently out against the sea, unlike other parts of the Dorset coast which seem almost to embrace the waves. But on a bright spring day, the quarries show an altogether different face and become places of beauty as well as interest.

Stone quarrying is still a part of the island's life and work

Distance: About 4¾ miles
Terrain: Mostly rocky underfoot, so watch out for stumbles. After rain, the quarry tracks are covered with a layer of sloshy clay.
Start: The car parks at Verne Yeates, by the Heights Hotel at the top of the island. OS reference SY691732. Postcode DT5 2EN.
How to get there: Take the A354 from Weymouth across the causeway and onto the island. Follow the main road up through Fortuneswell and, on reaching the roundabout at the top of the hill, opposite the Heights Hotel, turn left. Bear right and the car parks are on the left.
Maps: OS Explorer OL 15 (Purbeck & South Dorset); OS Landranger 194 (Dorchester & Weymouth).
Refreshments: Portland is very well provided for pubs, restaurants and other places of refreshment. The Heights Hotel and Portland Lodge are on the route.

1 Turn right out of the car park onto the road. Where the road bends to the left, turn right down a no through road, then in about 80 yards left down a path with a railing on the right. At the bottom, go straight across the busy road and turn left up the pavement. Just before a hand crane and a tablet proclaiming ‘Portland – Home of Portland Stone’ turn right up a paved path, then  bear right onto another paved path and almost immediately left on a rough path signed as being the coast path. Follow this along the top of the cliff above West Weare for about 700 yards to where two pairs of distinctive and massively hewn portals, about 80 yards apart, narrow the path.

One of the artworks in stone to be found dotted around the Tout Quarry Sculpture Park

2 Just before the second pair, turn left, then left again up the bank. At the top, bear right and continue inland to reach some steps on the left. Descend them into a roughly circular area formed by sculptures and carvings. Leave the area at the far left and follow the main track through the Tout Quarry Sculpture Park, making digressions down the many side-tracks to see what sculptures you can find. Where the main track meets another track at a T-junction, turn right and head towards an embankment with a road on top and a tunnel through it. Go through the tunnel and continue on a narrow path along the bottom of a little valley. The path eventually leads up to a road.

3 Turn right for a few yards, then left up a drive between Portland Lodge and Chesil Beach Motors. In 60 yards, turn left up a rough track which curves to the right and becomes a narrow path. Soon after the top of the rise, bear right, round the edge of Kings Barrow Quarry. Reaching a fork, bear left into the edge of the quarry, but the path soon bears right and heads out of the quarry. Continue to a bluff overlooking a huge roadstone quarry. Here turn right down a slope, then continue in the same direction up the broad drive of the quarry. Bear left where the drive divides, then immediately turn left to head for a green embankment with floodlights on top. Just before the track bears right at the base of the embankment, turn right onto a rougher track. Take the first turning on the left and continue up to a tarmac drive. Turn left up to some rusty iron gates. Pass to the right of these and walk down to the road.

4 Go straight across, down a path between a paved lane on the left and a playing field on the right. Follow the path to the right, round the end of a children’s playground, with posts for a wire-mesh fence on the right. The path now runs past the backs of some houses, then alongside a road. Turn right to cross over the end of this road and continue ahead down a path to the left of ‘Meadow’s Edge’. Go through a kissing gate and walk to the very far right-hand corner of the field. Another kissing gate and a short weighbridge lead onto a drive, where turn left. Take the broad track closest to the building on the right. Stay on this track as it becomes rougher and narrower and leads eventually to the cliff-top.

An interested observer at the furthest point of the walk

5 Turn left on the path nearest to the cliff-edge and follow it through the area delightfully called ‘Shepherds’ Dinner’, with Penn’s Weare below and stupendous views of the coastline from St Aldhelm’s Head to Portland Bill. Stay on this path until it goes through a gate, becomes enclosed, passes a bowling club, and emerges onto a road. Follow the road straight ahead, with the forbidding stone walls and wire of the Young Offenders’ Institution on the right and more attractive views across the Breakwater and Portland Harbour on the right.Stay on the road as it bends to the left into an open area.

Looking north-north-east towards the port

6 In the far right-hand corner of this area, go through a gap in the wall and bear slightly left to cross a road. Reaching another track, bear left. At a T-junction with another track, turn right. In front of a quarry, the track bears right and descends to the quarry, but just before that, turn right onto a rougher track. Pass to the left of a rusty iron gate and continue ahead with a wire-mesh fence on the right. The track becomes a paved road, which leads past the tunnel entrance to the Verne Prison and a turning to the right (which ignore) back to your car.

A bridge at The Verne

Kit Glaisyer in his studio, visited Bridport in 1988 and never left

Bridport was awarded Dorset’s first government-funded art school in 1865, a humble seat of learning that sat on the top floor of the Literary and Scientific Institute in East Street, a Grade II Listed building currently the subject of a £2 million restoration bid by the Bridport Area Development Trust. Its best-known student, Francis (Fra) Newbery went on to become arguably the most distinguished director of the Glasgow School of Art which under his leadership, from 1885 to 1917, attained an international reputation with the flourishing Glasgow Style.
Although he later retired to Corfe Castle, Newbery never lost touch with Bridport and donated several paintings and murals to the town including the Spirit of Bridport, which can be seen in the town hall and lends its name to the broad alliance of councillors, artists and traders that today promotes a range of cultural and sporting activities including the Food Festival, Literary Prize, Bridport Carnival and Melplash Agricultural Show.
Throughout the last century artists continued to come to the area, drawn by the landscapes and the town’s closeness to the sea. Painter Paul Nash and painter/sculptor Eileen Agar – the so-called Seaside Surrealists – were frequent visitors to West Bay while based in Swanage in the 1930s; and in the 1960s and 1970s American abstract expressionist John Hubbard based himself in Bridport, as did experimental photographer John Miles and figurative painter Robin Rae, a former student of Francis Bacon and John Nash. Hubbard and Miles both taught at Symondsbury School of Art, founded in 1984 at the Old Rectory by Ann Barnes and Peter Hitchin, the owner of Symondsbury Manor who had established a college there some years before to offer tutorial-based courses.
‘The School had a range of courses from GCSEs to A-levels and foundation courses and we had a wonderful photographer called Ron Frampton who had a 100 per cent pass rate for his students and was an honorary member of the Royal Photographic Society,’ says Ann Barnes.

Ann Barnes, founder of the Oakhayes art residency

‘The School ran until about 1989-90 when the recession hit and student numbers dwindled. That was when I placed an advert in the Artists’ Newsletter for artists to come and live there.’
The Oakhayes art residency took its name from the Old Rectory’s alternative name and found a community of painters, writers, musicians, graphic designers and other artists living and working together. Bridport-based artists Horst Lindenau and Roger Lawrence came to work there, as did as Simon Poulter and Julie Penfold, who went on to set up PVA MediaLab, the digital arts association that nurtures developing artists to produce and exhibit new work.
‘It was a wonderfully rich time,’ says Ann, ‘and because we took a very broad definition of what an artist is we had a very vibrant community of people all feeding off each other’s creativity. There were spats of course, but mainly to do with who had left the kitchen in a mess!
‘The only trouble was artists are notoriously poor and their rents weren’t enough to pay for all the things you need to do to maintain a Georgian mansion, so eventually I had to give them notice to quit which was terribly sad.’
After much restoration the Old Rectory is now let as a weekend venue for private parties, family celebrations and corporate events where recent guests have included Eric Clapton and Jack Straw MP.
‘Oakhayes was a crazy place and completely inspirational,’ says landscape artist Kit Glaisyer who came to visit in the autumn of 1998 – and never left the area.
‘I grew up in North Dorset, but after college in Bournemouth and Farnham I headed for London where I was arting away for years trying to find a voice. I had been doing these really edgy abstracts, it was good work, but when I came to Oakhayes they started to turn out all fluffy and I didn’t want to paint fluffy. As a boy I had gone out painting watercolours with my dad – both my parents were amateur artists – so over time I returned to landscapes.’

The St Michael's trading estate: once derelict, now a hub for art in Bridport

Oakhayes closed six months after Kit’s arrival whereupon he took up residency in an abandoned net-making factory on the St Michael’s Trading Estate in Bridport, encouraging other artists to join him in founding the St Michael’s Studios complex, which has evolved as the focus of a renaissance of local artistic activity.
‘I had a couple of big commissions to finish so I needed studio space. St Michael’s was effectively derelict, but it had these incredible spaces – the first room I was shown is still my studio to this day.’
Within a couple of years Andrew Leppard and Caroline Ireland, who inaugurated the annual Bridport Open Studios event, had joined Kit and St Michael’s is now home to around 25 artists, providing a focus for the increasingly energetic – and widely acknowledged – Bridport art scene.
‘Whereas Bridport used to have artists spread throughout the area, St Michael’s has become a hub for this creative activity, a cypher for the scene if you like, but the scene is more than St Michael’s and St Michael’s is more than the scene.’
Other small businesses including antiques dealers, cafes, an upholsterer’s, carpenters, masons, a furniture warehouse, The Trick Factory skatepark, vintage clothing repositories and a recycling centre also operate on the six-acre site.
‘The attraction for artists is that because the buildings aren’t maintained to high-rent standards they make affordable studio spaces. What has grown up is a focal hub for the town’s artistic community, which has expanded as artists have visited and decided to move here.’
But St Michael’s faces an uncertain future as a succession of development proposals have come before the planning authorities.
‘Obviously,’ Kit says, ‘the site is worth much more with planning permission for housing and we have tapped into Bridport’s history of non-conformism to resist those attempts. The fear is that redevelopment would change the nature of the community that has grown up around St Michael’s. Residential concerns will always win out over commercial and there are bound to be complaints about noise that will irrefutably alter the nature of the community here.
‘People in general, not just artists, seem to have forgotten our right to dissent so we have been trying to overturn defeatist attitudes and galvanise the support of the wider community.’
In the last few weeks Kit and other tenants and townspeople have formed Enterprise St Michael’s, a not-for-profit Industrial and Provident Society, to raise the finances with which to buy all or part of the estate with a view to regenerating it as a protected employment space within the town.
‘I’ve been marketing St Michael’s and engaging with the community for years and have built up a range of contacts,’ says Kit. ‘So the plan is to acquire the estate and redevelop it as we want it to be. It’s an enterprise park in the very real sense of the word – there’s something like 200 self-employed people here already, people that are being enterprising in the way they make a living.’
Enterprise St Michael’s aims to develop existing affordable workspaces, restoring the site’s historic buildings and build new work units on the west of the site including a market building, a creative industries incubator, a food sector workspace, an eco-industries and green manufacturing zone, space for skills training and a youth hub, as well as managed office space to support start up for micro-enterprises.
‘Bridport was always a working town, but it’s nearly 50 years since many of the factories closed and the town is changing. Now that St Michael’s is gaining recognition it is contributing greatly to the profile of the town as a whole,’ says Kit.
Whether or not the townspeople of Bridport welcome the attention from further afield is open to debate. The town’s designation as ‘Notting Hill-on-Sea’ continues to divide opinion and Kit is quick to disassociate the art quarter from any such labeling. Enterprise St Michael’s is part of the industrial profile for Dorset supported by the Local Enterprise Partnership. It also intends to develop land on the adjoining riverbank as a public walk and wildlife corridor to deliver community open space for the town.
‘If I came into Bridport when I was at Oakhayes there was a sense that people could spot the artists, but now we are part of the town. Bridport has changed a lot in the last ten years and the Notting Hill thing has become shorthand for a diverse group of people whose energy has galvanised this creative activity, but lasting change has to be unforced, an organic process.’
That diverse group includes writers Horatio and Ioana Morpurgo; affluent incomers like Richard and Nikki Cooper who own the Bull Hotel; local innovators such as Gabby Hitchin at the Electric Palace; film-maker Robert Golden and his writer wife Tina; and Niki McCretton and Marc Parrett whose Stuff and Nonsense puppet company has bought the Lyric Theatre.
Chris Day, owner of The Pierrepoint art gallery in South Street, has closely observed the evolution of the town’s artistic fortunes in the ten years since he opened: ‘There are exciting things going on in Bridport, especially down at St Michael’s. It’s a treat to be surrounded by such wonderful work and to be part of such a spirit of enterprise, it gives the place a real sense of community,’ he notes.

One of Kit Glaisyer's paintings, inspired by the West Dorset countryside

It also requires boundless energy and enthusiasm. With his community work and on-going efforts on behalf of St Michael’s, it’s easy to forget that Kit Glaisyer is also a working artist with an epic series of West Dorset landscapes underway and several commissions. ‘I always say I wish I had more time to paint, but truthfully I make no distinction between the various aspects of my work, be it painting, politicking or polemics – it’s all part of the whole and when you love your work it rarely seems like work. I’m innately optimistic, that’s why I’m an artist and art has to strive to be original, to find its own way and not look to rest on its laurels. That tenacity is what drives St Michael’s. It’s an inspirational place and we have been presented with the chance to shape our own future.’

The Spirit of Bridport Festival of Culture (11-27 August) features performing arts, music, food, sports, art, literature, heritage and film. For more information see www.spiritofbridport.org

Frank Kibblewhite in contemplative mood with a selection of Sundial titles

It is twenty-five years since Sundial’s Frank Kibblewhite moved to Mappowder – the village where the author T F Powys had lived for the last thirteen years of his life. Before then, Frank had taught at St Aldate’s College, Oxford, and opened three record shops in Maidenhead. The first was a small classical record shop in November 1978 which experienced an impressive Christmas turnover, but struggled through the first quarter of the new year before he decided to introduce pop music and jazz; turnover doubled almost immediately. It proved a very successful combination and after eighteen months he opened a separate classical-only shop, and then a much larger shop, which proved immensely popular. Despite business success, he gradually began to lose interest and when the leases ended in 1987, he made up his mind to pursue other passions.
Although he had been born in Bristol and raised in Maidenhead, he regularly visited his paternal grandparents in Wimborne and explored much of the nearby countryside as well as many of the surrounding villages and towns, including Dorchester. Over time he developed a deep-rooted love of Dorset with a strong desire to one day make it his home. The 1987 move to Dorset ushered in an extraordinary and wonderful period; from Mappowder he explored Dorset’s beautiful villages and took in the stunning diversity of landscape and coastline. Frank became involved with rare books and issued catalogues of 20th-century first editions. He exhibited at occasional book fairs and became sufficiently well known in his field of expertise to establish a modest but viable book business.
His particular focus on Dorset books, with an emphasis on the Powys family, led to him being invited to give talks to local societies. These invitations increased and soon he was lecturing on the Powys brothers, Thomas Hardy and then a wider range of 20th-century authors when he linked with both the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) and Bristol University’s Department for Continuing Education.
After a decade of lecturing he realised another ambition when he opened a bookshop in Sidmouth. Running a single shop from a distance of nearly fifty miles was not without its problems, though. A few years later, he received an offer for the purchase of the business which he could not refuse. With time on his hands, and having both lectured on and sold books, Frank now decided to publish them.
A love for the novel The Blackthorn Winter by Philippa Powys – an ‘untutored writer of great elemental power’ – prompted him to take the first steps to bring back into print this ‘rare, interesting, unusual, raw novel of gypsy and country life’. With no experience of publishing, it took six months before the printed books arrived, a day he will never forget: ‘I’m a publisher,’ he declared triumphantly.

With a copy of The Sailor’s Return, in front of the Sailor’s Return

Since then, Frank has published several more volumes by members of the Powys family, including Theodore (Kindness in a Corner and Unclay), Llewelyn (Durdle Door to Dartmoor: Wessex Essays) and Littleton (The Joy of it), but is now turning his attention to other Dorset authors. David Garnett’s The Sailor’s Return is essentially about the nature of prejudice and its consequences. A remarkably liberated and daring novel at the time of its first publication (1925), it deals with deeply entrenched racism in British society in a Dorset village. In his review of the novel Llewelyn Powys wrote that it is ‘unequalled in its flawless meanderings’.

A selection of Sundial-published titles

Frank is particularly excited about another recently published title: Florence, Mistress of Max Gate, by Peter Tait, Headmaster of Sherborne Prep. It is a compelling biographical novel about the relationship between Thomas Hardy and Florence, his second wife. In his compelling recreation of Florence’s life, the author tells of a letter  that Thomas Hardy had written to her on the eve of their wedding, which she kept until her death, when, under instructions, it was destroyed … ‘And with it died part of the secret, the secret that helped explain Florence. For, as Thomas found out to his cost, there was more to Florence than was evident from their first meeting. And so began their trail of deceptions, first of Emma (Thomas’s first wife), then of their friends and, finally, of us all.’
Looking to the future, having published Red Die – A Dorset Mystery by Roger Norman, Sundial will release a new edition of his Albion’s Dream, previously issued by Faber & Faber, followed by the author’s new novel, Green Man, which is also set in Dorset. Sundial are also planning to publish The Deadly Joker, a crime novel by Nicholas Blake (Cecil Day-Lewis), set in the Dorset village of Plush and inspired by the author’s stay at the pub, The Brace of Pheasants.

For a full list of upcoming publications, visit www.sundialpress.co.uk or contact them by post at Sundial House, Sherborne, Dorset DT9 4BS or by telephone on 01935 814113.

The E S Hindley factory at Bourton, near Gillingham, from where the new engine for the Sherborne Steam and Waterwheel Centre came

In 1829 a gentleman from Salisbury visited Sherborne, and was not impressed. He wrote to his father ‘The lower part of Sherborne is a most obnoxious place. The stench in Half Moon Street is such as to cause ordinary gentlemen to vomit and ordinary ladies to be overcome by attacks of the vapours. Those persons living in this part of the town have become so used to this awful stanch that they go about their daily work as if living in the middle of a fragrant flower meadow’. At that time Half Moon Street had a very deep sewer in it – so deep in fact that the residents complained that their wells drained into it. The Town Council’s solution was to dig their wells deeper with the result that the sewer drained into their wells. The deep sewer drained untreated sewerage, including the output of several slaughterhouses, into the river Yeo.
Under the Public Health Act of 1848, every borough which had an annual death rate of 21 or more per thousand of the population, was ordered (amongst other things) to set up its own water works, in order to ensure a supply of fresh, clean water. Sherborne at the time had a death rate of about 22/23, which subsequently went up to about 62 – so over a period of five years without an adequate supply of clean water one third of the population would have died of water-borne diseases. Sherborne Local Board of Health held its first meeting in September 1851. Its first priority was to supply clean drinking water to the people of the town. Initially there were three possibilities. The first plan was to bring water from three large springs to the north of the town; this plan failed because the supply was inadequate. An attempt to pump water from boreholes at Castleton to the Golden Ball Turnpike Reservoir using turbines was also unsuccessful as the turbines used were not able to produce the head of water required to drive it 230 feet up to the top of the town. The next scheme was to use a steam engine at Castleton as a temporary measure, but that was rejected as being too costly at the time. Eventually the Board of Health employed an engineer named John Lawson to draw up a scheme to pump water from the Castleton boreholes to the reservoir. His first step was to carry out a full survey of the town, and the fascinating original of his plan, which measures some eight feet by thirteen feet, now hangs in the Council offices in Newland. Copies of parts of this can be seen at the Steam and Waterwheel Centre. Lawson put forward his proposals in January 1868; they involved using a waterwheel to pump water from two new boreholes at Castleton up to the top of the town.  His plans were accepted, and the system was installed with great speed, beginning to pump in December 1869. The total cost of the installation was £2,987.18s.6d, and was capable of delivering over 7800 gallons of water an hour to the reservoir.
As constructed the waterwheel was unusual in that it had three feeds, one at the top, one slightly lower (‘breastshot’) and the third lower still. This is almost unparalleled. The top feed came from a leat which had served Castleton Mill; Castleton Mill had been demolished to make way for the new railway from London in 1860. The central leat brought water underground from the lake at Sherborne Castle, but is no longer used. The wheel is now powered by the lowest leat fed by the Oborne stream. When the top leat was in use, there would have been about two tons of water in the wheel’s buckets at any given time, and this was sufficient to power the pumps. The wheel has a diameter of twenty six feet making it one of the largest in the south of England. Its design incorporated ‘ventilated buckets’ which had been invented by William Fairbairn. A common problem with unventilated buckets, especially when constructed of metal, was that with the wheel under load and water pouring into the buckets, the displaced air is compressed and the water blows back. The Fairbairn design has a vent at the rear of each bucket which allows air to escape, so that the buckets fill more efficiently.
The waterwheel was connected to lift pumps which pumped Sherborne’s water to the Golden Ball reservoir at the top of the town, from 1869 to 1959.  It was generally very reliable but was damaged on one occasion, in November 1897 when, after very heavy rain, the Oborne stream flooded the area around the pumphouse to a depth of three or four feet. The action of the floodwater in the wheel pit caused damage to both the pit itself and the water wheel, which had to be repaired. A back up gas engine was installed at the same time at a cost of £250.10s.6d although this appears to have been little used over the years.

Manhandling the new flywheel into position before installing it

Some seven years after the wheel was installed, a steam powered pumping station was set up at Castleton because the water wheel driven pumps could no longer cope with the increased demand of the whole of the town. The steam engine for this was built by E S Hindley of Bourton, near Gillingham and it drew water from new boreholes. However this engine was costly to run, especially before the railway interchange at Templecombe was constructed, because coal had to be brought in by horse and cart from South Wales or from the Somerset coalfields – a three day haul. Eventually with the construction of the Templecombe interchange the cost of coal dropped enormously. Even so the steam plant was very expensive to operate when compared with the water wheel. The secretary to the Sherborne Urban District Council reported in 1869 that ‘The waterwheel driven pumphouse costs us one and one quarter pounds of grease per month and the attendance of one man for one half hour per day. For this small cost it pumps water for 24 hours per day. The steam driven pumphouse costs us six and three quarter tons of coal per week and the attendance of two men at all times that the engine is under steam.’
In 1959, the wheel was taken out of service partly on account of government legislation, but also because its pumps were beyond economic repair. In 1969, they, with other items of machinery including the gas engine, were taken away by the scrap man, but the wheel remained in place – chiefly because the gentleman concerned could not be bothered to dismantle it. It gradually degenerated into a poor state.

The eleven-foot diameter flywheel in situ

In 1975, a group of volunteers saved the old pump house building from demolition by the simple expedient of obtaining listed building status. The pump house building has since been restored, and a new sluice gate installed. A visitor centre has been established, and the museum opens for ten Sundays each summer. In 2008 the Centre completely rebuilt the water wheel, which had become seriously rusted and was in a state of collapse. The new wheel can be seen running on open days.
The steam engine had been scrapped in 1928, but the Sherborne Steam and Waterwheel Centre managed to locate a similar Hindley engine, which had previously run the at the brickworks in Gillingham. This engine is a large single-cylinder, double-acting horizontal engine, which has an eleven foot flywheel that weighs in at about two tons. It was kindly donated to them and is now in full working order. A period engine house has been constructed to accommodate it and its boiler, and to provide a museum about E S Hindley. The engine will be running under its own steam on open days.
The Sherborne Steam and Waterwheel Centre is well worth a visit if you are in the Sherborne area. It occupies a pleasant site with picnic facilities. The museum has its own website, from which details of opening and membership of the support association can be obtained at www.sswc.org.uk

The period engine house built to house the new engine and its boiler

View south-west of Blackmore Vale from Melbury Beacon. The A350 can just be seen on the left.

In 1977 the National Trust purchased by public subscription an initial 60 hectares of neighbouring Fontmell Down in memory of Thomas Hardy and in recognition of the site’s valuable combination of natural history, landscape and archaeology. Further land on adjoining Compton Down and Melbury Hill has been acquired since.
As an important chalk flora and fauna conservation site Fontmell Down is part-managed today by the Dorset Wildlife Trust who has established a number of Nature Reserves in the area, one of which, The Curlews and Burys, borders this walk where it crosses the south facing slopes of Fontmell Down.

A section of the Iron Age cross-dyke on Fontmell Down

The chalk downland turf abounds with more than 90 species of flowers and grasses, including early purple orchids, birds-foot trefoil, aromatic wild thyme and clustered bellflower in spring and early summer. The downland is also a popular breeding ground for birds – kestrels and buzzards are a familiar sight – and more than 30 species of butterfly have been recorded on The Curlews and Burys Nature Reserve alone.

The Victorian St Mary’s Church at Compton Abbas

Nestling in the lee of Fontmell Down is the parish and village of Compton Abbas, its name derived from ‘Cumb-ton’ – village in a narrow valley, and ‘abbas’, signifying that its land once belonged to the abbess of Shaftesbury. In spite of its picturesque location at the foot of the downs the population of the village has shrunk from 456 1861 Census to 200 in 2001.
Along the busy and meandering A350, the former turnpike that divided the old villages of East Compton and West Compton when it was constructed, stands the Church of St. Mary designed by George Evans of Wimborne and consecrated by the Bishop of Salisbury in 1868. Victorian St. Mary’s replaces a medieval church of the same name of which only its 15th-century greensand tower survives in a stone walled churchyard at East Compton where it is accompanied by a number of graves, two unidentified table tombs and the remains of a medieval cross. All are now in the ownership and care of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. Two bells from the tower, the oldest of which is believed to date from 1500 and bears the inscription ‘Maria’, were relocated in its Victorian successor along with a carved stone font that has been re-cut since and placed on a new pedestal. Another item of note is the Indian sanctuary lamp originally from a Hindu temple near Mumbai which hangs above the side chapel altar.
A former rector of old St Mary’s, Reverend Thomas Bravell, is renowned for being one of the leaders of the ‘Clubmen’, an armed band of people between 2000 and 4000 strong, who fought Oliver Cromwell’s troops on Hambledon Hill in August 1645 in protest at the damage caused to their lands and livelihood by both sides during the protracted English Civil War. One of their banners proclaimed, ‘If you offer to plunder or take our cattel, rest assured we will bid you battel’.
The Clubmen were easily defeated, but although many were wounded, only a few were killed. A number of the protesters were held captive in Shroton church overnight before being released the next day. However, Reverend Bravell and the other ringleaders were retained. The place near East Compton where they assembled before the battle is known today as Clubmen’s Down.
Don’t be surprised by the frequent sight and sound of light aircraft on this walk, particularly during the early and late stages, because privately owned Compton Abbas airfield is barely ½ mile east of the starting point on Spreadeagle Hill. At 210 metres this is one of the highest airfields in England and certainly one of the most picturesquely situated with superb panoramic views from its public viewing area and licensed restaurant which is open 360 days of the year. During summer the airfield hosts a number of spectacular aerobatic displays and fly-ins, regularly involving historic aircraft.

The walk:
1. Facing the road, turn left out of the car park onto a narrow bridleway and follow alongside the C13 for 300 yards where pass through a gate onto grassy downland leading to Melbury Beacon in 1 mile. After a north-south bridleway that crosses half way (you will return to this later) there is a fairly strenuous climb to the summit. Cross a fence-stile on your left to reach the viewpoint and OS triangulation pillar.
2. Having admired the superb views of Shaftesbury and the Blackmore Vale, retrace your steps for ½ mile to the bridleway on your right and head SSW downhill to a metal farm gate. Pass through this and a second metal gate almost immediately after onto a farm track crossing an open field and leading to East Compton in 500 yards.
3. On reaching village lane turn left and after only a few yards fork right. Ahead is the churchyard and surviving greensand tower of 15th century St Mary’s church. Pause to view the churchyard and then continue along the lane, with the church on your right.

4. Walk past Melbury Hill House and Twintown uphill to within a few yards of the A350. Turn left and ascend stone steps leading to the footpath through woodland and passing former Compton Abbas school and schoolhouse (now a private dwelling) to reach St Mary’s church.

5. After visiting the church turn left out of the gate onto a downhill track and in 50 yards descend wooden steps on your right to a path with the appearance of a minor watercourse leading to a metalled lane in 100 yards. Turn left (ignore public footpath sign pointing right) for 200 yards to a wooden finger post on the right, signed ‘Gore Clump 1½ m’.

6. Follow this bridleway past Willis’ Farm, on the left, through a tree-lined sunken lane to the gate at end where enter an open field and, keeping the fence on your right, to a metal farm gate at foot of Fontmell Down.

Fontmell Magna view from Fore Top on Fontmell Down

7. A bridleway sign at this point gives two options: left or straight ahead. Choose the latter. Keep the fence on your right and head for the far side of the field, where turn left for a short distance to reach a grassy slope ascending to a bridle gate and NT sign ‘Fontmell Down’. Continue uphill, taking great care because this mud over chalk track gets very slippery following rain.

8. Shortly after the ground levels out, a single gate in the fence on your right provides an opportunity to divert to the viewpoint at The Border on Fontmell Down which offers a superb view, on a clear day, of the delightful village of Fontmell Magna nestling in the vale below. If you would prefer to return to your vehicle, ignore the gate and continue straight ahead for 1100 yards to the car park.

Duncliffe Wood (just right of centre in the distance) view from The Border with the spire of Victorian St Mary’s church just visible below it

9. For this additional 1¼ mile section of the walk across gently undulating and open grassy downland, pass through the gate at 8. and head diagonally over the rise for the clump of trees on the skyline (almost due south). On reaching the trees, keep the fence on your left and, after pausing to admire the view of Fontmell Magna below, continue for 200 yards and go through a single gate on your left, noting that this is a NT designated path and not a public right of way. Longcombe Bottom is on your right.

10. With the fence on your left, aim towards the right hand end of a clump of trees where go through two gates 60 yards apart and continue ahead, passing the fence-stile on right accessing The Curlews and Burys Nature Reserve, to an Iron Age cross-dyke. On reaching this follow its course to a track where turn right and follow to end alongside the Upper Blandford to Shaftesbury Road. The gate on your left opens onto a narrow track beside the road which leads to the car park in 250 yards.

Distance: 4½ miles + 1¼ miles for excursion to Fore Top.
Terrain: Mostly downland turf with a few possibly muddy tracks and some quiet, tarmacked village lanes. Dog owners please note that sheep and cattle may be grazing on Fontmell Down.
Start: National Trust free car park at the top of Spreadeagle Hill. OS grid reference ST886 187. Postcode SP5 5AP (Compton Abbas airfield, not NT car park).
How to get there: Turn eastwards off A350 at Fontmell Magna. Follow road past Springhead Trust, uphill for 1¼ miles to cross-roads on C13 (Upper Blandford to Shaftesbury Road) where turn left and continue for 1¼ miles to NT car park on left at brow of Spreadeagle Hill.
Maps: OS Explorer 118 Shaftesbury and Cranborne Chase. OS Landranger 183 Yeovil and Frome.
Refreshments: Licensed restaurant and light refreshments at Compton Abbas airfield, ½ mile east of Spreadeagle Hill car park. ‘Milestones’ 17th-century Tea Room near St. Mary’s church alongside the A350.
Public transport: None to start point on Spreadeagle Hill. Apart from taxis, the only alternative is by bus from Shaftesbury or Blandford to Compton Abbas village and join walk at 5 (St. Mary’s church).

Slow worms photographed by Colin Varndell

]]> http://www.dorsetlife.co.uk/2012/04/colin-varndell%e2%80%99s-wildlife-year-%e2%80%93-april/feed/ 0 http://www.dorsetlife.co.uk/2012/04/oborne-a-photo-essay-2/ http://www.dorsetlife.co.uk/2012/04/oborne-a-photo-essay-2/#comments Wed, 25 Apr 2012 23:26:53 +0000 DorsetLife http://www.dorsetlife.co.uk/?p=4582

Oborne has its fair share of stone-mullioned windows

The highways and byway of Oborne, ignored by Sir Frederick Treves

If Oborne has one distinction above all, it is probably that it is one of very few villages to have been roundly ignored by both Sir Frederick Treves in his Highways and Byways of Dorset and Dorothy Gardiner in her Companion into Dorset.

The chancel is all that remains of the original 1533 St Cuthbert’s church which, ironically considering it survived only six years as a chapel of ease for the monks of Sherborne before the dissolution, bears the crest of Henry VIII above the east window

The 17th-century pulpit and communion rail in the old chancel

History too has appeared to be an infrequent visitor; Oborne is mentioned just twice in Papal Bulls of 1145 and 1303, and even then only as an adjunct to Sherborne. Its existence was first documented in the year 975, when it was known as Womburnan. By the time of the Domesday Book in 1086, it was known as Wocburne and then Woburn in 1212 before becoming Oborne in a document of 1479. The name comes from the Old English ‘who’ and ‘burna’ meaning place ‘at the crooked or winding stream’. Arthur Mee’s Dorset – The King’s England, rather poetically describes Oborne thus: ‘the stony cottages of Oborne wander off among the fields by a tiny rill, hardly big enough to carry a minnow but just the size for the forget-me-nots. It is the River Yeo.’

A duck stands in a place of safety in Oborne

The 17th- and 19th-century Old Schoolhouse – which was originally a parsonage – beside which flows the River Yeo

The peace of the village is practically unbroken; during the Civil War a skirmish here on 29 April 1645 led to the death of ‘Morice Lee, an Irish soldier’. 296 years and eight days later – on 7 May 1941 – a Luftwaffe bomber crashed into the hillside below Oborne Wood. All aboard perished, the pilot having baled out, and were buried the next morning in the churchyard, where they lay until their remains were transferred to the German War Cemetery in 1963.

One of many attractive gardens within the village

The Old Rectory, which is not as old as the Rector, John Shuttleworth, who held his post for 57 years from 1693 to 1750

Another grave which is not as it was is that of Robert Goadby, founder of the Western Flying Post, now better known as the Western Gazette, whose credo was printed above the door of the Sherborne Printing house: ‘The liberty of the Press and the liberty of the People fall together. May God avert it.’ He was buried in 1778 and a pine tree planted next to his grave. This was later replaced with an elm tree which, on the bicentenary of his death, was felled after falling victim to Dutch Elm disease. The tree surgery had catastrophic consequences for his memorial, which was destroyed in the felling process.

The ‘new’ St Cuthbert’s church, which celebrates its 150th anniversary this year

In modern times perhaps the reason why most have heard of Oborne is the Trencherman’s Guide-featured The Grange hotel and restaurant

Misty morning, trees half seen,
Rooks depart on lazy wing;
Duncliffe welcomes early spring
Blanketed with fresh-grown green

Garlic smells drift in the air–
Sharper than Italian food–
Growing stronger as the wood
Warms in sunlight, scents to share.

Weeks away yet from the sweet
Hyacinth and bluebell tones.
Brownsea Island’s nascent cones.
Squirrels pine for seeds to eat

On the heath in salty air
Bracken, birch and bloomless gorse
Alder carr and watercourse.
No more rhododendron there,

Nor by the A31–
Where the smell is more intense–
Heady whiffs of raw incense:
Papaver Somniferum

Medical, you understand,
Grown for treating chronic pain,
Scenting Charborough in the rain;
Opium on MP’s land

Cross the county, summer’s here:
Fish and chips at West Bay quay,
Piscine bounty from the sea,
Salt and vinegar and beer

Kelp and seaweed, steam trains too,
Candy floss in Swanage sun,
Parents slop the sun cream on.
Wafts of Studland barbecues

Blend with damp but happy dog;
Naturists and horses mix,
Oysters, ice cream, lip-salve sticks,
Passing ferry, diesel fug.
Hotter, hotter, hotter still
Kingston Lacy is the place
Naga eater’s tear-lined face
At the Chilli festival

Skip to Tarrant Hinton now
Traction engine, Ferris wheel
Fresh-sawn wood and heated steel
Sun-baked hill and fire-box glow.

Harvest time and just-cut hay
Not the May-cut silage sweet
Just an aromatic treat.
Autumn’s rains: damp earth and clay

Hedgerow pickings – fruit and sloes –
Purple fingers, apple pies
Cider pressing. Wintry skies
Fewer scents and runny nose.

Nasal journey near complete
Wareham’s pubs and its Court Leet
Beer and bread and frying meat
Standards checked… and guts replete.