Tag Archive | Dorset

Sunday stroll: Fontmell Down

Yesterday Chap and I headed off to the main part of Fontmell Down Nature Reserve, which is run by Dorset Wildlife Trust and situated about 5 km south of Shaftesbury in Dorset. Fontmell Down is a spur of chalk downland jutting out above the Blackmore Vale. The spur is bisected by two cross dykes, landscape features that are likely to date from the Middle Bronze Age. We visit this reserve often, but it is at its beautiful best this time of the year, we reckon. Click on all photos to embigggen/bigify.

The spur of Fontmell Down, part of the chalk downland above the Blackmore Vale in Dorset. The northern cross dyke is clearly visible, just in front of the woodland on the spur. The southern one is obscured by the wood.

The orchids are out and within a few minutes of being on the reserve we’d seen five different species: bee, common spotted, fragrant, pyramidal and the greater butterfly orchid.

Fragrant orchid (Gymnadenia conopsea).

Greater butterfly orchid (Platanthera chlorantha).

Common spotted orchid (Dactylorhiza fuchsii).

Viper’s bugloss (Echium vulgare) is such a pretty flower. It is a glorious blue, and beloved of moths and butterflies and bees. It doesn’t grow very high on the thin soil of the chalk downland, but I have seen it growing up to about 80 cm tall.

Viper’s bugloss (Echium vulgare).

We also saw milkworts (Polygala sp.) in pink and in blue, and the wonderfully vibrant flowers of birdsfoot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus). We always called this ‘the eggs and bacon plant’ when we were kids, for obvious reasons!

Birdsfoot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus).

There were also the enormous seedheads of goatsbeard (Tragopogon pratensis), like dandelion clocks on steroids. Goatsbeard flowers only open on sunny mornings, so the flower gained the charming folk name of Jack-go-to-bed-at-noon.

Goatsbeard (Tragopogon pratensis).

It was a rather blustery day, so we didn’t see too many butterflies, but we did see some fritillaries and a rather tatty painted lady (Vanessa cardui), as well as various blues and skippers.

A fritillary. I’m not very good on butterflies, but think this might be a dark green fritillary (Argynnis aglaja).

We also saw this chap – isn’t he wonderful? No idea what he is.

Mystery beetle with the most dashing striped antennae.

The beautiful down has a deep coombe on its southern side, Longcombe Bottom, with ravens flying over, cronking their atmospheric calls

Longcombe Bottom.

and there are stunning views to the south-west across the Blackmore Vale:

View looking south-east into Blackmore Vale, with the village of Fontmell Magna in the foreground of the vale.

We also walked on down to a chalk pit hollow nearby, where there was the best show of orchids. Just common spotted and pyramidal, but so beautiful.

The orchids in the chalk pit hollow: pyramidal orchids (Anacamptis pyramidalis) and common spotted orchids (Dactylorhiza fuchsii). Definitely click on this one to embiggen/bigify – it’s worth it, I promise!

A water pipeline has recently been built across the reserve, and it was interesting to see the different flowers that have popped up in the disturbed area: lots of oilseed rape and common poppies and thistles, whereas the undisturbed land was mainly cow parsley and nettles.

The different flora marks the recent pipeline disturbance.

The northern cross dyke had more orchids than on the other parts of the down, because the ditch provides a sheltered microclimate.

Looking north-westwards down the northern cross dyke, with Melbury Hill in the background.

A beautiful thistle. Not sure which kind, but what a gorgeous colour.

A beautiful thistle on Fontmell Down Nature Reserve.

Sunday stroll: Tyneham and Worbarrow Bay

May25

Yesterday Chap and I headed south, to Tyneham and Worbarrow Bay in the Purbeck Hills of Dorset.

Tyneham has a fascinating and rather sad history. For centuries it was a small, isolated village near the Dorset coast, its inhabitants subsisting mainly by agriculture and fishing. In 1943, the Army took over the area for training and preparations for the D-Day invasions, and this required the evacuation of the 225 inhabitants of Tyneham. They were given just 28 days’ notice. The villagers left, believing they would return after the war, but 72 years on they have not been allowed back to Tyneham, nor are they ever likely to be. The area is still used as an Army Firing Range, and access is limited.

The road down into Tyneham.

We have previously visited Imber, a similar deserted village on the Salisbury Plain Training Area, where the houses are closed up but well preserved. Tyneham is very different. All the buildings apart from the church and the school house are dilapidated, with roofs missing, no floors, no windows and generally in a really ruinous state: the once-beautiful family homes are now just shells.

The approach to the village. Army ‘keep out’ sign to the right of the road.

Row of four cottages. The village has been 'prettified' for the visitors: the pavement and kerbing postdate the village's abandonment.

Row of four cottages, and an old phone box. The village has been ‘prettified’ for the visitors: the pavement and kerbing postdate the village’s abandonment.

Fireplaces inside one of the cottages.

Another ruined cottage. The tie bars are holding the walls upright – without the roof they have started to spread quite markedly.

The Rectory.

Noticeboard at the Rectory. The photo shows that it was once a beautiful Georgian building.

A picturesuw ruin now. Since the village's abandonment, trees have grown where would once have been beautifully-tended gardens.

A picturesque ruin now. Since the village’s abandonment, trees have grown where would once have been beautifully-tended gardens.

It really brings it home to you on a visit to Tyneham how much a community is about the place as well as the people. And when the people were moved away from the place they loved, and settled in different locations, their community died.

The last villagers to leave pinned a poignant note to the door of the church:

Sadly the houses were not treated with care. I don’t know whether Tyneham itself was used for target practice, as were and are the surrounding hills, or quite how they came to be so ruinous in such a short period. Certainly the Army is trying to keep them from further decay, but in general their repairs are very unsympathetic to the fabric of the old buildings, with hard Portland cement being used rather than lime mortar, and infills and repairs made with engineering bricks and cement. I know the Army is not a conservation body, but it is so sad to see the buildings as they are.

View on the way down to Worbarrow Bay.

Worbarrow Bay. Lots of landslips round here.

Thrift or Sea pink (Armeria maritima).

Bulbarrow Tout, and a party of kayakers who pulled up on the beach.

Worbarrow Tout, and a party of kayakers who pulled up on the beach.

May blossom. The hawthorn flowers certainly look nicer than they smell! (Crataegus monogyna).

A pretty small area of meadow planted at Tyneham Farm barn.

Another abandoned farm on the way out of Tyneham.

We drove past this on our (circuitous) way home: the Osmington White Horse, a hill figure created in 1808, and 85 m (280 feet) long and 98 m (323 feet) high.

Tyneham and Worbarrow Bay are open to visitors at certain times: check the visitors page on the Tyneham PC website for details.

An ammonite gift

Mar18

Look at this beauty! Chap was given it by a friend the other day. It’s a huge nautilus-like ammonite. Our friend is another historic building conservator, and found the fossil in a weathered and degraded stone that she had to remove from an old building in Sherborne, in Dorset, in order to fit a replacement piece.

What a lovely gift.

The suture lines of the living chambers as the animal grew show clearly.

The opening where the animal would have lived.

The stone is almost certainly Sherborne Stone, a limestone which was quarried close to the ‘new’ Sherborne Castle, and the quarries have been recently reopened. According to the quarry’s website, Sherborne Stone dates from the Bajocian age of the Middle Jurassic, and Wikipedia tells me that the Bajocian lasted from 171.6 to 167.7 million years ago. Looking at the list of ammonite species known to have lived in that near-four million year period, I don’t think I’m going to easily identify it, which is a shame. I’d love to know which species it is.

A nautilus in the Himeji Aquarium, Japan. Photo by Daiju Azuma.

Three present-day nautilus species. Left to right, N. macromphalus (left), A. scrobiculatus (centre), N. pompilius (right). Photo by User:Mgiganteus1.

The shells of three present-day nautilus species. Left to right, Nautilus macromphalus (left), Allonautilus scrobiculatus (centre), Nautilus pompilius (right). Photo by User:Mgiganteus1.

Look how big it is! It’s really heavy.

So heavy that my hand’s starting to go red!

A present-day nautilus for comparison. Photo by DanielCD.

Chap and I love looking for fossils. Part of our work in archaeology back in the early 90s involved a lot of fieldwalking (or Surface Artefact Collection, as it later became known)—an archaeological surveying technique that seems to have gone somewhat out of favour (it’s very time and personpower-heavy). Essentially it involves walking line transects spaced at set distances up and down ploughed fields, and picking up everything of archaeological interest, so the distribution of various artefact types and densities can then be plotted. This may be an indicator of below-soil archaeological sites and features such as pits and ditches that have been disturbed by ploughing, activity which has brought the artefacts to the surface. Anyhow, a lot of our fieldwalking was around the Wessex region and so on chalk geology, so we would also find many fossils, mainly echinoids (sea urchins). As these aren’t of archaeological interest, we got to keep them. So we have a great collection of lovely fossilised sea urchins. Even now, when we go for a walk, old archaeological habits die hard and we’re usually scanning the ground for flint flakes and pot sherds (and of course fossils) rather than looking at the view …

Hambledon Hill

Aug16

I’m a few days late to the news that the National Trust has bought Hambledon Hill, an Iron Age hillfort in North Dorset, for £450,000, thereby securing its future, for ever, for everyone.

Hambledon Hill, Dorset.

The ramparts of the Iron Age hillfort at Hambledon Hill. Photo by David Squire.

I have a very soft spot for Hambledon Hill: it is where I went on my first proper archaeological dig, 35 years ago. Roger Mercer, then of Edinburgh University, was directing the excavation of part of the Neolithic causewayed enclosure on the hill. The causewayed enclosure is a barely-visible part of the earthworks on the hill: the much later hillfort banks and ditches are the best-preserved and most obvious features. I spent a month that summer hoeing and trowelling chalk in the interior of the enclosure (as a green volunteer I was not allowed near the one large archaeological feature—the enclosure ditch—that was being excavated by experienced archaeologists), and finds were few and far between, but I loved it—summer on the chalk downs, with larks singing overhead and independence for the first time in my teenage life. We camped in a field, washed using water from a tap over a cattle trough, and ate meals cooked by a lovely lady called Grace in the Iwerne Courtney village hall.

(The first ever dig I went on was a Sunday spent at a rescue excavation at a site in the area of the proposed Empingham Reservoir, in 1970 or 1971. The reservoir was later built, and renamed Rutland Water. Of course I was a child, so not a proper digger. I found a sherd that I was told was the best found that day. I rather suspect they were being kind to me, but I glowed, and wrote a ridiculously long essay about my archaeological triumph at school the next day. Until that point it had been a toss up between dinosaurs and archaeology. That sherd decided it for me, and set me on course for my career.)

I now live not too far from Hambledon, and Chap and I visit there every now and then. It’s a beautiful spot, and one full of very happy memories for me.

‘Ay up lad’ or ‘Ooh aaar m’dear’?

Jul5

Watching the first stage of the Tour de France travelling through Yorkshire today reminded me of what I had always thought of as one of the most ‘Yorkshire’ television ads of all time: a young lad pushes his bike up a cobbled hill, on his way to deliver a basket full of Hovis bread loaves, while a brass band plays Dvořák’s New World Symphony (Symphony No. 9). The advert was directed by Ridley Scott in 1973. A few years later he went on to start his movie directing career with The Duellists and then Alien. The advert was voted the nation’s favourite in a poll a few years ago (albeit in a poll of just 1,000 people!).

However, my memory has failed me—I had always remembered it as being voiced by a man with a Yorkshire accent. I think the brass band would certainly have added to the general impression of ‘Northern-ness’. On re-watching it the voiceover is by a man with a West Country accent, and so is perfectly fitting for the location: Gold Hill in Shaftesbury, Dorset.

We live in the south-west corner of Wiltshire, so we spend a lot of time in the neighbouring counties of Somerset and Dorset. One of our nearest shopping towns is the Saxon hilltop town of Shaftesbury. 41 years on, Gold Hill is still known as ‘where they filmed that Hovis ad’, and a giant Hovis loaf stands outside the Town Hall, a collecting box for money to go towards the restoration of the Hill. Many of the older buildings in Shaftesbury are built with the green-coloured and well-named greensand stone.

Gold Hill, Shaftesbury, overlooking the Blackmore Vale. 15 June 2014.

The Hovis bread loaf collecting box, outside Shaftesbury Town Hall near the top of Gold Hill.

Shaftesbury Town Hall (right) and St Peter’s Church (left), on Shaftesbury High Street.

There were two other Hovis ads using the same music and a Yorkshireman doing the voiceover, which might help to explain my confusion:

and the first one in this sequence, with a boy walking up a cobbled hill (with his Mum):

Hovis do a nice line in ‘nostalgia’ advertising, and in 2008 they made a fantastic and very moving ad, celebrating 122 years of Hovis and British history:

They get an extra ‘yay’ from me for including the fight for Women’s Suffrage and the miner’s strike, as well as the brave men and women of both World Wars. Four years later Danny Boyle did something similar, but on a far grander scale—but that’s for another blog post!

Sturminster Newton Mill

Jun20

Last Sunday Chap and I headed south into Dorset. We wanted to visit the Fippenny Fair at Okeford Fitzpaine, but as that didn’t start until 2 we decided to take an amble en route. We stopped at Sturminster Newton Mill on the River Stour, with a view to doing a riverside walk, but to our delight found that the Mill was open, and not only that, it was one of its milling days. So in we went, paying our very reasonable entrance fee of £2.50 each.

Sturminster Newton Mill. Photo by Mike Searle.

The history of the Mill can be traced back for nearly 1,000 years, as it is almost certainly one of the four mentioned at Sturminster Newton in the Domesday Book of 1086. There may well have been a Saxon or even a Romano-British mill on the site before this. For most of its life the Mill was powered by two undershot water wheels working side by side; in 1904 these were replaced by a single water turbine, mounted horizontally under the water, which drove three pairs of stones. The Mill produced both flour and animal feed. It is owned by the Pitt-Rivers Estate, and was in constant use until 1970, when the last miller left and the Mill was boarded up and left abandoned for ten years. In the 1980s a Mill Trust was formed and several tenant millers worked there over the next decade. In 1994 it was decided to run the Mill as a visitor attraction, managed by the Sturminster Newton Museum and Mill Society, a volunteer-run organisation.

Sturminster Newton Mill on the River Stour. South wing (flour mill) to the left and north wing (originally a separate fulling mill) to the right.

We were taken on a guided tour of the entire building, and all the while the turbine was powering various machines and of course the millstones. The whole building gently shook, and the air thrummed to the regular pulse of the machinery. Canvas drive belts span, flour was pouring down shutes made of old-fashioned ticking and hessian, and chaff floated lightly about in the air, like drifting snowflakes. The homely smell of freshly-ground corn (grain such as wheat, rye, and barley to transatlantic readers) was all-pervasive. It is a magical place, and a real time warp—just as if the last hundred years had never happened. On the ground floor is the meal floor; above that is the stone floor where the grinding was done, and on the top floor is the bin loft where the grain was stored prior to grinding.

The mill is an L-shaped building. The south wing is the flour mill, and the present building was rebuilt c. 1650, presumably on the site of/incorporating parts of an earlier building. We were told that one of the trusses in the roof has recently and tentatively been dated by architectural historians to c. 1350! The north wing was ‘originally a completely separate fulling mill, built in 1611, then demolished in the late 18th century and rebuilt in brick on its original stone base to join with and extend the grain mill’, so the Mill’s website explains.

Machinery on the meal floor of the Mill: ground corn in the form of flour arriving from the floor above.

Machinery on the stone floor of the Mill. The pair of millstones are protected under the wooden vat or tun on the left.

Winnower in action on the stone floor.

Bag of grain arrived via the hoist through a well-worn trapdoor. Miller visible on the floor below.

Bag of grain (on its way to the bin loft) arrived on the stone floor via the hoist through a well-worn trapdoor. Miller visible on the meal floor below.

Millstone with tools to dress it when it had worn down too much.

Bins for grain in the bin loft at the top of the Mill. The roof truss that possibly dates from c. 1350 is visible up against the gable wall.

Miller's workshop in the other wing of the Mill.

Miller’s workshop in the other (north) wing of the Mill.

We were able to buy some of the flour that had been ground that day and I’m really looking forward to baking with it. (Update: you can see how I got on with a recipe for wholemeal bread made with this flour here).

Flour from the Mill.

The Mill is open until 29 September on Mondays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays from 11 am—5 pm. Admission for adults is £2.50 and for children is £1.00.

According to the leaflet we picked up, the special milling weekends this year are on

12 and 13 July, 11 am—5 pm

9 and 10 August, 11 am—5 pm

13 and 14 September, 11 am—5 pm

and the same entrance fees are charged. It’s well worth a visit. The stairs are very steep, so only the ground floor is suitable for those with limited mobility. There is a picnic area at the back of the Mill where you can sit and watch the river.

A big ‘thank-you’ to the great volunteers who work there and who made our visit such a joy. It really is a very special place indeed.

I have looked to see if the Mill has been used as a location for films or television programmes, but can’t find anything. It certainly would make an exceptional location for a period production as it is so untouched by the 21st century (and barely by the 20th!).

Sturminster Newton Museum and Mill Society website link. Also used as a source: Sturminster Newton Mill, by Peter Loosmore and Roy Clarke, 2010 (2nd edition), published by Sturminster Newton Museum and Mill Society.

The Crazy Dorset World of Arthur Brown

Jun14

Do you ever have those moments when you start poking about on the internet to find out one thing, and end up learning something completely different, and new, and unexpected? Chap and I had one of those moments the other day. It all started with a car advert on the telly (Toyota Auris Hybrid, fact fans). The music playing was ‘A Horse With No Name‘, written by Dewey Bunnell of the band America, and released in the UK and parts of Europe in late 1971, and in January 1972 in the US. I loved that song so much when it was released, and still do. I wanted to know more about it, and a quick google told me that although the band members were American, the song was written and demoed while they were staying at Arthur Brown‘s recording studio at Puddletown in Dorset.

What? What? Puddletown? Puddletown? Double take, re-read to check, then scratch head in incredulity at the incongruity: a song that is about as all-American as can be, and conjuring up a harsh, arid, desert world, was written in bucolic, lush, green and very English Dorset. Puddletown is a village 8 km to the east of Dorchester. It’s grown a lot with housing developments in recent years, but in the early 1970s was a small, out-of-the-way place.

At this point Chap (who lived in Dorchester for much of his youth) got very excited. He’d heard an urban legend that Arthur Brown (he of ‘Fire‘ and flaming headgear fame) had lived there, but had never had confirmation. More internet snooping was in order.

Details came. Arthur Brown and his Crazy World lived in a farmhouse in or near Puddletown, and had a recording studio there called Jabberwocky Studios. Various musicians pitched up and stayed, and as people came and went bands were formed and evolved into others, including Puddletown Express, Brown’s backing band. By 1970 Brown had left, and Puddletown Express developed into another short-lived band called Rustic Hinge and the Provincial Swimmers (May—August 1970). John Peel visited Jabberwocky Studios, to talk to Rustic Hinge about signing them to his record label. In August 1970 a BBC camera crew arrived, to film the farmhouse for a documentary on Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy—apparently the farmhouse was Hardy’s model for one in which Tess stayed. The programme was produced by documentary maker Michael Croucher. He was amused by the musical anarchy going on around him, and filmed a performance of ‘Lychee’ by Rustic Hinge for the programme.

But no name given for the farmhouse. Where was it? we wondered. Cue more googling. And then we hit paydirt: a thread on a board about Rustic Hinge. With the very footage of ‘Lychee’ shot by the BBC, with the house in the background.

And someone in the thread identified the farmhouse as Ilsington Farmhouse, near Tincleton. Here was another ‘what?!’ moment—we know Ilsington Farm as both Chap and I worked quite a few years ago in one of the offices in the converted farm outbuildings there: Terrain Archaeology’s headquarters. Small world!

Ilsington Farmhouse.

Tincleton is a small village about 2.5 km south of Puddletown, and Ilsington Farmhouse is a Grade II listed building dating from the 17th century. Yet more internet truffling and we learned that you too can rent the seven-bedroom farmhouse from a mere £2,000—£2,950 a week, and have a go at recreating those crazy days of 40 years ago. We also learned that Ilsington Farm has had a swallow hole incident (also known as a sink hole) a few years back. I’m fascinated by sink holes, so all this was too much excitement for one evening!

Caveat: a lot of the details here about Arthur Brown and his fellow musicians might well be wrong, as the various sites I’ve looked at seem to have accounts with conflicting details, chronology, etc. Considering the amount of drugs that were no doubt consumed back in the late 60s and early 70s there, it’s not surprising—I wonder that anyone could remember anything at all from back then in much detail!

September 2015 update: Nick Churchill has commented with a link to an article he wrote for Dorset Life in June this year, with masses of detail about the house and the recording studio – apparently Led Zeppelin recorded there too! Do give it a look – it’s a great read with fascinating information.

Making space for nature: swallows

Jun6

Recently Chap and I were at the Dorchester Curiosity Centre, a favourite spot for rootling about among antiques and bric a brac, looking for treasures. It’s on an old industrial estate in a series of interlinking hangar-like rooms. One of the areas has high sliding doors to the outside and is used for furniture storage rather than display—and what drew us in there was the twittering of swallows. As we were admiring them as they flew in and out through the open doors, the owner (?) of the centre came by and chatted with us about how they come every year and nest in the eaves and holes in the gable end of the wall, and how he had hung up some protective sheets overhead to keep the droppings from landing on the furniture (and punters). He mentioned that some customers had said he should shoo them away and prevent them from nesting. We were so glad he chose to ignore those people—swallows are such a delight and their nesting spots are increasingly under threat. And they will certainly draw us back there!

Swallows (image from Richard Crossley - The Crossley ID Guide Britain and Ireland)

Swallows (image from The Crossley ID Guide Britain and Ireland, by Richard Crossley).

Our village church has a Swallow Mess Committee (I don’t think they call themselves that …) as swallows nest every year in the porch. The members of the SMC duly clear up after them. I think they might even have a rota for oomska duty.

Swallow chicks in their nest (and oomska). Photo by User:Wsiegmund on Wikimedia.

Another church I know has an umbrella hanging upside-down below the nest in the porch to catch the mess. We are so grateful that people go to this kind of trouble for our feathered friends: an English summer wouldn’t be the same without them. Chap and I keep a nature diary and every year we note the date of various spring ‘firsts’—first brimstone, first bat, first clump of frogspawn in our pond, first hedgehog poo on the lawn—but the first swallow is the one that means the most.

One of my favourite mugs, by Emma Bridgwater (Photo off eBay)

One of my favourite mugs is a swallow one by Emma Bridgwater. I was going to link to it in her shop but it looks like the company doesn’t make that design any more. I shall have to be doubly careful of mine, in that case. And of our great bustard one: that’s a special one and I’ll squeeze a blog post out of it at some point …

Inglenookery

West Country witterings