coast-point at which Mantell's description is of interest distinct from its formation and to be taken up. Before the reign of Eliza- scenery. Scarcely two miles from the cove beth the newer borough of Melcombe Regis there is the castle of the Welds, one of the (Regis originally referred to Edward I.) oldest families in England. Here are to be was at constant feud with the older Wey- seen the drawings of Giles Hussey, a native of mouth. The Government then interfered Marnhull in Dorset, and a protégé of the and compelled the two towns to become incor- owner of Lulworth, in the middle of last cenporated, in which state they have remained. tury. A detailed account of this really reLeland called Melcombe 'Miltoun,' but the markable man may be seen in Maton's 'Westmore modern name was coming in even in ern Counties' (i. 25). His fundamental nohis time. This town,' he says, 'hath been tion--he seems to have been a kind of belated far bigger than it is now. The cause of this Pythagorean-was this: that every human is layed on the Frenchmen, that yn tymes of face is in harmony with itself; and that if the warre rasid this towne for lak of defence.' keynote is once obtained, the proportionate The French were troublesome enough in the intervals follow as a matter of course. It fifteenth century to cause the port privileges would probably be an easy task to maintain, of Weymouth to be handed over to Poole, in if not to demonstrate, an opposite theory, hopes of making them regard the less defen- namely, that nine out of any ten human faces sible place as not worth burning. Ever since do not present us with harmonies at all, but that time Poole has been the first commercial with discords. Be this as it may, Hussey has port in the county, carrying on a very active left many portraits corrected by a musical trade with Newfoundland and a considerable scale, and believed them all to have gained one with Spain, Portugal, and the Mediter- in character and expression by the employranean. Weymouth is not destitute of trad-ment of his method. The present Castle was ing activity, but its chief glory came to it about a hundred years ago, when Ralph Allen* of Bath (the Allworthy of Tom Jones') contrived to make it a fashionable wateringplace. The Duke of Gloucester built Gloucester Lodge (now used as a hotel) in 1780, and George III. used it as a residence for many seasons succeeding the year 1789. built by Lord Bindon, a junior member of the Howard family, in 1600; the property was bought from the Howards by the Welds in 1641. The ruins of the Cistercian Abbey of Bindon, near Wool Bridge, were made use of in building the house; the site of which abbey was the scene of a temporary revival of monastic life early in the present century, when a colony of Trappist refugees was sheltered there by Mr. Weld during the French troubles. The monks have long since been recalled; but the place, with its sombre alleys and fish-ponds, is still worth a visit, though a few lines of low wall, with here and there a broken arch or abbot's tomb, alone remain to represent the ancient buildings. The Dorset cliffs grow finer as they trend eastward from Whitenose up to the now wellknown Lulworth Cove--the Lynton of Dorsetshire. At Holworth Cliff, adjacent to Whitenose, a spontaneous combustion of bituminous shale occurred in 1826, and caused a little pseudo volcano, with volumes of flame and exhalations of sulphureous vapour. The smouldering went on for many years, and the All the Purbeck strata may again be found surrounding clay and shale were burnt into compressed in the small compass of Worbarcellular slag. Decomposition of pyrites, with row Bay, with fine slopes of down on the which the strata abound, was the origin of this top. Hard by is the grand profile of Gad outbreak. The contortions of the firestone, Cliff, with five hundred feet of sheer cliff and gault, wealden, and Purbeck strata at many tangled base, and a famous specimen of a Cypoints are very grotesque. This is particu- cadeoid tree among the debris of the oolite. larly the case in the coves with which the This tree is encased in a bed of limestone; coast is indented, the sea having worked its the pith is discernible surrounded with bundles way into the softer sands and chalk when of fibre, and the bark is well defined. From once the stone casing has been pierced. Lul- Gad Cliff we descend to Kimmeridge, the worth Cove exhibits a section of all the strata land of bituminous shale, which abounds in between the chalk and the oolite, and owes its the dark-blue beds, and is quarried under the peculiar form to the unequal resistance of these name of Kimmeridge coal. The so-called strata against the action of the sea. At Staircoal-money' has long been regarded as Hole there is a barrier of Portland limestone at the cove-mouth, but it has been ruthlessly breached by the sea, which rushes in at highwater, through chinks and caverns. Lulworth is the gem of the coast, and has points * Murray. nothing more than refuse pieces thrown aside by the makers of beads, bracelets, and other ornaments for the Roman population. The base of the shales is alumina, which exists in such quantities that some of the material * Ruegg. has been used as a source of alum, and a former owner of the property erected works for the purpose. The really important extracts are a light oil, very fine, extremely volatile, and quite colourless, suitable for the same purposes as coal-naphtha; and a dense oil, with good properties as a lubricant, and possible merit as a material for burning in lamps. The residue of the shale is a porous kind of coke, which has been used-though not widely-as a manure. But it is vain to attempt writing in detail of a coast like this. Whoever visits Dorset with a sufficient pair of legs should explore Purbeck, and especially the Purbeck coast, on foot. Between Kimmeridge and Poole harbour he will stop, where we cannot, at Lord Eldon's beautiful valley of Encombeat the chantry crowning the 440 perpendicular feet of St. Alban's (Aldhelm's) Head*. at the curious platform called Dancing Ledge, the floor of an old quarry--and at the grand old cliff-quarry of Tilly Whim, near Swanage, said to have been last worked during the building of Corfe Castle. Swanage is a pleasant little watering-place, and unsurpassed probably as a centre of geological exploration. The Purbeck strata above the town have an estimated thickness of 275 feet, nearly half consisting of merchantable layers; and many are the remains of saurians and chelonians found in the pits by the workmen. Mantell has described at length the Goniopholis cras sidens, or Swanage crocodile,' which was found here in 1847, and whose unwieldy bones now rest in the British Museum. Once at Swanage, one must mount the Ballard Down, the eastern end of the great south range of chalk down, which looks across to the Isle of Wight where it rises again from the sea. From the Ballard you look down on the pretty bay and village of Studland close by the foot, with a seat of the Bankes family, whose name is suggestive of Corfe Castle five miles off. More distant is Poole Harbour, the eastern boundary of Purbeck, and the lately notorious Brownsea Island at its mouth; with the Hampshire coast, a long low line of This is a very interesting relic. It is the Norman successor of the wooden oratory erected by the Saxon saint; and, though used as a storehouse by the coast-guard, it is very little the worse for ill-treatment and time. The plan is a peculiar one for so small a chapel. The building is square and vaulted. The ribs spring from single responds in the corners, and form a cluster of three in the middle of each wall. All these ribs arch over to a central pier of eight clustered shafts. These shafts, like the responds and ribs, are rectangular in plan, but bevelled. In short the whole chapel is like a miniature chapter-house. In the north bay of the east wall is a small simple window, the sill of which was probably the altar. The doorway, a doubleshafted one, is in the south bay of the west wall. sandy cliffs, stretching away down the Solent. But, with Corfe only five miles off, it is time to be stepping westward;' and every step may be taken along the magnificent Nine Barrow Down, the continuation of the Ballard. Corfe Castle requires a whole article to itself: it is hard to say a little only of such a place. Imagine a long, uniform, unbroken, unbreakable-looking range of chalk-hill. For several miles east and west of Corfe it runs like a giant wall; but at that point there is an abrupt, sharply-cut gap about a quarter of a mile wide. In the middle of this gap rises a steep and lofty eminence, the top crowned with the soaring keep, and girt with the long circuit of the walls of Corfe Castle-a place altogether of its own kind; and so quaint and grand withal, that you feel as if it ought to figure in the Morte d'Arthur. It is one's very vision of Camelot or Caerleon. Not that it wants tales of its own-such as the heroic defence by Lady Bankes, which has been recounted before, and of which there is only too much evidence to show; or the murder of Saynt Edward, kynge and martyr,' whose tale runs thus in the Golden Legend: rood on huntynge with hys knyghtes in the wode It 'bapped that thys sayd yonge kynge edward of dorsete beside the town of warha, [Wareham] -and there in the chaas it happed the kynge to departe away from hys men and rode forth alone to see hys broder ethelrede whych was thereby with ye quene hys moder in ye castell named corfe-but wha ye quene saw hym there being and wente to the kynge and welcumed hym with allone she was joyfull and glad in her herte ... fayre and blaudishing wordes, and commaunded to fetch bread and wyne to the kynge-and wyles ye kynge dranke ye botelyer toke a knyf and roof yo kynge through ye body to yo herte in such wyse that ye kynge fyll down deedAnd anone thenne ye quenes servaunts buryed the body in a desolate place of ye wode.' This account so far differs from the story of the Chronicle that it makes the king fall dead on the spot; while the 'Chronicle' gives him strength to put spurs to his horse, but relates that he fainted from loss of blood, and was dragged by the stirrup over rough stones to the rivulet at the foot of the hill. Both narratives agree in ascribing wonderful virtue to his remains, in the performance of miracles at Corfe, at Wareham, and then at Shaftesbury, their last resting-place. Castle was blown to pieces, and some of these After the siege, during the civil wars, the pieces, of vast size, rolled down the hill and lie now at its foot, solid as rocks. One gateundermined by pickaxes or powder or both, tower, the reputed scene of the martyrdom, fell bodily seven feet. It stands to this day upright as it fell, sound and uncracked as any wall built yesterday. The keep, all shattered as it is, rears its head nobly. Mr. Bankes supposes that Italian artisans were employed by King Edgar to instruct his native workmen in the extensive additions which he made at Corfe; but there are reasons for referring the keep to a Norman origin. Another part of the Castle, at the western angle, bears a very strong mark of Saxon work. This is called the 'Queen's Chamber,' a name which suggests the thought that it might have formed a part of Elfrida's stronghold; and the feature in question is a considerable piece of herring-bone masonry with one or two round-arched windows in it. Near the Queen's Chamber is a curious relic--the Castle gallows, consisting of a stone projecting from the wall and notched at the top. He is a fortunate visitor who gets a sight of Corfe against a sunset sky. The two portions of the keep, one broad and grey, the other -a pillar-like fragment-all shrouded to the lofty summit with ivy, loom up grandly against the gold; and all the minor features of the great Castle group well below, with the little town hard by, and the church famous in the siege. For the student of architecture, however, Dorset is not a very rich field. Besides the majestic ruin just described there are two noble churches, remnants of three or four large abbeys, and a few delightful old houses. Of these, any one would well repay the mediævalist for the trouble of a considerable journey; but these are all of the sort which the county can offer. Judging from the numbers of fragments, churches were plentifully built here by the Normans; while during the reign of the Early and Middle Pointed styles singularly little seems to have been done in that way. But of the Later Pointed work there is abundance, since almost every parish church not modern consists of it. Its general character is, however, decidedly poor. The village churches are often pleasing and picturesque, but seldom noble. The genius that filled Somerset with Late-pointed churches, so lovely in their way, hardly crossed the border. Still there are, as already said, some architectural treasures in Dorset; and St. Mary's, Sherborne, is nearly as fine a specimen of Third Pointed as can be met with anywhere. The church is quite cathedral-like in size, and excellent in all other respects. The lofty Norman arches of the tower-they are the chief Norman feature in the church--are remarkable from the fact of their having been under-built of late years. It is strange to see an old tower standing on nineteenth century piers. In the effect of a church's interior no element is more important than the roof; and in the vaulted roof it was, as soon as any. where, that the failure of the old mysterious instinct for the noble showed itself. At Sherborne nave and choir are vaulted, but the roofs are ribbed by a sufficiently rich multiplicity of lines, without mazy, frittered prettiness. A great cross-church with a fine roof is always worth seeing, even though not otherwise excellent; but here all is goodall is in keeping; and a recent costly restoration--due chiefly to the late Earl Digby and to Mr. Wingfield Digby, his heir and successor in Sherborne Castle--has been a real success. In these restorations there is always something to deplore. Needful repair expands into renovation, and a venerable old-world building stares at us with a bran-new face in a sort of second childhood. But here much that has been done is truly admirable, especially the polychroming, which to some extent has taken the place of the banished whitewash. It is chiefly applied to the panelled stone-work of the choir, and only the sunk faces are painted, while the Hamdon Hill stone of the ribs and foliations remains untouched. The result is that you perceive at once the glow of colour and the bona fide reality of the wall-work beneath. Outside the most remarkable feature is the curious Norman south porch. The general look of the church is very grand; but its fine position is spoiled by surrounding buildings, including a large remnant of the monastery and the ancient grammar-school. The remains of the old castle, which served the bishops of Sherborne as a palace,* for space very large, for cost very chargeable, for show very beautiful,' stand in Mr. Digby's magnificent park. The present house was begun by Sir Walter Raleigh, who passed many a quiet hour at Sherborne, smoking on a stone seat still shown on the Camden says:-'In the year of our Lord 704 an episcopal see was erected here, and Adelm was first consecrated bishop. Afterwards, in the reign being advanced to this bishoprick, transferred his of King Etheldred, Harman, Bishop of Sunning, episcopal see hither, and annext the bishoprick of Sunning to it, which in William the Conqueror's reign he transferred to Salisbury, reserving Sherwhom it now belongs.' Gibson, in his edition of borne to his successors for a retiring place, to 'Camden,' some 100 years later, says: But since the Reformation all the old bishopricks having been cruelly lopp'd, Salisbury has lost this (the chief rents only reserved) to the Crown. The main end of it has been to gratifie great favourites, has took occasion from this and like instances to none of whom having long enjoy'd it. The world remark that church-lands will not stick by lay owners.' Pope, in his sixth letter to Martha and borne curse (vide Peck's 'Desiderata,' vol. ii. b. Teresa Blount, alludes to the well-known Sherxiv. No. 6, p. 5), and gives a long and interesting account of the place. grounds, where there are some noble oaks, and two small groves planted by Raleigh and Pope. towers retaining their old conical roofs. By Wolveton there hangs a tale. In 1505, Philip, Archduke of Austria, and in right of Wimborne Minster is the other great his wife King of Castile, having met with Dorset church, and a grand exception to the stress of weather on his way from Spain to remark that the Early Pointed styles are ill Flanders, was compelled to put in at Weyrepresented in the county. The interior of mouth. Sir Thomas Trenchard, of Wolvethis excellent church owes almost everything ton, the most important person in the neighto the thirteenth century architects. It ex- bourhood, sent off a messenger to inform the hibits an uncommon arrangement of the King of what had occurred, and meantime choir, under which runs an unusually lofty lodged the Archduke at his own house. crypt, and the choir-floor is raised accord-There was then resident at Berwick, in the ingly, and is reached from the nave by a parish of Swyre, not far distant, a gentleman considerable flight of steps. The whole east newly returned from foreign parts, and well end, within and without, is of the utmost versed in Spanish. This was Mr. John Rusexcellence; and the east window consists of sell, a connection of the Trenchards, and son an Early Pointed triplet, over each light of of Sir John Russell, Speaker of the House of which is a quatrefoil, a feature of very rare Commons in the second and tenth years of occurrence. The exterior of the church is Henry VI. Being invited to meet the Archless striking; but here, as within, the east duke, he acquitted himself so well that on end is very fine, and so is the Norman cen- leaving Wolveton Philip took him to court, tral tower, which would rank well among the and recommended him warmly to the King. coeval buildings of the kind if stripped of its He was at once made a gentleman of the crenellations and completed with a lofty Privy Chamber to Henry VII., went into roof. St. Mary's Church, Bridport, has lately France with Henry VIII, was made Lord undergone an admirable restoration, and de- Russell in 1529, and, after partaking largely servedly lays claim to the third place among of the spoils of the monasteries, was eventhe churches of the county. One feature of tually promoted to an Earldom. The house the exterior--a little oriel to the priest's of Bedford may therefore regard Wolveton chamber over the south porch-is almost as the spot where the foundation-stone of the unique. The fine early wooden roof in the illustrious fortunes of their house was laid. church at Bere Regis is also well worth a passing visit. The monastic buildings must be merely enumerated at Milton Abbas, the fine Middle-Pointed choir of the Abbey Church, and the Refectory; at Cerne Abbas, a wonderfully rich gatehouse and a gigantic Abbeybarn; at Abbotsbury, a still larger Abbeybarn, and a curious and entire chantry crowning a lofty hill overlooking the sea.* Bingham's Melcombe, again, is a capital model of the old English gentleman's country house. It stands in a remote nook of the downs, where the Bingham family has been seated ever since the earlier part of the thirteenth century. Built originally not later. than the reign of Queen Mary, the mansion was considerably added to, and not very judiciously modernised, at the beginning of the last century; but the oriel, a fine speciFuller says that the houses of Dorset are men of Tudor domestic architecture, has been built rather to be lived in than to be looked left intact; and the bowling-green, surat.' But there is a fair sprinkling of Eliza-mounted by a stupendous yew-hedge, and bethan houses, and some of an earlier date. also some ancient fish-ponds, are scrupulously Athelhampstone and Wolveton, both dating preserved, as far as may be, in their original from the beginning of the sixteenth century, state. deserve a longer stay than we can afford them. The first is a charming place, with a gatehouse and a high-roofed great hall, both thoroughly good. Wolveton, though much altered, is very interesting, its gatehouse * St. Aldhelm's Chapel, in Purbeck, has been described above. Dorset has of late years, it seems, reclaimed Ford Abbey from the neighbouring county on the west. In Hutchins it frequently figures as the Abbey of Ford, c. Devon. A full and interesting notice of its history, and of the Norman chapel (temp. Stephen), the Tudor cloisters and refectory, and the modern additions by Inigo Jones, is included in Murray's 'Handbook.' Jeremy Bentham rented the Abbey, and lived there from 1815 to 1818. The streets of the Dorset towns retain very little worth notice. Dorchester, Wareham, and Shaftesbury, as old towns, perhaps, as any in England, have very few old houses in them. Sherborne is less poor, and at Bridport and Weymouth there are some old bits remaining. But whatever is wanting to the county in architectural richness is made up by the number and interest of its earthworks, stonecircles, cromlechs, ancient roads, and dyked embankments, with other remains of the earliest period of our history. Within a stone's throw of the South-Western Railway at Dorchester there is an amphitheatrical may see the first brown knolls of the heathcountry showing below the distant blue of the Purbeck hills. ber fair-Weatherbury Castle, with an obelisk erected inside the rings; and probably three or four points besides these are more or less entrenched. Few people now regard these hill forts, or caerau, as having been, Old Sarum, the seats of a settled population, πόλεις οἰκουμέναι. 'The Britons, under Cassivelaunus, fled before Cæsar, and gathered their cattle into his caer; and so, as cattle-stealing seems to have been one of the evils dreaded by the law with Britons and Saxons, the coerau might have been strongholds for cattle, from night-robbers-men or wolves--and especially in the upland summer-feed. Or they might have been tribe-fastnesses at an early time of British life, where every pencenedl headed a little body of kindred that might suddenly find it needful to fight out a quarrel with another tribe.'* The countless barrows which dot the Dorset hills are partly burial-places, and partly mounds for law-gatherings, and so used for centres of hundreds, as in the case of Culliford Tree, near Dorchester. oval called Malmbury, one of the most perfect relics of the kind in England. The length is 218 feet, the width 163 feet; the greatest elevation of the chalk-banks is 30 There are earth works also at Abbotsbury, feet, and Stukely calculated that more than Badbury, Banbury, Bullbarrow, Cattistock, twelve thousand people could be seated in- Chalbury, Chilcomb, Cranborne, Crawford, side. Ten thousand assembled in 1705 to Dudsbury in Parley parish, Duntish, Eggarwitness the post mortem burning of Mary don, Flower's Barrow on the noble downs Channing, who had been executed for the cresting Worbarrow Cliffs, Hambledon, Hodmurder of her husband. From the top of hill, where a Roman quadrangle stands inthe bank a capital view may be had of the side a British bank, Kingston Russell, Muzgreat Fordington Field, a splendid unenclosed bury, Knowlton, Lambert Castle, Milborne area of 3500 acres of good corn-land, stretch- Stileham, Melcombe Horsey, Pillesdon Pen, ing away southward between Dorchester and Shaftesbury, Toller Fratrum, Woodbury Hill Weymouth, and cut through by the British--the site of a large and wellknown SeptemRoman road that strikes straight for the sea across the Ridgeway 'fault.' Bounding this fine specimen of the old open fields at the south-western end, the low but striking encampment of Maiden Castle (mai, dun, great, hill) is plainly visible. The weight of author-like ity is in favour of its construction by the Britons, and its occupation by the Romans as a summer-camp. Mr. Barnes calls it a British pah,' and rejects the theory that Maiden Castle was Richard of Cirencester's Durinum, believing that to have been the name of Wareham, the British capital of Dorset. There are those, however, who look still further back, and seek for traces of Oriental workmanship in these vast trenches, just as Stukely ascribes Stonehenge to a Phoenician origin. The hill is in form an irregular oval, with a wide plateau on the top, moderately level, and forty-five acres in extent. Beginning from the edges of the plateau, and occupying a large part of the sloping hill-side, there is a triple series of ditches and ramparts, the innermost being sixty feet in height, and rather more than a mile in circumference. The two entrances on east and west are defended by dovetailing the ends of the valla and by additional earth works. The little Winterbourne flows at the hill-foot on the south side, and traces of a supposed reservoir have been found or imagined in a basin indenting that slope. If Maiden Castle was used as a summer camp by the Romans, then Poundbury was probably the winter quarters. Poundbury is an irregular fort with a vallum and ditch, double on the western front, and cresting the head of a hill on the northwest of Dorchester, with two miles of unenclosed corn-land between it and the larger remains. From the summit a characteristic view may be had of Dorset scenery. There is the Frome close below the hill, with rich alluvial meadows skirting its streams; northward over the old round towers of Wolveton are the bare slopes of the chalk downs; and eastward, beyond the towers and spire of the county town, you From the old and curious hill of Eggardon to the county town the remains of an ancient road are plainly traceable. Stukely took this for the direct line of the Icenhilde Stræt, which he supposed to run by Maiden Castle, Eggardon, Bridport, Honiton, Exeter, and Totnes, to the Land's End. But, by consulting the map belonging to a paper on The Four Roads,' by Dr. Guest, the foremost authority on these matters, it will be seen that this line of road is a branch of the more famous one, and that under the name of the Ackling Ditch' it runs direct from Eggardon to Dorchester, thence in a north-easterly line, and with much fainter traces, to the great hill-fort of Badbury Rings, on the old road between Blandford and Wimborne, and then still further northward by Old Sarum, until it joins the main line of the Icenhilde. Badbury is a huge earthwork, rivalling *Barnes's Notes on Ancient Britain,' p. 92 Report of the Archæological Institute.' |