Dorset Ancestors Rotating Header Image

February, 2011:

Chalbury Church

Feb 24th, 2011
by Dorset Ancestors.
Comments are off for this post

In eastern Dorset, in the Cranborne Chase country near the Wilts and Hants border lies the barely registered hamlet of Chalbury. There has been a church here at least since the early 13th century, but one, which was never dedicated to any saint. It did not serve a community with a definitive nucleation around a green with cottages, shops, or an inn, but instead just a few dispersed dwellings clustered around the base of the low, though steep hill the church stands upon. But the building never underwent the development accretions that so many other churches in more prosperous parishes did.

This is clearly evident from the exterior appearance of Chalbury Church. To this day it remains a rustic memorial to a bygone society, way down on the scale of ecclesiastical architecture and appearing to show the hallmarks of a stagnant economy in the community it was built to minister to. This church still shows a simple nave – chancel plan, to which aisles, transepts or a tower were never added at a later stage. Instead the visitor is confronted by a long narrow building scarcely wider than a cottage, with only a south porch and a diminutive cubical bell-cote at the west end to summon the few faithful to worship through the tolling of its single bell.

Chalbury further departs from  the customary appearance of churches in the more prosperous Dorset parishes by having a smooth whitewashed surface, as distinctive from the commonplace unadorned, frequently lichen-infested brick, stone and flint courses so evident elsewhere. Round-headed windows of only clear lights are set into the walls and the roof is of small, neat tiles, with a small skylight near the west end on the south side.

The appearance of the interior, as one might expect, is as unusual and unique as the outward aspect of this church. It is whitewashed, with a smooth corbelled ceiling below which some dark oak beams span the width of the nave. The original arch between the nave and chancel has been converted into a tripartite screen with a segmental-headed centre section with two straight-headed sections supported by classical columns on either side. It is several feet deep, so there is the effect of a short colonnade as well as screen.

This feature, as well as the interior details in general, is due to a re-ordering the church underwent in the 18th century, at which time also the original windows were replaced by the present ones. A further change of this century was the introduction of box pews, those on the south side being clearly some six inches than those on the north side. These pews reflect the status of their occupiers, and perhaps represent an apparent contradiction about Chalbury. It is a curious fact the the higher your status in the community, the higher the pew you occupied in church. In this instance the pews belonged to the tenant farmers of the parish, and may at first seem strange that these indicators of high social standing should be found in the church of such a small contracted community, instead of simple, crude benches.

But it is in the chancel that these higher social distinctions are even more apparent. On the south side there is a long seat reserved for the use of the Rector’s servants, but even more lavish is a balustraded and canopied pew, which was constructed for the Earl of Pembroke. A prominent triple-decked pulpit stands against the wall separating nave and chancel and embodies the great emphasise placed on the preaching of the word in the 19th century, But it is likely there were many more pews than worshippers to fill them.

Because definitive architectural features are rare, it is difficult to date the original building with certainty. The older parts are perhaps 13th century, while some extension was carried out in the 14th century. Then for four centuries any further development – at least in the form of structural alterations – at Chalbury was suspended. During this time it was one of a large number of English churches to be appropriated by a monastery, which appointed the rector. The monastery also had the right to the tithes in money and agricultural produce. Until the reformation and dissolution of the monasteries Chalbury was in the possession of St. Mary’s Abbey, twenty miles away at Wilton near Salisbury. The Earls of Pembroke became patrons of the living of Chalbury after Henry VIII sold possessions of St. Mary’s Abbey to the first Earl, William Herbert. The Earls had the right to appoint the rectors, but it is not known how often they occupied their pew, in the church.

The spacious churchyard has several large noble trees seeming to dwarf the low modest structure of the church. But the three hundred-foot hill on which it stands commands splendid views for miles around about which Hutchins commented:  “A very high Elm tree standing by the church was used as a landmark because it could be seen from the Channel and might be plainly discerned from the hills that lie above Yarmouth in the Isle of Wight”. A storm in 1703 brought down the elm.

There are photos of Chalbury Church in the photo section

 

Where Dinosaurs Walked

Feb 23rd, 2011
by Dorset Ancestors.
Comments are off for this post

Had you been able, 140 million years ago, to stand where Studland, Worth Matravers or anywhere else in Purpeck now are, your surroundings would have been as terrifying as they were breathtakingly primeval. You would have been thrown back to the age of the Dinosaurs, but at a point approximately half-way along in their reign on earth, with almost as long again before the catastrophe in which they perished.

By the end of the much-publicised Jurassic period, south east Dorset was covered by a swampy lake in which the sediments now forming the Purbeck beds were deposited. Here the water margin was frequented by the great reptiles of the day, who left their multi-ton imprints in the soft mud, a substratum which periodically dried out, setting footfalls in what today is the solid rock of the Purbeck cliffs and promontories.

Because of this unfortunate accident of nature in remote antiquity, Purbeck today is not just the centre of a long tradition of aggregate extraction. The course of nature has made it simply one of the world’s premier dinosaur sites. It is a treasure house of prehistory, but one more noted for the traces of these monsters than for their bones. The Purbeck hills have yielded more sets of saurian footprints than any other area of Britain. And the bones which have been found – usually washed up by the sea – hint powerfully at the presence of a dinosaur graveyard somewhere beneath Swanage Bay.

Through excavation and quarrying activity however, it has become apparent that one formation above all others has preserved the great majority of the saurian traces discovered in the Purbeck Series. This is a scorious, pink sandy limestone packed with casts of numerous spire-shelled snails, called the Roach (or Pink) Bed. This bed lies only a few feet below the surface and is fissured horizontally and vertically. In 1962 Geologist J.B. Delair had noted the high frequency of reptilian prints in this bed, but such traces from any other Purbeck beds would not be proved until 1965.

Delair noted that the prints occurred along the bedding. Other clues suggested the saurians were in shallow water just deep enough to keep their tails buoyed up as they waded in deeper, for there are sets of tracks starting well-defined, but which become less distinct with immersion.

In all instances the prints show action: the reptiles were not simply standing or grazing passively. Some appeared to be running or changing direction. Six-inch prints exposed in a quarry near Acton have been attributed to a creature named Purbeckopus pentactylus . Two prints facing away from each other at 90 degrees were discovered in 1936 and another set forming an almost complete circle on the rock bed has also been found.

Delair noted, in a quarry between Worth Matravers and Acton, prints orientated in all directions around a saucer-like depression on a bedding plane. Although several dozen saurian prints in all have been found in Purbeck, barely a handful has been saved for posterity, and most of these have been erased or partly obscured by weather conditions. In 1961 at Herston a fine set of double tracks saw the light of day when E.W. Shuttle re-opened Mutton Hole Quarry. There were 26 prints, and a further trail was discovered here in 1962 which attracted much more attention from the scientific community. The prints were interpreted as those of a Megalosaurus, but no attempt was made to preserve them. The Natural History Unit of the British Museum excavated a further 70 prints from an undamaged section at Mutton Hole.

A quarry at Queensground, Lytchett Matravers, revealed prints of Tri-dactyls, one of which came not from the Roach Bed but a freestone bed four feet lower. This made it the first saurian footprint ever to be found in a bed other than Roach.

Upon the great extinction and geographical change which ushered in the Tertiary era, the dinosaur remains were engulfed in torrents of water bearing sediments which buried their carcasses and traces. But Purbeck’s fossil record bears witness to the next great evolutionary leap – the emergence of the mammals.  One of the earliest deposits of mammalian remains is in the cliffs at Durlston Bay. The remains are disarticulated bones and teeth of some of the earliest marsupials, heralding the scion of evolution that, 50 million years later, would result in the appearance of ourselves.

The First Earl of Shaftesbury

Feb 21st, 2011
by Dorset Ancestors.
Comments are off for this post

The first Earl of Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, was a quite amazing man who in a frenzied, tumultuous and almost feverish life changed from the Royalist to the Parliament side in the Civil War, later serving under Charles II.  He lived from 1621 to 1683, and was only 10 when he succeeded to huge estates at Wimbourne St.Giles in Dorset and elsewhere, his mother having died in 1628. He entered Exeter College, Oxford and Lincoln’s Inn, and was elected MP for Tewkesbury in 1640.

In 1642 he was accompanying King Charles I at Nottingham and Derby, conveyed the offer of the Dorset gentry to support the king, and actually raised foot and horse at his own expense. Yet when it seemed he might become governor of Weymouth he resigned his commission and joined with Parliament. Soon he was in charge of the forces in Dorset, capturing royalist strongholds and taking Corfe Castle in 1646.

From 1646 to 1648 he was Parliamentary High Sheriff for Wiltshire, and in the succeeding years he sat for Wiltshire in Cromwell’s parliaments, served on the council of state and was actually imprisoned as a political suspect in 1659, seized the Tower of London and persuaded the Fleet to declare for Parliament.

In March 1660 he was negotiating with Charles II. Two months late he was admitted as a privy councillor and in June he received a formal pardon for his past actions. In 1661 he was created Baron Ashley and became Chancellor of the Exchequer, and in the following years he received grant of land in Carolina and an interest in the Bahamas. In 1667 he became Lord Lieutenant of Dorset.

He was a supporter of the Duke of Monmouth, and in 1672 we find him approving Charles II’s Declaration of Indulgence for Protestant dissenters. The same year he was created Earl of Shaftesbury. He once annoyed the king’s mistresses by refusing grants of money to them, and he was also opposed to the prevailing despotic rule in Scotland. In 1673 he was dismissed as chancellor, and the next year from the Privy Council and as Lord Lieutenant.

Refusing to obey the king and leave London, he was imprisoned with others by order of the House of Lords in 1677 but released the following year, when he supported the ‘Papist Plot’ scare movement. The same year he was leading the Opposition in Parliament and president of the Privy Council, though he was soon dismissed from office.

After bringing in a Bill to repeal penalties against Protestant dissenters, he was committed to the Tower and charged with high treason in 1681 but was released by a Whig grand jury, and soon after he was planning a revolt in London, Cheshire and the West of England. Escaping to Holland via Harwich, he was made a burgher of Amsterdam in 1682. There he died: his body was brought back to be buried at Poole in Dorset.

St. Aldhelm’s Chapel

Feb 18th, 2011
by Dorset Ancestors.
Comments are off for this post

St. Aldhelm’s Chapel sits high above the sea, a short distance from the edge of the promontory that has taken its name. This lonely wind battered little place of worship has been here for centuries; its priests would have stood and watched proud ships sail majestically by to take their place in history and those same men of God will have prayed for the souls of those aboard vessels caught by the storms that often rage here disturbing the sea some three hundred feet below.

Dedicated to a man who was born in the Wessex area around 640, he was likely the son of a high and noble family who would have been new converts to Christianity, probably only a few years before his birth. It is known he studied at Malmesbury, later visiting Canterbury before travelling to Rome.

On his return he established a monastery at Malmesbury. A leading scholar of his day, he was a charismatic man who went about his business with an evangelical zeal. In 705 AD, four years before his death, he departed from Malmesbury and was consecrated the first Bishop of Sherborne.

The cross on top of this ancient monument announces its Christian purpose; without that there is nothing easily visible outside to suggest this is a house of God. The plan and orientation – the corners equal the points of the compass – do nothing to suggest ecclesiastical use and it is known to be the only chapel in England with no east wall. It is likely that its construction was as a defensive lookout post for Corfe Castle as much as a spiritual home for the small Christian community who had been here before the 12th century. This is evidenced by earthen mounds that surround the chapel, which is thought by experts to have been built over an earlier timber building.

The Chapel was built in the 12th century and is of coursed rubble, its pyramid-shaped roof covered with stone slates. Entered through the round-arched Norman doorway the interior is a single room with a single central pier from which spring arches under a vaulted roof, the bare unplastered walls dribbling on to a stone flagged floor. Just enough light dances through the slim single-lancet window in the south-east wall to make out a 19th century font and an altar placed across the east corner.

As is so often the case we turn to John Hutchins to fill the gaps. He tells us  the first mention of St. Aldhelm is in the reign of Henry III, when the Chapel of St. Mary at Corfe Castle and the Chapel of St. Aldhelm’s in Purbeck were each served by a chaplain paid fifty shillings per annum by the Crown. During the reign of Edward I it was rated at twenty shillings and later in 1428 St. Aldhelm’s continued to be taxed at twenty shillings but there were no inhabitants. John Aylworth sold to Bernard Gould the Manor of Renscombe including the advowson of the chapel of Renscombe – but is this a reference to St. Aldhelm’s? The chapel is clearly shown in a map dated 1737 as belonging to the Manor of Renscombe.

St. Aldhelm’s falls within the parish of Worth Matravers and the church guide says this about the chapel: “…It was believed that the chapel was originally a chantry, where a priest would celebrate mass for the safety of sailors; and it might well have been used for rest and prayer by kings, who often hunted in Purbeck…”

At the reformation the chapel would have become redundant and abandoned, the records appearing to confirm this. Chantries were suppressed by Edward VI. Another historian tells us that in 1625 this place served as a sea mark. Their has been some speculation that in earlier times a fire-beacon  to aid sailors sat atop the chapel but the RCHM thinks this idea “untenable”.

Graffiti cut into the central column including dates show people continued to come here in the 17th century, even though the place was almost derelict. It was for some time used as a wishing chapel. Turning again to Hutchins (where would we be without him?) we learn that the roof had collapsed in places. Work started on repairs when the Scott family purchased Renscombe in 1811. A descendant, the 3rd Earl of Eldon, completed the restoration in 1873 paying all the costs and he provided a font and added the cross. More recently, on 4th of July 2005, The Most Reverend Dr. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, came here and consecrated the new altar table as part of the celebrations marking the 1300th anniversary of St. Aldhelm’s consecration as Bishop of Sherborne.

St. Aldhelm’s was fit for purpose again. H.J.Moule wrote in 1893: “On Whit Thursday, Worth Fair Day and club day, the people went with music to St. Aldhelm’s. decked the grey sombre interior with flowers and danced there.” Moule also said it was used at that time as a storehouse for the coastguards.

To this day people come from near and far to the chapel, some for the history and setting others come as pilgrim’s their purpose more spiritual. Legends, mysteries and superstitions run freely throughout the Isle of Purbeck and about this place there are tales to be told and examined, but we will keep them for another day.

There is a photo of the chapel in the photo section.

The Bennetts of Lyme Regis

Feb 16th, 2011
by Dorset Ancestors.
Comments are off for this post

Sometime in the year 1774 or possibly 1775 a young man still in his teens bade farewell to his parents at the family home in Chard, Somerset, and walked the twelve miles towards Lyme Regis on the south coast, to begin a new life of independence. Since it is thought that the boy already had an aunt living in Uplyme, just over the Devon border to the north of Lyme, he first lived with them, though he would later move down to become a man of property and renown in the town itself.

The youth was John Bennett, and his move to Lyme sometime after 1776 proved to be the starting pistol for a productive life spanning almost eight decades in the service of the town. However, John was just the outstanding ancestor; for he went on to sire a kind of dynasty of civic notables who in no small way through their own family lines temporarily replenished Lyme’s dwindling population during the years of its early 19th century revival as a health resort. Lyme built ships, caught fish, mended nets, wove silk, and traded cloth; here also William Pitt lodged, Jane Austen danced, Princess Victoria stayed and Mary Anning hammered fossils out of rock. Bennett’s arrival clearly coincided with an auspicious time for civic betterment and reconstruction.

From his relation’s home in Uplyme John would descend the steep hill to the town to work as an apprentice to a cordwainer (shoe-maker). This was an honourable trade of seven years indenture or training, and Bennett was no exception to the tradition of literacy and erudition among its practitioners; indeed he was noted for his steady handwriting and signature. John was also a competent violinist, who was soon playing at dances held at Lyme.

In September 1788 John Bennett married Maria Denning, a local women the about 25 years old in St. Michael the Archangel Church. Their first child was Henry, born in 1790, who was followed by Maria (1791); Elizabeth (1793); William (1794); Eleanor (1796); Mary (1797); Sarah (1798; Ann (1799); John (1801); Thomas (1803) and William (1804). Five of these children would survive childhood, but the first William died as a baby, as did Mary and Sarah in infancy soon after.

By 1800 Mr Bennett’s shoe-making business was prospering and in 1802 he rented a house on Bridge Street, off Cockmoile Square, next door to the home of the Anning family. Fossil-collector Mary was then just three; the two families never inter-married however, Mary dying a spinster. However, it has been suggested she may have fostered an interest in fossils in some of the Bennett grandchildren.

For another local family it was a different matter. Mr & Mrs Govis, regular customers of Mr Bennett, had a daughter, Mary, to whom Henry was strongly attracted – so much so that their first child, Henry Jr. was actually conceived before his parents wedded in November 1812. By this time Mr Bennett had deeply committed to administering St Michaels as a churchwarden and as a member of the town council. As Lyme became something of a mecca for health-bathing, he took possession of one of the town’s three public baths. When he wasn’t pre-occupied with his business, the Corporation, and the Church, Mr Bennett had to fight a lifelong battle defending his other properties from storm damage and coastal erosion.

Henry and Mary’s second son Edwin was born in December 1814, being followed by John (1817); Emily (1820); William (1821); Frederick (1824); Caroline (1825); Elisha (1829) and Augustus (1832). Of all John and Maria’s 11 children, Henry was the only one of two to establish solid, contiguous lines of descent. The other was John, who after his marriage to Eleanor Woodman in July 1825 had six children by her: Ellen-Kate (1826); John (Woodman) (1827); Charles (1830); Maria (1831); Joseph (1834), and Rose (1836). Born in Cerne Abbas in 1799, Eleanor came to know John as a friend of his younger sister Ann, with whom she entered into partnership running a millinery shop in Lyme. Between them these Bennett brothers would disperse the Bennett genes to other parts of the country and abroad.

Contrary to his father’s hopes. Henry Sr evidently had no leanings towards a cobbler’s life, finding his true vocation as a schoolmaster; being also a talented musician, he filled the position of organist at St Michaels and taught children music. His younger brother was not so fortunate. Mr Bennett taught his son the cordwaining business, but in 1837 John drowned when a boat returning him from Charmouth capsized in a squall.

Soon after their marriage John and Eleanor bought Malabar House, a fashionable property where in later years Eleanor was to become a warm-hearted mother-figure to her own children and some nieces and nephews. Now a widow she kept up her shop, though in 1832 Ann had married widower, Richard Cox, a saddler by trade in Bridport, and moved with him to that town, leaving Eleanor to run the millinery shop on her own. By Richard her sister-in-law had three children: John (1834); Emily (1836) and Richard (1838).

Of John and Eleanor’s own children Ellen-Kate married john Sharpe, a solicitor’s clerk from Norfolk in August 1853. She bore him seven children: John Woodman; William, Eleanor; Alice; Charles; Clara and Rosalie, between 1854 and 1858. Eleanor Bennett’s Charles married Elizabeth Smith in 1852 and emigrated to Australia, but died only eight years later from wounds sustained in a bizarre shooting accident in 1860. Buried in Geelong Cemetery, Melbourne, he left Elizabeth with two sons and a daughter to bring up. Maria, Eleanor’s second daughter, married Richard Loveridge, a London cheese-monger in May 1856. The couple had grandparents in common, for Richard’s grandfather, also called Richard, married old Mr Bennett’s sister Eleanor; he was therefore, Mr Bennett’s great-nephew. Richard and Maria had four children born between 1857 and 1862: Eleanor, Anne, John and James, but by the latter date these children were orphaned. They were adopted by grandmother Eleanor, and so went to live with her at Malabar House.

That left John, Joseph and Rose. John married Sarah Longhurst in Hackney in October 1870; at the time he was living and working with Joseph in Devizes, who like him had not remained in Lyme beyond childhood, but unlike him, had no recorded issue. Joseph married Jane Wing, a London girl, in the capital in January 1857. They had seven daughters and four sons. Rose married Thomas Brown, Lyme ironmonger, in January 1862. Their son and daughter were born in a house on the Cobb before the couple eventually went to live in London.

Of Henry and Mary’s branch of the family, Henry Jr married twice: first, Priscilla Loveridge in April 1835, and after her death, Martha Murley in October 1846. By Priscilla (apparently un-related to Mr Bennett’s sister’s family) Henry had three children: Henry Alfred; Esther, and Myra, between 1838 and 1841. He too became a schoolmaster and succeeded his father as organist at St. Michaels.

Henry’s brother Edwin married Emma Dunster, daughter of a local builder, in October 1834. The Dunsters, however, were better known as a Lyme family in the printing trade, and for a time Edwin went into partnership with them as Bennett & Dunster. By 1839 they had left Lyme, leaving the business to Daniel Dunster. Edwin and Emma had five sons and five daughters.

William, fourth son of Henry Sr married Elizabeth Spear, a London-born Bridport woman 20 years his junior, on Boxing Day 1864. The couple had four children: William Henry; Mary; Esther; and Minna, between 1865 and 1883. William became a prominent figure in Lyme and by 1880 he would be almost the last of the Bennetts still living in the town. One of his later duties was to collect harbour dues, but he was a gifted painter, mainly of the local land and seascapes, though he also painted portraits of his grandparents, old John and Maria.

Elisha married Sarah, though it is not certain who she was, whether Sarah Longhurst or someone else. After his brother’s re-marriage Elisha became a master mariner in South Shields. According to the recorded selective genealogy of the family neither he nor his siblings John, Emily, Frederick and Caroline, are shown as having any descendants, and of these, only Elisha married.

With the death of William in 1881 and Elizabeth’s move to Bridport with the children, the perpetuation of the Bennett line effectively ceases. Henry Jr’s last son Augustus is a progeny of particular significance, for he was the last Bennett to be living in the town at the time of his death in 1911. Eleanor Woodman Bennett, the home matriarch of Malabar House, died April 28th, 1873 in her 74th year.

As for John and Maria, the patriarch and matriarch of the extensive Bennett clan, they died in 1852 and 1831 respectively – but not before seeing about 20 of their 72 descendants born. Demographically, the family is interesting in that it appears to buck the trend for the period in two respects. Not because of the size of the generations, for ten to twelve children was the norm in the late 18th and 19th centuries. It is that at least one Bennett bride –Henry senior’s Mary – did not go to the altar as a virgin, and also the atypical longevity of John Bennett himself, in that he lived long enough to become a great-grandfather.

However, any diligent search for Bennett graves in the churchyard is likely to be futile. Although family members were buried in Lyme cemetery and at St Michaels, the area of consecrated ground at the latter that formerly included the Bennett plot has been reclaimed by the sea through landslipping.

Iwerne Minster

Feb 13th, 2011
by Dorset Ancestors.
Comments are off for this post

Peel back the patina of a century of modernity and you will find in Iwerne Minster – the village and the parish – much to interest those of us curious about bygone times and Dorset ways. Here is one of only three churches in the county that can boast a medieval spire, here is a large country house and curiosities, and here lived some people deserving of our remembrance.

Equal distance of about six miles between Shaftesbury and Blandford the road we tread today through the village was originally made up in the 19th century by a Turnpike Trust, rendering it suitable for stage coaches.These colourful vehicles brought to the village some gaiety and bustle for the few years before their demise. A parish of 2,865 acres, the eastern half being downland over 600 feet in height, falling to the fairly level valley at about 200 feet above sea level in which the village stands. The small river Iwerne flows through the west of the village.

 About a mile south west of the church an Iron Age settlement and a Roman Villa were excavated in 1897 by General Pitt-Rivers. Ethelgwa, daughter of King Alfred, was installed as Abbess of Shaftesbury in AD 888 and she was given some of his lands to administer including Euwenmynstre.  A charter from AD 956 by King Eadwig (or Edwy) confirmed the authority of the Abbess of Shaftesbury over Iwerne Minster and its five churches; in earlier times the parish included the modern parishes of Sixpenny Handley, Hinton St.Mary, Margaret Marsh and East Orchard; all were parochial chapelries of Iwerne Minster.

Domesday Book records this place as belonging to Shaftesbury Nunnery, from whom it was held in small manors: Brookman’s by Ralf de Brockman, Pegg’s by Geoffrey de Puego and Goodman’s (being three or four meadow grounds adjoining Pegg’s farm) was the manor of Roger Godman. 

On the 4th of August 1645 Cromwell ordered a troop of cavalry from Shaftesbury to suppress the Clubmen assembled at the earthworks on Hambledon Hill and they would have passed through Iwerne to avoid the sharp ascent and descent over the Downs.

Towards the end of the 18th century button making came to Dorset providing much needed employment for women and girls who produced linen buttons; metal rings covered with linen. Iwerne Minster became a business hub for this new cottage industry, which was brought to a close with the arrival of the button making machine in 1851.

As the 20th century opened, modernisation at Iwerne Minster was being ushered in by the folk residing at Iwerne Minster House. The house and estate had been in the Bower family for two and a half centuries when in 1876 Capt. Thomas Bowyer Bower sold it to George Glyn, the 2nd Baron Wolveton; he was a banker and a politician. Glyn demolished the house and in its place had Alfred Waterhouse build him a palatial country residence in the Victorian Perpendicular Gothic style. The 4th Baron Wolveton, Frederick Glyn, who was the 2nd son of George Glyn’s brother, married Lady Edith Amelia Ward in 1895. The couple sold the house in 1908.

The new owner of Iwerne Minster House was James Hainsworth Ismay and his wife Murial Harriet Charles Mcdonald Moreton. Muriel Moreton was James’ second wife. He was previously married to Margaret Seymour who died in 1901 aged 32. The census records for 1891 and 1901 describe James Ismay as a ship owner which is rather an under-statement. He owned the White Star Fleet and made his fortune when he sold it to an American in 1903.

James’ older brother was Joseph Bruce Ismay and he used to regularly shoot on the estate. It was Bruse Ismay who was named in the Wreck Commissioner’s report as being primarily responsible for the sinking of the Titantic.

A look at the 1911 census return gives a clue to the wealth of James Ismay. It tells us he is living off private means with his wife and two daughters. ‘Below stairs’ there were twenty servants living-in.

We should not conclude from all this grandeur that he was a selfish man. By all accounts he took a great interest in the lives of the villagers most of whom would have been his tenants. All the houses had red-roller blinds, which were supplied by the estate office that also made sure all the hedges were regularly cut. The tenants weren’t allowed to strip Ivy from their houses. He insisted all the village boys wore blue jumpers with a red band and all the girls had Little Red Riding Hood cloaks. Interestingly, the flag of White Star Line was a white star on a red background. James Ismay provided a library and a village hall for the community.

On Ismay’s death Iwerne Minster House was bought at auction and Alex Divine started a school for poor children there – nowadays it is known as Claymore School and is for fee paying pupils.

The parish didn’t have to wait until the 20th century for wealth to arrive. Back in the 18th century a local man, John Willis, had for over 30-years ran a school for teaching hand- writing. Such was his fame scholars arrived in Iwerne Minster from all parts of this country as well as from Switzerland, Holland, the West Indies, and the American colonies. He was buried at Iwerne Minster on 28th of April 1760, it is said he made a considerable fortune.

Many of the cottages and buildings in the village are Grade II listed buildings. A most ordinary little shelter with its parish notice boards has made the Grade; more, perhaps, for its history than its architecture. During World War I, James Ismay wrote and despatched newsletters to local men serving at sea, on the Western Front and in the Middle East, with a copy being posted in the shelter along with all replies from servicemen, together with newspaper cuttings and telegraph bulletins. The Shelter became known locally as The War Office and that tradition continues today.

During the Great War some German prisoners of war were put to work at a nearby farm sorting potatoes, which were despatched to London by way of Shillingstone station.

The parish church dedicated to St. Mary is a Grade I listed building. Pevsner says it is “The most important and interesting church in its neighbourhood…” and as such we will devote a separate article about in the future.

As the Edwardian period began Frederick Treves, the surgeon, was preparing his book Highways and Byways of Dorset. In it he uses Iwerne Minster to debate the advantages and disadvantages of picturesque old thatched cottages and red brick modern housing, in Iwerne Minster he could witness the transition being made. As he peered into the future to see what it held for rural village housing he failed to see what today’s home improvement experts can do with an old cottage or derelict barn. Looked at today we can see Iwerne Minster hasn’t faired too badly, there being a pleasant mix of the old and the new.

Arne

Feb 10th, 2011
by Dorset Ancestors.
Comments are off for this post

Arne stands on a peninsula between the Isle of Purbeck and Poole harbour. The parish is entirely rolling heath land with a farm and a small number of houses. It furthermore includes parts of the earlier Wareham Holy Trinity parish. Not spoilt for amenities, Arne has no shops, no public houses, nor restaurants in the village and motorists are encouraged to leave their vehicles in the car park and walk to the village – a distance of about half-a-mile. The car park serves the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds nature site, which surrounds Arne and attracts visitors interested in the rare birds who make this their home.

From about 948 AD Arne belonged to Shaftesbury Abbey and the church, built in the early 13th century, is dedicated to St. Nicholas and is attractively sited at the foot of a wooded hill. The architecture is Early English: a single cell structure comprising nave and chancel with a south porch where above the door are the remains of an early fresco. The upper part of the west end of the nave was partitioned off in the 17th century to make room for a bell gallery; Hutchins mentions a bell in this gallery having the initials: ID-RRT and the date 1625. There being no tower, the solitary bell cast in 1782 and replacing the original bell of 1625 hangs in the roof space. The heads of some of the windows were hewn out of a single stone. The East Window, being a triplet, dates the building at around 1220 AD.

The altar is made from a pre-Reformation stone, which was found buried outside, has five small crosses carved on it and sits on a timber frame. Near the altar is a piscine; probably original 13th century it has a acutely pointed head and round drain. There are several monuments and floor slaps inside the chancel area the oldest being a floor slab “to Mary, wife of Thomas Baker Jun., 1673/4.”

In the 3rd (edited) edition of Hutchins there is mention of a linen cloth embroidered with the emblems of the Trinity presented as a gift to the church in 1861 by William Wake, Rector of Holy Trinity. Arne had been a chapel of ease of Holy Trinity since the 15th century and earlier it had been a chantry.

Outside there are five buttresses all apparently added during a restoration in the 19th century.

Looking from the altar window of this ancient place, built all those years ago by the order of the Abbess of Shaftesbury, you can see across the heath land to the shipping roads and watch the modern day ferries majestically sailing to and from Poole harbour. The view is delightful.

The name Arne is derived from the Saxon ‘Aerne’ meaning a house or secret place.

Purbeck – Into the Quarries

Feb 7th, 2011
by Dorset Ancestors.
Comments are off for this post

“Carved by time out of a single stone” was how Thomas Hardy described Portland. Yet all of Purbeck can be regarded as a geologist’s bonanza, a chronicle of millions of years of the earth’s history set in stone. Small wonder then, that this “county within a county” should have become one of the country’s major centres for the quarrying and mining of aggregate and building stone.

The stone industry of Purbeck has been the economic mainstay of the ‘Isle’ for over 500 years. For Britain, and for the Empire through export, it has been a font of supply for several kinds of rock belonging to the Portland and Purbeck Beds. All these are part of the two uppermost-and youngest-formations of the Jurassic period, deposited between about 150 and 135 million years ago, when Dorset was sub-equatorial. The Portlandian was laid down in shallow, warm sea, which then regressed to leave a lagoon environment in which the Purbeck beds were then formed.

Although prehistoric man probably carried out very local quarrying for the stone, it was the Romans, particularly favouring the use of the decorative Purbeck Marble for their villas and tomb slabs, who first began quarrying on any significant scale. In ‘modern’ times the industry really took off during the Middle Ages; in the 17th century, too, stone was shipped from Swanage to London, where Wren employed it in re-building the capital after the Great Fire in 1666.

During the 18th and 19th centuries the Purbeck quarries reached their peak in manpower and production. It was at this time when a variety of stone used to build many of Dorset’s older cottages and homes was extracted from small local quarries now long since abandoned and overgrown. Sine transporting the stone overland was difficult and costly, the major quarries and mines were concentrated upon the coastal outcrops, where the stone could be transported away by sea.

As a focus for quarrying, nowhere else in Purbeck was more central or important than Swanage. This town became a centre for the mediaeval trade in limestone, where serious quarrying began in about 1700 and continued until the mid 19th century. This was the heyday of great stone barons, the businessmen who made their fortunes from the industry, George Burt, and John Mowlem being probably the prime movers. Swanage was built from stone in more ways than one; exports from the quarries secured its location and the prosperity of the Burt and Mowlem families. It was during this period too, that the quarry platforms in the cliff outcrops at Tilly Whim, Dancing Ledge, Winspit and Seacombe were cut.

Tilly Whim, Dancing Ledge and Winspit are all coastal quarry sites for Purbeck stone which has been used in a number of Buildings including Durlston Castle, Lulworth Castle and Swanage Town Hall.  The Tilly Whim Caves at Anvil Point are the most easterly of the coastal quarries and are thought to have originally been open-cast working which later shifted towards adit or drift-mining from galleries cut into the cliffside. A capping rock was blasted away so that the high-grade building stone, the Under Freestone, could be quarried out using wedges called “gads.” Galleries of about 3 metres by 8 metres were cut into the hillside, sometimes as far as 60 metres. To support the roof, quarrymen left pillars in the in-situ limestone or else built pillars from stone wasters. Blocks were lowered from the caves using timber derricks (whims) that loaded the stone onto lighters or barges which then trans-shipped the stone to an offshore cargo vessel in calm weather.

Similarly at Dancing Ledge Quarry, the stone was lowered to a large sloping ledge, and carried to a shipment point at the very edge. Here the trammels or ruts made by the carts or wagons, which moved the stone, can still be seen. Quarrying at Dancing Ledge ceased in 1914. Winspit is an area just below Worth Matravers on the south coast where large cliffside quarries have been opened on both sides of the valley. Stone working at Winspit began in 1719. The west quarry has a very large underground gallery, which was worked until 1953; the east quarry has square cut holes for crane positions still to be seen on the cliff top.

Seacombe is a large quarry excavated where Seacombe Bottom meets the coast. This was worked from the 18th century until 1923-31, when much investment in mechanisation took place. Stone was shipped from below the west end, and the foundations of the steam-derrick remain. Other quarries were opened between Durlstone Head and St. Aldhelm’s Head, from where the stone for the harbour walling at Ramsgate was shipped. At Durlstone, deeper beds were worked from underground “quarrs,” the stone being brought to the surface by a horse drawn capstan. There are also shallow quarrs in the country-park. In 1897 197 men were working in 58 quarrs. The last timber derrick to survive anywhere in Dorset can be seen at St. Aldhelm’s Quarry.

Away from the coast there have been extensive quarries in other Purbeck Beds outcropping over the high ground between Swanage and Worth Matravers, though Lychett Matravers to Acton. Purbeck Limestone is worked for aggregate in Swanworth Quarry (due for imminent closure) and Purbeck stone is still quarried in the Acton area west of Swanage, where the rock was formerly mined from underground shafts. Today good decorative stone is being extracted at Acton from open cast pits down to 10 metres. Corfe was formerly the centre for the quarrying of Purbeck Marble (which is not true marble but shelly limestone able to take a hard polish), but the trade no longer exists today.

While the stone native to the mainland has been of considerable commercial value, Portland’s limestone has probably been even more so, and not wholly for its infra-structural applications. This oolithic limestone has encased the gargantuan shells of Titanities, the largest ammonite to have inhabited British Jurassic waters, and which today is to be seen displayed in many of Portland’s garden walls. For centuries, man and nature have contributed to the island’s landscape, and there are features marking where the original landscape once stood.

Wren used Portland stone in the re-building of London, notably the new St. Paul’s, but it has also been applied in the re-construction of the capital after the destruction left by the last war. The old quarry gangs and their methods have almost entirely disappeared. The piers and jetties of the old quarries, from where stone has been shipped around the world, also have largely vanished, and some of the excavations have been infield; no derrick or crane now remains in the Portland Quarry. In Jordan Quarry the succession in the Portland Beds can be traced up to the overlying Purbeck in a sequence which the geologist can read like a book, and which reveals the climatic changes in the region 150 million years ago.

But today some of the Portland quarries have been given a new lease of life. Through a 1983 initiative begun by the specially formed Portland Sculpture Quarry Trust (PSQT) artists and sculptors have been coming to Portland to work creatively in response to the quarry environment. The Trust aims to forge links between the artists and the lives of the masons working in stone, enabling them to share and exchange knowledge and skills, rather than undertaking public commissions for works. This project has fostered much working collaboration over the years, including the creation of Britain’s first Sculpture Quarry in the now regenerated Tout Quarry. Works produced here include Anthony Gormley’s ‘Still Falling.’ and ‘Falling Fossil’ by Stephen Marsden. PSQT is further extending access through workshops. Since 1983 the experience of the Trust has been as appreciation of the importance of the personal aspects of people’s lives and their relationship to the landscape.

Happily, after decades of decline in Portland and Purbeck, something of the old landscape is making a comeback. Abandoned quarries and older sites are being restored to their pre-extractive agricultural state, often with no trace of the former activity in evidence. While the industrial landscape on Portland is being revitalised, in Purbeck nature is re-claiming the traces of an industry, which ranged from prehistoric bell-pits, through opencast excavations and thence gallery mining, to mechanisation and decline.

Monolith on Batcombe Hill

Feb 7th, 2011
by Dorset Ancestors.
Comments are off for this post

Above the village on Batcombe Hill, an area of outstanding natural beauty offering views over Somerset clear to the Bristol Channel, there stands an upright stone pillar a little under four feet in height.

This pillar, which is a monolith of hard oolithic stone, with fragments of fossils appearing on its surface, stems from a rectangular base, chamfered at the four angles, measuring about 7 inches by 8 inches, the longest sides facing to the east and west. It is difficult to make out but above this base runs a semi-circular moulding. Rising from this moulding is the major part of the pillar; its statistics measured by circumference being 34 inches at the lower part, 33 inches in the middle and 28 inches at the top of the shaft. The overall height is just 46 inches. These measurements were taken on the 16th of July 1889. Round the top of the shaft runs another semi-circular moulding similar to that at the base and it is topped off by a spherical capital.

This stone known as the Cross-in-Hand has been described as mystic, it has been suggested it could be the site of a harrowing murder or perhaps a miracle; on the other hand it may just be a mislaid boundary marker. It has been stated that a devotional cross once stood here and the pillar or stump is all that remains. No recognised authority has said what its purpose is or what it represents.

Nevertheless over the years it has attracted much interest. In his novel ‘Tess’ Thomas Hardy’s character Alex D’Uberville claims that the pillar is a “Holy Cross” but turn a few pages and a passing shepherd suggests to Tess “…’Tis a thing of ill-omen miss…”

In 1889 the Revd. C.R. Baskett related a legend, which he credited to a Mrs Cockeram “whose whole life was spent near Batcombe Hill, and whose memory was stored with Dorset legends.”

The legend has it that back in the middle ages, one dark and stormy winter’s night the Batcombe priest was called out to administer holy communion to a man close to death. Taking pyx and his service book the priest set off travelling through the storm across Batcombe Down to the sick man’s house. On arriving he found that he had dropped the pyx on the way and so he ventured forth back into the storm faced with the hopeless task of finding it.

Back on Batcombe Down he saw a pillar of fire reaching from heaven to earth and shining in the night. He could make out cattle kneeling in a circle around the pyx and the steady beam of light. According to Mrs Cockeram the stone is all that remains of a cross that was set up here. Hardy’s poem ‘The Lost Pyx’ is based on this legend.

Batcombe – The Church of St. Mary Magdalene

Feb 3rd, 2011
by Dorset Ancestors.
Comments are off for this post

For the visitor a stop at the picnic area on Batcombe Hill will be a rewarding experience. This is an area of outstanding natural beauty with views over to Somerset; on a clear day you can see as far as the Bristol Channel including Glastonbury Tor. This wide-open space provides habitats for orchids and butterflies and there is woodland, hay meadow and heathland in abundance. At the foot of the hill tucked away under the northern slopes of the Dorset Downs, is the small agricultural village of Batcombe.

The Church at Batcombe is dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene and is to be found at the far (south) end of the village. As you descend into the village you will see the tall tower and if you are familiar with the local folk tale about ‘Conjuring Minterne’ you will not be able to resist looking at the pinnacles.

 In its heyday during the 19th century the parish population reached 200. Numbers declined to between 40 and 50 although we have been told by a long time resident of the village that recently there has been a “crop of children, mostly boys,” bringing the current population back to between 50 and 60.

There are indications that a church has stood on this site since the 11th century but the first recorded mention of the place tells us only that there was a rectory here in 1291 and that John Carls resigned as Rector in 1309.

Architecturally the church comprises chancel, nave and tower. The west tower was built in the first half of the 15th century and the nave and chancel built shortly after. In 1864 John Hicks restored the church and it was then that the chancel was rebuilt and the north porch added. Sacrificed during this restoration was the Minterne Chapel. The walls are of local rubble and flint with freestone dressings; the roof is tiled.

The chancel is modern except for the 15th century chancel-arch and a stone screen of similar antiquity. The pillar-piscina is 12th century and there is a fragment of stone in the middle south buttress of the chancel with pre- Norman Conquest interlacement, suggesting an earlier church at Batcombe. The modern roof incorporates some 15th century timbers.

The nave, approximately 35 feet, has in the north wall a 15th century window and doorway; there is a similar doorway opposite in the south wall which also has two similar windows. The partly restored 15th century roof of the nave is of collar-beam type with curved braces forming four-centred arches; the moulded principals and purlins have carved foliage bosses at their intersection. Beside one of the pews on the north wall is an ancient stoup.

The west tower is early 15th century and in three stages with an embattled parapet with pinnacles and gargoyles at the angles. There is a west window and on the second stage a north window of one pointed light. There is a two-light window in each of the walls of the bell chamber.

In 1827 there were four bells. One of the original bells was cracked and sold in 1864 the proceeds going someway to pay for the restoration work. A second cracked bell thought to have been cast in 1592 at Leigh by William Warre has been retained and presently rests in the intermediate chamber. The other two bells were melted down and used to cast a new bell in 1958. The new bell and the 1592 Warre bell were for some years on display in the Nave and in 1974 were stolen but fortunately recovered a couple of days later in Hampshire. The new bell now hangs in the ringing chamber and was first rung on 17th November 1974 and is still in use.

The altar cross was made by one of the parishioners in 2004 and the church has a new organ built by Brian Daniels of Crewkerne.

Within the church are memorials dating back to 1595 and include monuments to George Harris (1804), Ann his mother (1810), and John her husband (1826); John Minterne (1592); John Palmer, rector (1702-3); Thomas Beazer, rector (1734); Frances (Minterne), wife of Andrew Buckler (1648); John Minterne (1705) and Eleanor his wife (1716-7) and Ruth their daughter (1685). In the churchyard are memorials to Francis Stount (1685) and Sarah his daughter (1685-6). The oldest gravestone dates from 1680.

There are some legends about Batcombe the most intriguing being the legend of Conjuring Minterne, which tells us that one day as he was riding away from the village to Batcombe Hill he remembered he had left his book of spells open on his desk. Realising the dangers of someone dabbling with his magic book he turned back towards the village and with help from the Devil his horse leapt over the village in one gigantic stride. The horse’s hooves clipped one of the church pinnacles and it fell to the ground, Conjuror Minterne landed safely in a field near the church. It is said the pinnacle lay by the church tower for many years and it was believed it would bring bad luck to the village if it were replaced. But in 1906 it was restored and to this day it can be seen to be crooked. When he died Minterne left instructions that his body should be buried ‘neither in the church nor out of it.’ He was buried half in and half out of the Minterne Chapel.

← Earlier Posts