Dorset Ancestors Rotating Header Image

May, 2012:

The Parish Church of St. Andrew – West Stafford

May 31st, 2012
by Dorset Ancestors.
Comments are off for this post

The parish of West Stafford lies to the east of Dorchester and south of the River Frome its 1,000 acres dissected by the Winterborne, which flows north east across the parish. Within the parish boundaries there are several important houses including Stafford House parts of which are dated from 1633, with a more recent west front designed by the eminent Victorian architect Benjamin Ferry.

The present church survives from the 17th century but there are many indications of an earlier building. The west end of the south wall of a 15th century nave and the west tower built in the 16th century remain.

There is no structural division between the nave and chancel, rebuilt to a simple rectangular plan in 1640; the south porch was added at the same time. Further structural alterations were made in 1898 when the present chancel was added; the chancel screen was moved eastward and the 17th century chancel became a part of the nave. In the east wall of the chancel is a re-used 15th century window.

One of the two buttresses on the north wall of the nave is inscribed ‘John Dashwood 1640.’ The north doorway is blocked off and the easternmost window of the nave is of 1640 and the second window is of 16th century while the third window, which has a moulded oak lintel, also dates from 1640.

The south wall of the nave is dated 1640 but the western end is 15th century and the 16th century south doorway has stones numbered for rebuilding. The easternmost window and the third window in the south wall are 15th century but the second window is 16th century and similar to the second window in the north wall.

The roof of the nave (1640) is divided into panels by moulded ribs with turned pendants at the intersections. The elaborate panelling in the two easternmost bays shows the extent of the original chancel. At the back of the nave to the left of the door is a medieval baptismal font an octagonal straight sided bowl and notched square stem. The pews in the nave have been restored but date from 1640.

The three storeys of the 16th century west tower are divided externally by a moulded string course and have a moulded plinth, parapet string and embattled parapet and diagonal buttresses on the west end. A stair turret projects on the north side and rises higher than the main tower. There is a west doorway to the tower above which is a window: the second storey window in the east wall is 15th century. There is a window in each wall of the bell chamber, which houses three bells all by John Wallis, two are dated 1620 and one 1595.

The nave gives the impression of being smaller than its 45ft x 20ft dimensions; the panelled ceiling and the number of large wall and floor slab monuments is perhaps responsible. On the north wall a monument to William England, Archdeacon of Dorset 1835 and to Margaret his widow 1837; John Gould of Milbourne St. Andrew, erected by his executors in 1727. Hanging in the chancel is a brass candelabrum inscribed ‘The Gift of John Gould Esqr. Anno Domi 1713.’ The Royal Arms of King James I painted on wood panel with a painted frame. On the south is a wall monument to Richard Russell 1638, Richard Russell 1660, Richard Russell 1667, Rectors and patrons, erected by Elizabeth Russell in 1674. On the north and south walls of the nave the remains of theDecalogue and Creed in black lettering 1640.

There are several brasses on the nave walls including on the north wall, to Giles Long, patron of the living, 1592; and on the south wall to Robert White 1680; to Robert White, grandson of Richard Russell, Rector and patron. In the chancel there are four 18th and 19th  century paintings, copies of old masters.

Literary scholars will tell you of West Stafford’s associations with Thomas Hardy. St. Andrew’s is the setting for the marriage of Angel Clare to Tess and a little to the east of the village on Talbot’s Mead is Talbothay’s Lodge, which Hardy designed for his brother. Travel a little farther east and you will come across Lower Lewell Farm, the place where Angel and Tess met, in Hardy’s novel it is called Talbothay’s Dairy.

Nether Cerne

May 24th, 2012
by Dorset Ancestors.
Comments are off for this post

A short way along the Dorchester Road from Cerne Abbas is Nether Cerne, a hamlet quintessentially English.  Sitting on the banks of the River Cerne amongst riverside meadows and rolling hills it can boast only of having a fine manor house, a redundant church and a few cottages. Once part of the Cerne Abbey endowment the parish was served by Benedictine monks up to the dissolution of the monasteries in the 16th century.

It was in the 16th century that work started on the building of the manor house and this was completed early in the 17th century. A publication of 1926 describes it as having a “thatched roof” but nowadays the roof is tiled.

Just a few steps from the manor house and by far the oldest building in the parish is the church. The last service at The Church of All Saints took place in 1968; it was declared redundant in 1971 and passed to the Redundant Church Fund in 1973. In his book Highways and Byways Treves talks of the church roof being “gold-green with moss.” Gothic in style and built from flint and stone the chancel window looks out on the bank of the River Cerne, just a few yards away. The nave, chancel and east chapel with its fine window all date from the 13th century, the perpendicular tower was added during a 15th century restoration and is decorated with eight angels rather than the usual gargoyles.

The Norman font is shaped like a bell-flower with alternating broad and narrow flutes. There is a slab memorial to John Dammer who died in 1685; it is thought he was the great grandfather of the first Lord Milton who ordered the building of the mansion house at Milton Abbey. There was a further restoration in 1876 when seating for one hundred wasinstalled, but the days when a minister would look out from the pulpit to address a full church are a distant memory.

Aspects of Purbeck – The Roman-British Potteries

May 19th, 2012
by Dorset Ancestors.
Comments are off for this post

Around the south shore of Poole Harbour there are saltings, mudflats across which the native marsh grass Spartina townsendii has well-established roots. The grass has been reclaiming the salt marsh since the early 1900’s, but has also been helping to re-conceal evidence of what was happening here almost nineteen centuries before: the highly significant vestiges of the pottery industry the Romano-Britons were engaged in at the time.

The Romans were quick to realise the exceptional quality of the Tertiary ball clay, which underlies much of Purbeck, and which ever since has played a major role in making the Isle one of the key sources of the raw material for ceramics now exported all over the world. Although the Durotriges, the Iron Age Celtic inhabitants of Dorset, were themselves producing pottery for local use using clay from seams in the London Clay, it was the Romans who effectively commandeered the industry, turning it to their advantage in the production of superior fine table and other wares for local, regional and even national and Empire markets.

In 1972 archaeologists were stunned to learn that cookware pottery unearthed during the excavations along Hadrians Wall had come from one of the Poole Harbour pottery sites. That the clay employed in their manufacture could only have come from Dorset was conclusively proved when David Peacock, a Southampton University geologist, conducted a heavy metal analysis of the clay in the pots. Until then, it had been assumed that the Hadrianic wares were locally produced; such a far-flung trade route had never been suspected. It was this revelation that bears witness to the efficiency of the Roman system of distribution and points to a centralised store or centre within Purbeck for supplying the Roman civil aristocracy and army.

Such dating evidence clearly points to these potteries having been worked by native Britons during the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, but then were abandoned when the potters moved to the more lucrative environment of a larger and more sophisticated pottery industry then emerging in the upland valleys of the New Forest, an area centred on the present villages of Farnham, Verwood and Alice Holt. After the full emergence of this New Forest industry by the end of the 2nd century, the potteries in Purbeck virtually ceased production until their revival during the 18th century industrial revolution.

Clays were collected on the heath and taken to a string of workshops organised on cottage industry lines along the shore of Poole Harbour, where individual craftsmen potters had their wheels and kilns. Two such kilns have been relocated a short way south of Shipstal Point on the edge of the saltings and old shore, but a number of other archaeological excavations have thrown up others. Not far north of Nutcrack Lane near Redcliffe Farm the kiln sites of other potters using wheels have been found. The presence of discarded fragments of pots at this and other sites – sometimes in large quantities – were a sure sign of a kiln below ground. These were wasters: the substandard or misfired pots rejected by the potters and smashed on a heap, which was later scattered upon abandonment of the site. The remains of what was probably a potter’s hut have been excavated at Fitzworth Point on the Frome at Stoborough. Kilns have also been re-discovered on Fitzworth Heath and on Cleavel Point (the west spit of Newton Bay) beside safe harbour beaches. But the largest concentration of kilns – over thirty – has been discovered at Bestwells Farm, between Wareham and Poole Harbour.

In 1952 a walker in Nutcrack Lane near Stoborough noticed that a number of molehills along the wayside had numerous sherds of ancient-looking pottery scattered over their surfaces. Subsequent excavation of the site unearthed a vat of puddled chalk four feet in diameter by two feet deep, with a clay lining, a central plug-hole at the bottom and five other holes in the rim. A cindery residue at the bottom contained a considerable number of sherds, pointing to the feature being a 1st century potter’s pit for puddling clay. With extreme care archaeologists lifted the basin-shaped vessel and conveyed it to the County Museum in Dorchester, where it remained on indefinite display under glass for a number of years. Unfortunately the vessel broke up during an attempt to remove it to another part of the museum in 1970, the strain evidently proving too much for its fragility and advanced age!

The native pottery style produced by these potteries is what is known as Durotrigian or Dorset Black Burnished Ware. Typically the vessels are wide bowls, urns or other forms in a hard sandy or gritty fabric and a black or grey burnishing (polishing with a pebble before firing) to produce a highly reflective surface. The Iron Age pottery (known as BB1) was usually black all over, indicating heavy reduction during firing. A variety of clays may have been used, oxides being added to colour them. The pots may have an iron rich slip or slurry finish to cover the gritty fabric. The pre-Roman Durotrigian potters could produce highly competent hand-made wares fired in bonfires or clamps. Many vessel forms used by the Romans belonged to types used on prehistoric Dorset farms, but others show that the Purbeck potters imitated continental (Belgaic) styles brought to Britain by the new colonisers, who employed the natives to supply pottery for their army.

Pottery produced on the wheel, which the Romans introduced, typically left horizontal throwing grooves on the inner side, whereas the hand-made wares of the Durotrigians often show finger marks on the insides. One problem of the potters technique, which is not fully understood is how they obtained the marked colour contrast between black and the grey surfaces, and furthermore, how the black is always well-burnished, while the grey surfaces are a dull matt and often show tool-marks.

The sites of the pits from which the clay was dug are often betrayed by mounds and depressions of extraction, small-blackened depressions indicating the former position of kilns. The kilns near the harbour shore in Purbeck were purposely sited so that the finished wares could easily be shipped from the production site without the need for any overland transportation. They are now over one hundred yards from the high water mark, but in Roman times were evidently much closer to the tidal margin of the harbour. At that time the sea level was higher or the land lower, but the tidal regression from the harbour has left behind the salt marsh we see today.

Then the mud flats were reclaimed by the Spartina grass and one of the country’s oldest industries was lost to history for centuries to come.

Dame Alice – a child of fate in a merciless age

May 8th, 2012
by Dorset Ancestors.
Comments are off for this post

When James Scott, Duke of Monmouth, made landfall at Lyme Regis in 1685, it was the curtain-raiser for one of the most bloody and shameful episodes in English history. An illegitimate son of Charles II, the Duke believed himself to be the rightful heir to the Crown, and raised an army in rebellion against the incumbent James II. But the insurrection collapsed, with fatal consequences for the Duke and all those who took up arms in his support. For the revolt could scarcely have been more ill-timed, coming as it did when the Lord Chief Justice in the land was the infamous Baron Sir George Jeffreys of Wem.

Probably the most tragic figure to become ensnared in the judicial reprisal for the rebellion was not one of the numerous renegade soldiers so soon to be hung in gibbets at crossroads the length and breadth of the west country. No, this particular victim of Jeffreys’ indiscriminate brutality was a quiet genteel woman of high standing and humanism, whose only crime was to naively commit the one well-meaning act, which would lead to her downfall. The woman was Dame Alicia (or Alice) Lisle, who earned the unenviable distinction of becoming the first of the accused (and the only woman) to be condemned to death for complicity in the Monmouth Rebellion.

Alice was born Alice Breconsawe (or Breckonshaw) about 1614 and brought up at her family home at Moyles Court, an Elizabethan manor in the parish of Ellingham, just north of Ringwood on the Hants side of the Dorset border. Together with her sister Elizabeth (the future Lady Tipping) she was a daughter of Sir White Breconsawe and Elizabeth Bond. Of the Breconsawe’s next to nothing is known, but on her mother’s side Alice was a descendant of the Purbeck scion of the manorial Bond family of Dorset, whose estate was at Blackmanston.

In 1636 when she was grown up, Alice married John Lisle, a leading Parliamentarian who, under Cromwell, would take up arms against the King in the Civil War. He was called to the bar in 1633 and was MP for Winchester from 1639 and for Southampton in 1654. In  1659/60 he was also Commissioner for the Navy. Lisle was a leading promoter of the trial of Charles I in Westminster Hall in January 1649 and actually drafted the death sentence for the doomed monarch. Later Cromwell appointed Lisle Commissioner of his Seal, and to a place in the House of Lords. By him Alice had four daughters and one son.

The road which would ultimately lead Alice Lisle to her cruel fate began on the battlefield of Sedgemoor, Somerset, in 1685. The Duke of Monmouth, who had declared himself king at Taunton shortly before, was routed at the head of his rebel army by the superior forces of the King, then captured, tried and executed.

Among the Duke’s supporters who would remain at liberty until their eventual capture were two fugitives, one of whom, a man called John Hickes, would later become known to Alice as a wanted man, but not for the reason she supposed. Hickes was a dissenting minister who sent Alice a message asking for shelter at Moyles Court. He arrived at 10pm on July 20th, accompanied by one Richard Nelthorp and Alice, though not believed to be a Monmouth sympathiser, secreted the fugitives in a malthouse. It was there, during a county-wide mopping up sweep of rebel runaways by the King’s men under the command of a Colonel Penruddock (who had been tipped off by a spying villager) that the two men were flushed out the next day, sentenced, then hung, drawn and quartered.

Though Alice Lisle knowingly concealed the wanted man, she mistakenly assumed that John Hickes’ offence was one of religious dissent, not treason. But under Jeffreys’ draconian interpretation of the criminal code, the difference would probably have been academic. Although many more arrests, trials, and executions were to follow in the months ahead, all of these were of male combatants fighting in a rebel army. It is thus a measure of the extraordinary harshness of 17th century justice that, at least in the Lisle case, no concessions were made to the accused’s sex, age, infirmities, or social status. She would go down to her grave along with those far more guilty and deserving of punishment than herself.

As Chief Justice it fell to Jeffreys to try and condemn Alice and the captured rebels as the King’s advocate, under duress to apply harsh retribution for Monmouth’s treason. Many hundreds would be hung; some luckier ones transported – but fewer still would ever be acquitted. Indeed it was said that Jeffreys was a magistrate who never found anyone innocent (though 80 rebels were pardoned.) He was equally deaf to any appeals for clemency. On one notorious occasion at Dorchester a girl saw her brother’s lifeless body hanging from a wall opposite her window the morning after she had pleaded with the judge to spare his life.

For the circuit of trials and summary executions that have passed into history as the Bloody Assizes, Jeffreys embarked upon a veritable tour de force, holding court at Dorchester and elsewhere in the west country. In Dorset’s county town the judge presided in a room at the Antelope Inn, ever after known as the Monmouth Room. Alice Lisle however, was not tried and sentenced at the Antelope, but at a court in Winchester.

Here she was charged with the treasonable act of harbouring two of the King’s enemies. But despite the jury finding her innocent three times, Jeffreys refused to accept the verdict – three times. Still, the bullying judge was very persuasive. After much coercion, and probably fear of their own lives, Jeffreys managed to exact from his jury precisely the verdict he wanted: not one determined so much by the facts or mitigating circumstances, as by a malicious prejudice and paranoid loathing for anyone wishing ill of the monarch!

Then Dame Alice’s fate was sealed. As a woman inevitably found guilty she was first sentenced to be burnt at the stake. But this method of dispatch proved too extreme for the Clergy of Winchester to stomach. Following their intercession to James II, the King commuted the sentence to one of beheading!

It is recorded that the condemned woman spent her last night at the Eclipse Inn in Winchester after delivering a remarkable execution speech apparently recorded for posterity by the court clerk. And the following day, 2nd of September 1685 in Winchester’s market square, Dame Alice Lisle’s head was struck from her body by a swordsman. She was then about 75 years of age and was supposedly buried in the precincts of Ellingham’s 13th century church, although there is some archaeological evidence that the tomb supposed to be hers was occupied by someone else.

By this time however, Sir John Lisle was already dead. At the Restoration in 1660 he fled to Switzerland, but was murdered there by a man called Thomas McDowell in 1664. As for Jeffreys, when the Protestant William III came to the throne, the King, possibly fearing a Papist backlash against the judge, threw him into prison for his own safety in 1688, but he died from kidney failure the following year.