BARFORD ST MARTIN TO TISBURY AND SHAFTESBURY
And she is very small and very green
And full of little lanes all dense with flowers
That wind along and lose themselves between
Mossed farms, and parks, and fields of quiet sheep.
And in the hamlets, where her stalwarts sleep,
Low bells chime out from old elm-hidden towers.
GEOFFREY HOWARD.
Starting from Salisbury, the pilgrim of the Hardy country, when he has
passed through Barford St Martin and Burcome, might think it worth while
to take the road to Tisbury when he arrives at Swallowcliff. The large
village of Tisbury is situated on the north side of the River Nadder, on
rising ground, and is about twelve miles west of Salisbury. There is
much of interest to be seen, and the spacious church, in the flat land
at the bottom of the hill and close to the river, is well worth a visit.
It contains several monuments to the Arundels, and on an iron bracket
near the easternmost window is a good sixteenth-century helmet, which
has been gilded in places and is ornamented with a small band of
scroll-work round the edges; there is an added spike for a crest. It is
a real helmet, not a funeral one; the rivets for the lining remain
inside. Tradition says it belonged to the first Lord Arundel of Wardour,
who died in 1639. All the seats are of oak and modern, but against the
walls is some good linen-fold panelling of the seventeenth century or
very late sixteenth century. In the sacrarium is a fine brass to
Lawrence Hyde of West Hatch. He was the great-grandfather of Queen Mary,
1689, and Queen Anne, 1702. He is represented standing in a church in
front of his six sons, facing his wife and four daughters. The
inscription is:
"Here lyeth Lawrence Hyde of West Hatch Esqr. who had issue by Anne
his wife six sons and four daughters and died in the year of the
incarnation of Our Lord God 1590. Beati qui moriuntur in domino."
The churchyard is a very large one, and the old causeway which was used
in times of flood is most picturesque. Two massive black grave slabs at
once arrest the eye. In plain, square lead lettering one reads:
JOHN LOCKWOOD KIPLING
C.I.E.
1837-1911.
ALICE MACDONALD
WIFE OF
JOHN LOCKWOOD KIPLING
1910
[Illustration: STOCKS AT TOLLARD ROYAL
(Seven miles south of Tisbury)]
The village of Tisbury existed in the seventh century, the earliest
extant spelling of the name being "Tissebiri" or "Dysseburg," and there
was a monastery over which an abbot named Wintra ruled about 647. Mr
Paley Baildon, F.S.A., who has devoted considerable time to the
investigation of the origin of place names, thinks that without doubt
Tisbury is derived from Tissa's-burgh, Tissa or Tyssa being a personal
name and owner of the estate; hence it came to be known as
Tissa's-burgh.
It was at Tisbury that Rudyard Kipling wrote some of his stories after
leaving India, and there can be little doubt that after some years of
absence in the East the return to things desperately dear and familiar
and intimate exercised a strong effect upon his thoughts and writing,
and prepared a way for his delicately fashioned pictures of the Old
Country in _Puck of Pook's Hill_ and _Rewards and Fairies_.
At Barford St Martin I had the misfortune to burst the back tube and
tyre of my motor cycle, and that is the real reason I arrived at
Tisbury. I wheeled my machine to the Green Dragon, hoping for a lift to
a place where I could get fixed up with a new tyre. A large wagon was
standing outside the inn, and as it bore the name, Stephen Weekes,
Tisbury, upon it, I penetrated to the bar-parlour, thinking that I
might induce the driver to take me with the machine into that village.
The owner of the wagon was sitting inside with two large bottles of
stout before him. He was a burly fellow in shirt-sleeves and a broad
straw hat. I saw he was fifty or thereabouts--not a mere wagoner, but a
small farmer who would have answered to the description of Farmer Oak by
Thomas Hardy in his opening to _Far from the Madding Crowd_. He was of a
more jovial type than most Dorset men I have met, and after submitting
to his fire of questions I asked him gently, in jest, if he would
require any assistance with his two bottles.
"Aye," he answered, quizzing at me with his merry eyes. "I shall require
another bottle to assist me, I think."
He looked at me a moment with seriousness and then he laughed to the
point of holding his sides. He slapped his knees, shouted, roared and
almost rolled with merriment. I looked at the farmer, not without a
feeling of admiration. It was perhaps a very poor jest, you will say.
But how well a simple jest became the fellow; how gloriously he laughed.
Down in my heart I knew that no man could laugh as he did and at the
same time possess a mean mind. He was as broad as the earth, and his
laughter was just as limitless. Talk of good things: there may be
something finer than a hearty laugh--there may be--perhaps....
At this moment he called for two glasses, and explained to the landlord
that now he would drink out of a glass, seeing that he was in company.
"Then tell me," I said, "why do you drink out of the bottle when you are
alone?"
"Why, you don't get no virtue out of the beer 'thout you drink it out of
the bottle. No, fay! Half of the strength is gone like winky when you
pour it into a glass."
"I believe you are right," I said, "and I especially commend you for
drinking beer. Ale is a great and generous creature; it contains all
health, induces sleep o' nights, titillates the digestion and imparts
freshness to the palate."
"'Tis the only drink that will go with bread and cheese and pickling
cabbage," dashed in the farmer.
"'Tis a pity," I said, "that so many workers in London take bread and
cheese with tea and coffee, for there is no staying power in such a
mixture."
"It can't be good," he shouted. "It can't be healthy."
The farmer's name was Mr Weekes--the same as it was painted on the
wagon outside--and he said that he would be very glad to take me with my
machine into Tisbury, where there was a motor garage. He made an
extraordinarily shrill noise with his mouth and a fine greyhound that
had been sleeping beneath the table bounded up.
"This long-dog," said Mr Weekes, "is a wonderfully good dog--the best
dog of his kind in the world."
Mr Weekes is never half-hearted about things. His enthusiasm is
prodigious. He is like a human hurricane when he launches upon any of
his pet subjects. At once he fell to explaining the points and final
perfection of a perfect greyhound. I remember a quaint rhyme he quoted,
which is perhaps worth repetition here:
"The shape of a good greyhound is:--
A head like a snake, a neck like a drake;
A back like a beam, a belly like a bream;
A foot like a cat, a tail like a rat."
The farmer, then, I say, was not the kind of man to qualify any of his
remarks, and he reasserted his claim that, in the concrete, in the
existent state of things, his dog was the best that breathed.
[Illustration: THE GREEN DRAGON AT BARFORD ST MARTIN IN 1860
This inn is one of the few remaining places in England where the
landlord brews his own ale
The adjoining barns have been regularly used for brewing since 1750]
This he said for the sixth time, drank up his stout, and after helping
me to lift my machine into the wagon, climbed up on to his seat, I by
his side. He then flicked his horses gently with his whip and they began
to amble along with the wagon. On the way to Tisbury the farmer talked
with the greatest friendliness, and when we arrived at his farm he
insisted on bringing me in to supper. He showed me his orchard, barns
and a very fine apple-tree of which he was enormously proud, and pulled
me an armful of the finest apples he could find.
"Take these apples home," he said, watching me with his merry eyes;
"they make the best apple pies in the world."
An armful of apples of prodigious size is not exactly the kind of thing
one welcomes with a broken-down motor cycle two hundred miles from home,
but I dared not refuse them, and so I stuffed them into all my pockets.
Finally my good friend insisted on keeping me under his roof for the
night.
After my machine had been repaired next morning I went on my way,
thinking what a fine, merry, hospitable fellow the Dorset yeoman is--if
you only approach him with a little caution.
* * * * *
I left my friend the yeoman farmer with regret, regained the main road
and soon came into Shaftesbury, or _Shaston_, as it is commonly called.
This town is very curiously placed, on the narrow ridge of a chalk hill
which projects into the lower country, and rises from it with
abruptness. Hence an extensive landscape is seen through the openings
between the houses, and from commanding points the eye ranges over the
greater part of Dorset and Somerset. To add to the beauty of the
position, the scarped slope of the hill is curved on its southern side.
Shaftesbury is one of the oldest towns in the kingdom. Its traditions go
back to the time of King Lud, who, according to Holinshed, founded it
about 1000 B.C. A more moderate writer refers its origin to
Cassivellaunus. However, it is certain that Alfred, in the year 880,
founded here a nunnery, which in aftertimes became the richest in
England, and, as the shrine of St Edward the Martyr--whose body was
removed to this town from Wareham--the favourite resort of pilgrims.
Asser, who wrote the _Life of Alfred_, has described Shaftesbury as
consisting of one street in his time. In that of Edward the Confessor it
possessed three mints, sure evidence of its importance; and shortly
after the Conquest it had no less than twelve churches, besides chapels
and chantries, and a Hospital of St John.
The view from the Castle Hill at the west end of the ridge is very
extensive, and from all parts of the town you come unexpectedly upon
narrow ravines which go tumbling down to the plain below in the most
headlong fashion. The chief trouble in the olden days was the water
supply. On this elevated chalk ridge the town was obviously far removed
from the sources of spring water, and the supply of this necessary
article had been from time out of mind brought on horses' backs from the
parish of Gillingham. Hence arose a curious custom which was annually
observed here for a great number of years. On the Monday before Holy
Thursday the mayor proceeded to Enmore Green, near Motcombe, with a
large, fanciful broom, or _byzant_, as it was called, which he presented
as an acknowledgment for the water to the steward of the manor, together
with a calf's head, a pair of gloves, a gallon of ale and two penny
loaves of wheaten bread. This ceremony being concluded, the
byzant--which was usually hung with jewels and other costly
ornaments--was returned to the mayor and carried back to the town in
procession.
About 1816 the Mayor of Shaftesbury refused to carry out the custom, and
the people of Enmore were so put out by his omission in this respect
that they filled up the wells. The Shastonians paid twopence for a
horse-load of water and a halfpenny for a pail "if fetched upon the
head." I heard a rather amusing story of the water-carrying days. A
rustic who had been working on the land all day in the rain came
"slewching" up Gold Hill, feeling very unhappy and out of temper. At the
summit of the hill he passed by the crumbling church of St Peter's, but
did _not_ pass the Sun and Moon Inn. Here he cheered his drooping
spirits with a measure of old-fashioned Shaftesbury XXX stingo, and,
thus strengthened, he went on his way home, expecting to be welcomed
with a warm, savoury supper. But the news of his call at the inn had
reached his wife before he arrived home, and being rather an ill-natured
person, she decided to punish him for loitering on his way. "Oh," she
said to him, "as you are so wet already, just you take this steyan
[earthenware pot] and fill it with water at Toute Hill spring, and don't
go loafing at the Sun and Moon again." The rustic took up the pitcher
without a word, filled it and returned to his sour housewife; but
instead of putting the pitcher down, he hurled the contents over her,
saying: "Now _you_ are wet too, so you can go to the spring and fetch
the water."
Bimport is a wide and comfortable street which skirts the north crest of
Castle Hill. It is a street of honest stone houses, and readers of
_Jude the Obscure_ will look here for Phillotson's school and the
"little low drab house in which the wayward Sue wrought the wrecking of
her life." Their house, "old Grove's Place"--now called "Ox House"--is
not difficult to find. As you come up from the Town Hall and Market
House to the fork of the roads which run to Motcombe and East Stower,
Bimport turns off to the left, and a hundred or so yards down is Grove's
Place, with a projecting porch and mullioned windows. It was here that
Sue in a momentary panic jumped out of the window to avoid Phillotson.
The name of the house derives from that of a former inhabitant mentioned
in an old plan of Shaftesbury. Poor, highly strung Sue Bridehead, with
her neurotic temperament, could not throw off the oppressiveness of the
old house. "We don't live in the school, you know," said she, "but in
that ancient dwelling across the way, called old Grove's Place. It is so
antique and dismal that it depresses me dreadfully. Such houses are very
well to visit, but not to live in. I feel crushed into the earth by the
weight of so many previous lives there spent. In a new place like these
schools there is only your own life to support."
The village of Marnhull is situated in the Vale of Blackmoor, six miles
from Shaftesbury. It is the "Marlott" of Hardy's novel _Tess_, the
village home of the Durbeyfield family. It contains little of interest.
The Pure Drop Inn, where "there's a very pretty brew in tap," may be the
"Crown." Here John Durbeyfield kept up Tess's wedding day "as well as he
could, and stood treat to everybody in the parish, and John's wife sung
songs till past eleven o'clock." There is a Pure Drop Inn at Wooten
Glanville and another at Wareham; one of these most probably suggested
the name. The fine church is of the eighteenth-century Gothic (1718),
and it has often been regarded by strangers as being three hundred years
earlier. The font bowl, late Norman, was unearthed in 1898, also the
rood staircase and squint and the piscina. Some ancient alabaster
effigies, ascribed to the middle of the fifteenth century and
representing a man in armour and two female figures, are placed on a
cenotaph in the north aisle. Some authorities claim that they represent
Thomas Howard, Lord Bindon, and his wives, and are of a later date. Nash
Court, a little to the north, is a fine Elizabethan mansion, formerly
the seat of the Husseys.