Part 5

Perhaps, however, the most remarkable relic of the Roman occupation is the amphitheatre, said to be the best preserved in Britain. It is larger than the so-called “Bull Ring” of Cirencester, and, being quite free from trees and bushes, stands out more boldly than the similar work at Silchester. It is built of chalk, now covered with grass, somewhat elliptical in plan, the height of the sides being given as about 30 feet, and the internal measurements 218 feet by 163 feet. On each side of the entrance there are walks which ascend gradually to the centre of the mounds, where there are small platforms as if for seating the principal spectators or judges, but there are no traces of steps or ledges for the accommodation of the general public; and, judging by the remarks of early Roman writers, it is very probable that the people were obliged to stand throughout the public games.

But in addition to these more obvious relics of a bygone age, the subsoil of Dorchester is full of treasures that emphasise the Roman occupation. It would be impossible to describe in these pages even the most interesting of the objects that have been brought to light in recent years, but it is fortunate that they find their way very frequently to the County Museum, of which the people of Dorset are justly proud. It must suffice at the present time to mention that in its cases may be seen a fine collection of objects made of Kimmeridge shale; glass hairpins, brooches and bracelets, and a metal mirror; pottery of all kinds; many examples of mosaic floors, fragments of wall plaster retaining their brilliant colouring, three curious antefixæ, a Roman sword handle, which is believed to be almost unique, and a base and capital of a column of a temple. In looking at these memorials of the past, and stepping the while on the ancient pavements, the mind is taken back with irresistible force to the men and women who made use of them in their daily occupations—the Romans, who for a period of four hundred years exercised their wise and beneficial influence over the people of Britain.

THE CHURCHES OF DORSET

BY THE REV. THOMAS PERKINS, M.A.

Out of about three hundred churches which are to be found in Dorset, three stand out as far ahead of all the rest—the church (once collegiate, now parochial) of Wimborne Minster; the church of the Benedictine Abbey at Sherborne, now the parish church; and the great Benedictine Abbey Church at Milton, now in parochial use. These three, which receive separate treatment in the present volume, are the only three Dorset churches that can rank with the great parish churches of England.

There were before the Reformation many religious houses, each with its own church, in the county, but at the time of the Dissolution, in the reign of Henry VIII., most of these, as being of no further use, fell into decay, and their ruins were regarded as quarries of hewn stone whenever such material was needed in the neighbourhood. Of the Benedictine nunnery of Shaftesbury, once one of the most wealthy religious foundations in the kingdom, nothing remains save the foundations, which recent excavations have disclosed to view; of Cistercian Bindon, only the gatehouse and a few ivy-clad walls, rising only a few feet above the ground; of Benedictine Cerne, a splendid barn and a beautiful gatehouse, and a few fragments incorporated in some farm buildings; of its daughter abbey at Abbotsbury, a still larger barn, testifying to the wealth of the community, and some ruined walls—this is all that remains to mark the spots where day after day through many centuries the words of prayer and praise rose almost without ceasing, and monks and nuns lived their lives apart from the busy world, spending their time in meditation, in adorning their churches with the carving of capital and boss or miserere, in copying and illuminating manuscripts, in teaching the young, in giving alms to the needy, in tilling their lands in the days while yet they cherished the high ideals of the founders of their orders, before they lapsed into luxury and riotous living.

A few monastic barns remain in other places, as at Tarrant Crawford and Liscombe. These owe their preservation to the fact that they could at once be utilized; for those who received grants of abbey lands, no less than their predecessors, required buildings wherein to store their corn; whereas the refectory, dormitory, cellars, and other domestic buildings designed for a community of monks or nuns were useless when such communities no longer existed; and the churches, unless they could be turned to account as parish churches, would also be of no use.

After the three great ministers already mentioned there is a wide gap, for though many of the Dorset parish churches are of architectural or archæological interest, either generally or because they contain some special object—a Saxon font, a Norman doorway, a Decorated Easter sepulchre, a canopied tomb, or the effigy of a noble who fought in the French wars of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries—yet as a rule the churches are comparatively, if not actually, small, and are for the most part built in the Perpendicular style, the most prosaic and uninteresting of the mediæval styles of architecture, though in mason-craft it can hold its own against all the rest. And, moreover, Dorset Perpendicular is not equal to that which is to be found in the neighbouring county of Somerset. We look in vain for the splendid fifteenth century towers which are the glory of the Somerset churches; here and there in isolated places, and, strange enough, not on the Somerset border, we find traces of the Somerset influence; but for the most part the Dorset towers are utilitarian appendages, not structures carefully designed with a view to beauty of outline and richness and appropriateness of ornament, as the finest of the Somerset towers are. Spires of mediæval date are rare in Dorset. There are but two—one at Winterborne Steepleton, near Dorchester, and one at Trent, a parish added for administration purposes to the County of Dorset in 1895; there is a spire also at Iwerne[15] Minster, but it cannot be called a mediæval one, for though the tower of this church was formerly surmounted by a beautiful spire, yet that to be seen to-day is only a reproduction, built of some of the stones of the old spire, which was taken down at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The upper part above the lower of the two moulded bands, preserves the original slope; the lower has a different slope, as the builder had, in a vertical distance of about ten feet, to connect the base of the original spire with the horizontal section of the upper part, which was originally about thirty feet above the base. The original spire was forty feet in height; the present one is only twenty feet. The stone not used in the rebuilding was sold to a road contractor for metalling the roads.

The hand of the restorer has been laid very heavily on Dorset churches. In some cases, where there was absolutely no necessity for it, old churches were entirely destroyed to make room for smart new buildings; others have been restored—a few judiciously, the majority injudiciously; a few only, so far, have entirely escaped. Many causes in Dorset, as elsewhere, have led to extensive restoration—the desire to adapt the building to the form of worship fashionable at the time, or to put back, as it is called, the church into what was supposed to be its original form, as if such a thing were possible; the love of uniformity, which has led to the removal of seventeenth and eighteenth century additions, such as pulpits and galleries, which were supposed to be out of keeping with the main portion of the church; by which removals much interesting history has been destroyed. Oak pews, sometimes carved, have been swept away in order to put in more comfortable benches of pitch pine; encaustic tiles have taken the place of the old stones, which, if they had become uneven, might have been relaid; ancient plaster has been stripped from walls, and the stones pointed; churchyards have been levelled, and, in some cases, the paths have been paved with old headstones. Unfortunately for Dorset, there has been found no lack of money to carry out these supposed “improvements,” so that the work of “restoration” has been done most thoroughly throughout the length and breadth of the county, and there is now little more that is likely to be done. It is, indeed, almost too late to utter the prayer of Thomas Hardy:—

From restorations of Thy fane, From smoothings of Thy sward, From zealous churchmen’s pick and plane, Deliver us, good Lord![16]

But despite the fact that Dorset is architecturally much poorer at the beginning of the twentieth century than at the beginning of the nineteenth, there is still much that the archæologist may take joy in, though his joy may be mingled with regret at treasures of old time that have vanished for ever.

One of the most interesting ecclesiastical buildings in Dorset is the little church, disused for many years save for an occasional service, of St. Martin, at Wareham. Some of it is probably of Saxon date; in size and proportion it bears a remarkable likeness to St. Ealdhelm’s recently re-discovered church of St. Lawrence, at Bradford-on-Avon. This is specially interesting, as it is said that St. Ealdhelm founded a monastery or nunnery at Wareham, and the similarity of this church to that which he built at Bradford gives some confirmation to the belief that this church also was built by him during the time of his episcopate at Sherborne (705-709). Some authorities, while recognising the church as of Saxon foundation, would date it approximately 1050. The chancel arch is low, like that at Bradford, but not so narrow; the nave, though subsequently lengthened, is short, narrow, and high—long and short work may be seen in the coigns of the walls; all these seem to indicate its Saxon origin. The church, however, has been enlarged from time to time; the north aisle is divided from the nave by round-headed arches; the windows at the east of the chancel and aisle, now walled up, are of the Perpendicular period; and a window in the south wall of the nave is of Decorated date; but an early Norman one may be seen on the north side of the chancel. The tower, with a gabled roof, is an early addition to the building. When, in 1762, a great fire destroyed about a third of the town of Wareham, many of those whom this disaster rendered homeless found a refuge within the walls of the little church, which even then had ceased to be used for service. Beneath the church a vast number of burials took place; it would seem that the limited space within the walls was used over and over again for this purpose.

Among other examples of Saxon work to be found in Dorset may be mentioned a walled-up doorway, with triangular head, on the south wall of Worth Matravers church, in the Isle of Purbeck; a fragment of herring-bone work in Corfe Castle, which may possibly be a portion of a wall of the chapel founded here by St. Ealdhelm, though it may, on the other hand, be of Norman date; and fonts at Toller Fratrum and Martinstown; and the carved stone over the doorway of Tarrant Rushton, the chancel arch of which church is also probably of pre-Conquest date.

Norman work is naturally more abundant. The church at Studland, in the Isle of Purbeck, is no doubt the most complete example to be met with in the county. It is also a fine example of restoration at its best. The church was in great danger of falling, owing to the sinking of an artificial bed of clay on which the foundations of some of the walls were laid; wide cracks had opened in the walls, in the chancel arch, and other places; the mortar of the core of the walls had perished; but by underpinning the walls, grouting with cement, the insertion of metal tie-beams, and stopping the cracks, the church has been made safe. There is little work of post-Norman date, but it is by no means certain that the Norman builders built the church from its foundations; there is good reason to suppose that a previous church of rude rubble masonry existed here, and that a great part of the original walls was left standing, and that the Norman builders cut out portions of the old walls to insert their own more perfect work in various places. It is a long, narrow church, without aisles; a low central tower, probably never completed, covered with a gable roof, stands between the nave and chancel. The tower arches are low, and the roof is vaulted. The Norman work probably dates from about 1130. The church bears some resemblance to the well-known church at Iffley, but the decoration is not so elaborate.

Next to Studland in interest comes the church of Worth Matravers, also in the Isle of Purbeck. Here, however, the tower stands at the west end. The chancel is Early English, the roof is of wood; but the chancel arch is elaborately carved, as is also the door within the south porch. In the parish of Worth stands a unique building—the chapel of St. Ealdhelm, on St. Ealdhelm’s (or, as it is often incorrectly called, St. Alban’s) Head. It shares with the later chapel of St. Catherine, near Abbotsbury, the peculiarity of being built, within and without, walls and roof alike, of stone. The chapel of St. Ealdhelm stands four square, with a pyramidal roof, now surmounted by a cross, which has taken the place of the cresset in which the beacon fire blazed on nights of storm or national danger. No doubt it showed one of the “twinkling points of fire” of Macaulay’s ballad when the Armada had been sighted off Alderney. There is a legend that it was built by St. Ealdhelm, who, finding that he could not by land get at the heathen of what we now call Dorset, came in a boat and climbed the cliff, and afterwards founded this chapel to mark the spot where he landed. That he landed here is probable enough, but the style of architecture—Norman—shows that it was built long after St. Ealdhelm’s time. It is far more likely that his chapel was built on the hill at “Corfes-geat,” now crowned with the ruins of Corfe Castle. Another more romantic story tells us that this chapel on St. Ealdhelm’s Head was founded by the Norman Lord of the Manor, who, when his daughter, who had just been married, set out from Poole Haven to sail down channel to her home, came to this high spot to watch the vessel that bore her pass, and saw it wrecked on the rocks below. Hence it is said that he built this chapel so that masses might be said there for her soul’s rest. Be this as it may, it is certain that for many centuries the chaplain received his yearly stipend of fifty shillings from the Royal Treasury, and the chapel was a seamen’s chantry, where prayers for their safety might be offered, and whose flaming beacon served as a lighthouse. A narrow Norman window, or, rather, a slit, near the north-west corner of the east wall, alone admits light. A Norman doorway, in the opposite wall, is the only entrance. The stone vault is supported by ribs springing from a central pier, an arrangement similar to that common in polygonal chapter houses. The local name for the building was at one time “The Devil’s Chapel,” and people sought to gain their objects by some process of incantation, one part of the rite being the dropping of a pin into a hole in the central pier, a custom not altogether abandoned even now. On Worth “club walking day,” in Whitsun week, the building was used as a dancing room; at other times of the year as a coastguard store. It has, however, been refitted as a chapel, and service for the coastguard station is held at stated times by the rector of Worth.

It is neither possible nor desirable to mention all the Norman work which is to be found in Dorset, but attention must be called to that at Bere Regis. In this church may especially be noticed some curious carved heads on some of the capitals; on one, an arm comes down from above, and the hand raises the eyelids—evidently the gift of sight is here indicated; on another in like manner the fingers open the mouth—probably the gift of speech is here represented, although the carving might be intended to represent the gift of taste.

Work of the Early English period (thirteenth century) is not very common in Dorset. We meet with it, however, in the east end of Wimborne Minster, in the churches of Knighton, Cranborne, Corfe Mullen, Portesham, and Worth, among others.

Nor is the Decorated style more fully represented. The best examples are Milton Abbey Church, which is almost entirely in this style, and the aisles of Wimborne Minster; but it may also be seen in Gussage St. Michael, Tarrant Rushton, and Wooton Glanville, and at St. Peter’s, Dorchester, a well-preserved arch for the Easter sepulchre of this period may be seen. It was customary in such arches to set up at Easter a movable wooden structure representing the grave in Joseph’s garden, where certain rites commemorating the Burial and Resurrection were performed. These sepulchres were very elaborate, and associated with them were figures, of course of small size, representing Christ, the Father, the Holy Ghost, the armed guard, and angels and devils.

The great majority of the Dorset churches are of Perpendicular date, and in churches of earlier date there are few that do not contain some addition or insertion made after the time when this peculiarly English style had had its birth in the Abbey Church at Gloucester, and had been adopted by William of Edington and William of Wykeham in the transformation of the Norman Cathedral Church at Winchester during the latter half of the fourteenth century.

Why was it that so many churches were built during the fifteenth century? Probably because conditions had changed, and the building was no longer the work chiefly of the bishops or of the religious orders as it had been up to the thirteenth century, or of the nobles as it had been in the fourteenth, but of the people. The French wars of Edward III. emptied the purses of the nobles and the monasteries; the Black Death also counted many monks among its victims, and had entirely swept away many of the smaller religious houses, and decreased the numbers of brethren in the larger;[17] and the middle class rose after the Black Death to a position that it had never occupied before. This class demanded parish churches, as well as trade halls and guild chapels, and built them, too—that is, supplied money to pay masons. Architecture became more of a trade and less of an art. Norfolk and Somerset were especially rich districts at a time when England exported the raw material, wool, and not, as now, manufactured goods; and hence in these two counties some of the largest and grandest parish churches were built. And Dorset, lying as it does on the Somerset border, showed, though in less degree, the results of the new conditions. It has no churches of this period to match in size St. Mary Redcliffe at Bristol, or St. Mary Magdalene’s at Taunton; it has no Perpendicular towers to rival those of Shepton Mallet, St. Cuthbert’s at Wells, or Huish Episcopi; but it has some fine examples, nevertheless, distinctly traceable to Somerset influence. The parent design in Dorset may perhaps be seen in Piddletrenthide, 1487; Fordington St. George, the top of which tower has not been very wisely altered of late, is a little more in advance; St. Peter’s, Dorchester, and Charminster are still further developed; the two last probably are the finest individual towers in the county. Bradford Abbas may be thought by some more beautiful, but the builder borrowed details from the Quantock group of churches. The tower at Cerne is probably by the same builder as Bradford, judging from the similarity of the buttresses and pinnacles in the two churches. Beaminster also has a fine tower, and so has Marnhull, though the general effect of the latter is ruined by the clumsy modern parapet. Milton Abbey tower has good details. In all these cases, excepting Cerne, there are double windows in the belfry stage; but this arrangement is not so common in Dorset as in Somerset, and the writer knows no instance of triple windows. A Somerset feature that is very commonly met with in Dorset is an external stair-turret, an arrangement not found in the East of England. The Somerset builders often placed pinnacles on the offsets of their buttresses; these are rarely seen in Dorset. Generally, the Dorset towers are not so richly ornamented as those of Somerset.

It has been said before that there are only two Dorset churches with spires built before the Reformation. A few words may not be out of place descriptive of the two. Steepleton is a long, narrow church, with nave and chancel, but no aisle. A blocked-up Norman arch, and a pointed one, similarly blocked, in the north wall of the nave, indicate that originally a chapel, or chapels, stood here. A curious stone, carved with the figure of a floating angel, probably taken from the interior, was at some time built into the exterior of the south wall of the nave. It has by this means escaped destruction, but the damp has caused lichen to grow on it. It bears a strong resemblance to the angel to be seen over the chancel arch of St. Lawrence’s Church at Bradford-on-Avon. It is not unlikely that the corresponding angel is on a stone that has been used in blocking one of the arches mentioned before. They possibly date from pre-Conquest days, or, at any rate, from a time before the pre-Conquest style had died out in this remote village, and may have formed part of a representation of the Ascension. The western stone may possibly date from the fourteenth century, as a window in its east face, now covered by the raised roof, shows geometrical tracery; the windows in the other faces are much later—probably they have been altered. The main octagonal spire that rises from the tower does not seem to have been part of the original design. On the four spaces between the corners of the tower and the spire are four spirelets; these do not stand as pinnacles of the tower, nor are they used, as sometimes spirelets were used, to hide the awkward junction of a broad spire with a square tower, for this is not a broad, but rises, as fourteenth century spires generally do, from the tower roof, though here a parapet hardly exists.

Trent Steeple, standing midway on the south side of the church, is a very beautiful one; the tower has double-light windows, with geometrical tracery, and a pierced parapet, with pinnacles, from which rises a very graceful spire, the edges of which have a circular moulding. The spire is slightly twisted from some subsidence, and cracks have occurred in the tower. The church has no aisles, but the projecting tower, the lower part of which serves as an entrance porch, on the south, and the chapel and organ chamber on the north, give it a very picturesque appearance. A modern addition is a distinctly pleasant feature, namely, an octagonal baptistery, which stands beyond the church at the west end of the nave. The interior is also pleasing. There are bench ends of oak, black with age, a reading desk on the north side, of like material, and a fine oak chancel screen. The carved wooden pulpit, if not entirely modern, is very largely so. In the churchyard are the steps and base of a churchyard cross. It is an exceedingly beautiful church, and the few houses in its immediate neighbourhood, with stone mullioned windows, are all in keeping with the church. The straggling cottages, the winding lanes, render it one of the most picturesque villages in the county. It was a distinct loss to Somerset and gain to Dorset when this parish was transferred from the former to the latter county.