Close by is Puddletown, a pretty old village with a remarkable church,
[Pg 177]
where, as at Athelhampton, everything is in harmony. It is the sort of
church one reads about in novels, yet so seldom meets; and now we
come to think of it, this village does figure in a popular Wessex novel.
Doubtless there are some lovers of ecclesiastical architecture who
would like to see the Jacobean woodwork cleared out and modern
Henry VII. benches introduced to make the whole coeval. The
towering three-decker pulpit is delightful, and so are the ancient
pews, and the old gallery and staircase leading up to it. Within the
Athelhampton chapel are mailed effigies, and several ancient brasses
to the Martin family who originally owned the mansion.
Bere Regis church, some six miles to the east of Puddletown, is also
remarkable, particularly for its open hammer-beam roof from which
project huge life-size figures of pilgrims, cardinals, bishops, etc., and
monster heads suggestive of the pantomime. The whole is coloured,
and the effect very rich and strikingly original. One can imagine how
the younger school-children must be impressed with these awe-
inspiring figures looking down upon them with steady gaze. There are
two fine canopied tombs (one containing brasses dated 1596) to the
Turburvilles, who possessed a moiety of the lordship since the
Conquest. Their old manor-house, a few miles south at Wool, a red-
brick Jacobean gabled house with roomy porch in which a great
pendant is conspicuous, picturesquely situated by an old bridge and
the winding ree
[Pg 178]
d-grown river, has of recent years obtained notoriety by Mr. Thomas
Hardy's pen. We photographed the old house some years ago before
it had been thus immortalised. Upon a recent visit we found the
house desolate and empty. Had the good farmer flown in
consequence, and sought an abode that had not become a literary
landmark?
But the vicinity of Bere Regis had obtained notoriety of a tragic kind many centuries before the birth of Tess of the d'Urbervilles, for that very undesirable lady, Queen Elfrida, retired there for peace and
quietness after various deeds of darkness, one of which, according to
the Annals of Ely, is said to have been inserting red-hot nails into Abbot Brithnoth's armpits; and from Lytchet Maltravers to the east of
Bere came Sir John Maltravers to whose tender mercies the
unfortunate Edward II. was delivered before he was done to death at
Berkeley Castle. Sir John's monument is in the church; but as it was
not the fashion in those days to enumerate the various virtues of the
departed in laudatory verse, this particular act of charity is not
recorded in suitable effusion.
MONMOUTH'S TREE.
Wimborne Minster to the north-east is too world-famed to call for any
[Pg 179]
particular description here, but a word may be said about the first
Free Library in the country. In past days, when there was no good Mr.
Carnegie to cater for the welfare of millions, nor the finest classics to
be purchased for sixpence, it was only natural, books being rare, that
the local authorities should not have placed the same implicit trust in
would-be readers as is shown by the British Museum Library
authorities. The rusty iron chains securing the aged tomes to an iron
rod above the queer old desks even after the lapse of centuries would
hold their own. The literature cannot be said to be of a much lighter nature than the bulky volumes in weight. The rarest specimens are
placed in glass cases, and are calculated to make the mildest
bibliomaniac full of envy. Before the Reformation the Minster was rich
in holy relics, conspicuous among which was a part of St Agatha's
thigh. One of the most curious things still to be seen is a coffin
brilliantly painted with armorial devices, placed in the niche of a wall,
which according to the will of the occupant has to be touched up from
year to year; and thus the memory of the worthy magistrate, Anthony
Ettrick, is kept more actively alive than good King Ethelred who rests
beneath the pavement by the altar. Ettrick lived at Holt Lodge near
Woodlands, a few miles away in the direction of Cranborne; and
when the Duke of Monmouth was captured in rustic garb in the
vicinity, he was brought before the magistrate and removed from Holt
to Ringwood, where at the "Angel Inn" the room in which he was kept
prisoner is still pointed out. We have elsewhere described the old ash
tree near Crowther's Farm beneath which the unfortunate fugitive
from Sedgemoor was found. It is propped up, and has lost a limb, but
is alive to-day, and surely should be protected by a railing and an
inscription like other historic trees. To the north is St. Giles, the
ancestral home of the Earls of Shaftesbury, the first representative of
which title, Anthony Ashley Cooper, worked so skilfully on
Monmouth's ambition. When the Merry Monarch visited the noble
politician at St. Giles, he little thought that his favourite son
[Pg 180]
would be taken a prisoner as a traitor within only a mile or so of the
mansion. A memento of the royal visit is still preserved in the form of
a medicine chest that the king left behind, which in those days
doubtless contained some of his favourite specific "Jesuit drops."
Another historic mansion is Kingston Lacy, to the west of Wimborne,
the old seat of the Bankes family, which is rich in Stuart portraits as well as other valuable works of art. It is a typical square comfortable-looking Charles
[Pg 181]
II. house, with dormer-windowed roof and wide projecting eaves. The
staunch Royalist, James Buder, the great Duke of Ormonde, lived
here in his latter years, and died here in 1688. The duke's intimate
friend, Sir Robert Southwell, has left a graphic account of the last
hours of the good old nobleman, which he concludes with the
following:—"His Grace could remember some things that passed
when he was but three years old. He was only four years old when
his great-great-uncle Earl Thomas died in 1614, but he retained a
perfect remembrance of him. That Earl lived in the reigns of King
Henry the Eighth, King Edward the Sixth, Queen Mary, Queen
Elizabeth, and King James; and His Grace had seen King James the
First, King Charles the First, King Charles the Second, and King
James the Second; so that between them both they were
contemporary with nine princes who ruled this land! "[27]
[Pg 182]