14 - South-west England: historical background

Summary

DORSET AND WILTSHIRE

DORSET is a relatively self-contained county, less affected by twentieth-century commercial development or residential expansion than its neighbours, Wiltshire and Hampshire. Dorset is still primarily an agrarian countyof rolling chalk downs, broken by the broad but shallow valleys of the Frome and the Stour and their tributaries. The inhospitable coastline has been little touched, while the county is bounded bythe open expanse of the vale of Marshwood towards Devon, the broader Blackmore Vale towards Somerset, and Cranborne Chase towards Wiltshire. Only the residential onslaught from Poole towards the conurbation of Bournemouth introduces an alien note in this unhurried and quietly contained shire.

Two lines of chalk upland extend across Dorset from near Beaminster, one arching north-east to Cranborne Chase and Wiltshire (the Dorset Heights) and the second stretching in a belt to Dorchester, Lulworth, and the Purbeck Hills. For building purposes, Dorset also benefits from spasmodic outcrops of the limestone belt that sweeps from the Somerset border (Ham stone) and Sturminster Newton (Marnhull) to Yorkshire, with outcrops between Bridport and Weymouth and ‘islands’ at Portland and Purbeck. The golden Ham stone was used for high-quality buildings in the north-west, including the abbeys at Sherborne, Forde, and Cerne. The coarser, duller Coralline limestone from Marnhull was used more widely, as at Fiddleford Manor and Sturminster Newton Manor House, while the comparable local quarries near Abbotsbury provided the stone for Woodsford ‘Castle’ and Athelhampton Hall. Purbeck ‘marble’ was highly popular for decorative work from the later twelfth century, with a ‘golden age’ between c.1250 and 1350, while roofing slates were quarried locally.