by Desconhecido
Buried nearby at Stinsford is the Poet Laureate CECIL DAY-LEWIS, (1904–72), who wished to be buried here because he loved Dorset and the work of Thomas Hardy. He is the father of actor Daniel Day-Lewis.
Milton Abbas
MILTON ABBAS is THE FIRST PLANNED VILLAGE IN ENGLAND. In 1771 the Earl of Dorchester built himself a mansion next to Milton Abbey and decided that the old village spoilt his view. So he knocked it down and built a new village over the hill and out of sight. This was not quite as appalling as it might seem, for the old village was dirty and tumbledown, whereas the new one was well laid out with attractive cottages, a village hall, church and inn. Today the properties in Milton Abbas are much sought after.
Sherborne
SHERBORNE CASTLE was built at the end of the 16th century by Sir Walter Raleigh in the grounds of the old 12th-century castle of the Bishop of Salisbury. The story is told that Raleigh was sitting in the garden here enjoying a quiet smoke when a servant, having never seen tobacco before, doused him with a bucket of water, thinking that his master was on fire.
SHERBORNE ABBEY has THE HEAVIEST PEAL OF EIGHT BELLS IN THE WORLD at 7.5 tons, and the abbey’s medieval fan vaulting is THE EARLIEST VAULTING IN ENGLAND TO COVER A WHOLE CHURCH CEILING.
Isle of Portland
Dorset has given a proud face to many notable English buildings, with stone carved from the quarries of the ISLE OF PORTLAND. A haunting, rocky, almost treeless peninsula, 4 miles (6.4 km) long, Portland’s bleak atmosphere makes it easy to believe in the legend that in Celtic times this was the Isle of the Dead – where the insane were sent to eke out their wretched lives in caves and hollows.
The architect Inigo Jones was the first person to recognise the potential of Portland stone for building, using it for the Banqueting House in London’s Whitehall. Other notable buildings constructed with Portland stone are St Paul’s Cathedral, the east front of Buckingham Palace, Manchester’s Central Library, and the United Nations headquarters in New York. The gravestones of British soldiers killed in the two world wars are made from Portland stone, as is Britain’s national memorial, the Cenotaph.
In the mid-19th century convicts were used to quarry the stone for the great Portland breakwater, which protects the second deepest harbour, and second largest artificial harbour, in the world, after Rotterdam.
From a high point of 496 feet (151 m) in the north, the wedge-shaped Isle of Portland slopes down to a lighthouse at PORTLAND BILL on the southern tip. The contraception campaigner MARIE STOPES (1881–1958) used to come here to study fossils, and after her death her ashes were scattered across the cliffs. The fast currents and savage rocks off the Bill have claimed many lives, including that of the poet William Wordsworth’s brother John, who went down with his ship, the Abergavenny, off Portland Bill in 1805.
Portland is connected to the mainland by CHESIL BEACH, which stretches for 10 miles (16 km) to near Abbotsbury, and is THE LONGEST SEA BAR IN EUROPE. A unique feature of Chesil Beach is the precise way the pebbles are graded, increasing in size from west to east. Local fishermen, in fog or at night, can tell how far along the beach they are by the size of the pebbles. The beach encloses a lagoon known as the Fleet, part of which provides a haven for Europe’s largest swannery, established in the 14th century by the monks of Abbotsbury. In stormy weather whole ships have been hurled over the bar into the lagoon, where they remain trapped for ever.
Moonfleet, J.M Falkner’s classic novel about smuggling is set here.
Portland cement, the standard type of modern cement, is so called because its inventor, Joseph Aspdin, noted that the colour of the cement, when set, resembles Portland stone.
In 1961 Portland was at the centre of a spy scandal when it was discovered that two clerks at the Underwater Weapons Establishment at Portland, Harry Houghton and Ethel Gee, were supplying secrets to a Russian spy, George Lonsdale, at a secret rendezvous near the Old Vic theatre in Waterloo. He passed them on to a second-hand book dealer, Peter Kroger, and his wife Helen, who lived in a bungalow in Ruislip. The Krogers then reduced the documents to microdots, which they pasted over full stops in the books, and then sent to Russia.
Another prestige building material from Dorset is Purbeck marble, which is not a true marble but a hard, highly polished limestone that can be seen in many English churches and cathedrals, notably Lincoln, and is used for floors and pillars and occasionally for fonts.
Well, I never knew this
about
DORSET FOLK
John Russell
1485–1555
About a mile (1.6 km) east of Burton Bradstock lies an old grey farmhouse called BERWICK. One windy day in 1506, the owner, a young farmer called JOHN RUSSELL, rode out from Berwick to answer a cry for help from his kinsman, Thomas Trenchard, of Wolfeton House near Dorchester. Trenchard was entertaining some rather unexpected guests, Archduke Philip, ruler of the Netherlands, and his wife Joanna of Castile. They had been on their way to Madrid when bad weather had forced them to take shelter in Weymouth Bay. Sir Thomas Trenchard, as the senior man on the spot, was obliged to invite them home until the storm abated, and he was having a difficult time as he spoke no Spanish and his guests spoke no English.
Coming from a family of wine shippers, young Russell had been to Spain and learnt the language as part of his education, and now had the opportunity to put his experience to good use. In fact, he charmed the royal visitors so much that he was later asked to accompany them to Windsor to see Henry VII. The English king was equally taken with the wit and intelligence of the young man from Dorset and bade him join the Royal Court.
Under Henry VIII, John Russell distinguished himself in war and diplomacy and was eventually made Earl of Bedford. At the Dissolution of the Monasteries, a grateful king showered him with estates, including Tavistock in Devon, large parts of Exmoor, the lands of Thorney Abbey in Cambridgeshire and several acres of London. To top it all, Russell gained Woburn Abbey, now the principal seat of his descendants, the Dukes of Bedford, and the largest privately owned park in England. Not a bad return for learning Spanish.
Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury
1621–83
ANTHONY ASHLEY COOPER, 1ST EARL OF SHAFTESBURY, whose ancestral home is at Wimborne St Giles, was one of the first Whigs and was responsible for the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679, which was introduced into the English legal system as an essential safeguard against wrongful or arbitrary imprisonment by the state.
THE WHIGS were mostly Protestant aristocrats with Liberal tendencies who supported the exclusion of the Catholic James II from the English throne, championed the supremacy of Parliament over the Crown, and upheld the rights of Nonconformists. The term Whig was a derogatory name used by their political opponents the Tories, and came from the word Whiggamore, meaning a Scottish Presbyterian rebel.
HABEAS CORPUS, literally ‘you may have the body’, gives a detainee or his representative the right to demand that his custodian must state on which charge he is being held, and to require that he be brought before a court to determine if he is being legally held in custody. As Britain has no written constitution, habeas corpus has long been regarded as ‘worth a hundred constitutional articles guaranteeing individual liberty’. In the first years of the third millennium, habeas corpus is under serious threat from the British government and European Law, for the first time since its introduction over 300 years ago.
Born in Dorset
SIR JAMES THORNHILL (1675–1734), artist who painted the interior of the dome of St Paul’s and the Painted Hall at Greenwich, and the first English-born artist to receive a knighthood, was born in MELCOMBE REGIS.
SARAH FIELDING (1710–68), sister of the novelist and magistrate Henry Fielding and author of The Governess, the first full-length English novel written for children, was born in EAST STOUR.
WILLIAM FOX TALBOT (1800–87), photography pioneer and creator of the oldest known photographic negative (of the oriel window at Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire), was born i
n EVERSHOT.
VERNEY LOVETT CAMERON (1844–94), African explorer and the first European to cross Equatorial Africa from coast to coast, was born in RADIPOLE.
County Durham
COUNTY PALATINE ∗ FINEST NORMAN BUILDING
∗ SANCTUARY ∗ NEVER FELL TO THE SCOTS ∗ PRINCE BISHOPS ∗ THIRD UNIVERSITY ∗ ONLY ORIENTAL MUSEUM
Sanctuary Knocker on the door of Durham Cathedral.
DURHAM FOLK
Bede ∗ Elizabeth Barrett Browning ∗ William Wouldhave ∗ Ernest Thompson Seton ∗ Dame Flora Robson ∗ Catherine Cookson ∗ Captain Richard Wallace Annand ∗ Ridley Scott ∗ Eric Idle
Durham
The name Durham comes from the Old English ‘dun-holm’, which means ‘hill-island’, an apt description of the 98 ft (30 m) high sandstone rock on which Old Durham Town stands.
The story of Durham begins in 995 when monks guarding the relics of St Cuthbert, then resting at Chester-le-Street, were led to the spot by a milk-maid looking for her dun cow. They found the cow lying high up on the rock which, being surrounded on three sides by the River Wear, made a good secure site on which to establish a church to serve as Cuthbert’s permanent shrine. It soon became one of England’s principal places of pilgrimage for both Saxons and Normans, and in 1093 the present cathedral was begun.
Cathedral
DURHAM CATHEDRAL as we see it today is not that much changed from the original 11th-century conception, and with its massive round pillars, some with spiral or zigzag decoration, it is undoubtedly England’s finest Romanesque or Norman cathedral – some commentators regard Durham as the greatest Norman building in the world. It was also ENGLAND’S EARLIEST VAULTED CATHEDRAL, and THE FIRST TO USE RIB VAULTS.
A vault is a stone roof, found in a few churches and most cathedrals. A rib vault is one that features projecting stone strips, used either for decoration or for structural purposes. The most decorative type of rib vault is fan vaulting, as found in places such as King’s College Chapel at Cambridge or Henry VII’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey.
On the main entrance door of Durham Cathedral hangs a huge SANCTUARY KNOCKER, a relic of the days when Durham Cathedral offered sanctuary from the law. Any criminal who banged on the knocker would be admitted to the cathedral, and fed and protected from his pursuers. In return the fugitive would be obliged to don a black robe and confess his crime, and at the end of 37 days he would be sent to Durham’s assigned port of Hartlepool and told to leave the country. If he disobeyed any of these conditions, the criminal would be handed over to the law. Over a period of some 50 years in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, some 330 offenders, including 280 murderers, were given sanctuary at Durham, and even King Edward IV was unable to extract an escaped prisoner accused of treason.
One of Durham Cathedral’s most precious treasures is a stole given to St Cuthbert’s shrine by King Athelstan in 934, and thought to be THE OLDEST EXAMPLE OF ENGLISH NEEDLEWORK IN EXISTENCE. The cathedral is also the resting-place of THE VENERABLE BEDE, who died in 735.
Durham’s Bishop’s Throne is THE HIGHEST BISHOP’S CHAIR IN CHRISTENDOM.
Castle
DURHAM CASTLE was begun by William the Conqueror in 1072, during his ‘harrying of the North’, and was the only northern castle never to fall to the Scots. Because Durham was far from London and yet in a strategically vital position on the main route from London to Scotland, William relied on the Bishops of Durham to protect and rule the North in his interests, and granted them immense powers to raise their own taxes and armies, administer their own laws and even mint their own coins. Durham Castle served as the Bishop’s Palace.
In 1986 Durham Cathedral and Castle together became one of England’s first World Heritage Sites.
Prince Bishops
THE COUNTY PALATINE OF DURHAM was created by William the Conqueror to defend England’s northern border with Scotland. It was carved out of the old Saxon kingdom of Northumbria, Durham lying south of the Tyne and Derwent rivers and Northumberland to the north. Within Durham the Bishops ruled like princes and were known as PRINCE BISHOPS, a description applied to them until the time of the Great Reform Act in 1832.
Durham University
DURHAM UNIVERSITY was founded in 1832 by the last Prince Bishop, William Van Mildert, as ENGLAND’S THIRD UNIVERSITY, after Oxford and Cambridge. The Bishops of Durham moved their principal residence to Bishop Auckland and gave over the castle to the new university.
The university’s ORIENTAL MUSEUM is ENGLAND’S ONLY MUSEUM DEVOTED WHOLLY TO ORIENTAL ART AND ARCHITECTURE.
Durham Miners’ Gala
The 19th century saw Durham become a centre of the English coal-mining industry, and an important part of Durham’s heritage is the annual DURHAM MINERS’ GALA, when representatives of each mining village and union march behind banners and brass bands to meet at Durham race course for speeches and merriment. Established in 1871, this is England’s oldest and best-known celebration of trade union pride and tradition.
THE DURHAM REGATTA, held in June, was inaugurated in 1834 and is ENGLAND’S OLDEST REGATTA.
Well, I never knew this
about
DURHAM FOLK
The Venerable Bede
The ancient town of JARROW grew up around a monastery founded in 682 by a Northumbrian nobleman, Benedict Biscop, and for more than 50 years it was the home of the brilliant monk known as THE FATHER OF ENGLISH LEARNING, the VENERABLE BEDE.
Born in MONKWEARMOUTH in 673, Bede was THE FIRST PERSON TO WRITE EXTENSIVELY IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. His Ecclesiastical History of the English People is the earliest and most important record we have of English history until 729, and tells us about the beginnings of Christianity in these islands, up to the Synod of Whitby in 664. He was also the first historian to date events from the Year of our Lord, Anno Domini. On the very day he died in 735, the Venerable Bede completed an Old English translation of the Gospel of St John. He was buried at Jarrow, but 300 years later his relics were stolen by a monk, who took them to Durham, where they now lie in the cathedral’s Galilee Chapel.
The church of St Paul, attached to the monastery, was dedicated in 685 and the original dedication stone, THE OLDEST DEDICATION STONE IN ENGLAND, is still in place above the chancel arch. The arch has survived, along with much of the chancel itself, from Bede’s day. One of the windows in the south wall contains the oldest Saxon stained glass of its kind in Europe. A battered wooden seat known as Bede’s Chair sits against a wall.
The church and monastery ruins, one of the most significant Christian shrines in England, occupy a rather bleak site beside a muddy creek, but it has all been jollied up as ‘Bede’s World’, a modern interpretation centre.
Jarrow March
Twelve hundred years after Bede, in 1936, the name of Jarrow reverberated throughout the country once again, when the men of Jarrow marched to London. Unemployment in the north-east, particularly among miners and shipbuilders, was horrendous, around 80 per cent, and 200 men set off from Jarrow to lobby Parliament for jobs and recognition of their plight. Wherever they stopped for the night, local people provided them with food and shelter. The Jarrow March took almost one month, and when they arrived in London, the MP for Jarrow, Ellen Wilkinson, handed in a petition of 12,000 signatures, which Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin ignored, refusing even to meet the marchers. Although the march did not achieve very much at the time, it was a significant landmark in the struggle for the rights of England’s working men.
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING (1806–61), poet, was born at COXHOE, south of Durham. One of the most quoted opening lines in the English language comes from her Sonnets from the Portuguese – ‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.’
Born in South Shields
WILLIAM WOULDHAVE (1751–1821), inventor of the lifeboat.
ERNEST THOMPSON SETON (1860–1946), founder of the Boy Scouts of America.
DAME FLORA ROBSON (1902–84), character actress and theatrical grande dame.
CATHERINE COOKSON (1906–98) the most widely read English novelist of the later 20th century.
CAPTAIN RICHARD WALLACE ANNAND (1914–2004), of the Durham Light Infantry, the first recipient of the Victoria Cross in the Second World War.
SIR RIDLEY SCOTT, film director (Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator), born 1937.
ERIC IDLE, comic actor, writer and member of the Monty Python team, born 1943.
Essex
FIRST TOWN ∗ BIGGEST KEEP
∗ CAPTAIN OF THE MAYFLOWER ∗ FINE WORDS
∗ TRIANGULAR TOWER ∗ FIRST IN BRICK ∗ JAM TODAY
Colchester Castle – the largest keep ever built in Europe.
ESSEX FOLK
Captain Lawrence Oates ∗ William Byrd ∗ Gustav Holst ∗ Sir Evelyn Ruggles-Brise ∗ Sir Alf Ramsey ∗ Dudley Moore ∗ Terry Venables ∗ Sandie Shaw ∗ Eva Hart ∗ Raymond Baxter ∗ Ian Holm ∗ Dame Maggie Smith ∗ Kathy Kirby ∗ Noel Edmonds ∗ Richard Littlejohn ∗ Jane Leeves
Colchester
COLCHESTER is THE OLDEST RECORDED TOWN IN ENGLAND and was the capital of the kingdom of Cunobelin, Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, who was the father of Caratacus, leader of the initial resistance against the Romans. Caratacus was captured and hauled off to Rome, where he was paraded in chains, but his courage and dignity earned Caesar’s admiration and he was allowed to live in Rome as a free man.
Colchester, known as Camulodunum, was THE FIRST ROMAN TOWN IN BRITAIN, and ITS FIRST CAPITAL, until the town was reduced to ashes by Queen Boadicea in AD 60. It was rebuilt by the Romans, but the capital was moved to Londinium.