Dean seems to have been the site not only of one Roman villa but of a group, and these were clearly the dwellings of people accustomed to living in the civilised manner of the later Roman townsmen. A plan of three separate villas was drawn by Mr Masters of Dean from the discoveries made in 1741, 1846 and 1871. Being a clergyman, he christened them all, giving them the names of Villa Urbana, Villa Rustica and Hollyflower Villa, from the very attractive field in which it was found. Each house had more than one bathroom heated from a central furnace, with adjoining dressing and cooling rooms; they had important halls and corridors, dining-rooms and bedrooms, as well as accommodation for slaves. Many of the floors were made of tiles in mosaic patterns, in black and white or red and white. Mr Masters describes one as being “constructed of tesseræ of half and a quarter of an inch square to the number of twelve thousand, in a geometrical design not unlike a double dahlia”. It would be surprising to find such a floor in a farmhouse of the present day. Some of the walls had originally been frescoed in red, green, yellow and white, and a large number of household implements were found, including much pottery. Altogether, these immigrants from a far-off land must have made themselves at Dean a home far more comfortable and ornamental than were the dwellings of the early settlers in parts of the British Empire, who, after leaving the England of Wren, Inigo Jones and Adam, seemed to have made up their minds to the roughest of living in a new country.
After the departure of the Romans, Saxon Dean seems to have settled into the ordinary village life of the next few centuries, and the next striking figure is that of Waleran the Huntsman, who founded a family here and who was a great personage not only in Dean but in other parts of Wiltshire. Waleran was an Englishman, but in spite of this he was a great favourite of William the Conqueror. Obviously this corner of Wilts had not been exclusively given up to farming during the Saxon occupation, and a large part of the parish of Dean was the primeval woodland out of which the Normans evolved some of their most famous royal forests—Clarendon and the New Forest. Waleran was made Ranger of the New Forest, and five of his descendants retained this position, which, as was the case in Savernake, was made hereditary and was distinguished by the possession of a hunting horn which was the badge of the office. Waleran was also given land by William in many other parts of the county, notably at Coombe Bissett, at Wardour and at Harnham, where tradition says he built the still existing little Norman church, and at Steeple Langford, where the lid of his stone coffin has been discovered with carved upon it the figure of a huntsman with his horn slung around him. This is the only case in England of such an instrument being depicted on a coffin, though there are some in Scotland. This Waleran tomb may possibly belong to a later Waleran, as no less than five generations succeeded one another at Dean, till, in the thirteenth century, the family ended in three sisters from whom several Wiltshire families trace their descent. The Inghams, the Vernon Harcourts, the Darrells, the Nevilles, the Pophams, the Hampdens and the Veres are some of these.
During the thirteenth century there were two churches in Dean, one being dedicated to All Saints and the other to the Blessed Virgin. In 1483 these two parishes were united by a process which (as they were not in the same diocese) demanded a long and complicated deed for its legalisation. This deed is still in existence. It explains that “the fruits, dues, tenths, oblations, profits, of the said church of All Saints, as well from the scantiness of the parishioners as from the sterility of the soil, the deficiency of tillage, and many other accidental reasons, have so decreased and are diminished, that they are at this time, and will in future be barely sufficient for the maintenance of one chaplain”. There is in the deed no mention of the demolition of either of the churches, but All Saints was subsequently pulled down, and its very site was unknown till in 1870 traces of the graves in the churchyard and of the foundations of the chancel proved that its actual position had been in a field still called “All Hallon”. The church of St Mary remained until 1868, when it too was taken down with the exception of the Borbach Chantry, which had been attached to it by a little colonnade. This Chantry was built in 1333 in the Decorated style of that day and now it is preserved as a mortuary chapel holding various monuments from St Mary’s Church. The only tomb contemporary with the Chantry itself was the very simple one commemorating the Borbach family; the others are mostly Evelyn memorials.
Sir John Evelyn of Godstone bought the Dean estates early in the seventeenth century. He was the uncle of the author of Sylva and of the Evelyn Diaries, which vie with Pepys’s more amusing records as one of the two best authorities of a social life of the reign of Charles II.
The Evelyns gave a new character to West Dean. First of all they built the Manor House, which, as long as it lasted, must have been the most interesting building in the village. Masters says of it that:
“The Manor House erected by the first Evelyn proprietor of the estate, tempo James I, was a large square structure of the character of that period. Closely adjoining the parish church, it stood in a grove of elm trees at the top of a succession of terraces and formal gardens facing west in which direction lay the park, well timbered and adorned with canals in the Dutch manner, fed from a large fish pond which, with its overhanging bank of yew, formed a prominent feature of the ornamental grounds. The ancient circular entrenchment, already noticed, formed a convenient bowling green, extensive barns and out-buildings adjoined the house on the south … it was pulled down, its materials sold and its offices and outbuildings converted into a farm house and homestead by Charles Wall in 1819.”
It is unfortunate that the Manor House has gone, as it was the clou to a fine architectural group of buildings, some others of which have also vanished. There was the Manor House with its formal gardens and avenues of trees: nearby was a glorious deer-barn which is one hundred and seventy feet long and must have been built by Waleran himself in his capacity as Forest Ranger; and then there was the old church, which it must be admitted was described by Sir Richard Colt Hoare as “a poor building with a wooden turret”. The present modern church on the site of St Mary’s has few architectural features, although the interior has good proportions.
In the absence of the Manor House the Evelyns are represented by an astonishing group of memorials in the Chantry, and these alone are worth a visit to West Dean. The earliest is a tomb of alabaster and marble representing John Evelyn and his wife kneeling upon cushions face to face, at a fald-stool. Beneath them kneel their three sons and eight daughters. Nearby are two delightful busts representing Elizabeth Evelyn, a young girl who died in 1629, and Sir John Evelyn, M.P. for Wilton, who died in 1685. His daughter, the Honourable Mrs Pierrpont, was responsible for the hideous and striking monument to her husband now at the east end of the Chantry. This is thus described by Mr Masters:
“In a broad deep niche or recess is a life-size, full-length figure of a heavy man, half clad in a sheet which is falling from him, kneeling upon one knee, his hands clasped in prayer, his eyes upraised. He has a scull-cap upon his head, from which his long hair falls in great masses over his shoulders. Behind him is an angel, flying down with outstretched arms to succour him, and in front some gilded rays of glory, Issuing from an aperture indicate the divine blessing.”
The inscription takes up a great deal of space on two doors which enclose this figure. This is a small portion of it.
OF
ROBERT PIERRPONT
Eldest son of ye Hoble WILLIAM Esqr.
& Heire to the whole Familie
The BODIE
Which yet, as One of Her worst Enemies
the SOULE y dwelt in’t did as twere Despise AT THIRTY FIVE when grown full Ripe for Action
Then She forsooke It, if not Unkindly,—Saye Untimely too Readily—too Soone, So some SUNS are Overcast at NOONE.…
Healthie & Sound It Passd thro ITALIE & FRANCE& SPAINE, Un-mutilated, Un-Diseasd
Without ye Marks of SIN or CHANCE
Returnd Matchd wth a LADYE—Of Whom
Though A
ll Good might, Nothing must Here be said
St
VAULTS speake not ye Living but ye DEAD
Yet This To Parte with HER alone
I Over-Heard was Th’Expiring Grone
Both Great EXAMPLES Never to Refuse
In Matches What Wise PARENTS Chuse.
Like their predecessors at Dean, the Evelyns brought the village into connection with many well-known families. A granddaughter of Robert and Elizabeth Pierrpont was the famous Lady Mary Wortley-Montagu, who eloped from Dean, in 1712, in order to marry Edward Wortley-Montague. A grandson of the same people became Duke of Kingston and was the husband of Elizabeth, Duchess of Kingston, who was tried for bigamy in Westminster Hall in 1776 before an audience of five thousand persons. She also came from Wiltshire, being the granddaughter of John Hall of Bradford-on-Avon.
The last tenants of the Manor House were some French nuns who escaped from the village and were given refuge here till they died off one by one. The village people called them “them heathen what didn’t ought to be there”; and they were buried, like gypsies, against the outer wall of the churchyard. When the last had gone the Manor House was pulled down.
There is a Miss Beauchamp now living at Dean who is a descendant of the Thomas Beauchamp who was “specially summoned” as a witness to testify to the signature by the representatives of the Bishops of Salisbury and Winchester, when the two parishes of St Mary and All Saints were united in 1471. But long before this, in the year 1333, when the Borbach Chapel was founded, a Beauchamp had already witnessed to the deed which made that property over to the church. The name appears at that time Bouersham, which is thought to be the original form of Beauchamp. The small freehold property which Miss Beauchamp occupies has been in her family since the middle of the eighteenth century. In the yard are still the malthouse and the windmill, where she remembers as a girl that her father used to brew the beer and grind the corn for the family. Although Dean stands in a hollow there was always plenty of wind for the mill, and in fact they often had to tie the sails in order to stop them when the milling was over. Miss Beauchamp made the butter, and at busy times all the village went out to help in the fields. She also remembers how much music there was in the village in the old days, and in the church the choir was always accompanied by an orchestra composed of village people. “ West Dean is not so pretty now as it was,” she said, summing up her memories of music, milling and buttermaking, and speaking rather ruefully of the colony of Royal Marine Police now housed in modern villas on the hillside. Other employees of the Royal Naval Armament Depôt at Dean live at Southampton and in its neighbourhood, so that they can throw off the memory of village life by going every evening to see the pictures. But even with these amenities, life is less interesting to these newcomers than it was to the Dean people half a century ago.
MERE
Mere was a great place in coaching days, and though the South-Western main-line station at Gillingham sent it into eclipse for a time, it has come into its own again in these motoring days. This is no wonder, for there is no more beautiful stretch of land in all the down country than the approaches to Mere, either from Amesbury, Salisbury or Warminster. Above the village there is a noble earthwork, which is now all that can be seen of Mere Castle. The earthwork existed before the castle, as in 1253 Richard, Earl of Cornwall, received permission to “build a castle on a hill situated in his manor of Mere”. But this castle did not last very long, and after a good deal of labour had been spent on repairs it quietly ceased to exist. Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Cornwall, who lived about 1296, was separated from his wife, the Earl of Gloucester’s daughter, and while he lived at Berkhampstead, she was “decreed to live an unmarried life” at Mere Castle, where one of the six towers was subsequently called the Countess’ Tower. After a few vicissitudes the castle reverted to the Crown, and the estate has ever since been a part of the Duchy of Cornwall.
Its nearness to the Chilmark quarries has given to Mere some charming buildings, which all preserve a pleasing village character, and there are few more inviting hostelries on the road than the Ship Inn, with its wrought-iron sign, the work of Kingston Avery, who was a clockmaker here in the first half of the eighteenth century. He also made the church clock.
Mere has always had independent ideas on the holding of land, and when the forest of Gillingham was disafforested in 1651, the Mere people claimed rights over it and the Crown allotted eighty acres to be used for the benefit of the poor for ever. A good part of the forest also became smallholdings, and this is interesting in view of the fact that Mere was one of the most successful places in the smallholding scheme which was started in many places early in the present century.
Mere has always been a great place for games and sports, and especially for the game of fives. For many years the church tower was the village fives court, and its stone is still marked with traces of the fives balls. The bull ring was still used till early in the nineteenth century, when there was an old woman named Betty Dolby, called “Bull-riding Betty”, who used to ride the bull on to the scene. Till 1829 a purse of twenty sovereigns was given as a prize at the “Annual Single Stick playing”; and Sir Richard Colt Hoare graphically describes a race meeting on Mere Down in 1733; and the Mere Down coursing club had its headquarters at Mere till this good old Wiltshire sport was spoilt by the wire netting. Among Mere sports might also be mentioned church ales, for these were a great feature of the place till they were suppressed in 1614, as it was no more allowed for “drunken Bacchus to beare swaie” at these functions. In an early survey of the Duchy of Cornwall printed in 1602, this account of the church ale is given;
“For the church ale, two young men of the parish are yerely chosen by their last pregoers to be wardens, who deuiding the task make collections among the parishioners of whatsoeuer prouision it pleaseth them voluntarily to bestow. This they imploy in brewing, baking, and other achates against Whitsuntide, upon which holydayes the neighbours meet at the church-house, and there meetly feed on their owne victuals, contributing some petty portion to the stock which by many smalls groweth to a meetly greatness, for there is entertayned a kinde of emulation betweene these wardens, who by his graciousness in gathering and good husbandry in expending can best aduance the churches profit. Besides the neighbour parishes at those times louingly visit one another and this way frankely spend their money together. The afternoones are consumed in such exercises as olde and yonge folke (hauing leysure) doe accustomally weare out the time withall.”
The two “ wardens” had a special title, and their names generally appear in the churchwardens’ accounts with the other church officials. For instance, in 1566 it is noted that
“Thomas Sheppard Rem’ Cuckowe King this yeare for that he was Prince the last yeare According to the Custome. And at this daie John Watts the sonne of Thomas Watts is Chosen Prynce for the next yeare.”
In 1424 Henry VI granted a piece of land in the churchyard where was built the Chantry House, in which, some four hundred years later, the Dorset poet William Barnes would keep a school and would write many of his poems. Other natives of Mere include John Martin, of whom Anthony Wood says, “He was a person of great modesty, well-skilled in the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages, and versed in all such learning as was necessary to make him a compleat divine”. He was made vicar of Compton Chamberlayne, and was ejected from his vicarage by the Cromwellians, when he had a near squeak from sharing Colonel Penruddock’s fate. He became a grazier at “Tysbury” till better times came and he was reinstated in his living. Eventually he refused to take the oath to William of Orange, but Bishop Burnet personally gave him an allowance for the rest of his life, and said of him that “he would never join in the schism with the rest of the non-jurors whose principles and practises he said to me he detested”. In spite of this somewhat turbulent life John Martin left behind him several very quietly mystical devotional works.
Another Mere writer was Francis Potter.
“Born in the vicarage house at
Meyre on Trinity Sunday 1594, he succeeded his father in the rectory of Kilmington, and retired to that place, led a single and monkish life, without the conversation of ingenious men till the day of his death. He was from a boy given to drawing and painting … his genie lay most of all in the mechanicks, had an admirable mechanical invention, and excellent notions for the raising of water and making water-engines … he entertained the notion of curing diseases by transfusion of blood out of one man into another: the hint whereof came into his head from Ovid. His memory is preserved in Trinity College, Cambridge by a Dial he made and set up on the north side of the old quadrangle.”
He also left a remedy for the gout.
A very beautiful fourteenth-century house in Mere is Woodlands, which for many years belonged to the Dodington family. As a result of a mortgage, it came into possession of Thomas Pitt, Earl of Londonderry, who had one daughter, Lady Lucy Pitt. On the death of her parents, this girl was put into the charge of her aunt, Lady Essex Cholmondeley, a very severe chaperone. One day, when staying in London, Lady Lucy and her cousin, Miss Cholmondeley, stayed out later on their walk than they should have done, and met an uncle of Lady Lucy in the street.
“He said, ‘ What will Lady Essex say to your being out so late?’ The poor frightened girls at that moment met two Westminster boys whom they were acquainted with, the Mr Meyricks, brothers, of Bodorgan, in the Island of Anglesea, the eldest heir to an immense estate and a beautiful place. The boys proposed that they should set off immediately for the Fleet and be married, and take the maidservant, who was then walking with the young ladies, and then all sail over to France. They agreed to go, but Lady Lucy Pitt said she could not possibly go without a little figure of a dog, a toy that when it was pressed down the dog barked; and Miss Cholmondeley said that she must take with her a beautiful bird which opened the door of the cage, hopped out, and sang. So childish were the girls that they returned home solely to get these things. On their arrival at the Fleet they did not delay a moment, but sent for a clergyman, and they all went to Church, Lady Lucy Pitt not quite fourteen years old and Miss Cholmondeley thirteen. The clergyman demurred about marrying Lady Lucy, she was so very little, and in a frock, and both children in all respects. However, they put the maidservant’s gown on Lady Lucy Pitt, and she was married to the eldest Mr Meyrick, and Miss Cholmondeley to his brother. They were stepping into the vessel to sail away when they were all seized by Lady Essex Cholmondeley and her party. The boys were sent abroad, and the girls carried back to London and severely reprimanded and locked up. Poor children, they were perfectly miserable. If the clergyman had not delayed in regard to Lady Lucy, the parties would have sailed for France. This extraordinary affair was the cause of the ‘Marriage Act’, the two young couples being of such high rank and having immense property. Some years afterwards the marriages were solemnised properly in England with the consent of all the relations and friends.”
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