A walk around West Stafford
St Andrew's, in the village of West Stafford. And some wit has taken a pen to the speed limit sign. (You wouldn't really want to do eighty miles an hour through West Stafford - it is a very twisty village).
The sky grey on Sunday, and the weather tormenting the poor parched earth with a light drizzle that hung about in the air and never fell to ground. I went walking around West Stafford.
A landscape of flat flood plain meadows, bordered by woods. Cattle and meadowsweet in the fields.
It's not a boring landscape, though my photos of it are boring. It's lovely. But flat green river valleys need tall fluffy clouds - dramatic John Constable cloudscapes - to appear to best advantage in photos. Not flat grey-white skies, the enemy of landscape photography.
The sort of metal fence used by posh country estates.
Stafford House. This is the west facade of 1848-50, by Benjamin Ferrey. The east facade, not visible from the road dates from 1633. According to the Daily Mail, the house belongs to Julian Fellowes, creator of Downton Abbey. But I expect he's got several.
One of the many streams feeding into the River Frome.
Arriving in the village, the road zigzags round the churchyard.
Wisteria on the church porch. (If you want to look inside the church, I visited once in 2011.)
"Hardy of course, was born within a mile of so of West Stafford at Bockhampton. In his novels, West Stafford is called Talbothayes and the local church is where the fictitious wedding of Tess to Angel Clare took place in Tess of the D'Urbervilles. To the far east of the parish lies Talbothays Lodge and cottages where Hardy's siblings, Mary, Henry and Kate lived at the time of Mary's death in 1915." www.weymouth-dorset.co.uk/west-stafford.html
Talbothays Cottages, opposite the big brick villa, Talbothays Lodge, which was designed by Thomas Hardy for his brother in the 1890s. Pevsner thinks the cottages the work of Thomas Hardy as well.
West Stafford's quite a quiet backwater these days. No shops. There are cottages named "The Old Forge", and "The Schoolhouse". But there's still a pub and a car repair garage.
Wise Man cottage, opposite the Wise Man Inn.
Whitewashed 19th century cottages on the lane leading down to the river meadows.
Walking eastwards from the village, a view of Dairy House, down by the cattle meadows on the river:
Then through a field of golden wheat, with the swallows swooping:
Over the stile (or through the dog flap, if you are a small terrier):
Then through a field of bronze, bearded barley:
But then, suddenly, the world closes in. A dark, narrow footpath, fenced and hedged on both sides, that skulks between private properties. A very begrudging path. One that says, "Yes, there is a footpath, and you have the right to walk it, but you have no right to any view."
(Actually, I found out afterwards that this path skirts the boundary of Dorset Falconry Park, which has many highly valuable birds of prey. So it makes sense they would keep their fences and hedges in good repair.)
Green track down to the river.
The River Frome on its extravagantly winding journey down to Poole Harbour. I heard a kingfisher, but never saw him.
Upstream is even more weed-choked than downstream. It never used to be quite this weed-covered when I was a child - you could still see water then, and white-flowered water crowfoot, and trout. I suppose the weed growth is the result of nitrate run-off from all the farms in the catchment area.
I had planned to cross the river meadows to Duddle and Bockhampton, but first I had to find me a big stick: the meadows were full of young cattle. I wandered back up the track a way, and found a half-broken willow branch, which the willow was persuaded to give me after a brief tussle, with only a token whap on the head to teach me to mind my manners.
But the path across the meadows has many fords, and it turns out they were much deeper than my boots were high:
So I decided to leave this particular walk for another day - another day involving wellingtons - and turned back for West Stafford, this time following the road.
The footpath back into the village:
Acquired by developers. Actually, the new houses here don't look bad - quite generously proportioned for new builds, though with the usual vestigial gardens.