Harvest Time, Cranborne Chase
The Met Office promised it would not rain this morning, but seeing a combine harvester parked up in a corner of a half-harvested field, I should have known that the weather was not set fair...
I saw a place upon the Ordnance Survey map with a significant name, where five tracks meet in the middle of nowhere, and thought I should go there.
Left the car by the village hall in Chettle, and set off up the lane. A grey morning, but not cold. Pleasant walking weather, even if the sky was a little boring for photography.
Along the lane...
... then, by the huge ancient dying ash tree, turn onto the track that leads off into the fields.
A narrow strip of set aside, planted with phacelia, wild radish, corn sow thistle, sunflowers, and a white flower - new to me - which I think might be buckwheat.
Happy bees on the phacelia!
Wild Radish.
I had quite high hopes when planning the walk, when I saw the path crossed Chettle Common. Common land, belonging to nobody and everybody, often escapes being "improved" for agriculture, and commons are therefore usually a good place for wild flowers. But not Chettle Common, sadly. It is all improved pasture.
The path then passes into woodland, very dark on a grey morning, before reaching a place marked on the map as Bloody Shard Gate.
https://epns.nottingham.ac.uk/browse/id/53285297b47fc4099d002202-Bloody+Shard+Gate gives the etymology as "bluds gate [from the] 1618 Map... ["Gate" from] sceard 'gap'. The early form bluds may represent a surname Blood rather than the word blood... Bloody no doubt represents a reduced form of Blood-way."
With such an interesting name, no matter what the true origin, legends and tall-tales and hauntings are bound to follow:
That event was a bloody skirmish that took place in 1780 between gamekeepers and poachers that became known as The Battle of Chettle Common. The battle was brutal, one keeper being killed and others injured. Ultimately the gamekeepers won the day but there is an interesting story concerning one of the poachers who actually turned out to be a sergeant in the dragoons. During the battle, he had a hand severed and was captured. Fortunately he was a popular man and got off with a light sentence, eventually being allowed to retire on half pay. Many years later, the man died and was buried in London, minus one hand!
But what happened to his severed hand? Well it is said that his regiment buried it with full honours of war in Pimperne churchyard. But it seems the hand found no peace because it was never reunited with its owner, and local tradition has it that it roams the area at night searching for the dragoon sergeant. Even as recently as 1970, people have reported seeing it!!!
https://thedorsetrambler.com/2017/05/07/quirky-dorset-part-11/
From Bloody Shard Gate, onto a nameless track that runs north - just a little way, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Iron Age Hillfort shown on the map as Caesar's Camp...
...but alas, it is entirely wooded. Not a rampart or ditch to be seen.
But, as I turned back, the path consoled me with a glimpse of something else instead:
A Red Kite (Milvus milvus)! Distinctive forked tail distinguishes them from Common Buzzards (of which there are many on Cranborne Chase). I knew there were Red Kites in Dorset now, but this is the first I have seen. (Not so long ago, Red Kites hovered on the verge of extinction in the UK, with only a small population holding on in West Wales... How wonderful that they can be seen in the skies above Dorset again).
After this, I became a little lost, and it began to rain. I took out the emergency plastic rain poncho from my camera bag, and forlornly wandered the tracks, dressed elegantly in flapping blue plastic.
Cranborne Chase. High and lonely and - even if you are carrying an Ordnance Survey map and a pair of reading spectacles - lacking in landmarks.
Once a royal hunting preserve, the Chase has always been a remote and lonely area. In the 18th century, if you were to be robbed upon the road by highwaymen, it would be on Cranborne Chase.
After a time the Chase came into the possession of the Pitt-Rivers family who monitored the area and protected their deer by Chase Law. These Laws actually prevent small landowners from uprooting the vegetation on their own land which, by the 18th century when farmers were increasingly keen to introduce modern farming techniques and mechanisation, led to bitter complaints that the Chase law was preventing them from doing so. By now the Chase had also become an area of lawlessness that was popular with poachers, highwaymen and smugglers, who found it a perfect place to carry out nefarious activities.
http://www.dorsetlife.co.uk/2014/11/dorset-walk-2-cranborne/
These days the landscape has changed to one of endless arable fields. Unmarked farm tracks running in every direction.
But even if it was raining, and I wasn't entirely sure where I was, there were cheerful pink-and-white Field Bindweed flowers in the hedgerow:
Corn Sow-thistle flowers, the poor man's chrysanthemum, growing along the margins of the fields.
And after a while, I met what might have been the genius loci, a red Visla dog bounding through the russet stubble fields, and his walking companion directed me to a small gate concealed in a hole in a hedge, and said I should turn right, and follow the field's edge.
Someone had kindly placed a table and bench in the field beside the path. So I stopped to sit a while, looking out over the barley fields, with the rain dissolving the distances and falling into my coffee.
A very peaceful spot. No sound but the wind in the trees.
In one corner of the barley field, the path invites you into the darkness of the woods.
After a while, I began to wonder if I would ever reach the edge of the woods...
...but eventually the path leads to the parkland of Chettle House, and I was back on familiar territory. I came here with one of my spaniels, I don't remember which. (Must have been Max. Because surely I wouldn't have been brave enough to let Pip loose in parkland...)
They have fenced the paths off with electric fencing since my last visit, but this was fortunate. It meant there was an electric fence between me and the young cattle grazing the park. Because I was still wearing my rustling blue plastic rain poncho - going in fancy dress as a feed bag, as it were - and I soon attracted their attention.
Chettle House, built in 1710, and possibly the most beautiful of all the grand houses of Dorset.
Back down to the village of Chettle, with the drizzle still falling.
Chettle's main claim to fame these days is its village shop - well advertised as you drive along the lonely main road from Blandford to Salisbury, with colourful hand-painted signs promising COFFEE! and PIES! It is well worth the little detour down the lane. I had a coffee and a fabulous spinach, squash and goats' cheese pastry roll.