By Charles G Harper London Adam & Charles Black Soho Square W 1911...

This is a modest, gossipy and allusive sketch of a delightful part of England, designed rather to arouse the interest and the curiosity of those not already acquainted with what I will call the “Middle West” than to fully satisfy it. If in this connection you choose to regard the author of these pages as a commercial traveller in the interest of Wessex, displaying samples of the picturesque wares the West of England can offer the tourist, it will entirely fit the humour in which they were penned

The Wessex of which I shall treat in these gossiping pages is that Wessex of romance and of the great dairy-farms, which has been little touched by the influence of railways. Hampshire and Wiltshire—Winchester and Salisbury—have become too closely in touch with London to stand so fully upon the ancient ways as does Dorset, with the greater part of its north-western neighbour, Somerset. But in these rural territories the countryman still talks the old broad Do’set and Zummerzet speech, in which t

From Wareham we cross the Frome by an ancient bridge, and enter the Isle of Purbeck. The road runs a straight four miles to Corfe, across a heath in which the activities of clay-cutters will be observed. Soon Corfe Castle appears ahead, the mighty upstanding ruins of ancient keep and surrounding walls rising from an abrupt hill curiously situated in a gap of a great range of heights. The stony little town of Corfe comes only after we have swung round by the curving road under the castle hill, an

The seventeen miles between Wareham and Dorchester, through Wool and Warmwell Cross, traverse pretty country and encounter interesting places. Passing the “Pure Drop” Inn, we come to the hamlet of East Stoke. Half a mile to the left, across the River Frome, which runs parallel with the road thus far, are the scanty remains of Bindon Abbey, in a dark situation amid dense trees, and with black and stagnant moat. The stone sarcophagus of some forgotten Abbot of Bindon, resting on the grass, figures

From Warmwell Cross the route into Dorchester may advantageously be varied by bearing to the right, through the very pretty village of West Stafford, where there is an interesting church, and an inn with a deprecatory set of verses, beginning: Pleasant by-roads lead across tributaries of the Frome and into Stinsford, which is in the heart of the Hardy Country, about two miles from Dorchester. It is a secluded place amid massed woods and at the edge of the fine park surrounding Kingston House. St

Northwards out of Dorchester we come by favour of the long straight old Bristol road into the heart of the great Wessex dairying district of Blackmore Vale; but before reaching that region of green fatness we pass through the country associated in the minds of all readers of the Wessex novels with The Woodlanders . The road goes through the village of Charminster and in the valley of the little river Cerne, under the chalk downs that gradually rise as the decayed town of Cerne Abbas is approache

The little town of Yatton, below Bristol, situated on excellent roads and with a convenient station on the Great Western main line, is a very useful point whence to start upon a rambling exploration of Mid and North Somerset, called by Mr. Hardy “Outer Wessex.” Yatton is a junction station, its name-board familiar to travellers, with the alluring legend beneath: “For Cheddar and Wells.” Whether the place-name be really “Ea-ton” or “Yeo-ton,” from the little river Yeo, on which the town is situat

There are ways from Wells to Bath somewhat shorter than the twenty-four miles by which we shall now proceed, but they take you up weariful heights, over the long, swooping contours of the Mendips. There is not, in fact, any really easy way between Wells and Bath. We leave the city through the cathedral close, along its north side, and through the beautiful Chain Gate, a work of the Perpendicular period, connecting the cathedral with the Vicars’ College. Presently begins the long rise of Horringt