Engel's England

by Matthew Engel

  Burnett is the living embodiment of Dorset’s real appeal. He arrived at Stanbridge, near Wimborne, in 1972. The locals thought he was some daft hippie. His company, the Dovecote Press, has since become one of the most successful of all small-scale publishers, turning out 120 books about Dorset alone.

  His timing was ideal. It was the moment when the frantic progressivism of the 1960s was starting to fade and the English were starting to rediscover their countryside; cottages that were unsaleable in the decades after the war started to acquire the allure that has never faltered. Globally, those years were producing the first great surge of environmental awareness. And nationally, Hardy, then far more fashionable than soppy old Jane Austen, made Dorset a kind of collective fantasy. Somehow he made the place seem irresistible, despite filling his novels with a never-ending trail of injustice and misery.

  For Burnett’s business, offset printing had just arrived, making smallscale book production much more economic, and all the towns had an infrastructure of little bookshops that lapped up stuff like his Discover Dorset series. It’s become harder, but even now he shifts about 1,200 copies a year of his bestsellers: the volumes on geology and the Romans.

  There is, however, another side to Dorset. ‘Introspective’ was the word chosen by Sue Clifford, founder of the support-local-distinctiveness charity Common Ground, which was based until her recent retirement on Gold Hill in Shaftesbury. One incomer told me he was astonished by how many of his Dorset friends – intelligent, educated people – did not own passports and had hardly ever been to London. And it was an old friend from Weymouth who told me of the local boy whose view of the world was based on induction rather than deduction. ‘Oy don’t loike them Frenchies,’ he said. ‘They do roll their bogeys up and down their lilo.’

  There is another word that kept cropping up unprompted: ‘feudalism’.

  Tolpuddle is just east of Dorchester, a pretty village but stringy and noisy: the A35 to Poole now bypasses the village, but not by much. In 2013 it was also being threatened by a rural power station, otherwise known as a wind farm. At one end of the string is a row of early twentieth-century farm workers’ cottages, now given over to a celebration of the village’s most famous sons: the six men who in 1834 began something slightly resembling a trade union and were transported to Australia.

  Knowing only the headline, I had assumed that Dorset was an improbable hotbed of agrarian radicalism. In fact, the reverse was the case. The Tolpuddle Six, Methodists rather than advance-guard Marxists, were doing what was by then legal, if not yet perfectly legal. Elsewhere in England their Friendly Society of Agricultural Labourers would have passed without comment.

  But this was Dorset. There was little industry to compete with landowners for labour. And even after the 1832 Reform Act had extended the franchise, the local grandees were still able to convince themselves that the very thought of raising farm wages was the first step on the road that led to Robespierre and the tumbrils. So the local landowner James Frampton schmoozed the Home Secretary to invoke the Unlawful Oaths Act 1797, designed to prevent naval mutinies, and put the men on trial. This was enough to convince a Dorchester jury and get the men transported. (Or, as the Daily Mail might now put it, ‘SOFT-TOUCH JUDGE GIVES UNION THUGS FREE SUNSHINE HOLIDAY’.)

  It was not enough to prevent a large and ultimately successful furore which got the men pardoned. Thus Tolpuddle became a byword in the history of trade unionism. And the occasion is celebrated every year in the village with a festival run by the TUC, which used to consist mainly of droning Labour Party speeches – like the irrelevant part of the Durham Miners’ Gala – but has now been Billy Braggified into a jolly old music-and-fun-led shindig.

  But the history has not gone away. For many locals, the defining monument in Dorset is not Corfe Castle, nor the Portland Bill Lighthouse, nor the monument to Admiral Kiss-Me Hardy on Black Down – it’s the Drax Wall, separating Charborough House, home of the Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Draxes, from several miles of the A31. It’s a dark wall, shaded in places by huge copper beeches that almost demand the use of headlights. It’s not a security measure: any kid could scale it. It’s not an aesthetic addition: the brickwork reeks of the early railway era. It’s a statement. The latest scion of the family emulated at least six of his forefathers in 2010 by being elected MP for South Dorset, though, for political purposes, he understandably calls himself Richard Drax.

  The P-E-E-D family (good God, didn’t anyone spot the acronym at Harrow?) are by no means alone. In Dorset people talk about the landowners the way Londoners distinguish between suburbs (‘No really, dear, that’s not Islington, it’s Dalston’). Here is Pitt-Rivers land; there are the Ashley-Coopers; there the Cecils; much of the coast (and the Abbotsbury swannery) belongs to Charlotte Townsend, daughter of Viscount Galway; then there are the Digbys at Sherborne, the Martens at Crichel Down. (Most unusually, the Martens were reputedly in the process of selling up.)

  Several of the old county bridges still have a sign on them, which appears to date from the late 1820s:

  DORSET

  ANY PERSON WILFULLY INJURING ANY PART OF THIS COUNTY

  BRIDGE WILL BE GUILTY OF FELONY AND UPON CONVICTION

  LIABLE TO BE TRANSPORTED FOR LIFE BY THE COURT.

  T. FOOKS

  This law applied everywhere: indeed, defacing Westminster Bridge was for a long time a hanging offence. But I have never seen such a sign anywhere else. Sure, it’s all a joke now: you can buy that sign on a key fob. But I also have not seen another county where the social order of the pre-Victorian era seems quite so intact.

  This is not necessarily a bad thing. At Wimborne St Giles, the estate of the Earls of Shaftesbury, the 12th Earl has been restoring the family estates and fortunes after the unfortunate murder (by his trophy wife) of his father, and the even more untimely death of his elder brother. The Earl still has 6,000 acres, with 1,000 head of cattle grazing in Constablesque water meadows, flanked by bridleways along which Tess of the d’Urbervilles might have trudged. I didn’t use the word ‘feudal’; the villagers did, in the bar of the Bull, after an idyllic evening’s cricket on the little ground inside the gates to the park. But they weren’t complaining, and nor was I. The place was suffused by a pleasing air of noblesse oblige, without obligations on the peasantry.

  Yet the one place in Dorset that best represents England’s unchanging hierarchy is an entirely new one. Poundbury is Dorchester’s new suburb (though that word is frowned on), built by the Duchy of Cornwall, which ‘seeks to implement the principles’ expounded in the Prince of Wales’s 1989 book, A Vision of Britain. The architect, Leon Krier, was challenged to create ‘a self-contained new extension to the town in harmony with traditional Dorset architecture’.

  Poundbury is a puzzle. By design, it is less spacious than Letchworth or Welwyn. Yet it is not thrown together, like most of the later new towns: the buildings are full of curly bits. It is clearly meant to be urban and not suburban, yet – on a weekday lunchtime – there was no buzz. It is so bourgeois the shop in the square was a mini-Waitrose and there was a bead shop, rather than a bread shop. Yet the ration of social housing to owneroccupied is 35:65 in the latest phase. The royal prerogative is less intrusive than it was early on, when the Duchy reputedly specified which roses were allowed, yet there are still stern princely rules about building materials. On the other hand, when I was there the verges were a disgrace, with the dandelions reproducing themselves as exuberantly as the Abbotsbury swans.

  The district councillor, Andy Canning, admits Poundbury is a Marmite place which people either love or hate. But he thinks it has three great pluses: the cheek-by-jowl societal mix; the blend of housing with offices and workshops; and the architecture, which he personally likes. There is a pub, and a school is imminent. But I couldn’t sense a real community there. Many of the homeowners are retired, either downsizing and happy to have a house with almost no garden, or dividing their time between England and abroad. This is not a mix likely to reproduc
e, say, the beleaguered camaraderie of Milton Keynes. It is not a malign place; this is benevolent paternalism, twenty-first-century-style. It just seemed a bit bloodless, unreal; a bit like its progenitor, his future Majesty.

  There is certainly no rush to create future Poundburys. But, up the road in Sturminster Newton, where does the redeveloped town centre most resemble? This place. Many local architects and builders have had work from the Duchy here and seem to have gone a bit native. Poundbury does not remotely look like the rest of Dorset. And yet it may be that Dorset will come to look like Poundbury.

  There is a similar disconnect in Sandbanks, reached by a lovely clanking old chain ferry across Poole Harbour. Though on the Hampshire side of the water, Sandbanks was always in Dorset, despite feeling more like an outpost of southern California (waterfront home: lots of acute angles, very ugly – £7.25 million).

  It really is full of surprises, Dorset. A couple of miles from Corfe Castle, you can turn off near the steam railway, drive down a forested country lane, pass a ‘Beware of the Deer’ sign, ignore a couple of ‘Private Road’ notices, before finally being stopped by a security man who, in my case, appeared not so much threatening as baffled as to how I knew anything was there. For in this enchanted woodland glade, too hidden to be remotely controversial, is Wytch Farm, the largest onshore oil well in Western Europe. And wytch farmer wouldn’t fantasise about retiring to Sandbanks or California after a discovery like that?

  And then, on the coast road from Bridport to Weymouth, you crest a rise and suddenly there appears what looks like a causeway akin to the one leading to Holy Island. (Oh, Gawd! Not more tide tables!) This is in fact Chesil Beach. And beyond it, like an elongated Rock of Gibraltar, stands one of England’s most mysterious places: Portland. There is something mind-blowing about Chesil, a unique stretch of shingle eighteen miles long, 300 trillion stones allegedly, on which a blindfolded expert can locate himself by the particular scrunch underneath, the stones subtly getting bigger, from mushy peas in the west to baked potatoes in the east.

  It is this fragile link that, in theory, stops Portland being an island. Now it has a bridge rather than a ferry, it seems less like an island geographically. In every other respect, this is a world of its own. You approach it now past the Chesil Beach centre, a pleasant baguetty/vin-rouge kind of café-cum-information point surrounded by sharp un-Chesil-like gravel, brought in presumably by lorry. Truly: they imported stones to a place with 300 trillion of them.

  But once on Portland itself, the baguettes fall away: there is no less vin-rougey place anywhere in southern England. It is also very, very distinctive: the Barrow of the south. Careful readers of this book will recognise that as a compliment.

  Portland is busy trying to remake itself after the withdrawal of the navy and the closure of the Underwater Weapons Establishment that was the centre of attention for the Ruislip spies. But it still has its greatest asset: the stone that provides the gleaming whiteness for many of Britain’s most prominent buildings, including Buckingham Palace and St Paul’s. It is set about not just with quarries but with fields of grey rocks, like mini-Stonehenges. The houses themselves are not gleaming but very, very grey. The explanation seems to be that the stone is porous and needs attention to keep it clean, which is more likely at St Paul’s than in the terraces of Portland.

  Famously, no one in Portland can say the word ‘rabbit’, the wretch that can spell death to quarrymen. This is a far more rational superstition than the one that stops actors naming the Scottish play. But everything about Portland is particular. It is incredibly ugly, right down to the beach huts on Portland Bill. Yet it is utterly true to itself: the epitome of Dorset introspection. It does not seek the approbation of the likes of me. And for that reason I am delighted to offer it.

  It has very little competition on the coast: Bridport is very nice and welcoming but Weymouth’s buildings were savaged by the Germans and Poole’s by the council. However, inland Dorset is full of towns competing with each other to smile. There is Blandford Forum, the Georgian town that manages simultaneously to embrace influxes of urban escapees and army recruits: an unusual mix of tisanes and tattoos. And then there is the wonderful hilltop town of Shaftesbury, best known for Gold Hill.

  As I approached the summit a woman was standing at the top, yelling into her mobile: ‘You know that advert? Duh-duh-duh. Duh-duh-duh. Duh-duh-duh-duh-duh …’

  Dvořák, dear. And Hovis. The film was shot here originally in 1973, by Ridley Scott, and was widely believed to have been set in Yorkshire. This is a trick of the memory, because the accent on the voiceover on You-Tube is definitely Mummerset. The advert was brilliant; the street, mostly barred to passing traffic, is beautiful but overrun; the bread’s disgusting.

  The connoisseur’s Dorset place is, however, Beaminster (‘Beh-minster’). Charmingly set among the hills and the spring breezes, the square has not been touched since Hardy’s day. It has wisteria, unwrapped sherbet lemons and ladies called Marjorie. But it also exudes an air of Hardyesque struggle, which was exacerbated in 2013 by the enforced closure of the Beaminster road tunnel. But that was not the whole story. The square is a gem architecturally, but clearly in a long-term battle economically. The bank had gone; so had the Wild Garlic restaurant; and two other shops were for sale.

  Beaminster exists in the uneasy twilight that divides a large village from a small town. It is not big enough to be self-sustaining, but too big not to worry about it. It is not quite chi-chi enough or set dramatically enough to draw the crowds: a great place to grow old, but not to grow up. It is the epitome of the Dorset dilemma.

  May/June 2013

  The winter storms that ravaged the country in 2013–14 uncovered a virtually complete 200-million-year-old skeleton of a five-foot ichthyosaur (‘a fish-lizard’) at Black Ven, near Charmouth. It took eight hours to dig out. Fossil hunter Paul Crossley told the BBC that had it not been discovered, the next storm would have wrecked it.

  Chesil Beach also had a battering, making the slope to the sea much steeper. ‘The beach will sort itself out,’ said Angela Thomas from the Chesil Centre. ‘It might not always. There may be a time – we’ve no idea when – that the sea does overtop Chesil.’

  28. The ascent of Mount Toebang

  CUMBERLAND

  One morning in early June I awoke in Rosthwaite on the edge of Derwent Water. It is just a couple of miles from Seathwaite, the wettest habitation in England. The sound outside was that of incessant rain, mitigated only by interruptions from the cuckoo, a bird now increasingly confined to damp corners. Obviously our plans would have to be aborted. That was agreed: if the weather was ridiculous the mission was off.

  Slowly I opened the curtains. The sun blazed in. The supposed rain was the water in the beck tinkling over the rocks. There was no possible excuse now. After kippers, we drove – my old school friend Anselm and I – to the car park at Seathwaite, which was another national landmark ticked off. I had already been to the southernmost and westernmost place in England (Chapter 11), the easternmost (Chapter 13), the northernmost (26) and the lowest (10). To come: the driest. Ahead of us, though still far out of sight, was the highest: Scafell Pike.

  ‘C’mon,’ said Anselm gently, in the fatherly tone he would use when I was nine and he was ten. He had always done mountains, including this one, several times; I didn’t. He was a lawyer; but I was a great respecter of the Law of Gravity. My back and right knee had been hurting for days, but I had been desperate not to cancel even though I was quite petrified.

  Scafell Pike is an odd record-holder: everyone in Britain knows about Ben Nevis and Snowdon. But the highest mountain in England is strangely anonymous. Many people – and even the memorial at the summit – call it just ‘Scafell’, which is another mountain entirely. This certainly confuses the walkers and may cause occasional chaos at Mountain Rescue HQ. Even most of those who know the name pronounce it ‘Scaffle Pike’, while the aficianados go for ‘Scawfell Pike’. It is a very English kind of conf
usion.

  It is also not a greatly loved mountain, even among mountain-lovers. When I mentioned the project to one climber he told me it was his least favourite anywhere: ‘uncomfortably steep with stretches of sharp rubble, real ankle-risking stuff. And sharp enough that you don’t want to put your hands out either’. He suggested misreading the map and doing Snowdon instead.

  In his Pictorial Guide to the Southern Fells, the sainted Alfred Wainwright is ambivalent. He also doesn’t make it sound attractive – ‘tarns are noticeably absent on the arid, stony surface … the landscape is harsh, even savage, and has attracted to itself nothing of romance or historical legend. There is no sentiment about Scafell Pike.’ But he adds, ‘The ascent of Scafell Pike is the toughest proposition the “collector” of summits is called upon to attempt, and it is the one above all others that, as a patriot, he cannot omit.’

  Seathwaite did not look as though it gets 140 inches of rain a year, not far off half an inch a day. There was even a sign by the campsite banning ground fires, as though this were the Australian bush in a drought. And indeed it hadn’t rained in a week. You could spend a hundred summers in the Lake District and hardly find such an ideal day for climbing: we had layer after layer in our rucksacks but we never needed more than a T-shirt.

  There are at least half a dozen routes to the summit, but Wainwright called the route up Borrowdale ‘pre-eminent’. So we marched along the narrow valley, me prattling the while to avoid thinking about what might lie ahead. Even now I was nervy. But it was not just a commitment, it was evidently my patriotic duty. Onwards.

  What struck me most was the complete absence of prohibitions, imperatives and instructions. Just after Seathwaite the farmer had a ‘Close the Gate’ and ‘Dogs on Lead’ sign. Beyond that, nothing: no warnings, no commands, no signposts even. Back along the valley there was a hire car that would order me to put on my seat belt and would not shut up until it was obeyed. All around us was the most spied-on country in the world, a place that abhors self-reliance. Up here we had only our wits and our Wainwright.