A HISTORY OF DORSET 



Dorset for the sake of their wool as well as for 

 their meat, but the cloth industry which at one 

 time depended on the local wool has lett the 

 county. 



Fields of hemp do not lend themselves so 

 readily as flocks of sheep to picturesque descrip- 

 tions, and even flax is only beautiful when its 

 dazzling blue flower is in bloom ; but the fact 

 that the rich damp soil round Bridport produced 

 the best hemp in England is continually men- 

 tioned. Hemp is no longer grown in the neigh- 

 bourhood, though the common nettle belonging 

 to the same botanical family springs up with un- 

 paralleled vigour and luxuriance. The home- 

 grown flax can no longer compete with that of 

 Ireland or Belgium, but it is used locally mixed 

 with hemp or cotton. 



In the Middle Ages the marble of Corfe won 

 wide recognition, and Dorset sculptors not only 

 wrought at home, but were summoned to a 

 distance by king and prelate as the ablest of their 

 time. Portland stone was exported at least as 

 early as the reign of Edward I, and the stone of 

 the quarries of southern Dorset is still the 

 county's one pre-eminent gift. The clay found 

 round Poole and Corfe Castle was not so widely 

 known as the stone of Purbeck and Portland, 

 but constant allusions are made by topographers 

 of the last three centuries to its intrinsic qualities 

 as a good clay for tobacco pipes, and to its value 

 as an export to London. 



Besides raw material, Dorset possessed and 

 still possesses all the power required by eighteenth- 

 century machinery. It is covered with a net- 

 work of little streams, which rush out of the 

 sides of the chalk downs. These make up in 

 speed what they lack in volume ; some are 

 strong enough to drive water-wheels within a 

 quarter of a mile of their source. Numerous 

 mills are mentioned in Domesday Book, but very 

 few of them still work. Almost all the corn is 

 ground by steam mills, and many of the water- 

 mills are in ruins ; others have totally dis- 

 appeared. 



Besides industries which were promoted by 

 the enterprise of individuals and the fallacies of 

 public bodies, there were those based on a false 

 estimate of mineral riches. Pottery and quarry- 

 ing do not fall under this definition, but most of 

 the attempts to work the other minerals found 

 between Poole and Weymouth have had little last- 

 ing success. The least important of these minerals 

 is gypsum, which occurs in the lower Purbeck 

 strata of Durlaston Bay, and was once worked 

 to a limited extent.* There are more references 

 to the alum industry, which was set up more 

 than once in Dorset, but never took root per- 

 manently in the county.'" Thus all the advan- 

 tages which Dorset possessed have decreased in 

 value ; the streams are left to irrigate the water- 



Green, Kimmeridge Shale, its Origin, 2. 



" See in/ra. 



meadows ; the cloth industry, now requiring 

 machinery, steam power, and coal, has migrated 

 to Yorkshire ; and better hemp can be imported 

 from Russia. 



The disadvantages to industry from which 

 Dorset has suffered have varied from time to 

 time. At present the most powerful drawback 

 to commercial enterprise is the lack of coal ; but 

 this deficiency had no practical effect until the 

 introduction of machinery at the end of the 

 eighteenth century. Another handicap is the 

 distance from London, and this was intensified, 

 until railways were built, by the inadequate 

 means of communication. Even now it is still 

 a factor to be considered in any industrial prob- 

 lem, and at any time up to the nineteenth 

 century it would be hard to overestimate its 

 influence. 



The older roads seem to have been far from 

 satisfactory. The county is famed for its downs ; 

 and the roads in use in Dorset were to a large 

 extent ancient ways along them, while even the 

 new lines of route made by the Romans in their 

 very directness occasionally admitted very steep 

 gradients. Modern road-builders have found it 

 impossible to avoid steep hills, but their roads 

 tend to follow the valleys rather than the ridges 

 or slopes of the downs. 



The Roman roads were wonderfully made ; 

 but if the presentments of the eighteenth century 

 are any criteria, the surface and upkeep of roads 

 and bridges must have been in a deplorable con- 

 dition. Year by year the roads are presented as 

 out of repair,'^ and sometimes as under water, 

 and the bridges as in a broken-down state. '^ The 

 expense of carriage by road is continually referred 

 to in the county records. The cost of transport- 

 ing soldiers, vagabonds, paupers, and convicts, as 

 well as that of sending luggage and messengers, 

 was always heavy ; a good example is the cost 

 of conveying a lunatic to Bedlam in 1794, which 

 amounted to^^ii lis. bd}^ At the beginning 

 of the last century ** the turnpike roads, and even 

 the by-roads when on dry soil, appear to have 

 been on the whole in a satisfactory condition, 

 and a surveyor of experience observed that they 

 possessed sufficient convexity to cast off the 

 water after sharp showers, which drained away and 

 was soon absorbed in the chalky substratum. In 

 the chalk districts flints were then used for the 

 repair of the turnpike roads, but elsewhere lime- 

 stone broken with hammers. In the west of the 

 county, however, and in some parts of the vale 

 of Blackmoor, the by-roads were even then 

 miry and scarcely passable in winter, while in 

 summer the large, rough stones with which they 

 abounded rendered them far from pleasant, 

 whether for horses or wheeled vehicles. In 



" Sess. R. 1709, 1720, 1752, &c., &c. ; Courtly 

 Rec. Ouartcr Sess. 1712, 1763, 1764, &€. 

 " fbid. " Ibid. 



" Stevenson, op. cit. 439. 



326 



