SOME ACCOUNT OF BRIDPORT AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD. 31 
latus and yellow rattle. Far to the eastward the towering chalk mass 
of Eggardon stands like a sentinel, barring the way to the centre of 
the county. 
At the foot of Eegardon and right across to Drake North runs a 
wild unkempt place called Powerstock Common. It is like a serubby 
piece of the New Forest with sparser trees, richer undergrowth, better 
watered, and less traversed ; it is rich with boggy spots, full of yellow 
flags and edged with scabious. Its call to me was powerful, but time 
forbade a closer examination than the leisurely G.W. Railway trains 
afforded, and my information as to this place is all therefore second- 
hand. From Drake North to the west, at the foot of a bold chalk 
shoulder, called Warren Hill, lies the biggest wood of the district, 
Hooke Park, according to the auction posters of a forthcoming sale of 
this district, 416 acres in extent, bearing a marked resemblance to Bere 
Wood, Dorset, superficially, but only superficially. 
The coast district is a contrast. Thorncombe, the furthest west I 
made, is Great Oolite piled on Lias and capped with Greensand, with 
an undercliff much like the Punfield end of Swanage Bay. It produces, 
Tam told, Hpipactis palustris, the Marsh Helleborine, to complete the 
likeness. 
Thornecombe, however, nearly touches 600 feet, and is almost sheer 
to the sea, being protected at the base with indurated masses of Lias. 
Burton Bradstock, the furthest east, is just at the end of some curious 
castellated overhanging cliffs of Fuller’s Earth, about 200 feet high. 
In contrast, the coast district is poverty stricken when compared to 
the exceedingly diversified and rich country of the higher ground 
behind Bridport. 
From the foregoing you can now picture Bridport standing on 
Middle Lias in the flat land of the confluence of the placid streams, 
the Allington, Mangerton, and Brit, which flow down from the hills 
behind, with a flat plain of rich alluvium between it and the sea. So 
flat is this land that from our bed-room window, at Bridport, we could 
see the sea two miles or so distant. Bridport is as it were in the 
bottom of half a saucer, the edge being the ring of hills which, starting 
from the sea at Thorncombe on the west, are Eype Down, Quarry Hill, 
Colmer’s Hill, Lambert’s Castle, Pilsdon Ren, Lewesdon Hill, Waddon 
Hill, Warren Hill, Drake North, Egegardon, Boar’s Barrow, Stone- 
barrow, Bottom Hill, a hill I called the 400 foot hill for want of a 
- better name, and the last eastern extremity at the sea again West Bay 
Cliffs. The formations running up from Lower Lias through the 
Oolite to the Chalk, or perhaps the Hocene or Miocene, and back 
through the same gamut to the Fuller’s Warth. 
A distinctly different facies from that of the eastern end of my native 
county, an argillaceous and calceous district, and not a silicious sand 
one. Greener, flowerier, more smiling, less wild, yet giving one the 
impression of being smaller and more cramped ; higher hills but less 
distance, more streams and less water, and no lakes of importance, and 
only the narrowest of fringes of rushes to the streams. 
The outerop of the Gault over the 500 ft. contours gave, however, 
marshy and rich marshy land at unaccustomed levels. Bogbean at 
700 feet is a strange sight to me, Salix infuscata at 600 equally so, 
Hea I think of Littlesea and the abundant growth of Salix infuscata 
there. 
