Author: nick_xylas

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The Character of Wessex: The Forest of Dean and Lower Wye

The Forest of Dean and Lower Wye character area is a triangular area bounded, for the most part, by the rivers Severn and Wye, and the A40 around Ross-on-Wye. It has been a mining area since antiquity, due to its large deposits of iron and coal. 40% of the area is woodland; mostly oak, ash and chestnut, but in recent decades, the Forestry Commission has inflicted its unpleasant habit of planting conifers in areas where they don’t belong.

The local sandstone has a distinctive pinkish hue, which in the past made it much in demand as a building material, though brick and concrete have supplanted it over the years. Pantiles and Welsh slate are widely used for roofing.

The area is noted for its orchards, with local varieties including the Blaisdon Red plum, excellent for making jam; Evan;s Kernel, a general purpose apple found in Ruardean, which is listed as critical on the Gloucestershire Orchard Trust website; . and the sweet-tasting Merrylegs pear.

Tourism is an important industry for the area. The Picturesque movement in art began there, and tourists still flock to popular beauty spots such as Tintern Abbey and Symond’s Yat, both (just) outside the bounds of Wessex.

The area is home to one of the UK’s largest populations of horseshoe bats. However, these ate threatened by wind farms upsetting their flight paths and messing with their sonar. It would be ironic if the transition from the traditional coal found in the region to cleaner forms of energy ended up endangering the local wildlife.

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Wessex Attractions: Newton Abbott Racecourse

Newton Abbot racecourse, situated on the edge of Dartmoor, was founded in 1866 as a community venture, funded by local horse racing enthusiasts. However, it lacked a proper grandstand for over a century, until one was opened in 1969, in a ceremony attended by the Queen Mother. In 1974, a greyhound racing track was added after the nearby Halfway Greyhound Track closed down.

The racecourse features two on-site restaurants, picnic benches, a children’s play area, and dedicated facilities for owners and trainers. The dress code is smart casual.

Ladies’ Day takes place in June every year. There are prizes for the best dressed and best hat.

The satnav postcode is TQ12 3AF. The racecourse is close to Newton Abbot railway station, and is served by multiple bus routes.

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Wessex Worthies: William D’Avenant

William D’avenant (sometimes spelled without the apostrophe) was born in Oxford in 1606, the son of John and Jane D’avenant, owners of the Crown Tavern, where Shakespeare was said to have been a frequent visitor. There is a story that Shakespeare was young William’s godfather or, in some versions, his biological father. He was sometimes said to have referred to himself as a “son of Shakespeare”, though this was probably just a figure of speech, referring to Shakespeare’s literary influence on him. He did, however, know Shakespeare as a boy, and at the age of twelve, wrote an ode upon the occasion of his death.

D’avenant was educated at Oxford, but dropped out before gaining a degree. He was a strong supporter of the Royalist cause in the Civil War, and participated in the siege of Gloucester.

He was named Poet Laureate in 1638, a title he held until his death 30 years later, despite being found guilty of high treason by parliament in 1641. In 1645, he moved to Paris and converted to Catholicism. In 1650, he was captured at sea while en route to Maryland, where the exiled Charles II had appointed him lieutenant-governor. He was put on trial for his life, but was supposedly saved by the intervention of John Milton.

D’avenant’s best-known work is the five-act tragedy Gondibert, written while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London. Based on parts of Paul the Deacon’s History of the Lombards, it tells of the titular Duke of Lombardy and the conflict between his love life and his royal duties. It is notable for introducing the “Gondibert stanza” of four lines of ten syllables each, with an ABAB rhyme scheme. He also wrote the libretto of what is believed to be the first English opera, The Siege of Rhodes.

He died in 1688, shortly after the publication of his final play, The Man’s the Master. He is buried in Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey.

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Wessex Attractions: St Catherine’s Oratory

St Catherine’s Oratory on the Isle of Wight was built in 1328 by Walter de Godeton, lord of the manor, as a penance ordered by the pope after he was found to be in possession of wine destined for a French monastery plundered from a Gascon ship wrecked on the nearby shore. A lighthouse helped ships navigate the treacherous rocks, while monks prayed for the safety of sailors, and for the souls of those drowned at sea.

Today, an octagonal tower is all that survives of the oratory, while the current lighthouse, one of the first in the world to be powered by electricity, dates from the 19th century. The tower is managed by English Heritage, while the rest of the site is owned by the National Trust. The postcode is PO38 2JB, and the what3words is into.bluff.tops. Southern Vectis bus route 6 passes nearby.

More recently, the lighthouse was used as a location in the video for the Wet Leg song Angelica (see below).

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The Character of Wessex: The Hampshire Downs

Bounded by Wessex’s historic capital, Winchester, to the south, and the newer commuter towns of Basingstoke and Andover to the north and west respectively, the Hampshire Downs is an area made up almost exclusively of chalkland, though there is a small area of mottled clay soil–an outcrop of the Reading formation–around East Stratton, 8 miles northeast of Winchester.

The chalky character of the area makes it suitable for sheep farming, and Hampshire Down is a regionally distinctive breed of sheep, noted for providing excellent mutton. The breed was created in 1829 by a local farmer, John Twynam, who cross-bred his flock of Southdown sheep with the Old Hampshire variety. Other farmers continued to refine the breed by further cross-breeding with the Wiltshire Horn and Berkshire Nott varieties.

The chalk streams flowing into the rivers Test and Itchen are the home of dry-fly fishing, first developed by Frederic M Halford, a Birmingham-born, London-based fisherman; and George Selwyn Marryat of Chewton Glen in the New Forest. The weeds in the chalk streams tended to float close to the surface, necessitating a method of keeping the fly afloat. Halford and Marryat first met in Hammond’s Fly Shop in Winchester on 28th April 1879, “the meeting that changed the course of fly fishing history” according to Marryat’s biographer Andrew H Herd.

Most famous of the Hampshire Downs is Watership Down, which provided the name and setting for Richard Adams’s 1972 novel and the 1978 animated film adaptation which traumatised a generation of children. Jane Austen’s house at Chawton also sits on the edge of the Downs, while Selborne Common was studied in depth by the pioneering naturalist Gilbert White.

Road and rail routes linking London to Wessex criss-cross the Hampshire Downs, and Winchester itself was founded at the convergence of prehistoric trackways known as dongas. With its chalk bedrock, connections to the rest of Wessex, and focus on the historic capital, one could argue that the Hampshire Downs represent the quintessential Wessex character area.