Category: Articles

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Wessex Attractions: Poole Harbour

Poole Harbour is the largest natural harbour in Europe, a haven for wildlife and watercraft alike. It features a marina for yachts, an area for jet-skis and personal watercraft, and another for wind- and kite-surfing.

The area is rich in wildlife. Nearby Brownsea Island will feature in its own blog post in due course, but the harbour itself is an SSSI, a SPA and a RAMSAR site. A mile offshore is a marine conservation where over 40 species of fish (including rays and black bream), 50 species of seaweed, and 40 species of sponge and sea anemone can be found, along with lobsters, oysters and crabs.

Birdlife includes cormorants, teal, great crested grebes and spoonbills (see photo above). The latter are attracted by the warm, shallow water. Unfortunately, this shallowness makes the area uncongenial for divers. A project is currently underway to reintroduce a breeding population of ospreys, with birds translocated from Scotland.

A marina guide detailing all the harbour’s facilities is available from the tourist information office.

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Wessex Worthies: William Laud

William Laud (1573-1645) was born in Reading and later rose to become Archbishop of Canterbury before being executed for treason during the First English Civil War. He was a leading light in the “high church” movement within the Church of England, and made overtures towards the Orthodox Church with a view to possible reunion.

Laud was educated at Reading School and St John’s College, Oxford, later becoming the (non-baby eating) Bishop of Bath & Wells. After being promoted to Bishop of London, he became an important figure in the court of Charles I. He was in his late 50s when he became Archbishop of Canterbury, and his high church, anti-Puritan views had hardened by that point. He ruled the Church of England with an iron fist, and was deeply intolerant of opponents..

This caused the Long Parliament to view Laud as one of King Charles’s “evil counsellors”, and he was arrested for treason in 1640, accused of running the Church as a “state within a state.” He was imprisoned in the Tower of London, and beheaded in 1645.

Today, Laud is commemorated on the Church of England Calendar on 10th January. He is now regarded as a great theologian brought down by political intrigue (though Patrick Collinson, a historian somewhat sympathetic to the Puritans, has called his reign as Archbishop of Canterbury “the greatest calamity ever visited upon the English church”) . Reading School, his alma mater, has named one of its houses Laud House in his honour.

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Wessex Worthies: St Dunstan

St Dunstan (c909-988) is an important figure in Wessex history and folklore. Born at Baltonsborough, near Glastonbury, he was educated at Glastonbury Abbey by Irish monks. According to one of his earliest biographers, he was introduced by his uncle Athelm, archbishop of Canterbury, to the court of King Athelstan. However, Athelm died a year before Athelstan became king, so this account cannot be regarded as reliable.

Dunstan was highly influential in successive royal courts, and spearheaded a reform of the monasteries, which had become corrupt and venal. This naturally made him many enemies. but he was largely protected by the patronage of successive kings. This changed when the dissolute king Eadwig came to the throne, aged just 16. Dunstan instantly made himself unpopular with the new king when he dragged him back to his own coronation feast, which he had slipped away from in order to enjoy a threesome with a noblewoman named Aethelgifu (who he later married) and her daughter Aelfgifu. At least that’s what the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles tell us, though some scholars dismiss this as propaganda designed to blacken the king’s name

Again according to the Chronicle accounts, Eadwig never forgave Dunstan for this, and he was forced into exile in Flanders. Eventually, the people of Mercia and Northumbria revolted against Eadwig and installed his brother Edgar (“the Peaceable”) as king of England north of the Thames – an interesting example of regionalism in action even after the supposed unification of England. Dunstan returned to England and was installed as bishop of Worcester, out of Eadwig’s jurisdiction. Two years later, Eadwig died and Edgar became king of all England, appointing Dunstan as archbishop of Canterbury shortly afterwards.

Dunstan died in 988. According to pious legend, he was told of his death three days in advance by angels, and assembled priests to give him the last rites and say a solemn mass in his presence. He remained a popular saint for many centuries afterwards, and many legends and folk tales accrued around him. The best-known of these is the story of his being visited by the Devil while working in his smithy and grabbing the Fiend by the nose with his tongs. This tale is alluded to in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (“If the good Saint Dunstan had but nipped the Evil Spirit’s nose with a touch of such weather as that, instead of using his familiar weapons, then, indeed, he would have roared to lusty purpose”), suggesting that it was still familiar to audiences in Dickens’s time. It may be related to the fact that Dunstan was the patron saint of the Goldsmiths’ Guild during the middle ages.

A fictionalised account of the saint’s life is given in the 2017 novel Dunstan by Conn Iggulden. The main secondary school in Glastonbury still bears his name to this day.

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The Character of Wessex: Wealden Greensand

The Wealden Greensand character area is a hook-shaped sandstone ridge stretching from the Kent coast at Folkestone to the eastern edge of Alton in Hampshire, before curving back again into Sussex. United only by its underlying geology, the area is home to a diverse array of landscapes. The parts in the “true south east” (Kent, Surrey and Sussex) are heavily urbanised, while the Wessex portion is much more rural.

A couple of conservation areas are especially worth noting. Woolmer Forest, straddling the Hampshire/Sussex border, is the only site in Britain which is home to all twelve native species of reptile and amphibian. It was historically included within Selborne parish, and so features prominently in Gilbert White’s pioneering work The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne,

The East Hampshire Hangers are a range of hills named for the narrow strips of woodland that “hang” onto its ravines. Most of these are beech, but some are a rare example of Tilio-Acerian forests, a mixture of ash, wych-elm and lime trees. Its grasslands play host to early gentian (Gentianella anglica), an endangered plant species endemic to Great Britain and mostly found on Wessex downlands, though there are a few colonies in Lincolnshire, Cornwall and South Wales.

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Wessex on Screen: Iris

Iris is a 2001 biopic of novelist Iris Murdoch, based on the memoirs of her husband, John Bayley. The narrative moves between Murdoch and Bayley’s student years at Oxford, where they are played by Kate Winslet and Hugh Bonneville respectively; and their later life (played by Judi Dench and Jim Broadbent), when Murdoch is suffering from dementia.

Broadbent won an Oscar® for his portrayal as the older Bayley, while Judi Dench and Reading’s Kate Winslet were both nominated. It is one of only two instances where two different actors were nominated for playing the same role, the other being Titanic (Gloria Stuart and Winslet again).

The film was directed by Richard Eyre, written by Eyre and Charles Wood, and produced by BBC Films in partnership with Fox Iris Productions, Intermedia and Mirage Enterprises. It was distributed by Buena Vista International in the UK and Miramax Films in the US.