The Heart of Wessex

A fine walk over Ballard Down not only commands some exceptional and sweeping views of the Dorset and Hampshire coast, but leads to Studland, a charming village with an ancient Norman church and a glorious little bay of golden sand, that is edged by the wide expanse of unenclosed moorland known as Studland Heath. The magnificent panorama from the high land above Studland embraces nearly the whole of the eastern half of Dorset, the far-famed Isle of Purbeck, and as we turn from the amphitheatre of rolling downs the eye ranges to the blue sea breaking at the base of the chalk cliffs of the Isle of Wight, or foaming round the near promontory of Peveril Point.

Away in a north-easterly direction the low-lying lands that edge the creeks and mudflats of Poole Harbour spread out like a map, and contrast their warm greens with the silvery tones of the great harbour. A brief description of Poole is given in one of the short stories of Life's Little Ironies, where it figures beneath the thin disguise of "Havenpool".

During the smuggling days Poole, together with the majority of these south-country ports, enjoyed a very unenviable reputation, and was the home of the celebrated Harry Paye, or "Arripay" as the Spaniards who so dreaded him rendered the name, who is said to have brought into Poole Harbour, on one occasion, more than one hundred prizes from the ports of Brittany, and "to have scoured the channel of Flanders so powerfully that no ship could pass that way without being taken".

Poole has retained quite a number of its ancient domestic buildings, including the problematical fifteenth-century structure known as the "Town Cellars"; but nothing is known with regard to the purposes for which it was originally erected. Some antiquaries believe it to have been connected with the Guild of St. George, others hold that it was used as a manorial storehouse, wherein were deposited the goods left by the lord of the manor. Michael Drayton in his Polyolbion depicts the rivers Frome and Puddle as entertaining each other, "oft praising lovely Poole, their best beloved bay"; and in truth Poole Harbour is charming at any state of the tide. It has been the haunt of the painter since the days when Turner found such uncommon sources of inspiration along the shores of its wooded creeks, and counterfeit presentments of this Dorset lakeland hang on the walls of many a European picture gallery. Exclusive of all islands the area of this vast sea-lake is ten thousand acres, while it has been calculated that thirty-six million tons of water flow into and out of the narrow entrance at every spring tide.