The Plan
Tolpuddle
to Milborne St Andrew
Who Turned Up
Wendy,
Sue, Jackie, Trudy H, Diane and Tony R, David
The Walk
My
apologies for a lack of blogs over the past couple of weeks. Your blogmaster
has been on holiday in his native Cornwall, celebrating his seventieth
birthday. But you didn’t want to know that, did you?
What of
today’s walk? After a week of inclement weather, we were pleased to see the
prospect of a pleasant day ahead of us. We drove through Tolpuddle, turned up
White Hill and parked close to the bridge over the main A35 road. We then
walked across Tolpuddle Common towards Milborne St Andrew on a direct route, passing
close to Manor Farm, but by-passing Weatherby Castle.
We all
know about Tolpuddle, don’t we? That’s were a group of men were sentenced to be
transported to the Antipodes for organising a trade union. Wrong. Trade unions
were legal in those days. They were transported for swearing an oath of allegiance
to the union, under a law designed to prevent mutiny in the Royal Navy. You
probably knew that already.
And what
about Milborne St Andrew? What do we know about it? In 1086, in the Domesday
Book, it was recorded as Meleburne. At that time it had ten households, four
ploughlands and one mill. There were originally two settlements here. St Andrew
was to the south of the main Dorchester road and Deverel was to the north. In
time, they coalesced into one village. In the late nineteenth century, the
neighbouring settlement of Miborne Stileham was brought into the conurbation.
After lunch
in the village, we returned to our cars via Weatherby Castle. This is an iron
age hill fort enclosing about seventeen acres. Its structure comprises two
concentric enclosures. Bits of Roman artefacts have been discovered here. The
route back to the cars was a bit up-and-down and we were all glad to get back
to Sue’s house for a welcome cup of tea and a slice of delicious home-made
cake. Many thanks, Sue. Thanks, also, to Diane and Trudy for the pictures.
The Pub
The Royal
Oak in Milborne St Andrew. Your pie-eating blogmaster must bow to circumstance
here and confess to awarding the pub’s pie an amazing… wait for it… ten out of
ten. Yes, it was absolutely the best of pies.
Next Week
Meet at
Diane and Tony’s house at 1030 for a walk to Lamb's Green.
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