BLANDFORD FORUM WALK
Saturday 25 March 2006
Despite the second part of its name and much Romano-British activity in the area, Blandford Forum was not a Roman town. The Forum suffix is a medieval Latin rendering of the town’s former name of Chipping [i.e. Market] Blandford. Architecturally, Blandford is one of the most homogenous and pleasing small Georgian-style towns in Britain. This is the direct result of its having been almost completely rebuilt following a disastrous fire in 1731 - the last of several conflagrations in the town. Most of the town was destroyed and the two principal surviving pre-fire buildings are Ryves Almshouse and the Old House. The reconstruction was authorized by an Act of Parliament obtained in 1732. The Act for the rebuilding of London following the Great Fire of 1666 provided a model for other towns devastated by fire such as Northampton and Blandford. Buildings had to be built in brick or stone, with lead, slate or tile roofs to minimize the risk of fires spreading. Trustees were appointed to supervise the funds for rebuilding and a Court of Record was set up to arbitrate in any property disputes. As with London, Blandford was rebuilt basically following the medieval street plan, although advantage was taken of provisions in the Act to widen certain bottlenecks and clear the shambles stalls, cottages and town hall that had encroached onto the wide market place. Again, just as the Great Fire of London had ended the plague, so in Blandford the 1731 fire eradicated a smallpox epidemic.
Blandford was remarkably fortunate in being the home of the unfortunately-named Bastard dynasty of master builders/architects who were well versed in the forms and motifs of classical architecture. Principally involved in the overall direction of reconstructing the town and much of the architectural design were brothers John and William (a third brother Thomas had died shortly after the fire). They had previously worked with their father Thomas senior (responsible for the classical-style church at nearby Charlton Marshall, parts of Winterborne Stickland and Almer churches and also Spettisbury rectory) on the building of Chettle House also nearby. This would have brought them into contact with its designer, baroque architect Thomas Archer (best known for the church that is now Birmingham Cathedral) who had worked under John Vanbrugh, the architect of Blenheim Palace etc. With such influences, it is not surprising to find the Bastard brothers distinctive ‘trade mark’ of upturned volutes on the capitals of columns and pilasters - a feature that ultimately derives from such Italian baroque architects as Bernini and Borromini. Other characteristics of their style are ornate cornices and the use of different coloured stone and brick.
Dorchester architect John Hicks does not appear to have undertaken any commissions near Blandford while Thomas Hardy was working for him. In June 1875, the Hardys had looked at houses to rent in Shaftesbury, Blandford and Wimborne. However, Hardy probably became best acquainted with Blandford while he was living at Sturminster Newton a few miles up the Stour valley, 1876-78; and would doubtless have travelled through the town on the Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway which linked the two towns and additionally served Wimborne Minster lower down the Stour where he also lived, 1881-83. We know that he visited Blandford in 1876, for he recorded in his notebook his impressions:
‘Night on the bridge at the bottom of the town. Light shines from a window across the stream; the surface of the stream seen moving on, the little ripples showing. Occasionally an insect of night touched the water just in the spot of light, & was unknown to himself, as visible as in day’.
In August 1913, Hardy visited Blandford with John Lane the publisher (Bodley Head) to help him search for material regarding the life of sculptor and painter Alfred Stevens (1817-1875), a native of the town and best known for his monument to the first Duke of Wellington in the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral. Stevens’ birthplace was found at 38 Salisbury Street, and Hardy was pleased to discover that Stevens’ father G. Stevens had painted the Ten Commandments at nearby Blandford St Mary church. Hardy sent his sister Katharine a picture postcard from the Crown Hotel, where he stayed a night.
On his 79th birthday in 1919, Hardy and Florence motored to Salisbury from Dorchester via Blandford as he records in the autobiographical Life.
Surprisingly, Hardy makes relatively little use of Blandford as a setting in his novels and short stories - most of his references to it as Shottsford or Shottsford-Forum are incidental and off-stage. However, the town’s architectural appeal makes it well worthwhile to seek out the few Hardy associations.
In Far from the Madding Crowd, Gabriel Oak was en route from Casterbridge, where he had failed to find employment at the hiring fair, to another hiring fair at Shottsford (presumably in the market place), when he was offered a job by Bathsheba Everdene after extinguishing the rick fire at her Weatherbury farm.
In The Trumpet-Major, Festus Derriman suggested that Ann Garland should join him in Yeomanry sprees at Casterbridge and Shottsford-Forum - wisely, she declined the offer.
In The Mayor of Casterbridge, Henchard, en route to Casterbridge for the last time from his self-imposed exile in Upper Wessex (Hampshire), stopped off in Shottsford. Here he bought some smarter clothes and a caged goldfinch as a wedding present for Elizabeth-Jane.
In ‘The Three Strangers’ Wessex Tales short story, the escaped convict was Timothy Summers, a watchmaker of Shottsford [Anglebury (Wareham) in original 1883 Longman’s Magazine edition]; and his brother was en route from the town to visit him on the eve of his execution at Casterbridge gaol.
In The Woodlanders, Farmer Cawtree had visited Shottsford and recounted that: ‘Shottsford is Shottsford still - you can’t victual your carcase there unless you’ve got money; and you can’t buy a cup of genuine there, whether or no ....’. Later, Grace Melbury stayed there when her marriage to Fitzpiers was in difficulties. Her father George Melbury visited her there as she was ill. She returned to Little Hintock in a vehicle hired from the Crown Inn - the only building in Blandford identified by Hardy - the Crown Hotel’s walls were refaced in 1937-38 as part of a rebuilding scheme necessitated by structural problems, so it is now neo-Georgian.
In the A Group of Noble Dames short story ‘Barbara of the House of Grebe’, the heroine eloped with Edmund Willowes whose father or grandfather had been the last glass-painter in Shottsford. Glass painting had been a major industry in Blandford, but had declined in the post-medieval period. The antiquary John Aubrey mentions a glass-painter by the name of Harding in the 17th century, and there were still Hardings practising the craft in the town in the following century.
The poem ‘My Cicely’ in Wessex Poems, describing a horse ride from London to Topsham near Exeter via Salisbury, Blandford and Dorchester in the 18th century, has the following stanza:
Along through the Stour-bordered Forum,
Where legions had wayfared,
And where the slow river-face glasses
Its green canopy,
With conquest-period Roman military activity in the area evidenced by the Roman fort on nearby Hod Hill, it is not too fanciful to postulate Roman legionary soldiers on the site of what later became Blandford, even though - as pointed out above - it was not a Roman town.
John Pentney
22 iii 2006