Dorset in the Autumn 4: In Ruins

Somehow I managed to miss the turning to Knowlton, and had to stop in a layby and turn the car round – but not before investigating the little ruin I could see in the wood a couple of hundred yards away. It’s an old lodge of the Wimborne St Giles estate. Presumably it once looked like the Pepperpot Lodges closer to the house, but even the Landmark Trust would find a restoration job on this hard work.

Corfe Castle is a rather grander ruin. Unlike some of the places I saw on my Dorset trip this autumn, of course nothing much has changed about Corfe: that’s the point of being owned by the National Trust. But my reaction has changed since my last visit which can’t have been less than thirty years ago (since then the closest I’ve been is driving around the base of the motte through the cramped grey stone streets of Corfe town). My sense of dread caught me by surprised. From a distance the Castle is a comforting presence, one of the images of Dorset simply everyone knows; its familiar, gaunt profile binds the landscape together. But close up the sense of raw power is overwhelming, notwithstanding the Castle’s ruinous outline, even though the slighted towers that have crashed into the northern part of the enclosure look more like a Neolithic monument than a medieval fortress. Built to control, to dominate, the gaps in its massive walls seem to scream with rage that they can no longer fulfil their purpose. The impression of terror and suffering is helped along by the notices calling attention to the horrors that have happened within the grey walls, such as Eleanor of Brittany’s knights being starved to death in 1206. I’m becoming more subject to these impressions as time has gone on: here, in my sixth decade, I’m finally suffering the consequences of too much reading, like a greying Catherine Morland.

The remains of Sturminster Newton Castle are very different. There’s not much of them, and they sit up a lane just off the main road, all but invisible until you turn onto the motte. There is a story of a golden treasure hidden here in a well and guarded by a spectral cat with saucer-sized eyes, but thankfully there’s little sense of that trolling around on a bright autumn afternoon.