It was a Monday, in August, and it was raining.
My mum and sister had come down from Essex for a long weekend to stay with me in Dorset, and, as usual, I’d made a plan of all the things we could do. All of them, however, unfortunately banked on the weather being anything on but raining. There was Durdle Door, Lulworth Cove, paddle boarding in the shallow waters around Sandbanks, exploring Monkey World…
And so, I sat, staring out the rain-specked window at the bleak, grey outside, watching the leaves of the bush in the garden patter up and down in the rain, and swiped through the results that Google was spewing out at me for ‘rainy day activities in Dorset’.
Eventually, we decided that Dorchester would be a good place to head to – my Mum liked the sound of the many museums to hide from the rain and muse at various artifacts, whilst my sister, being the cake lover she is, was certain that there must be a good afternoon tea to be sought in Dorchester given the number of ‘Dorchester hotels’ around the country which serve such a delicious delicacy.
The rain persisted. It was the horrible, heavy rain where being outside feels like you are running through a waterfall, and makes your umbrella, which you were certain was a good umbrella, prove that actually, it is rather a shit umbrella, and you should have spent the extra fiver to get the one with the more sturdy handle. I was sporting my wellies on this particular day, and the jacket which I had worn to hike up Ben Nevis, so I felt prepared to take on such weather, and was very close to – but did not quite – splash in every puddle I came across, just because I could.
Founded by the Romans, Dorchester was originally called Durnovaria, which is, co-incidentally, also the name of a lovely little eatery in the town centre. The earliest known recordings from Dorchester are from Maiden Castle, an Iron-Age hill fort 2 miles from the town centre, dating back to around 600BC, and, in 400BC, was expanded to become the largest hill fort in Britain, no doubt in a ‘my hill fort is bigger than yours‘ sort of way. When the Romans invaded, the fort was already in quick decline, and eventually it was left to ruin, being used for nothing more than the odd spot of farming.
The Romans, however, left a much more visible mark on the town than their Iron Age counterparts; Grade I listed ruins are left exposed and free to visit in the town centre, showing the remains of a Roman Town house divided into several rooms. As well as this, there are Roman mosaic paths lining the floor of the main hall inside the Dorset County museum. As we shook off the rain and left our umbrellas in the little umbrella stands by the door, suitably assured that no one who pays £7 to visit a museum would possibly want to steal an umbrella, I was shocked to find that we could actually walk on the Roman mosaic floor. It wasn’t cordoned off at all, it wasn’t behind glass for you to stick your face on, it was just there, under your feet, absorbing all the drops of rain the the dirt and stones stuck between crevices in all the thousands of shoes that walk on top of it. And actually, it was rather cool.
A little golden inscription at the edge explained how it had been moved there in 1905 from its original position near the High Street. I found that quite odd – how can one simply move a floor? Is there a magic way to move every single tile, without damaging them, which is secret to all museum staff? If that was common knowledge, then divorce settlements would be much more interesting, wouldn’t they? “You can keep the house, but I’m taking the floors!”
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| Dorchester County Museum, complete with Roman tiled floor. |
I overheard a chap with a rather large beard, who had a pen wedged behind his ear so firmly that it made me believe he put it there several years ago, has since forgotten to retrieve it, and is now part of his body in the same way his nose, or his hair, is – I naturally assumed he worked at the museum – and listened to him talking to someone about the floor.
“Well, yes, moving a floor would be rather difficult, but, you see, they actually used glue. Yes, I know, who’d have thought it to be so simple! They covered the top layer in glue, rolled out hessian fabric on top, simply ‘rolled up’ the mosaic floor, and when they got here inside the museum, simply un-rolled it again, un-peeled the hessian and washed off the glue! Remarkable, eh?”
The museum was a treasure chest of wonders – what initially started as a quick escape from the weather turned into 2 hours discovering facts, and learning things about things we had no idea were even things.
Being the official museum of the county, it housed a lot more precious artifacts than anywhere else in Dorset. There’s even a replica of the famous Dorset author Thomas Hardy’s office, where he wrote many of his most famous novels, including Tess of the D’Ubervilles, and the room itself housed all of the original contents from his office, even down to the very pen which wrote the novels! Naturally, I found it rather alarming that, whilst pressing my nose against the glass, the cello, which had been standing up on it’s pointy end and balancing on the fireplace surround, mysteriously fell over, in an almighty clang, as if an invisible ghost had patted it on the neck and decided it shouldn’t be perched there anymore, but should instead be on the floor. I wasn’t quite sure what to do. There was no one standing around me as it happened, and so there was no one for me to turn to, with a shocked face, and remark ‘how strange!’ to, or say ‘it wasn’t me!’ to. I did what any British person would do, and walked away, pretending it never happened, or that I had never been there.
I purchased a mug with a lovely quote on the back from the gift shop – it has an image of Thomas Hardy sketched on the front, with a quote from one of his poems on the back which is just delightful to read, and I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that it has soon become my favourite mug, and makes me feel more like a writer when I drink out of it, almost as if Mr Thomas Hardy has made the tea for me himself and is sitting next to me, prompting me to write more, whilst playing his now-slightly-dented cello for me.
We were called from the museum, almost in perfect unison, by the grumbling of our stomachs. We had passed many pubs on the way to the museum, and so we set out in search of somewhere to have a good pub lunch on this dreary English aftrnoon.
Unfortunately for us, it seemed that every pub we came across, be it The Kings Arms, or the The Maid’s Head, told us the exact same thing as we sat down and began perusing the menu.
“Oh, we’re not serving food today. Thanks.”
“Oh, right. But, your sign outside said food Monday to Friday?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“Well, today is Monday.”
“Ah, yes, I know. But we’re not serving it today.”
This happened no less than three times, and the grumbling of our stomachs was getting louder and more intrusive. Was there a secret pact between all of the pubs in the town to not serve food on a Monday?
Walking down the main High Street, we spotted a sign labelled ‘The Antelope’, and headed towards it hoping it was yet another pub, however, on inspection, revealed it was ‘The Antelope Walk’ – a small cobbled arcade of quaint shops and boutiques. Inside we found a pasty shop, and I can’t even begin to describe the sheer joy at finding somewhere which we could see had food to sell us. However, opposite the pasty shop was a small but modest entrance to a tea room. My sister, being the cake lover she is, eyed the sign up eagerly, and, after finding yet another food-less pub, decided this tea room would do.
The Tea Room was nothing short of spectacular. I admit, I was not expecting the extravagent interior which lay before me as we walked up the narrow stairs and were seated at a table next to the fireplace. The room was oak paneled, with chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, and oak furniture lining the edges of the room, mostly covered in cake stands and cutlery drawers; it felt as if we were sitting down to luncheon in the manor House of a great aristocratic figure. Even the maids were dressed up in stereotypical maids outfit, as if to make the effect even more complete.
I therefore, found it quite hard to believe when I saw a stone tablet above the fireplace explain that this very tea room, where I was now slurping a banana ice cream milkshake (well, I couldn’t get one without ice cream, could I?), was once a room where over 200 people were sentenced to death by Judge Jeffreys.
It was 1685. The Duke of Monmouth, the bastard son of the previous King, Charles II, was trying to overthrow the current King, Charles’ brother, James. It was done as it was always done in those days – with a big and bloody war.
Unfortunately, despite Monmouth being the Captain General of the English Army and having quite a number of supporters from the South West of England, he still lost the battle, and was captured, in a ditch in Ringwood in the New Forest. Not wanting him to get off ‘lightly’ (as if being beheaded wasn’t punishment enough), King James ordered the axe to be blunted, to make it as difficult and as painful as possible to actually remove the head – quite similar, in fact, to the tale of Sir Nearly Headless Nick from Harry Potter – and it was rumoured that it took 9 blows for the head to fall completely off.
The King, James II, however, was not quite satisfied. This was his country, and he couldn’t relax in his big, comfy throne if he knew that there were people out there who had tried take his throne away from him. How very dare they!
And so the King called upon his dear friend, the beloved Judge Jeffreys. The two had been pals for a while now, ever since before the King was the King. He tasked Jeffreys to make it his personal duty to punish all those who had helped Monmouth, and punish them he did, in what was called ‘the Blood Assizes’. He lodged at a house on High West Street (which is now a restaurant called ‘Judge Jeffreys’). In 2014, a secret underground tunnel from this house to the Oak Room was discovered, wide enough for Jeffreys and two other judges to walk shoulder to shoulder, away from prying, disapproving eyes of the public above.
The judge quickly earnt the nickname ‘the hanging judge’, for obvious reasons. In the past, he had been liable to accept bribery from prisoners in exchange for a pardon, and those who had no money were hung. The Assizes, however, were a different kettle of fish. Jeffreys had to prove to the King that he was ruthless, that he was a real man, that he was worthy of such a task, worthy of wearing his frilly little wig and pretty ruffled shirt.
One tale of the Judge remarks how he, in his scandalous and barbaric ways, persuaded a young girl to come to bed with him one night, on the premise that her brother, an accused prisoner, would be set free. The next day she awoke to see his body hanging by the neck from what was called in those day the Bridport Dagger. The nearby seaside town of Bridport (i.e BBCs ‘Broadchurch’ location) was known for its production of netting and rope, and more importantly, for the production of it’s hanging rope – those who were hanged were said to have been stabbed with ‘the Bridport Dagger’. Quite interesting, eh?
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| Bronze statues by Elizabeth Frink at the original site of the gallows in Dorchester, to remember all those who were killed. |
More than 1400 prisoners in total were brought before the judge – most of them sentenced to death. Of that number, 312 were heard in the very Oakroom where we were now innocently sipping our tea, pondering which of the many cakes to eat, and out of that number, 292 were sentenced to death.
Knowing this fact threw an altogether different atmosphere on this elegant room, and made my tea taste all that bit sweeter.
There is debate about how mean Jeffreys really was – that he was no more ruthless than any other judges at the time, and that it was the King who was the mean one, and Jeffreys was simply doing his job, like anyone else would have done. It was also a well known fact that Jeffreys was suffering from rather bad kidney stones – which, is said, to be the male pain-threshold equivalent of ‘giving birth’, and so he often drank to rid himself of the pain, and that perhaps his mean and nasty ways were just because he was in a great deal of pain.
Karma has a way of biting people in the backside, though – four years later, during the Glorious Revolution when King James fled the country, it was reported that Jeffreys, no longer covered by the veil of safety from his regal chum, tried to follow. He had, apparently, disguised himself as a sailor, but was thwarted when a former convict who had been deported as punishment recognised him. He was sent to the Tower of London, only to die, soon after, of his Kidney Stones.
So, if you ever get the chance to visit Dorchester, I highly recommend stopping at the Oakroom for a tea, to walk through the footsteps of one of the most feared men of the 17th century.
Oh, and we had the scones, by the way, in case you were wondering. They were delicious.