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| | | From Shetland to the Scilly Isles, Open Country travels the UK in search of the stories, the people and the wildlife that make our countryside such a vibrant place. Each week we visit a new area to hear how local people are growing the crops, protecting the environment, maintaining the traditions and cooking the food that makes their corner of rural Britain unique.
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Helen Mark Helen visits Cranborne Chase, which straddles three county boundaries: Dorset, Wiltshire and Hampshire. It is a rolling chalk landscape with dramatic scarps and steep-sided, sheltered valleys. The area is rich in pre-historic monuments, hillforts and ancient burial mounds called barrows. It was a royal hunting ground for centuries and, as a result, remained almost untouched by modern agriculture until the mid-19th century.
East Dorset Towns and Villages
Wiltshire Tourist Information
Hampshire Tourist Information
Helen talks to local historian Gordon LePard as they walk some of the Roman road that runs 15 miles from Old Sarum near Salisbury to Wimborne. The road runs straight as an arrow and was built to last, is unusual because it is raised six feet above the surrounding countryside - providing a useful field of vision for any one using it but also providing a poignant reminder to the local population of the power of Rome.
Roman Roads in Britain
Helen and Gordon also discuss the Dorset Cursus which is a banked causeway that zig-zags across the Chase, over six thousand years old its purpose remains a mystery although it does seem to have some religious significance as it connects some of the surrounding burial grounds.
Essay on cursuses
Martin Taylor is a local gamekeeper just like his father, grandfather and great-grandfather before him. He shows Helen an heirloom he inherited from his uncle George - a swinghle stick. Adapted from use as a flail to separate the wheat from the chaff at harvest, the swinghle stick evolved into a deadly weapon used by poachers to attack gamekeepers in their frequent confrontations across the Chase. Martin describes one "battle" where two gamekeepers and three poachers died. The penalty for poaching in the late-17th century was life imprisonment or seven years deportation - despite the penalties enough people were desperate enough to risk all for venison.
Emma Chambers is manager of Larmer Tree Gardens, a Victorian pleasure gardens based in the Rushmore Estate. It was built by General Augustus Pitt-Rivers and is set high on the Cranborne Chase. It provides exceptional views of the surrounding countryside and was originally created for the enjoyment and education of the estate workers and local villagers. It takes its name from the ancient Wych Elm, known as the Larmer Tree, which stood on the Wiltshire/Dorset border and is reputed to be the site where King John met his entourage before the hunt. Today it is still the site of festivals and concerts.
The Rushmore Estate
Martin Green is a local farmer and archaeologist. Winner of the prestigious Pitt-Rivers Archaeological Prize for amateur archaeologists, he has been collecting skeletons, flints and artefacts on his farm and the surrounding countryside for 35 years ever. He has built a museum of his findings in the old chicken shed on his farm near the village of Sixpenny Handley. He is particularly adept at chipping away at flint stones to make axes and scrapers - a technique called "napping".
Cranborne Chase Excavations
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Z to Z Britain
Open Country looks back 2003
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