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March 2021 March 2021

DORSET’S BEST CHURCHES BRIANTSPUDDLE AND AFFPUDDLE
Ian Ventham recently showed me a book called Dorset’s Best Churches by NEWS
Brendan Lehane with Photographs by David Bailey. Ian felt that the two articles
within the book on our churches in Bere Regis and in Affpuddle, might be of
interest to magazine readers. I contacted the publishers, The Dovecote Press, in VILLAGE HALL NEWS
Wimborne, to get permission to reproduce these. Sadly, the book is now out of
print but they were happy for me to publish the two extracts. We reproduced the As I sit down to write this we have over 15 million
one for St John the Baptist Church in Bere Regis and this month we have St people in the uk vaccinated and a large
Laurence in Affpuddle. proportion of our parish are included in that
number. We’ve embarked on the next stage of
We extend our thanks to David Burnett and Lyn Orchard of the Dovecote Press. finding a way of controlling the virus and hopefully
www.dovecotepress.com the beginning of a pathway that will enable our
lives to get back to some form of normality. When the village hall café will be able
to open again is still a matter of guesswork and even more so when the time will
AFFPUDDLE come when we can meet up together in the hall in larger numbers and celebrate
coming through the pandemic.

St Laurence Coronavirus isn’t going away but hopefully sometime
this year we will have it under sufficient control to meet
The river Piddle or Puddle careers up together without the fear that has filled the last 12
down the chalk hills of central months. I for one can’t wait. I think for all of us this last
Dorset, frisking and frothing with lockdown has been the hardest but the snowdrops are
young energy as it passes the out, the daffodils are getting ready to burst out in colour
churches of Alton Pancras, and a sense of better times to come is well under way
Piddlehinton, Piddletrenthide, as winter gives way to spring. The village hall has seen
Puddletown, and Tolpuddle. At more history than any of us and has much it could share
Affpuddle, overhung by willows, it about the resilience of this community. Whether as a
runs beside the churchyard within a barn or a village hall it has witnessed world wars,
landscape of trees and lush hedged meadows. The large straight-sided drought, pandemics, harvests and celebrations, and it
churchyard is lush too and far from overcrowded. Few tombstones date from will host parties, fayres and classes again soon.
before 1800. There is an avenue of eight yews that lead from nowhere special to
nowhere in particular. It has offered us all shelter from the weather and a
place to catch up with one another while we queue for
The tower, at the western end, is bright, tall, angular (the square-cut stair turret our fruit and veg or wait to get that letter to loved ones
stresses the look), rather neat, unadulterated Perpendicular and very handsome. in the post before Steve arrives to take them on for us.
The trim, groomed look pervades the place, outside and in. The brightness of It’s provided shelter from the wind and rain and for some
Portland stone is toned down by a patina of lichens, patches and stripes of flint protection when the sun has been to hot to sit out in.
and dark heathstone, and the warm honey-tones of the Ham-stone which was Even at some of the toughest times it’s been a place
used, as often, for conspicuous details: the tower’s battlements, the spruce where laughter can be heard, and a kind word picks up
pinnacles sprouting from them, belfry windows and so on. Right-angled buttresses those struggling a bit and the week after those who’d
are a little set back from the corners. Gargoyles are well worn but some of the been struggling are seen encouraging those now having a tough time of it all.
depicted monsters are recognisable. Most windows of the nave and north aisle
are Perpendicular, but two in the chancel may go back to the first building in My hope is that we’ll not only remember what the village hall provided for us and
about 1230. One is the east window itself – three slightly pointed lancets, the
middle one taller than those that flank it; the other the smaller window in the
Affpuddle and Turnerspuddle website: www.briantspuddle.info

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