InsaneJournal

Current mood:	complacent
Current music:	Fly me to the Moon

Halstock - Evershot - Melbury Park part I
Spoilers: a tiny bit of Yellow Admiral


I went to Evershot, only a few miles away because I wanted to find out about Melbury Park/Melbury Sampford/Melbury House/Melbury Osmond and my road map showed a minor road which I expected to be signposted. When I drove through Holywell and ended up on the A37 to Yeovil I knew I had missed a crossing. I drove back more slowly; there was nothing but a little side-street in Evershot. I went through the main street, past The Acorn Inn and turned at the church.

Down the street a third time and into a parking space in front of the closed village shop!
Shouldering my backpack with the boys I checked the camera and walked towards that little side-street, the only option left. I met and asked a lady if this was the way to Melbury Park. She said yes, that it was all signposted, and that Melbury Osmond was about 2 ½ miles. I found no signpost, but I went on and smiled when I passed a stone seat and read the name of the main street’s part. “The Common”. Maybe it had been part of Simmon’s Lea two hundred years ago?


John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales had described the area and Melbury Sampford in 1870-72:

MELBURY-SAMPFORD, a parish in Beaminster district, Dorset; 1¾ mile NW of Evershot r. station, and 7¾ SW of Sherborne. Post town, Melbury-Osmond, under Dorchester. Acres, 1,024. Real property, £3,208. Pop., 60. Houses, 10. The property belongs to the Earl of Ilchester. Melbury Hall is the Earl's seat; stands on high ground, commanding a fine prospect to the Mendip and the Quantock hills; is an ancient edifice, mainly rebuilt about the beginning of last century; and has an E front of weather-beaten stone, ornamented with Corinthian pillars. The living is a rectory, annexed to the rectory of Melbury-Osmond, in the diocese of Salisbury. The church is ancient, has a pinnacled tower, and contains monuments of the Brownings and the Strangeways.

The small road turned into a Y-junction. Again no signposts but one saying that this was the “Ilchester Estate” and there were to be no vehicles past that point. Only which point, the left or the right? Just in case, I made a photo of the bears as this might be the closest we might get to Melbury Park and House.


I took the left –the tarmac- first and ended up at heavy gates between two columns, topped by two roaring lions, their right paws resting on a crest of armour.

The gate’s iron bars ended in fleur-de-lys. The inset ovals showed a fox sitting on his haunches, a pointer to the family name. This looked like the end of the way because there was nothing telling to proceed.

I turned and took the other non-tarmac-ed way which was getting worse, only stones and pebbles leading first through a deep lane and then down to a field with sheep. I probably disturbed a few of them. Even though there seemed no chance of getting close to the house which must lie to the left, I enjoyed the countryside. Again it seemed unchanged; birds were singing, there was rustling in the underbrush and twice a cock pheasant crossed my way to disappear into the woods,

which reminded me –like a lot of other things recently- of the Yellow Admiral:
“…Ware riot, you vile bitch,' he cried, for Bess, roaming as they talked, had put up an explosive pheasant, well out of reach.
'I have rarely seen a dog look so ashamed,' said Stephen. 'She droops in all her members.'
'And well she may,' said Jack. 'Rambling about like a mad lunatic in that indecent way. If she were younger, I should beat her…

This walk got me nowhere, so I turned, resigning myself to the fact that the memory of the gate would be my only souvenir of Melbury House (or at an earlier time Melbury Hall) which I had marked down to be Woolcombe House for me. At the Y-junction again I saw a field gate open, usually the sign that it was possible to go through. I walked along the field’s edge towards the stone wall further up and next to the Fox gates. At least the boys should sit on the wall to what –IMHO- could have been Jack Aubrey’s family seat.