PREFACE

Through the Gate on The Hill and Across The Top. If you have come this far then it’s time to go Down into The Village. Once off the Hill and down through Kings Farm -King John? - you’ll reach Whetley in the bottom. A hundred years ago there was a school here, so we are told, but we go on, over the bridge which spans the now extinct Bridport - Maiden Newton railway.

In the first field on the right in 1900 an argument sprang up in a group of men mowing and one was stabbed with a scythe. He died before the doctor from Beaminster reached him. The place of his death showed in the field for many years.

Across the Plain and down Trench leaving Wanley and its hauntings on the right, and so we come to East Water and up The Knapp into the Village. Nineteen houses have gone from the Knapp in just over a lifetime in the same way as the house of Hounsell has gone from near the school. He is the subject of The Murder that Never Was.

By and large the other stories are about local people who made life in the Village in days gone by. I hope that you have enjoyed the trip over Eggardon and Down into The Village as much as I have enjoyed taking you.

After thirty odd years The Hill, charming in the summer but cold and forbidding in the winter still exercises a certain hold on the mind. It was and still is, always there, in the background of one’s life.

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