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CHARITIES

From time immemorial, the rent of a field called Lamp Ground maintained a lamp on the Altar in the Church. Property was left to the Parish to provide bread for the poor, but was later sold and the capital invested. It now provides coal and is administered by the Parish Council.
A report in 1837 by the Former Commissioners for Inquiring Concerning Charities stated:- ‘There is in this Parish a pasture field called Duckpool, estimated to contain lA, iR, the rent of which has immemorially applied to the use of the poor. It is occupied by Robert Hansford as tenant from year to year at the annual rent of.£2.5 which is considered the full value.
This rent is paid to the Churchwardens who generally suffer it to accumulate for three years, and then lay it out in the purchase of loaves of bread, of four pounds weight each, which are distributed among all the poor of the Parish indiscriminately, about Christmas, in quantities varying according to the price of bread and the circumstances of the Poor.’
In 1937, Mr. Arthur Wyatt, Clerk to the P~ish Council, wr~te to the Commissioners explaining that, after paying tax 6f ls.8d. out of the £3 rent, the rest is distributed in bread to the second poor of Powerstock~Tything. He went on to say that times had changed and it took a lot of canvassing by the Council to find recipients for the bread and could the Council buy coal instead? This is what happened and the monies are amalgamated with the Peter Meech Coal Charity.
Peter Meech left monies to provide coal for the poor providing that a tablet to this effect was erected in the Church. (This is in the tower); he aiso left monies to provide funds for deserving cases to be administered by the Vicar and Churchwardens. It was to be used to buy tools for apprentices, pay for visits to hospital and a thousand and one things but, as money lost its value, it dwindled into a pension of 3/6d. per week and was paid to a widow in the Parish, according to the Administrators, and became known as the Peter Meech pension which it never was. It has been amalgamated with other Peter Meech charities. The will of Peter Meech stated that six cottages for the poor were to be built at Beaminster and one was for the use of the poor of Powerstock. They were to be maintained by the rent of Hitts Farm, Beaminster but, as no capital was provided, they were never built.
There was, at this time - 1900- a Lord Sandwich Coal Club but the only written record about it is a letter to Charles Gale of Knapp Farm to ask him to help to deliver two trucks of coal, as usual.
Peter Meech deserves a little more space. He came from Beaminster about 1860 and built a slaughterhouse in Nettlecombe, but could not compete with the one in Powerstock and went bankrupt. He left owing local farmers a lot of money for cattle. In London, he found work with a butcher at Smithfield Market and eventually married his employer’s daughter. His life changed and his father-in-law’s business prospered in his~ hands. He returned to Powerstock and paid all his debts twc>~fold, it is said. He was obviously a
man of money and, when he died in 1900, a special train brough? ?he coffin and mourners from London to Powerstock. It occupies one of the few tombs in the Churchyard.
Charles Gale too played a large part in the making of the place. All the roads in the parish were his responsibility under the watchful eye of F. G. Wakley, the district surveyor. This was in the time before Local Authorities did their own work. In June 1905, Gale sent an account to the Council at Beaminster and Wakley wrote in return: ‘I enclose you a cheque for £5.0.0 on a/c of material although I think it rather cool on your part, as you do not say what quantity you have out~or even if you have commenced, as when I was at Powerstock three weeks ago you had not started, you might have given me some information as I am not supposed to pay money before I know what is done, although I do not doubt but what it is right, let me know the quantity you have quarried and do not exceed 200 yds. in all before you see me, that is at Eggardon Hill and Dragnorth, both’.
Gale was engaged in digging out pockets of flint in the chalk of the Hill for the parish roads. The scars remain after almost a hundred years. He drew stone from a quarry at Whetley Green and, in March ’91, he was still shovelling snow!” His accounts make interesting reading as do his day books:-

April ’91 Hawling 3 id. flint and help carrying Mrs. Smith to Churchyard.
May ’91 Going to Hams after tree .. and got beat. Broke harrow and
Mr. Chilcott horse no good. Pulling tree out of river and left him.
April ’93 Rain all day, all hands home. I going to Milton after cider and made a fool of. (!!)

In 1899, he took a horse to Dorchester Market but only got bid £3.10.0 so he brought the horse home, having paid 5/- for putting it in the auction. In 1921, he was sending an account to Mrs. Sanctuary, probably the daughter-in-law of Thomas Sanctuary:-

Butter 2.6.
Eggs 3.0.
Milk 1.
New Milk 2½
Rabbit 10.

He dipped the Parish sheep in season, charging 8/- per hundred in 1914, but this had gone up to £1 five years later. He hauled carbide from the station to Mappercombe Manor for the lighting system. In 1925, he sent a horse to Beaminster for the tar spraying tackle and charged 10/-. He also hauled tar and ‘chippens’ from the station.
In 1918, his daughter, May, was keeping the day book and noted th;at ‘A new airship came over to Greys at 100’ clock No. 55Z40. Later that month -April - another came 55Z19'. These aircraft were flying out over the channel, when weather permitted, to spot enemy shipping. May Gale obviously ‘fell’ for one of the airmen but, one day, he flew away never to return.
In 1900, his charge to Crawford for a man and two horses ploughing was 10/-. In 1912, he paid Walburton 12/&i. for thirteen items of boot repairs. The wear and tear must have been heavy for the next quarter he payed a further 8/11. for repairs. In September 1909 Wakley, the surveyor, wrote ‘Do you think I can have some nuts? I met a friend from Bristol a few days ago and promised him some but there doesn’t seem to be many left around here. Please let me know as soon as possible’.
His business covered the whole range of work in a rural area. He mowed the grass on the railway line, trimmed hedges, hauled hay, thatched, threshed the corn, built walls, beat the game for the Manor, pulled docks, harvested bracken for farm bedding and rushes for thatching. He dug potatoes and swept the village streets, selling the sweepings to the parsons (there were three in his time) for fertilizer for the garden. He employed about six men and one, in particular, was the plague of his life. His name was Walt and he seems to have spent all his time in a drunken spree, each one noted in the day book - ‘Walt home drunken’. ‘Walt not at work’. ‘Walt cutting grass and Walt got drunk and cut his hand.’ In 1866, Walt went to Dorchester to join the Police but it seems they wouldn’t have him for, six weeks later, he was paid 15/~. Walt wasn’t always alone though as ‘Wet all day, all hands drunk’.
In 1907 an entry reads - ‘I going to Cern to see Walt for the last time’. Walt died four days later, and ‘Walt on the Spree’ was written no more.
Death came and only slightly disturbed the daily pattern. In May 1898, an entry reads - ‘Mother died this morning 20 minutes to 30’ clock and I going to Izzack Gales about coflin’and afterwards land Charl going to Hooke Park for 100 bundles of wood and going round Nettlecombe and sold all’. Two days later... ‘1 load of mangle to H. Biles and burying Mother at 12 o’clock and I ploughed Plot later’.
A man who achieved notoriety was Wiltshire born Izzaac Gulliver a smuggler, who lived at North Eggardon at one time in his career. He planted trees on the top of Eggardon in order to have a landmark when his boats approached the shore at Bexington. One solitary tree remains. He kept forty or fifty men constantly employed. They wore a kind of livery, powdered hair and smock frocks from which they attained the name ‘White Wigs’. The smuggled goods were taken along the trial from Bexington to Powerstock Toller, Corscombe, Halstock and on to Bath. In later years, he became quite a gentleman and his daughter married into the Fryer family whose descendants owned part of Eggardon until the mid 1800’s.

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