page5

FOLKLORE

Some of the folklore stories come down from pre-Christian times and identical or similar tales are to be found all over Europe. The funeral at the cutting in Milton Lane is a case in point. Here a coffin crosses the road at midnight carried by four headless bearers. There is another one at the other end of the Parish at Poorton.
Eggardon is said to be hunted at night by Diana in her role of Goddess of the Chase. With her pack of ghostly hounds she seeks the souls of the dead.
When cider was made in the village, a sack was placed on the press to ward off witches who made the ‘cheese’ collapse.
Older inhabitants bow to the new moon and a white rabbit has been seen heralding a death.
There is a haunted well, a rattling of chains and horses hooves and a wizard who lived at Bottom Farm who did nothing without consulting the toads - this as late as 1900.
A man was chased down Eggardon by the Devil who asked another villager to sign a contract with him.
A woman was bewitched for seven years and she remained in one room for the whole of that time, eventually leaving it to attend Church. She then lived a normal lile once more.
Finally, at Wytherstone, there is a spring which has the power of healing eyes.
Interesting field names appear in several places in the Parish and would point to the time of enclosure. Melborne field (Melborne was Prime Minister in 1834). Beresford. (Beresford was leader of the Tories in 1847). Waterloo, Victoria, Buonaparte, and Comet (Halley). In West Milton, there is a Faures Mead. Two Faures, Willus and Robtus were brought before Jefferies at the Bloody Assize for taking part in the Monmouth Rising (1685).
Whilst the Parish and local area is popular with tourists and people seeking a retirement home, it is worth recording an eye-witness account of the village written in 1839
‘.....Powerstock is a country Parish, four or five miles from the towns of Beaminster and Bridport, entirely agricultural, and in those days (1839) the village contained two or three farmhouses, the parsonage and a few dilapidated cottages. It was a thoroughly ‘out of the world’ place; the roads to it were lanes and, such as they were, seemed to end there. Probably no one in a twelve-month found that Powerstock was in his way to any other place, and very few, except the union doctor or a chance friend of the vicar, ever went to it at all. The famous ‘Dorsetshire Labourer’ was then to be found there in the full completeness of his wretchedness, ignorance and want. Whether he has now risen to the height of bucolic luxury and nine shillings a week, by which Lord Shaftesbury has just asked the world to believe the Dorsetshire Labourers are distinguished, I cannot tell, but a railway at any rate has penetrated the Parish and Powerstock positively rejoices in a station of its own. But the country road, like many parts of the country, is picturesque and (as my remembrance of it remains) buried in a valley lying below well wooded sloping hills, the village itself at a little distance has a good claim to a kindly regard. The old Church stood in the centre of it, and with the churchyard out of repair, as the whole was, contrasted favourably nevertheless with the miserable cottages and the filthy heaps before the doors, and the pig-sties and the ill-kept farmyards.’
It would be fair to say that, apart from the surfaced roads, electricity and the telephone and a barely sufficient water supply, Powerstock Village has changed very little except of course it has been tidied up. The writer of the above description of the place was witness to an event that has probably not been repeated anywhere else ever.
In 1839 a man and a woman, both villagers, went to Mr. Cookson, the parson, and asked that the banns be published so that they could marry. Cookson, somewhat suspicious because they~had both recently lost their respective spouses paid someone to forbid the banns and arranged to have the two coffins exhumed and the bodies postmortemed. The coffins were left in the church overnight and the postmortems were carried out the next day on the altar table which had been brought down into the chancel from the sanctuary. The church was partly filled by the jury and by curious onlookers who could stand the stench. The county coroner adjourned the inquest to the Three Horseshoes with the result the would-be bridegroom, one Hounsell, was arrested a few days later and taken to Dorchester where he stood trial the following July. He was a horse doctor by trade and because there was no means of telling if the arsenic, of which he legitimately carried a stock, was deliberately administered to his wife, he was acquitted. Whether he ever did marry again we shall never know.
This event would have created a stir at the time and seventy years later another did the same. In 1910 a team of men were mowing grass in a field at Whetley. The pace wasn’t fast enough for one of the team who said to the man in front of him that if he didn’t move faster he would stick his scythe into him. A while later this is what happened and someone was sent posthaste to Beaminster but by the time the Doctor had come the man had bled to death. His assailant served five years in Dorchester Prison.
Whilst the area has declined in population houses and amenities, agriculture which is the main function of a rural area, has become more efficient see tables despite a smaller work force. About twenty percent of the population now live on or by the land whereas a hundred years ago it would have been nearer ninetyfive percent.
Finally, further researches for this essay have produced yet another spelling of the name - Powerstock (1690).

page5