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18-599: The Marshwood Vale (or Vale of Marshwood) is a low-lying, bowl-shaped valley of Lower Lias clay, in the western tip of the county of Dorset in south-west England . It lies to the north of the A35 trunk road between the towns of Bridport and Lyme Regis , and to the south of the two highest hills in Dorset, Lewesdon Hill (279m) and Pilsdon Pen (277m). It is drained by the River Char , which flows south-west to its mouth on

36-565: A landscape that still contains a wealth of wildlife. Farming existed in the vale at least as early as the Iron Age , with early farmers keeping livestock such as sheep and cattle and also cultivating crops such as barley and peas. Later in the Middle Ages these agricultural activities expanded and forest clearance increased; several of the farms in the vale have names ending in '-hay', which means 'enclosure', and these have their origins in

54-401: Is almost wholly surrounded by hills, including Lewesdon Hill (279 m), Dorset's county top , Pilsdon Pen (277 m), Dorset's second highest point and site of an Iron Age hill fort , Lambert's Castle Hill (258 m), also with an Iron Age hill fort and views across the vale, and Hardown Hill (207 m). The vale has escaped wholesale ploughing and large-scale agricultural intensification, leading to

72-584: Is now more specifically known that the Lias is Rhaetian to Toarcian in age (over a period of c. 20 million years between 200 to 180 million years ago ) and thus also includes a part of the Triassic . The use of the name "Lias" for a unit of time is therefore slowly disappearing. In southern England , the Lias Group is often divided into Lower, Middle and Upper subgroups. In Southern England

90-598: The English Channel coast at Charmouth . All of the vale lies within the Dorset National Landscape area. There is an electoral ward with the same name stretching from Whitchurch Canonicorum north to Thorncombe . The total population of this ward is 1,717. The landscape of the vale is agricultural and consists of narrow lanes winding between farms that lie amongst small fields, old hedgerows, copses and ancient semi-natural woods. The vale

108-875: The Inferior Oolite in most of England and the Dogger Formation or Ravenscar Group in the Cleveland Basin. In some areas there is a stratigraphic hiatus , and the rocks are overlain by Cretaceous marine sediments. There are restricted outcrops of Lias rocks on the west coast of Scotland where, in the Sea of the Hebrides depositional basin on Skye , Raasay and Mull , the Broadford Beds Formation , Pabay Shale Formation and overlying Scalpay Sandstone Formation are assigned to

126-485: The 19th century when fundraising began in the 1830s. The site for a new church was donated by Mr. C. B. Tucker of Chard in 1839 and Mr. Jesse Cornick of Bridport was awarded the contract for its construction in January 1840. The foundation stone was laid at a ceremony on 25 March 1840, which was witnessed by approximately 2,000 people. The main body of the church and tower was completed by the end of November. St Mary's

144-488: The Dorset historian John Hutchins (1698 - 1773) who said it "was hardly passable by travellers but in dry summers", whilst in 1965 the Dorset-born agriculturalist and broadcaster Ralph Wightman remembered that in his boyhood in the early twentieth century "after months of hopeless winter rain .... little farms across the fields were cut off in desperate poverty and loneliness". Mains water and electricity didn't reach

162-637: The Lias Group. In Dutch lithostratigraphy, the name Lias has no official status, however, it is often used for the lower part of the Altena Group in the subsurface of the Netherlands and the southern North Sea. In northern Germany, the Lias Group consists of nine formations (from top to base): St Mary%27s Church, Marshwood St Mary's Church is a Church of England church in Marshwood , Dorset , England. The earliest part of

180-743: The Lias is divided into the following formations (from top to base): In the East Midlands Shelf the Lias is divided into the following formations (from top to base): In the Cleveland Basin in Yorkshire the Lias is divided into the following formations (from top to base): In South Wales only the Blue Lias is present. The Lias is underlain by the Late Triassic Penarth Group , and overlain by

198-400: The architect Mr. G. Viles of London were accepted and the church, except for its tower, was rebuilt by Messrs Randall of Lyme Regis for a cost of £900. The church reopened with a ceremony on 15 May 1884. In 2000, St Mary's Church and the adjacent primary school formed a partnership, allowing the school use of the church as a classroom and hall. Improvements to the church were carried out for

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216-426: The church is the tower, which dates to 1840, while the rest of the building dates to a rebuild of 1883–84. St Mary's has been a Grade II listed building since 1983. Marshwood was originally served by a chapel dedicated to St Mary, which was located on the edge of Marshwood Castle. It had Norman origins and became a ruin in the 17th century. Plans for a replacement to serve the village did not come to fruition until

234-474: The floor of the vale has historically provided less amenable sites for building, and only supports a few scattered farms. The village of Whitchurch Canonicorum is the largest settlement connected to the vale, and is notable for its church , which has the rare distinction (shared with few other churches) of possessing the bodily remains of the saint to which it is dedicated (St. Wite or St. Wita, in this case). Pilgrims to this shrine stopped to refresh themselves at

252-497: The forest clearances from this time, as does the vale's irregular pattern of many small fields. In the 13th century Marshwood Castle was built on a site now occupied by Lodgehouse Farm. It was a motte and bailey construction but only earthworks remain today. Due to the poorly-draining nature of its clay soil, until modern times the vale maintained a reputation for being difficult to traverse in wet weather. In 1906 Sir Frederick Treves called it "marshy and full of trees" and quoted

270-555: The south, with the coastal hills and the English Channel beyond. Lower Lias Lias is a Middle English term for hard limestone, used in this specific sense by geologists since 1833. In the past, geologists used Lias not only for the sequence of rock layers, but also for the timespan during which they were formed. It was thus an alternative name for the Early Jurassic epoch of the geologic timescale . It

288-408: The thirteenth-century inn which still stands a couple of miles to the north in the centre of the vale, and folklore recounts that this is why thereafter the inn became known as the "Shave Cross Inn", after the shaved heads of its pious guests. The village which shares its name with the vale, Marshwood , stands on the line of hills to the north, and from the churchyard the whole vale can be viewed to

306-399: The vale until the second half of the 20th century, and ploughing with horses was still common in the 1960s. Today a number of small villages and hamlets (Fishpond Bottom, Marshwood, Birdsmoorgate, Bettiscombe , Pilsdon, Bowood, Broadoak, Ryall and Whitchurch Canonicorum ) surround the vale, sited mostly on the hills and higher ground which virtually encircle it. The impervious clay soil of

324-562: Was consecrated on 26 October 1841 by the Bishop of Norwich , Edward Stanley , acting on behalf of the Bishop of Salisbury who was absent due to bereavement. Once the church was completed, attention turned to fundraising for a national school to be built in the village, which was erected in 1842 on land again donated by Mr. Tucker. By the 1880s, the church had fallen into a state of disrepair and required immediate restoration, with fundraising led by Rev. William Toms. In 1883, plans drawn up by

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