St. Augustine’s Holy Well, Cerne Abbas, Dorset

Following Merrily’s funeraI and wake yesterday, I was invited to stay overnight with Prue and John C. at their home in Cerne Abbas, just a few miles, a fast flowing ford and a couple of valleys away from Cattistock in Dorset. I’ve known John as long as I’d known Merrily as he was also at the same school as Merrily’s three bothers and I. Our histories have been entangled throughout those decades since we were teenagers.

I hadn’t previously visited their lovely listed thatched home which they love enormously. Since moving to this village from south Devon about seven years ago they have dived into the village’s active community. We had a short circular walk around the village and that meant having at least four conversations with locals they bumped into on the paths, roads and meadows.

We started near the church and the biggest house in the village, opposite the former duck pond fed by a spring which surfaces about fifty yards away at the base of the adjacent Giant’s Hill. Where the spring surfaces is called St. Augustine’s Holy Well and is regarded as a sacred spring, only a few yards from where the now demolished Abbey once stood. Apparently there will be another archaeological dig this summer to explore the grounds where the abbey stood, which John is very pleased about as a keen member of the local history society.

We walked on past a Saxon longhouse, now converted into a modern dwelling, and crossed an ancient bridge over the River Cerne which we followed back into the village, passing the remnants of a former water powered mill. Reaching the main street John pointed out the hare and the fox sculpted in thatch on the ridge of a house. John had pointed out houses which had been roofed by the thatcher they have booked to re-thatch their house this spring.

I’ve added a few ’Extras’ to show some of the scenes I saw on this short walk around this lovely Dorset village. The last 'Extra' is a panorama showing Cerne Court and the duck pond, with the graveyard and the holy well about fifty yards to the rear of the pond.

I also found a link to my long gone ‘Blipfolio’, which early Blippers may remember having themselves. I’d posted this summer scene in 2013, showing the Cerne Abbas Giant, which is on the flank of the aforementioned Giant’s Hill, seen from a distant hillside. The river Cerne flows from left to right at the base of the Giant’s Hill.