In the footsteps of Treves – The Isle of Portland
Steve White and Clive Hannay follow Treves to Hardy’s Isle of Slingers
Published in September ’17
Sir Frederick Treves, writing in his book Highways and Byways in Dorset in 1906, appears to have a grudging respect for Portland despite declaring the place ‘ugly’. True, Portland is like no other part of Dorset. With its spectacular sheer cliffs, its numerous quarries, its dearth of trees, chocolate box it is not, but ‘ugly’ seems a little callous.
Atypically, as if to avoid immediate offence, he begins politely enough: ‘Portland is an abrupt peninsula of rock, some four and a half miles long and less than two miles in width. Its sides are steep except at the point which is thrust forth into the Channel. Its summit is flat, and can nowhere be reached without a climb. Years ago the “isle” was merely a sheep run, where pasture was found for hardy black-faced sheep, which were well esteemed, and whose descendants still haunt the bleak plateau. No really characteristic Dorset dinner is even now complete without “Portland mutton” on the menu. In Hutchins’s time [the late 1700s] the number of sheep on the island was 3,000 and the population 2,000. There was a little arable land, as there is still, while much care was devoted to the growing of sainfoin.’
Portland sheep were near extinction in the 1970s. The Rare Breeds Survival Trust’s website says that the last Portland sheep left the isle in 1920; they were re-introduced in 1977. The Portland Sheep Breeders group now has 250 members, but just one small flock of 28 sheep is kept on Portland itself, at Fancy’s Family Farm. Sainfoin, a legume once grown widely as it improved weight gain in grazing animals, is also making something of a comeback in the UK, although it is unlikely that sainfoin is now grown on Portland as there are no longer adequate grazing animal numbers to justify it.
The Joseph Pennell illustration of ‘Church Hope’ Cove is, despite Treves’s unusually poetic words, rather bleaker than Clive’s cheerful rendering
Treves now quotes John Leland, who in 1542 visited the area while compiling his ‘Itinerary’ of England and Wales at the behest of Henry VIII. Treves reports: ‘Leland writes: “… the island was ever wind-swept, barren and sour, treeless and ill supplied with water”. It is the same island still. As in Leland’s time, “there be very few or utterly no trees in the isle”. The southern part of the rock, near the Bill, retains its primitive condition unchanged. Here in melancholy fields marked off by stone walls are the little sturdy Portland sheep. Elsewhere are a few plots of ground where depressing phases of agriculture are being carried out, and where patches of corn and of potatoes are grown under protest. There is not a tree to be seen from the summit of the island, for the flora of the Portland plateau consists of harsh grass, a few teazles, and an occasional starving
bramble bush.’
Even the most romantic writer would be hard pushed to call Portland a farming community these days and nobody goes for rambles in Portland Forest. That said, trees are now more plentiful than in Treves’s time. Many of the roads and streets have been planted over the years and some trees have reached considerable size.
A couple of large fields on the south-west of the island and plots of allotments are really the only evidence of cultivation. Other than these few bucolic additions, the scene representing Portland is predominately grass, quarries and cliffs. Numerous buildings and huts are now characteristic of the area near the Bill, while there are still small fields with stone walls around them to be found.
Having been mildly polite about Portland by allowing someone else first dibs at putting the boot in, Treves now holds little back: ‘The chief town of Portland is Fortune’s Well. The name suggests a glen full of trees and dripping ferns, where timid maidens come to learn of the future by peering into a pellucid pool. Portland encourages no such mawkish fancy as this. The capital is like the island – ugly. Its ugliness is vaunted with so little shame as to be nearly immodest.’ For a moment Treves takes a backward step: ‘There is, however, something virile about its plainness, for, in a stern, Cromwellian mood, it spares the spectator nothing. The houses of stone and slate condescend to no weakness in the matter of style or decoration.’
The he returns to name-calling: ‘The church has about it a sound, convincing ugliness. The town is built upon the side of what the inhabitants call a hill and others a precipice….There is just one thing of mockery at the entrance to the town—a public garden and a band-stand’.
As far as Fortuneswell is concerned, notwithstanding the change of name configuration from two words to one, things are much as they were just over a century ago, when Treves was here. There are a few streets of modern houses built in the intervening years but essentially Fortuneswell contains mainly Victorian or pre-Victorian houses. It is not, though, a West Dorset thatched village, but Fortuneswell does have a certain charm, probably owing to its proximity to the sea, which can be glimpsed through alleys and gaps wherever one is. The bandstand was removed during the 1960s and the gardens in which it was located now feature Portland’s D-Day memorial, donated by the USA and unveiled by the US Ambassador on 22 August 1945. It commemorates the fact that Portland Harbour saw the launch of the major part of the American assault force on 6 June 1944.
Having dealt harshly with Fortuneswell, Treves softens: ‘There are still some very picturesque old cottages on the island, which belong mostly to the early part of the seventeenth century. They will be found at Easton, Weston, and Chesil (or Chiswell). Small as they are, they display stone-mullioned windows with dripstones, cosy porches and fine gables, and often enough very sturdy buttresses. To many a date is attached, while they are notable as the only buildings in the island roofed with the humble thatch. There is a great fascination about these little houses, as well as about the Spartan flat on which they are placed, regardless of shelter, shade, comfort, or view.’
Now even older and still very picturesque, the old stone cottages remain a key feature of Portland . What has changed is the roofing material, because with the exception of Portland Museum, no thatch is evident. Here and there the steep pitched roofs of some houses betray the fact that they were probably once covered in reed or straw. Some fine examples of these stone cottages can be found in Wakeham, which wide street make for an impressive setting.
Treves now finds something he can be poetic about, almost exactly, in fact, what he bemoaned the lack of in Fortuneswell: ‘The strangest thing about this sour island remains to be told. There lies on the east side of it a tiny, green-wooded dell, which for charm and picturesqueness can hardly be surpassed. This is the cove of Church Hope. The glen is narrow and full of shade, a most gentle hollow in the cliffs opening to the sea. On the summit is Pennsylvania Castle, a modern castellated house, built in 1800 for John Penn, governor of the island, and grandson of the founder of Pennsylvania. It is surrounded by a luxuriant garden, in vivid contrast to the rest of the barren and dusty rock. The trees in this genial nook were planted by the said John Penn. At the bottom of the dell is a small cove of shingle, where a wet beach glistens among a waste of rocks and brambles. There are some tarred fisher huts on the shore, together with a few boats, lobster-pots, and nets’.
Something that has gone missing since Treves’s time is the ‘H’ from Church Hope, similarly the ‘tarred fisher huts’, now replaced by beach huts. This is now a popular leisure spot, and rightly so on a part of Portland short of such things as easy access to the sea. Church Ope Cove is so popular it even has its own car park, which it shares with the museum. John Penn’s castle is now luxury accommodation with a spa available for private hire. Nearby are some ecclesiastical ruins. Treves notes: ‘Close to the margin of the cove are the ruins of the old parish church of Portland. It came to an end through a landslip, and of it little remains but ivy-covered walls, an arched doorway or two, and certain venerable tombs buried among the grass of the churchyard. One gravestone bears the date 1692. The eternal quiet of the place is broken only by the sound of the sea.’
The church of St Andrew’s was in use until the middle of the 18th century, when it became victim to the Great Southwell Landslip of 1734, the second largest recorded such event in Britain. The remains of the church and graveyard can still be found close to the South West Coast Path and are likely much as Treves saw them. It is recorded that there was a gravestone bearing the inscription, ‘To Mary Ferly who departed this life ye 10th day of March, 1692, aged 24 years’. This may be the one seen by Treves.
