The landscape west of Corfe Castle is dominated not just by the line of the Purbeck Hills but an uplifted volcano-shaped wedge of gravel heathland known as Creech Barrow Hill. Creech Barrow Hill derives from cruc, the Celtic word for hill, plus the Saxon for mound, and then hill from mediaeval usage. Hill – Hill – Hill is the meaning. ‘Crich’ of 1280 can be traced back to ‘Criz’ in Domesday Book, through to ‘Cryc’ in Old English and ‘Cruc’ in British.
On top are the stone foundations of a royal hunting lodge that is shown on mediaeval maps. The densely overgrown slopes towards Stonehill Down are strewn with the remains of a Victorian brickworks and its clay-pits.
Other pits on the heath were for clay. Some are smothered with water-lilies and most have a nationally important dragonfly fauna. That at Blue Pool – which you pass but can pay to enter – owes its ever-changing blue and turquoise colour to reflected light from the minute particles of clay in suspension in the water. T. T. Barnard turned it into a famous beauty spot in 1935. His daughter, Miss J. S. Barnard, told me that to the surprise of visitors the blueness can be at its strongest on dull days. Don’t expect to see pond life. The water is dead. The high concentration of minerals and the absence of oxygen prevents decomposition and for this reason the 50-feet deep water has no vegetable or animal life.
Linking those workings are the skeletal traces of a miniature railway system, operated on a 2 feet 8.5 inch gauge (there is a section embedded in Nutcrack Lane) with characterful little steam engines and tipper wagons, which collected grey ball clay from an extensive series of open workings and a mix of underground adit and vertical mines. Cut clay was taken to the Pike Bros. weathering beds at Furzebrook for processing, followed by a final rail journey down to Ridge on the River Frome, and onward transport by barge to the Staffordshire Potteries. The locomotive Russell, built in 1906, has survived and now works the revived Welsh Highland Railway at Porthmadog.
Hidden in Killwood is the site of one of Dorset’s 32 underground bunkers for Auxiliary Units of British Resistance. It comprised a Nissen hut, set in a hole dug by the Pioneer Corps, and covered with timber, earth and camouflage in July 1940. The secret store contained weapons, explosives and food for guerrillas to operate behind German lines in the event of invasion. The Creech platoon of farmers, clay-miners and quarrymen were led by Sergeant Fred Simpson and Corporal Doug Green. The men were Les Green, Howard Hatchard, Jack Hatchard, Eli Kitkat and Wilf Stockley.
Conservation land management extends along much of the walk. There is National Trust downland on East Hill, overlooking Corfe Castle, and a Dorset Wildlife Trust chalkland nature reserve at Stonehill Down, with woodland over the lip of the hill. Then come the big heathland reserves with several having been established by the Herpetological Conservation Trust. Speciality species are the rare smooth snake and its colourful sand lizard prey. Adders, grass snakes, common lizards and slow worms complete the full tally of British reptiles.
Basking adders will hear you coming; this is not the sort of habitat where you are going to stray from the path. There is one place where the public path heads through hostile tussocks but we have described a sanitised alternative through the gorse which is also lawful as it takes you across access land.
The big beasts of these wild lands are the herds of Japanese Sika deer. You are likely to heard the ‘yaffle’ of green woodpeckers – particularly if the weather is on the change – as Dorset countrymen call it the ‘rainbird’. Dartford warblers, stonechats, crossbills, buzzards and
hen harriers are all a possibility. If you divert a short distance into Norden Farm for refreshments you will be treated to a happy mix of rare breeds in an archetypal Hardyesque setting.
The Walk
1 Set off along the Church Knowle road with Castle Hill up to the left and the River Wicken to your right. Cross the footbridge, between the stone bridge and site of West Mill, and then bear left. Keep to the central option and follow the sign for Cocknowle into National Trust land. Then follow the foot of the Purbeck Hills with a splendid view behind you of the castle and thatched Vineyard
Farm Cottage.
2 Proceed straight ahead, with the field to your left, at the scrubby end of this section of downland. In the next stretch we embark on the climb to the top. There is a well-preserved limekiln and its quarry across to the left.
In the field on top we bear left and pass three Bronze Age burial mounds.
3 Follow the top of the hill to the Six Ways memorial stone to rambler Mary Baxter (1919-88) and proceed straight ahead, gradually down the slope, to the asphalt road at Bare Cross in a mile.
4 Turn right, down the Cocknowle road to the hairpin corner, where we cross the stile into Dorset Wildlife Trust’s Stonehill Down nature reserve. Climb straight ahead, up the slope and into the wood, and then descend to the lane to the right of Keeper’s Cottage.
5 Turn right, down to the junction with the telephone kiosk and post-box in East Creech hamlet, beside Jubilee Cottage, where we turn left. This lane brings us to the next cluster of cottages at Cotness. The tramway system had reached the first claypits at Cotness, in John’s Plantation, in the early 1880s.
6 Turn right 100 yards after the ‘S’ bend sign, into a driveway, but then turn right across a stile beside the right-hand gate. Bear left in the field, keeping the wood to your right, into the corner where we enter Creech Heath. Turn left in 10 yards, into the rhododendron bushes, and keep close to the field and then a fence. Drop down on to the track-bed of a clay railway and turn right along it.
7 Turn left at a cross-roads of tracks in 150 yards. This heathland path brings us to a gate and the Herpetological Conservation Trust notice board. Pass the Old Mission Hall and turn right and then left, to cross into the Blue Pool entrance, opposite Carefree Cottage.
8 Proceed straight ahead beside the car-park and go through the gate to the left of the admission kiosk. Follow the fence and turn right at the corner to go through the gate into Norden Heath. Turn left in 40 yards, towards Norden Farm, and a glimpse of Corfe Castle.
9 The path, south-eastwards, is boggy in places but well marked. Go through the gate on the other side and turn right across the board-walk. In 500 yards we come to a path junction beside a pond and turn left. Cross the footbridges. Expect to squelch across the spring-line and bear left on reaching a field. Stay inside the wood.
10 At the end of the field, on approaching the camping ground at Norden Farm, turn right through a kissing gate and cross the field to the gates beside the left-hand end of Killwood. Turn left, following the fence at the foot of the ridge, for a mile. Turn right on reaching the signpost beside the gates in view of Castle Hill. This path brings you back to the West Mill Bridge, where we turn left along the track beside the trees to follow the River Wicken downstream to the layby and Visitor Centre.
• This is the penultimate ‘Legging it in Dorset’ that Rodney Legg wrote before his untimely death at the end of July. For an appreciation of Rod, please turn to page 22.
The final ‘Legging it in Dorset’ walk will appear next month in our October issue.