Portland
Island – 1858
Located and transcribed by Bob Stone
this
article appeared in
"Household
Words" A Weekly Journal
conducted
by Charles Dickens
dated
17 April 1858
Pages
423 to 429
Has
Dorsetshire no scenery, no mines, no manufactures; nothing but starving
labourers on bad farms and dusty third-rate watering places?
Nine
people in ten are not aware of the important fact, that Portland Island is no
island at all; but a peninsula. Formerly,
it is true, the world got over to Portland Island by means of a ferry-boat.
Less than twenty years ago, the way to the ferry, and the only way, was
over a mound of shingles, into which horses' legs must plunge knee-deep at
every step. Now, there is a famous
road, ending in a good strong bridge over the little strait; and, on the bridge
- rare sight on British soil - are sentinels, who, with fixed bayonets keep
guard over the turnpike-gate.
From
this bridge there is a fine view of the north-west side of the island, but the
best first view is to be had from the Weymouth steamer while crossing the
Portland Roads. From the steamer
we
see right a head a precipitous escarpment of stone, the topmost point of which
is four hundred and eighty feet above the sea level, and which is relieved in
the foreground by a long grassy slope, reaching down to the houses and the sea.
Chips
of that stone block are Saint Paul's cathedral, many of our London churches,
and the bridges of Westminster and Blackfriars.
But it does not achieve greatness in London only, part of it is being
transformed into a Breakwater, that shall make of its own coasts a haven, even
for the largest men-of-war.
Be
it known that the foundations of our island are laid in Kimmeridge clay, which
on the north side of us rises to some height.
Over the clay are beds of Portland sand, and of the oolitic limestone,
known as Portland stone. We dip
towards the south, and as the island dips, the beds of clay and sand and stone
dip. Of the stone, the lower bed,
just over the clay, contains kernels and veins of flint.
The
middle bed is full of petrifactions. The
upper bed, to within twenty feet of the surface (surface of the series, not of
the ground) consist of our fine architectural stone.
That is our best bed, we call it the White-bed.
There is a blanket over it three or four feet thick, of limestone full of
holes, left by shells that have made impressions and then disappeared; that
blanket we call Roach. Over it is a
rather tumbled sheet of flint nuts, that we call Cap.
Over this is a coverlid of earthy oolitic waste, known as the Dirt-bed.
Beautiful yellow pyrites, known as sugar-candy spar, and stalactites of
chalky (sugar-plum) spar occur in the clefts of the limestone.
Of stone of all kinds, the thickness is about ninety-three feet on the
east side of our island, and a hundred-and-twelve on the west.
The
White-bed, or Whit-bed was brought into fashion by King James the First, who
used it in rebuilding the Banqueting House at Whitehall.
But it was not until after the great fire of London that vast demands
were made upon it; since that date it has been a valuable article of commerce.
Nevertheless, as matter of sentiment, I prefer the Dirt-bed.
It is a black loam, rich in the remains of tropical foliage and in the
great trunks of trees changed into flint. Some
of them, more than thirty feet long, branch at the upper end, and they bore
heavy crops of cones, in days when there were no men to be convicted of offences
against society, and when there was no society, except that among animals who
were not likely to use Portland as a convict-station, and employ the prisoners
in work on a great Breakwater.
Of
Portland quarries there are two kinds, these and those:- These, are the
Government quarries for the
Breakwater, three hundred feet above the sea-level on the east side of the
island; those, are the old private quarries, lying more to the westward at a
lesser altitude. From both, the
stone is lowered on inclined tram-roads, furnished with "drums" for the
passage of the chains at the head of each incline, the loaded wagon in its
descent pulling the empty one up by its weight.
The Government "drums" are bigger than the private drums, and –
strange to say – display much more science in construction.
The private quarries export annually about fifty thousand tons of the
valuable Whit-bed, a duty of two shillings being paid on every ton.
The stones are got out, of different sizes; upon the average, about one
ton each in weight, but many of the large blocks weigh five or six tons.
The large quantity of stone just mentioned is less than one- ninth part
of the quantity of rubble-stone (Cap) which is tumbled every year into the sea
through the massive rafters of the Breakwater cage.
The Cap is not marketable among architects, being hard, rough, and shelfy;
and it is supposed that twenty millions of tons of it were lying idle on the
summit of the island, when the Breakwater was begun.
The
sights of Portland, independent of the Government works and the quarries, are
Portland Castle at the water's edge, Rufus Castle over the hill, the ruins of
old Portland Church down the precipitous hill side, Pennsylvania Castle, a
modern house built by a grandson of William Penn, with feudal aspirations, and
the two light-houses at our Tierra del Fuego, or the Bill, which warn sailors of
the Race and of the Shambles. These
are not great sights, and I make no boast of them; but Portland was well worth
going to see long before any castle was built there.
The bold and noble face of the old island itself is, after all, the
finest thing it has to show. It is
worth castle, ruin, convict prison, breakwater, and quarries.
If
you would view Portland aright, visit it by the pale moonlight a day or two
after a heavy gale, when the sea is still running with all its force upon the
Chesil Bank. Go up to the hill-top,
and you will trace a wizard lizard curve in all its beauty. The wind is perhaps high, and blows away the full sound of
the sea, but the wide-drawn line of foam stretching far out along the distant
miles, tell what a deadly force is fighting in each wave to break the neck of
the good island. There lies the
Chesil Bank, dreamily stretching far away to the north-west and forming a
natural breakwater from the west, for Weymouth, and the Roads; lover down,
guarding the splendid Swan-Decoy, of Abbotsbury, where the abbots used to
indulge in seven thousand head of swans, and where Lord Ilchester keeps up a
goodly number at this day; still farther down – always kind to the men on
land, but never quite disposed to join hands with its sister-shore – it melts
away in the dim distance, and we see only that it is always gently following its
own beautiful curve, still but a little way distant from the land, but still
with the division set between the shores. If
turning southward the spectator gets out of the Bill, he will not, except in
clear daylight, be able to boast of having seen Torbay westward, and the Isle of
Wight to the east, but he may do better. He
may fancy himself at the world's end and think new thoughts.
The crags may talk to him of that by-gone time, when the Invincible
Armada did pass along the Dorset coast, and the young gentry of England did
incontinently hire ships from all parts at their own private charges, and
therein speed to their own fleet as volunteers. William Hatton, a nephew of Sir Christopher Hatton, then the
owner of Corfe Castle, with many more of the highest rank, became efficient
members of this gallant yacht-club. The
old rocks may ring out the echoes, wakened on a July day two hundred and seventy
years ago, when, after a dark night and with a heavy sea running, Howard and
Raleigh came to blows with the Armada, off this very point.
Then, a battle began, which lasted nearly all that day; they, the English
fighting loose and at large, and avoiding close combat or boarding, played off
their small craft against the galleons in noble style; keeping separate, and
always in motion, they tacked and played about the enemy, pouring in their fire;
then, sheering out of range, they would return before the Spaniard had time to
reload, give him another broadside, and sheer off again.
Sir Henry Wotton, while the work was a-doing, compared all this in the
joy of his heart, to a merry morris dance upon the waters.
Danes
by descent, with a strong infusion of Saxon blood, we Portlanders are a
stalwart, muscular race, admirably suited to our quarry-work, and still keeping
a good deal aloof from our neighbours on the mainland.
Four or five family names, of which Pearce and Stone are the most common,
suffice for almost the whole of us. There
are probably five hundred Pearces. The old practice of Gavelkind prevails here still.
The Crown is lord of the manor in chief; but, under the Crown, there are
no fewer than three hundred and twelve landed proprietors, who lord it over
three thousand acres of titheable land. There
is no want of boldness among Portanders. With
fourteen vessels, averaging seventy tons each, we carried on the
"free-trade" merrily, within the memory of man.
It is commonly reported on the spot, that of all the owners of those
formidable luggers, not a descendant is now living.
In many of the old houses in the upper villages may be seen large holes,
which were used as Smuggler's Caves. But
the trade seems to have died out with the descendants of the owners of the
fourteen vessels.
The
wrecking-system, too, is gone. Our
forefathers were mighty men in that shore-traffic, and used to sing, with a
relish, the local ditty;
"Blow
wind, rise sea,
Ship
shore 'fore day."
Scarcely more than a hundred years ago, they rifled the Hope of Amsterdam of jewels and bullion on board, as she lay stranded a few miles to the north-west of Portland. For two whole days the shore was an unbroken scene of barbarity and violence. When all was over, the owners of the Hope were poorer by five – and – twenty thousand pounds. In these days, when a vessel drives ashore upon the Chesil Bank, what was done formerly for robbery, is now done for charity and mercy. When a vessel has no chance left, a few well-tried men are always ready, half-stript, with a rope lashed round the waists, who make their way to the vessel as soon as she runs aground, or strike out for any floating goods.
There
is a man now living on the spot, who, when his wife's time was near, and there
was great fear for her life, leaped on a horse and galloped along the Chesil
Bank (no easy matter,) to the ferry, then the only way of communication with the
mainland. A high wind was blowing,
and all his efforts failed to make the boatmen hear. The man thought of his wife; and, tearing off his clothes, he
swan the strong current of the strait, pulled the boat back for the horse,
dressed, rowed back again, galloped into Weymouth for the doctor, and brought
him back. This fine fellow's
nickname (the island deals largely in nicknames) is Ben the Baker.
All honour to gallant Ben, the Deloraine of Portland!
Electioneering
was, in former days, another favourite pastime of the inhabitants, and they
liked it almost as well as wrecking. Men
of all sorts of abilities, and of all sorts of morals have represented Weymouth
in parliament. In the times of the
troubles, John Strangeways, a noble ancestor of the Earls of Ilchester, was the
member; and, after the Restoration, Sir William Penn, father of the William Penn
of history. In days more
recent, Sir Christopher Wren and Sir James Thornhill, the architect and the
painter of St. Paul's, both sat for the borough; Sir Christopher taking his
seat when over seventy years of age. About
a hundred years ago, Bubb Dodington was jobbing votes there in good earnest, as
the following extracts from his Diary may show:
"1752,
May 5 – Saw Mr. Pelham; began by telling him of
the
application I had received, & c. I
assured him that
the
interest of Weymouth was wholly in me and Mr. Tucker
&
c; and for this I desired no rank that could justly
create
envy in my equals, or suspicion in my superiors.
1754,
April 14, 15, 16 - Spent in the infamous and disagreeable
compliance
with the low habits of venal wretches.
And
not long before his time, one John Ward, of Hackney, M.P. for Weymouth, had been
expelled the House for forgery, and had stood in the pillory.
At the death of this conscientious senator, there was found among his
papers, in his own handwriting, a characteristic prayer, thus beginning:
O Lord, thou knowest that I have nine houses in
the city of London; and that I have lately purchased
an estate in fee simple in the county of Essex. I
beseech thee to preserve the two counties of Middlesex
and Essex from fire and earthquake; and as I have a
mortgage in Hertfordshire, I beg of thee to have an eye
of compassion also on that county; and for the rest of
the counties, thou mayest deal with them as thou art
pleased. Give a prosperous voyage to the Mermaid
sloop, because I have not insured it. Enable the bank
to answer all their bills.
And so on.
The
increase, lately, in our population, has been very great. It is just nineteen years since the rector buried an old man
of ninety, who was said, at his birth, to have made the thousandth living
Portlander. When the Act was
passed, ten years ago, for the formation of the Breakwater, the population had
only doubled itself in the hundred years; there were then two thousand people in
Portland. There are now six
thousand; the ten years having trebled it.
Yet the insular mind seems to remain in its old condition, and to run in
the same traditional grooves.
A
great deal is to be said about the Chesil Bank; and a great deal has been ably
said of it by the engineer-in-chief of the Breakwater Works, Mr. John Coode.
For what we have now to say we are indebted to a valuable pamphlet issued
by that gentleman.
The
Chesil Bank or Pebble Bank – Chesil is Saxon for pebble – is a vast ridge of
shingle, in the form of a narrow isthmus, lying upon the western sea-board of
Dorsetshire, between Abbotsbury and Portland
Starting from Abbotsbury Castle, the Bank skirts along the margin of the
meadows for half a mile, where it meets the Fleet, a shallow estuary between a
quarter of a mile and half-a-mile in width; it then runs parallel to the
mainland as far as Wyke, a distance of eight miles; and thence pursues a more
southerly course of two and three-quarter miles further, to Portland, where it
becomes an ordinary beach. The
shingle is composed, chiefly, of chalk flints, with a sprinkling of red
sandstone pebbles. We may pick up
now and then a jasper pebble, of flesh-coloured red; these are like Devon
limestones, and have often been mistaken for them.
There is, however, no calcareous matter in them.
Still more rarely, we may see green and red porphyritic pebbles: enough,
however, to show that they do not come there by accident.
A Portland fisherman will assure us that, land him where we please upon
the Bank, in a pitch-dark night, he will know his whereabout by the size of the
pebbles. This is absolutely true
within certain limits, if the observation be confined to the small shingle which
is found immediately upon the crest. The
graduation in size is very regular at that level, though variable lower down.
Whence
come the pebbles? And, when found,
what force is at work to transport them from point to point, and to plant them
thus in the form of this high mound? First,
it is clear that Portland cannot raise the shingle.
There are no pebbles whatever on its west-side, excepting an
accumulation, entirely oolitic, from the waste of the strata above, and from the
rubble and quarry waste, thrown over the cliff.
From the main land near Wyke, keeping along the coast as far as Lyme
Regis, we find no chalk flints. It
is manifest that none of these oolitic beds would supply any materials
corresponding to the shingle on the bank. Westward
of Lyme there comes a change. Indications
of chalk with numerous flints begin at that point; and, between Lyme and
Sidmouth, the cliffs yield a large quantity of flints.
Again, between Sidmouth and Budleigh Salterton, the dull red and blotched
pebbles of new red sandstone nearly cover the beach; and on this very beach the
jasper pebbles are found, brought down by the river Otter from Aylesbere Hill,
about six miles north; to which point they have been laboriously traced.
It may then be determined, that the chalk formation between Lyme and
Sidmouth is the source from which come the chalk-flints, the chief bulk, that is
to say, of the Chesil Bank. Westward
of Sidmouth the flints end: but the sandstone and jasper pebbles, which form an
appreciable item in the component parts of the Bank, prevail down to Budleigh
Salterton.
Everywhere
the shingle of the bank terminates suddenly, at a given depth of water.
The depth varies with the degree of exposure and aspect of the shore; yet
the tidal current remains, for all practical purposes, the same.
The largest pebbles are invariably found to leeward: that is, they
increase in size from Abbotsbury to Portland, from north-west to south-east.
Moreover, there is a very marked and rapid increase between Wyke and
Portland. Yet it is precisely at
this point that the tide begins to slacken; nor is it any way reasonable to
suppose that a stream, varying only from half a knot to one knot per hour,
should exert any sufficient influence upon the gigantic mass. Let us assume, then, that the tidal currents do not bring the
pebbles to the bank, but that the wind-waves yield the active force, thrown as
they are upon the west bay coast by the prevailing west and south-west winds.
So we shall understand why the large pebbles are found to leeward.
They present a greater surface to the waves, and are moved along more
readily in consequence. If we throw
a pebble of the size of an orange upon a beach composed of smaller pebbles, we
see it rolled up and down more actively than smaller particles, which form as a
mass a generally even plane, and expose individually only a small part of their
surface to the action of the wave.