Seeds of stories 1 // Wynford Eagle

Local poet and The Stones Sing librettist, Anna Rose-Prynn, reflects on the places that inspired each of her Dorset operas.

Win-frot: the chalk stream in the moonlight

The narrow road that goes from the Roman Road at Two Gates, near Eggardon Hill, to Maiden Newton winds along, and hugs the side of a hill at one point; looking down to your left, there it is. Wynford Eagle - the sparsely built village, the little church, the manor house - looking almost medieval in its layout. But more than that, the chalk stream that winds through the bottom of the valley and which from Celtic times gave this ancient settlement the first part of its name. Win-frot, the bright stream, the white brook. Maybe there was a time when the chalk stream-bed was more evidently white. But it may be because with the right light the water takes on the paleness of the sky and does indeed seem to run white-silver through the green meadows dotted with sheep. It’s a tranquil and beautiful sight.

“...the chalk stream that winds through the bottom of the valley and which from Celtic times gave this ancient settlement the first part of its name. Win-frot...”

A family of sheep cooling off in the shade of the church

If you go to the left then at the farm buildings you encounter the second part of the village’s name. Through the tall hedges on the right you’ll glimpse the impressive old manor house and on top of its portico sits a stone eagle. It’s there to acknowledge the Norman family L’Aigle who were gifted the land around by the Conqueror. Pass the place where the road crosses the brook next to a magnificent shadowy evergreen oak and the brook skirts the garden wall of the manor and under a culvert. St Laurence’s Church is up on the left, and by its door is a stone tympanum, protected by its own little roof like the precious and ancient thing it is; a stone inscribed with the image of two Wyverns, the mysterious dragon-like beasts that were the symbol of old Wessex; and the words 'Mahald de l'egele' for Matilda Eagle who commissioned it, and 'Alvi me feci', for its sculptor. A little acknowledgement of the past of the land by Matilda, perhaps; who knows why. And Wynford Eagle did, then, already have a past. Roman mosaic paving discovered in the 19th century mark it as a Roman villa site, and the numerous Iron Age barrows and Celtic field systems around attest to a long continuum of population.

“Perhaps many of the Sydenhams lie there in lost graves, under the grazing sheep, where the brook gushes through a narrow channel then spreads through wild watercress”

At the time of the Domesday Book it was a thriving place; sheep farms, woodlands, a mill. The church where the tympanum was first set was not on the site it is now - the current church was built in 1842. The original was across the field (Church Mead) nearer the brook and what is now the Schoolhouse (at one time a school, but now a house); maybe it was moved to be further from the brook. Brick and stone works are discernible in the ground at around the place it would have stood. All burials after 1842 took place in the churchyard of the new church and it seems the pre-1842 graves were lost. Perhaps many of the Sydenhams lie there in lost graves, under the grazing sheep, where the brook gushes through a narrow channel then spreads through wild watercress; the Puritan family who owned the house and land from 1551, through the English Civil War up until the last Sydenham landowner lost the house in a scandalous “lottery” and then died in Dorchester prison in 1709. The Sydenhams boasted a famous son: Thomas Sydenham, the “father of modern medicine”, to whom the medicinal principle “First do no harm” (primum nil nocere) is attributed. We know where he is buried - far from his home, in St James’s, Piccadilly. Maybe his unfortunate descendent is under Church Mead but more likely he is one of the bodies to be controversially exhumed during the development of the now closed Dorchester Prison. Not so far from home, and yet a world away.

A view down to the manor house from the top of High Hill

I first saw Wynford Eagle from the other direction. Maybe eight years ago. I had driven over for a walk. I walked from Toller Porcorum by way of Toller Fratrum: Toller of the Brothers, the Knights Hospitallers’ village that similarly sits visibly in its own history and in whose parish Wynford Eagle was eventually subsumed. The Reverend would have ridden on his horse between his two churches, over High Hill, down (or up) what’s now a bridleway and farm track but would have been the main route between the hamlets before the roads into Maiden Newton were built. I walked that day up the side of High Hill that brushes Wynford Wood, which was a medieval deer park up until shortly before the Sydenhams came on the scene. The light tumbling between hawthorn and ash onto the golden-tufted slope - old calciferous grassland which hosts orchids in spring. Whitethroats sang, a fox ran from the top of his little citadel into cover, and maybe the deer I saw were descendants of those that ran in the deer park for the Norman hunters, long ago. 

“I walked that day up the side of High Hill that brushes Wynford Wood, which was a medieval deer park up until shortly before the Sydenhams came on the scene”

Afternoon sunlight through the trees in the old deer park

I live here now. I walk through the water meadows, or up High Hill (the vicar’s track is right outside my door) to weave in and out of the venerable beeches, carved with the initials of people who lived here before me; or along the track next to the ash barrow, looking back down on the village. Most days in all lights and seasons and weathers. But Wynford Eagle is the white brook, and at night when I stand in my garden under the stars I hear its voice as it journeys through the valley over its stones, dipping under the little farm bridges and squeezing through the old unused sheep dips, singing its history and its memories.

Text and photos by Anna Rose-Prynn, 27 January 2021