Toller Porcorum 2


The Church of St Andrew and St Peter

The Parish church, built mostly of local stone, is visible from quite a distance away as it has been carefully sited on a hillock in the very centre of the village. The tower dates from around 1300, and there are four gargoyles just below the battlements, whose purpose was to empty water away from the roof - and also to frighten evil spirits. Inside the porch are rough stone walls, the old plaster having been stripped away. On the right of the porch is a Victorian iron stair to the ringing gallery while just beyond the foot of the stair is a wooden door which opens on to a spiral stone stair up to the bell chamber at the top of the tower.

There are six bells in the top of the tower. The tenor bell is the oldest dating from the 16th century, and decorated with ornamental alphabet letters round it. The next three bells are dated 1767, 1779 and 1669, with the first of these being inscribed Richard Keech - the family of Keech owned the tannery in Toller and made gloves and boots. By the 1930s the bells would not ring and in 1937 they were taken out and rehung. The new bell frame, however, was big enough for six bells rather than four. At the end of the Second World War the parish priest, Parson White as everyone knew him, suggested that two new bells should be added to the ring, as a thanksgiving for the fact that Toller had lost no men in the war, but he died shortly after and the idea seemed lost. Over 40 years later Peter Billen, who first rang the church bells as a boy, to celebrate the Allied victory at El Alamein in 1942, became Churchwarden, and determined finally to fulfil Parson White's wish. It took him two years to raise the £10,000 necessary, but he succeeded, and in 1990 two new bells, one inscribed 'Peace' and the other 'Thanksgiving for Mercy' were hung in the tower.

Entering the church proper the first thing the visitor sees is the ancient font. It is in fact two fonts. The top part is 15th century with leaves and flowers on the side, but it is the lower half, the pedestal, that is the more interesting. It is roughly carved with a ram's head in one corner and spirals on the other three, and is in fact a complete font in itself - for there is a shallow bowl in the top of it. The precise date of the pedestal is debatable, with some placing it in the 12th century, however others suggest that it is in fact far older, perhaps even part of an ancient Roman altar - which would make it a very rare example of Christianity meeting and overcoming its pagan forebears. Close by, on the north wall, is a list of the Rectors of Toller Porcorum since 1259.

On the left of the nave is a high window, which was to light the gallery, which stood across the back of the nave and up the south side of the church. The gallery was built because the church was not large enough to seat the whole congregation, and access to it was by an outside wooden stair. The remains of the gallery door can be seen on the outside of the north wall.

The inside of the church contains a variety of relics of old Toller. The school bell that called Toller children to school for over a century, from 1875 to 1980, is hung in the northwest corner of the nave. On the north wall is a board setting out the charities of George Browne of Frampton, dated 1774. Also on the left is an archway to the vestry - the archway used to be the north door to the church, and then the present vestry was the porch. Over the vestry arch are the arms of King William IV (1830-37), and on the same wall is a memorial to the three men of Toller who died in the first World War.

On the floor of the nave, usually covered by the carpet, is the grave slab of ...Banger, Yeoman, died 1609. Outside in the churchyard the oldest legible tombstone is the table tomb of Matthew Banger, died 1611, and there are other table tombs from the 17th and 18th centuries. On the right hand side, just inside the church, is a plan of all the graves.

The large window in the north wall was originally the east window of the chancel. When it was moved to its present position, Mr Thomas Legg was not satisfied with the position of a stone in the arch which he was building over the window. He stood a ladder in a wheelbarrow in order to reach the stone, but the ladder slipped and Mr Legg fell, breaking his back and dying soon afterwards.

Three of the stained glass windows in the Church, all put up between 1881 and 1920, are memorials to the Pope family, who lived and farmed in the parish for over a century, and whose tombs are in the churchyard. They include one small window on the south wall, showing the teaching of Timothy and the calling of Samuel, which was put up in remembrance of Edward Francis Pope, who tragically died on his fourth birthday. There is also a small north window in the chancel which was a gift from the children of the parish. The windows on the south wall of the nave are all clear, except for the most recent acquisition, the millennium stained glass window sundial, designed and made by John Hayward of Corscombe, which was dedicated by the Bishop of Ramsbury, the Right Revered Peter Hullah, on 31 October 1999. It is a full working sundial, accurately calibrated to give true sun time, and when dedicated it was one of only 33 stained glass sundials in England and Wales.

The present roofs of the nave and the chancel date from the extensive restorations of the 1890s - the older roofs probably had a steeper pitch. The chancel roof was built by a Mr Galpin and put together without any nails at all. The family of Galpin have lived in the village for at least 350 years and in the area for even longer. Before 1894 there was a plaster ceiling over the whole of the nave, as can be seen from the photograph in the porch.

Behind the pulpit is a restored squint, which indicates that before the Reformation a side-altar stood where the pulpit is now. Mass would have been said at both altars simultaneously, and the squint enabled the priest at the side altar to see the priest at the high altar to ensure that they both raised the Host at the same time. The stone tracery in the squint is part of an old window. The south aisle was added during the restoration of 1891 and three years later the high box pews were removed, the present pews were put in, and the galleries were taken down.

The chancel arch springs from Purbeck marble shafts and has a carved face on each side - the north side shows a man, the south a woman wearing a head-dress dating from the 1470s. There is no way of knowing who this couple was, but the likelihood would be the lord and lady of the manor, who had paid for some rebuilding of the church. The chancel itself has an old priest's door and old and new windows. The unusual angle of the chancel to nave implies the medieval church was built on Saxon foundations, as some Saxon churches share this strange angle. One suggestion to explain this is that the lean of the south of the chancel and the lopsided arch were deliberately built that way to represent the leaning of Jesus' head on the cross.

The old part of the churchyard is roughly circular, and has the appearance of a sacred prehistoric site. On the north side the churchyard rises seven feet above School Lane, and when part of the retaining wall collapsed an older wall was revealed standing behind it, including two upright stones. They do not seem to have been weathered enough to have been part of a stone circle but could have been the stumps of larger stones. They are now at the east gate of the churchyard, and have been appropriately named Peter (the Rock) and Andrew, his brother.

There have been three vicarages in Toller Porcorum. The earliest is now the outbuildings of Toller House, and a long tradition of an underground tunnel from this vicarage to the Old Swan Inn over the road was proved correct when repairs exposed the remains of a passage. The second vicarage is the present Toller House, and the third is St Peter's House in School Lane. There has been no resident vicar in Toller since 1980, when it became part of the Beaminster Team Ministry.

The Village and Parish

Toller Porcorum is a village of approximately 300 inhabitants, in the heart of West Dorset, just over 10 miles north-west of Dorchester, and 8 miles north-east of Bridport. It is roughly 120 metres above sea level, nestling in the beautiful valley of the River Hooke, a little way above its meeting with the Frome at Maiden Newton.

The village is fortunate in the rich and unspoilt nature of the surrounding countryside. There are two important nature reserves within the parish boundaries (both belonging to the Dorset Wildlife Trust) Powerstock Common and Kingcombe Meadows, and the whole of the area around the village is a rich home for nature. Animals include roe and fallow deer, badgers and two of the most elusive British creatures - dormice and otters. The bird life features several types of bird of prey - buzzard, three sorts of owl, hobby, kestrel, sparrowhawk and the occasional peregrine - together with dippers, grey wagtails and kingfishers on the River Hooke, and many commoner species. However most impressive is the huge variety of wild plants and insects, ranging from dazzling bluebell woods and several species of orchid to rare butterflies like the Marsh Fritillary and the Adonis Blue (on nearby Eggardon Hill). The wealth of nature in Toller Porcorum can be shown by the fact that one relatively small front garden close to the centre of the village has recorded 25 species of butterfly and 66 species of bird (with another 23 species seen from the garden).

Ancient History

The name Toller comes from the old name of the river (possibly named after a daughter of the Saxon king Ethelred the Unready who reigned 978-1016), and is also seen in Toller Down, Toller Whelme, Toller Fratrum, and Tollerford, meaning river in a steep valley. The river name seems to have been changed to the Hooke around the 15th century. 'Porcorum' is Latin for 'of the pigs', and either comes from the large number of pigs that were once farmed here in earlier days, or possibly from the presence in the area of wild boar, which were hunted by King John around Powerstock forest. The village has also been known as Swynestolre, Hog Toller, and Great Toller (compared with Little Toller - Toller Fratrum). The escape of some wild boar from one of the local farms a few years ago did result in the return of wild boar to Toller Porcorum, and they were even proved to have bred in the wild, but sightings have been less frequent recently. The hillside above the village shows many examples of strip lynchets, the borders of old Celtic fields, but the area has clearly been occupied far longer, for example a polished flint axe was found in the village in 1996, and the chalk pit on Whitesheet Hill was found to have been used for pre-Roman burials. To the south-west is the large Iron Age hill fort of Eggardon Hill, which was probably captured by the Romans during their invasion of 43AD. On each ridge, north and south of the village, are Roman roads. There have been stories of ghost legions seen marching along the Eggardon-Dorchester road, which prove an interesting contrast with UFOs which were apparently seen in the same place by an ex-Battle of Britain pilot some 40 years ago. Certainly there are still inhabitants of Toller who are reluctant to drive past Eggardon Hill at night!

Medieval Toller

Toller is mentioned in the Domesday Book (1087) as having been owned by Oger from a French lord named Waleran Hunter, who held a variety of villages in the county, including Maiden Newton. It consisted of land for four ploughs, and the lord also owned 3 slaves. There was a mill and a mixture of pastureland and woodland, and the whole was worth £4 (having been valued at £3 20 years earlier) The village then disappears into near-total obscurity until the 13th century when King John (of Magna Carta fame) hunted regularly in Powerstock Forest - and as he stayed in Maiden Newton, he must certainly have ridden through Toller Porcorum on many occasions. Indeed John and the ill-fated Charles I seem to have been the only English kings to have visited our village. Next comes the first record of a parish priest, in 1235, though certainly local priests would have served the village for several centuries before that. The list of names of Rectors and Vicars of Toller starts in 1317, and continues to the present day, except for a gap between 1569 and 1615.

Astonishingly in 1303 Swine Toller was apparently held by John de Ingham, who was a direct descendant of the Waleran of the Domesday Book. The Lay Subsidy roll of 1327 lists the names of 17 inhabitants of Toller Porcorum, and the subsidy roll of 1332 increases the list to 21, though these of course were only the richest men in the village. Fourteen years later a certain Tom Bridgewater was given a license to make a chantry in the chapel of St Andrew in Swine Toller, but another deed says that the church was dedicated to St Peter, so we now use both dedications. The Black Death must have hit Toller very soon after its arrival in England (in Weymouth in 1348 just before the feast of St John the Baptist - 7 April), and the parish priest died of the disease, as did the priest of nearby Hooke. The Black Death carried away around one third of the entire population of England, and there is no reason to think that Toller was spared such a catastrophe. In 1361 the rectory and living of Toller were appropriated by the Abbey of Abbotsbury, which held it for two centuries, and it was the monks that Latinized the village's name to Toller Porcorum. The village meanwhile has passed from one lord to another, including Henry Duke of Lancaster in the 13th century, and John Earl of Arundel and Matilda Countess of Arundel in the 15th century. In 1462 Toller was handed over by the new king, Edward IV to his brother, George of Clarence (famous for having been mysteriously drowned in a butt of malmsey wine), though part of it must have remained in the Fitzalan family until the mid-16th century, when it was bought by John Samways. Archaeological excavations by Bournemouth University found traces of medieval habitation in several local fields.

Toller Porcorum 1500-1900

The 16th century was one of massive religious change, and in 1552 Protestant Royal Commissioners visited parishes throughout the land, including Toller Porcorum, confiscating their treasures - which were tainted with Catholicism - and leaving only a bare minimum of plate, cloths arid vestments for the churches to use. This is what they found in Toller:

i challyce of Sylver gylt.

five payre of vestments

ii of them Manched Sarsenet

i of read saye

i of whytfustion

i of grene Satten of brydges.

ii of purpull velvet.

ii copes

i of purpull velvet.

i of Dornex.

ii surplices

iii Table clothes.

i corporas & ii carchyffes

ii candelsickes of bras.

ii Towelles.

ii crueties of tyn.

i lyche bell.

iii sacrynge belles.

iiii belles in the tower.

i cross of lattyn.

to the use of the Church - App by the saide Commysioners

i challis of silver.

i cope of Dornex, with all the Table clothes & surplices.

The resydewe of all the premises to the custody and charge of thes men. Whose names bee undre written.

Sir David barry Vicar

Thomas Buckler

Richard bylke

Robert Simon

William Younge

William Swett

Renold Cole

So there must have been plenty of money to be made from the switch to Protestantism, if so much could be taken from a small village church. The religious conflicts of the time are also briefly reflected by a record of 1598, when Queen Elizabeth had seized two-thirds of the land of William Moorcock in Toller, because he was a Roman Catholic.

The local court records for the early 17th century include several cases against inhabitants of the village for keeping an alehouse without a license, one case of suspected infanticide by the grandmother of the murdered baby, and another case of sheep-stealing. Then in 1640 the local grandees agreed to divide up and enclose the common land of Toller Porcorum, which must have made life harder for the majority of the villagers.

In 1641-2 almost the entire adult male population of England signed the Protestation, swearing to defend the Protestant religion, and the rights of liberties of Parliament and individuals. The Toller list had 133 signatories, including many names that can still be found in the area today, such as Biles, Cornick, Galpin, Legg, Munden, Samways, Snooke and Symes - together with one that became famous many years later and many miles distant: Presley! Toller's place in the civil war seems to have been small, although King Charles I's army marched through the parish in 1644, and a civil war era sword has been found on one of the farms near Kingcombe, where the royalist army bivouacked for the night of 2 October. Rural west Dorset was largely sympathetic to the King but unlike its near neighbour Powerstock, Toller Porcorum supplied very few royalist soldiers or supporters - with only one name picked out in 1655 and another in 1662.There is no evidence of any Parliamentarians at all, though nearby Wynford Eagle was the home of the celebrated Sydenham family, which included William Sydenham, one of CromweIl's companions-in-arms and an important figure,in the Commonwealth, and the great republican doctor, Thomas Sydenham.

Despite the lack of information about Toller in the Civil War, it may be that it was hard hit, for while the Protestation returns of 1642 imply a population of over 300, the Dorset Hearth Tax assessments just 22 years later list the village as having 47 houses, and therefore a population of only around 190-200. The rapid decline seems to have continued, for in 1673 it was down to 44 houses, of which over three-quarters were exempt from taxation, demonstrating very serious poverty. Eight years later a collection was made for the poor of Great Toller who had suffered from "a devouring fire". It is thought that Railway Cottage, recently renovated, was built just after this fire.

The 18th century passed quietly for the village. In 1762 Toller came into the ownership of George Browne of Frampton (a descendant of one of King Charles I's judges), whose charity is remembered inside the church, while in the 1780s and 1790s we know that John Cornick, Henry and Nicholas Galpin, John Goodwin, George Legg and Joseph Yeates all paid 'composition money' to avoid having to work on repairing the local roads - a back-breaking job which was done by raking up flints and breaking the large stones with a hammer. The local children were also used to pick stones.

In 1801, with the first modern census, we know that the population of Toller Porcorum parish was 340, and rising. Thirty years later, Toller had 18 registered voters out of over 400 inhabitants and in that year 11 voted against electoral reform, while the other 7 were not permitted to use their vote. In common with much of rural Dorset, the population of Toller peaked in 1841 - at an impressive 561 - from which time it has declined fairly steadily.

The first school we know of in the village was founded by George Browne in 1772, and the master was ordered to teach the poor children of Toller Porcorum (together with some from nearby parishes), in reading, writing, arithmetic and the church catechism. The old schoolhouse is on the High Street, just by the old railway bridge. The village school moved in 1875, and the final schoolhouse is at the far end of School Lane.

The railway had arrived in Toller Porcorum in 1857, part of the Maiden Newton to Bridport branch line. This proved a great advantage for the village, and the farmers were able to use the line to send butter and Dorset Blue cheese to London, while wood products were also carried on the railway from the Toller saw mill owned by the Galpin family, who had formerly built wagons and coaches.

A rather mysterious Victorian nursery rhyme is about Toller:

"Don, two, dree, vour

Bells of Girt Toller

Who'can meake panceake

'thout fat or vlour?

Gargy, pargy, how s yer wife?

Very bad, upon my life,

Can she ait a bit o' pie?

Ees, sa well as you or I.

Zee, zaw, Margery Daw

Swold her bed and laid in straw.

Wadden she a dirty slut,

Da zell her bed and lay in dirt?

Pon my life an' honner

As I was gowine to Toller,

I met a pig a 'thout a wig

Pon my life an' honner!"

Toller Porcorum has never been much noticed by the famous, but at the end of the 19th century, the Georgian house opposite the entrance to the churchyard in School Lane became the home for several years of the celebrated Pre-Raphaelite painter, William Holman Hunt, and there is even a somewhat doubtful story that when he repainted his celebrated 'Light of the World', which was hung in St Paul's Cathedral, London, in 1904, he used the door of Toller Church as a model for the door on which Jesus is knocking.

Toller Porcorum since 1900

Toller Porcorum parish council had its first meeting in 1920, and in 1931 a village hall was built on the old vicarage orchard for less than £500, with much of the money raised from the Toller Fetes. It was a popular site for dances, concerts and amateur dramatics, and people from Powerstock and Maiden Newton used the train to go there. Nevertheless Toller Porcorum was still well behind the times. As late as 1939 there was only one tractor in the village, and virtually all the ploughing was still done by horses. Electricity did not reach the village until 1938 when Wessex Electric offered three lights and a plug to everyone who wanted them. The old corn mill, just off the Kingcombe Road, has long been closed, though just opposite it you can see the old furrowed water meadows, which were controlled with sluices and flooded during the winter months to improve the pasture and keep it frost-free for early grazing.

The school continued to flourish for many years, sometimes almost reaching 70 pupils aged between 5 and 14. Those who passed their examinations at 11 could go to grammar school in Bridport, taking the train every day, or ride by bicycle to Beaminster, but neither option was particularly common.

The war brought sudden change to the slow evolution of West Dorset country life. A variety of army units were stationed in Toller, notably the King's Own Scottish Borderers, the Royal Sussex, the Highland, and the Durham Light Infantry. The Royal Artillery had two heavy guns just outside the village, there was a company of Home Guard, and there were searchlights at the top of Toller Lane, and at Lower Kingcombe, where the Nissen hut can still be seen. In 1943 a lone German plane even blasted the roof off one of the houses on the High Street. People from outside the British Isles now began to arrive in Toller Porcorum for perhaps the first time - 1944 saw American Gls, preparing for D-Day, as regular attenders at the dances in the village hall, while in 1945 German POWs were used to work the fields.

As with many other small villages, Toller suffered a steady reduction of amenities following the end of the Second World War. The school closed in 1980, and became a maintenance garage for some years, though it is now a private dwelling. Toller's children now usually attend Greenford Primary School in Maiden Newton, and then go to Beaminster Secondary School, seven miles away. The Bridport branch railway line survived the cuts of the 1960s, but was closed down in 1975, and the saw mill that depended on it lasted only another 10 years. The railway station itself was removed and rebuilt on the Dart Valley Railway in Devon. Parts of the old railway track are now permissive paths, open to public access, and make a pleasant walk through the countryside.

Several houses used to be shops - as you can still see in walking through the village - but by the 1980s there was only a single post office and general store left, and that closed in 1998. Fortunately a small sub post office (open Mon-Fri mornings only) was opened the following year.

The village pub was the Old Swan. The original picturesque thatched building burned down in 1903, and the present structure was built to replace it - the mosaic swan, high on its wall visible to all who drive down Toller Lane. The pub stayed open until 1998, when it closed within two weeks of the last village shop. It has remained unused ever since. Palmers Brewery, that owns the building, applied for planning permission to knock the pub down and build houses, but in 2000 after a public enquiry conducted in the village hall, and featuring intense involvement by many villagers, Palmers were refused permission for a change of use. The brewery has refused to sell the building as a public house, despite enquiries, and the building is now derelict.

Recent years have seen some encouraging signs of new life in the village. In 1987, after a nationwide appeal, the Dorset Trust for Nature Conservation bought about 350 acres of the Kingcombe Estate, which became famous as it had never had modern weedkillers or fertilizers used on it. It is now part of the well-known Kingcombe Meadows nature reserve, and close by is the Kingcombe Centre, where a wide variety of courses are held throughout the year. Around the same time there was extensive building of new houses in the village, notably in Church Mead, and the population grew significantly for the first time in 150 years. It is now around 300.

The village also put great effort into building a new village hall, and this was finally triumphantly opened in December 1997, having cost roughly 300 times as much as its 1930s predecessor - though like the previous hall, it too was built by a builder who lived in the village. The hall, as well as hosting the usual village activities, the local dramatic society, occasional film showings and a popular bowls team, is regularly used for professional performances brought in under the aegis of Dorset Artsreach. These have included touring theatre companies, comedy and live music that has ranged from traditional Bulgarian folk music to modem jazz and flamenco. In 2004, inspired by three 12-year-old boys who wanted somewhere to play and who went round the village collecting money, Toller raised £15,000 to buy a village playing field, close by the hall, where there are also pleasantly-sited picnic tables.

Toller Porcorum has inevitably seen huge changes in its long history, and it has become a very different place from what it was half a century ago. Now most of the people who live in Toller were not born here, and do not work here either. Nevertheless the heart of village life still remains very much focused on two things: agricultural pursuits, for it is still surrounded by working farms, several of which are now organic; and on the church, which is still the first sign of Toller that one can see approaching the village, and the last glimpse of it as you depart.