puddleshark

You get two landscapes for the price of one, on a walk around Briantspuddle. Above the village, dry sandy heathland and conifer forest. And then the village itself, down in the green river valley of the Piddle.

Left the car in the little car park by Cull-peppers Dish, a local landmark, and took the bridleway that runs alongside.

Cull-peppers Dish itself, a steep crater, isn't actually visible, unless you're willing to go scrambling through the vegetation.

"Culpepper’s Dish is one of several natural swallow-holes on the wooded ridge above Affpuddle. Started by an underground stream tapping a layer of running sand, these sink-holes, also known as a dolines, first appear as vertical shafts. Natural slippage forms the characteristic crater-like shape over time. Over 100 years ago, when Sir Frederick Treves was writing Highways and Byways of Dorset, a lone tree at the bottom of this doline looked like a pestle in a giant mortar, hence ‘Culpepper’s Dish’ after the famous herbalist. Its approximately 277ft diameter and 140ft deep."https://www.greatbritishlife.co.uk/homes-and-gardens/places-to-live/walking-route-a-ramble-around-culpepper-s-dish-and-affpuddle-7053850

Through conifer and beech woods, gently downhill towards the village of Briantspuddle. Pleasant walking on a warm August morning.

Briantspuddle, which is an extraordinarily pretty village.

"Cruck cottage is the oldest building in the village, thought to be late fifteenth century in origin. It is so called because it has the original cruck beam from ground to roof." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Briantspuddle

Briantspuddle once consisted of twelve cottages (which still exist within the village today) until Ernest Debenham [grandson of William Debenham, founder of the British department store Debenhams] expanded the village under the concept of creating a self-sufficient agricultural enterprise. By 1929 forty new cottages had been built to house the estate workers. His vision was that every house would have an inside toilet and at least a quarter of an acre of garden...

Many of the houses in the village are constructed from specially hand-made 'airspaced' concrete blocks which were produced locally...The consistency of the design of new houses and agricultural buildings is due to the use of Arts and Crafts style which was adapted to reflect the distinctive character of vernacular architecture in the area by the architects Halsey Ricardo and Leslie MacDonald Gill. Bladen Valley represents an interesting example of a 'model' estate.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Briantspuddle

The Ring.

Experiments were carried out on almost all types of farming on the Estate between 1919 and 1929, many of them with the close collaboration of Professor Boufleur, then head of the Cirencester Agricultural College. One of the main activities was dairying and a milk processing factory was set up in the 'Ring' buildings at Briantspuddle Farm. The farm itself was organised on modern lines and milk was imported from all the dairy farms on the estate for testing, separation, bottling etc. About 1000 gallons of milk per day was processed into “Grade A” milk, butter and cheeses, and pig feed. The factory contained a fully equipped bacteriological laboratory where the purity and fat percentage of the milk was analysed.

briantspuddle.info/history/

Briantspuddle village hall, a former barn, rebuilt in 1803 and converted by Debenham into a village hall.

Bridge over the Piddle at one end of the village.

To the east of the old village lies Bladen Valley, a small development of Arts & Craft houses built for farm workers, along a wide tree-lined gravel track.

The War Memorial at the turning to Bladen Valley. Christ with stigmata and sword - an unusual choice. By Eric Gill, 1918. (Gill's brother, Leslie MacDonald Gill, was at one point architect in residence in the village). There's an inscription at the base from Julian of Norwich: "It is sooth that sin is cause of all this pain but all shall be well and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."