JUST HOW OLD IS BROADSTONE?

"It was not until the railway line in 1847 intersected the tollroad.... that the village began to grow"(1)

There is a great deal of truth in this statement but it contains a challenge as well. Was it possible that the tollroad to Blandford could run from what is now Darby's Corner towards Corfe Mullen without attracting some settlement? Why were the stepping stones, from which Broadstone is reputed to have gained its name, placed across the stream in present Higher Blandford Road in 1840, except for the benefit of local pedestrians?

On my first visit to the Record Office in Dorchester to consult the Great Canford Estate papers for information about the history of Broadstone, I was advised to look at the Inclosure Map for 1805 with its related documents (2) and there began for me a piece of exciting detective work which would have stimulated the little grey cells of Hercules Poirot!

What is now Broadstone was part of the Great Canford Estate belonging to the lord of the manor, at that time a man called Edward Arrowsmith. Even so Common land and Wasteland were available for the use of tenants to farm or graze their animals. Gradually though, between 1750 and 1845 right across the country such land was enclosed by fences and in the case of Broadstone the process, which had begun in a small way at an earlier date, was completed between 1805 and 1822.

There was a precise method of handling these enclosures. The principal landowners of the parish had to submit a petition requesting enclosure and by Act of Parliament three Commissioners were appointed to supervise the business. The Commissioners, selected from the ranks of the nobility, Church, minor gentry or the farming community, were supported by a surveyor and valuer appointed by the parish.

Following a survey, valuation and public consultation, the Commissioners reallocated land in portions equivalent to the combined portions of Common land held by each claimant.

This land was enclosed by fences at the expense of the newly designated owner and in some cases the cost of fencing forced smaller landowners to sell their holdings to others.

It is clear from the Inclosure map that by 1805 the area of Broadstone was hemmed in by the Toll roads from Poole to Wimborne and a section of the Blandford to Wareham road. At the same time it was crossed by the Toll road to Blandford which ran from Darby's Corner along the line of present day Lower and Higher Blandford Road.

This road was crossed by road P, which can be confidently identified as Dunyeats Road (N.B. Great Dunyards) and its continuation along Clarendon Road.

Finally the tantalising stump of road I must be Fairview Road.

This is quite a substantial infrastructure for a place which had no name and little settlement, especially when one considers that road P was 30 feet wide, I 20 feet and both were privately owned and maintained.

The record is silent so far about who owned these two local roads and the purpose for which they were built but there was gravel working on the Poole to Wimborne Toll road at the aptly named Gravel Hill. Could it be that gravel for road making was transported by cart along road P across the heathland to places where it was needed in Corfe Mullen and beyond? This is a possible solution for the existence of road P but the purpose of Road I still remains a mystery to me.

The land itself was parcelled out between six people.

John Hudden Lander, who sold on to Thomas Parr, received 42 acres, 2 roods and 19 perches in West Heath on September 17th 1821 (lot 521)

William and Christopher Spurner were granted more than 465 acres. Lots 509 and 510 were in West Heath at Black Water Bottom, the remaining lots 544 - 547 were elsewhere in West Heath. Interestingly lot 547 was bounded on the east by "a new inclosure in the occupancy of William Bird", although there was no mention of him as a recipient of land in 1805 - 1822.

Edward Arrowsmith acquired the largest distribution - lots 522, 527 and 527a were "ancient inclosures" but lots 516- 519 and 524-543 were granted to him in 1805.

Lot 518 was situated in Mulberry Bottom, lot 517 was a gravel pit, 528 a clay pit. It may be that we have found the person who needed road P to transport gravel to his customers.

John Willett Willett, sometimes referred to as "the lunatic" in the documents, had over 414 acres allocated to him - lots 505 & 506 encompassing part of Corfe Mullen, 507 was on Minchin Hill and the largest lot number 495 of 262 acres 3 roods and 4 perches was on the borders between Broadstone and Merley.

Finally Isaac Fryer received lot 506a.

Before completing the enclosure of the area the Commissioners made some allocations which appear to address the needs of the community as a whole. The Surveyors of Highways and the Scavengers of Poole (forerunners of the refuse collection department) received allotments "for public watering places for cattle and for stone and gravel pits, sand and clay pits and for the laying and depositing of manure and rubbish".

These allocations were two 4 acre gravel pits on Minchin Hill (508) and Great Dunyards Hill (517) and a six acre clay pit (528) "situated by Gibbs Inclosure" (note this name).

Firm instructions were given that these allotments were to remain open forever and that the uninclosed herbage (pastureland) was to belong to the Surveyors and Scavengers. Only they could give the necessary written permission for the pits to be used by anyone else.

For me, the most frustrating part of the Commissioners' report refers to the area north of Road P (516) and two smaller sites which must lie somewhere between the Ridgeway and Barn Road.

Edward Arrowsmith was allotted these "in trust for several occupiers of the time of the Cottages and Tenements (holdings)N of less than one acre. This ruling applied only to buildings which were more than twenty years old 'previous to the passing of the first national Act". Assuming this to be the 1805 Act referring to Broadstone, it suggests that there had been people living in cottages and on smallholdings since 1785. Their names have been forgotten but at least we know that their rights or as the document states their "pretended rights" were preserved and that they were allowed to use these parcels of land for a Turf Common and for Heath and Fuel.

It is puzzling that their cottages and tenements were not marked on the 1805 Inclosure Map, since several buildings do appear. By mapping convention domestic buildings in those days were marked in red, industrial in grey. The 1805 Inclosure Map is not so colourful but it is possible by correlating it with a map produced in 1807 to say with conviction that there were domestic buildings on lots 530 and 534. These are in the Plainfield area and it seems feasible that lot 534 marks the position of Plainfield Farm - a group of 4 buildings at the corners of a square enclosure are clearly visible on both maps, with a fifth detached cottage. Other domestic buildings appear on lots 108 and 506a, while there were industrial premises on lots 536, 539 and 540.

What can we learn from these slivers of information about Broadstone at the very beginning of the 1800s?

It seems to have been a sparsely populated heath area scattered with gravel, stone, sand and clay pits, where "squatters rights" had been acquired by custom and finally legalised by the Inclosure Act of 1805.

A few cottages and the one identified farm suggest a mainly rural community gaining a living from farming, turf cutting and work at extracting and carting gravel, stone, sand and clay from the various pits. It may be that the clay pits were associated with brick kilns. Most inhabitants then would have been classed as labourers.

Two of the inhabitants however were wealthy enough to contribute to the Poor Rate in l802 (3) - William Budden for one field of about 1 acre 2 roods between the Dunyatts (N.B. Dunyard and Dunyeats) and John Gibbs for Plainfield Farm was ordered to pay 2/3 1/2 d. Broadstone did not have its own Anglican Church as it was still part of the Great Canford parish based around the church inCanford Magna village.

Most notably the area was not called Broadstone at this time in the surviving documents which I have consulted. Parts of it were referred to as West Heath and Plainfield or the descriptive Black Water Bottom and Mulberry Bottom.

Conversely Creekmoor, Corfe Mullen, Lake, Merley and Ashington were all named and the lives of their inhabitants can be followed in Parish Records of births, marriages and deaths, Poor Law Accounts, Census Returns or even Land Assessments and Alehouse Recognizances.

The unhappy conclusion must be that settlement in Broadstone was too insignificant to need a name.

After I had extracted as much information as I could from the Inclosure Map and other pertinent documents, I had decided to search parish records for traces of the people named as recipients of land, to see whether more details of their lives could give some colour to Broadstone's past. But my eye wandered to Isaac Taylor's map of Dorset first printed in 1765 and there on a map published 40 years before 1805 was marked Broadstones (sic) Pond.

I am sure that by now even Hercules Poirot's little grey cells would have been somewhat jostled and certainly mine were in deep shock. The joy of historical research, though, is following the trail wherever it leads you. So next week I shall be back at the Record Office trying to learn why a pond situated somewhere not too far from the roundabout, on the line of the Blackwater stream, carried the name of our village in 1765, nearly 75 years before the broad stones were placed as stepping stones for pedestrians in 1840.

Or can any of you shed light on this?

Margaret Roebuck,

(1) The History of Broadstone, Nona Bowring

(2) Canford Magna Perambulation of Manor in Inclosure Award 1805 Inclosure 20 Western Division.

(3) Overseers of the Poor Account Book 1784 - 1803

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