Yesterday I had some business to attend to in the lovely Dorset village of Kimmeridge In 1870-72, John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales described Kimmeridge like this: "a village, a parish, and a vale in Wareham district, Dorset. The village stands ½ a mile NE of Kimmeridge bay, 3 ½ SW by W of CorfeCastle, and 5½ SW by W of Wareham r. station; and has a post office under Wareham. The parish comprises 1, 570 acres. Total Real property, £1,263.(value of whole parish!) Pop., 185. Houses, 34. The property belonged to Cerne abbey; was given, by Henry VIII., to the Uvedales; passed to the Clavells; and belongs now to J.Mansel, Esq. Kimmeridge bay is a semicircular inlet, about ¾ of a mile wide; has a shore of sea weed and bituminous mud, girdled by black cliffs; and is overlooked by the amphitheatre of Kimmeridge vale. ..."
Our business took us to Smedmore house,which was founded in 1300's much of what is visible now is considerably newer:
apart from being a charming place the estate is covered in pheasants for the shoot, now i have seen a lot of pheasants in my time but the quality of these birds is amazing very vivid coulours:
One we had finished at the big house we made our way down to the seafront,the view from the top of the jill dropping into the village of Kimmeridge is really nice:
as is the bay itself:
It is also slap bang in the middle of the army live firing range ,and they were shooting all around us,plenty of big bangs and .50 cal machine gun fire!
we parked in the carpark and made our way on foot the rest of the way,passing the WW2 tank traps and machine gun bunkers:
once on the front our boys set about a bit of foraging for shelfish:
which we cooked on the kelly kettle base after a brew was made:
jack wasnt too keen on them:
we found a lot of other foragable stuff including masses of sea kale:
here is a pic of our youngest Charlie having a warm brew from his kuksa i made:
I took some time to take some arty shots of the fishing associated things about the place:
we found an old german ww2 contact mine on display by the range wardens shack:
All in all a fine day out was had,it was good to get back into a warm car that was for sure!
thanks for looking.
Our business took us to Smedmore house,which was founded in 1300's much of what is visible now is considerably newer:
apart from being a charming place the estate is covered in pheasants for the shoot, now i have seen a lot of pheasants in my time but the quality of these birds is amazing very vivid coulours:
One we had finished at the big house we made our way down to the seafront,the view from the top of the jill dropping into the village of Kimmeridge is really nice:
as is the bay itself:
It is also slap bang in the middle of the army live firing range ,and they were shooting all around us,plenty of big bangs and .50 cal machine gun fire!
we parked in the carpark and made our way on foot the rest of the way,passing the WW2 tank traps and machine gun bunkers:
once on the front our boys set about a bit of foraging for shelfish:
which we cooked on the kelly kettle base after a brew was made:
jack wasnt too keen on them:
we found a lot of other foragable stuff including masses of sea kale:
here is a pic of our youngest Charlie having a warm brew from his kuksa i made:
I took some time to take some arty shots of the fishing associated things about the place:
we found an old german ww2 contact mine on display by the range wardens shack:
All in all a fine day out was had,it was good to get back into a warm car that was for sure!
thanks for looking.
