![]() Vehicle tracks are shown to cross the heath and it is likely that dumping of at least one car occurred during this time. An aerial photograph shows a new drainage ditch behind Hazel Drive feeding into the old peat cuttings. A shire horse becomes stuck within the bog needing the aid of a tractor to regain its freedom. There is no thick woodland strip.ġ970s A proposal is put forward to expand the housing development into Slop Bog and the bungalows in Hazel Drive are built. He lives alongside Slop Bog in a timber bungalow made from three chicken sheds put together! Jim observes smooth snakes and water voles – the latter he believes to be eating the lily flower heads.ġ969 An aerial photograph shows scattered pines are on the Southern end of the site. The bends are allocated soldiers’ names in memory of their mishaps! A Typhoon bomber lands in Slop Bog and drifts, cockpit open and black peat flying, coming to a halt just before the West Moors Road.ġ952 Jim Brown, an employee of Stewarts Nursery, works on lily ponds. The suburban sprawl eats up the countryside.ġ930 A Mr Joseph runs a nearby nudist colony !ġ940s Soldiers based at West Moors are not unknown for their cars to come off the West Moors Road at the snake bends into the bog. Pre 1930 Increasingly the surrounding land holdings are divided into smaller plots on which individual houses are developed. They cultivate water lilies and other aquatic plants for sale for the first ever mail order plant catalogue. Stewarts Nursery is visible on the other side of West Moors Road. Today’s pines on Slop Bog would be the descendants of this planting.ġ915 An aerial photograph clearly shows the peat cuttings with the pine plantation on the drier ground. Another OS map identifies Slop Bog as being part of Hampreston Heath.ġ902 The Uddens Estate is owned by the Greathead family and their Estate Register records a purchase of 320 fir trees for Beaufoys Plantation at a cost of £24. Soon after, Stewarts Nursery arrived and used the railway to send its mail order waterlillies grown on Slop Bog around the country.ġ870 An OS map shows the site to be part of Beaufoys Plantation with much of drier heath lost to the conifer plantation. This means that they are entitled to cut a small allotment of peat or heather turves that they then use as slow burning domestic fuel.ġ847 The single line Southampton – Dorchester railway opened through West Moors with a “halt” at Ameysford. The neighbouring land is referred to as Wool Bridge Heath.ġ815 The Hampreston Enclosure Award shows local people possessing Turbary Rights for Slop Bog. The Old Thatch Inn is the gatehouse to the Uddens Estate. Gulliver’s Farm on the main road North of West Moors was once owned by him.ġ759 Slop Bog is a small wet corner of Hampreston Heath, which itself is part of a massive heathland complex stretching to the coast.ġ811 An OS map identifies the site as part of Uddens Heath. In his will, he left some £60,000, which today would be worth over £4 million. ![]() With a one night’s smuggling a farm labourer could earn the equivalent of an entire week’s wage – so there were plenty of volunteers! Gulliver was a notorious and very successful local smuggler who died in 1822 a wealthy man and is buried at Wimborne Minster. ![]() Slop Bog, lying beside Uddens Water would have been within an area of relatively fertile land and agriculture would have been the main employer. ![]() Masterly organisation, quick wittedness and amazing daring enabled him to pull off one coup after another and to prevent the custom men from being able to arrest him or collect sufficient evidence to convict him. He kept forty or fifty men constantly employed and these wore a kind of livery, powdered hair and smock frocks, from which they attained the name of “White Wigs” Isaac Gulliver (1745-1822) the celebrated smuggler of the Winborne area would have tramped across Slop Bog. ![]() He refers to smugglers using the wilderness of the commons and heaths “Wherein they may travel within so to conceal their contraband”. Man inadvertently maintains these heaths via grazing, burning and harvesting.ġ611 John Speed’s Tudor Atlas records “the Dorsetshire heathlands in the vicinity of Poole and Wareham yielding furze and ling for fuel that were economically important for the local community”. In turn these bare, sandy, porous soils leach out all nutrients forming heaths. All heathland part of the primeral forests – Neolithic man commenced clearance.ĥ00 BC The very presence of heathland indicates Bronze Age man clearing the pre-historic forest for the farming. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |