One of Wimborne’s great attractions and strengths is the unique fact that we can boast an unusual number of significant open spaces right in the heart of our town - the Minster Green, the historic Corn Market, and of course the area we all know and refer to simply as The Square. It is these open spaces that shoppers and tourists find so attractive and often so different from other shopping centres.
Here in Wimborne the visitor is offered a charm and openness from which to view the sky above, the abundant flowers and well tended green spaces between, and the pleasant period architecture of which we have in spades. It works so well.
The Corn Market exists for obvious reasons - space was needed to barter and sell goods until 1876 when the towns markets and fairs were abolished and the weekly corn market became relegated to the Corn Exchange - known by locals for many years as the Oddfellows Hall. And of course the Minster Green, or to give it its original name, the churchyard, once served a very different purpose than the leisure area that many enjoy today. It is not that long ago that the area was cleared to the grassy space that we see now. But it wasn’t for the first time. The churchyard had been levelled before in the late 1800s. Thomas Hardy and his wife Emma were living in Lanherne, number 16, Avenue Road, at the time, and it was in response to the levelling work and the redistribution of the tombstones, that he wrote one of his few humorous poems, The Levelled Churchyard.
Where we are huddled none can trace,
And if our names remain,
They have some path or porch or placeWhere we have never lain!
Here’s not a modest maiden elf
But dreads the final trumpet,
Lest half of her should rise herself,
And half some sturdy strumpet!
These two verses of the poem show a humorous side of Hardy not normally found in his work. It suggests to me that he was suited to Wimborne life.
But how many visitors, and who knows maybe a few locals, are aware that the tarmac covered square, now the home of taxis, parked cars and buses was not created purely by chance, nor was it drawn up by town planners, but that it was once a sacred and wooded place? Indeed a place that perhaps should be known as St Peters Square, as here once stood the ancient, St Peters, Wimborne's second church.
Records of the building are scarce, but it is known that the church was fenced or walled around in 1414 and once stood in an acre of ground. That this area was wooded is contained in a testimony of Churchwardens being paid for timber from the elms in the churchyard. And that gets the imagination racing. The elm is a giant and these trees may well have towered high above the surrounding buildings right in the heart of our town.
The Reformation took its toll on church buildings the length and breadth of the country and Wimborne’s St Peters was no exception. By the 1580’s our second church was in a sad state of repair. However, the grounds were put to grisly use in 1638 when the plague finally reached Wimborne.
Despair would have been rife, no family would have been spared the tragedy and by the time the epidemic passed some 400 people had died and been interred in common graves. These lie beneath the square we see today, once the site of the derelict St Peters Churchyard.
After the plague, dilapidation of the church continued until the building was vested by Thomas Hanham in the name of the Corporation for the building of a Town Hall. This was constructed, apparently abutting the church, with a shop on the ground floor and a tenement on the western flank. But maybe the good folk of Wimborne had little need or perhaps respect for the hall, as these new buildings and the church eventually fell down leaving the area in a state of decay for many years. In fact we had to wait until the 1800’s before the centre was finally cleared and turned into the open area that we call The Square today.
It’s true to say that our town centre spaces are open and pleasant, but they are not empty, they are crammed full of history, stretching back through the mists of time.
