Three miles down stream from Blandford, near Spettisbury, is the earthwork called Crawford Castle.  An ancient bridge of nine arches here crosses the Stour to Tarrant Crawford, where was once the Abbey of a Cistercian nunnery.  Scanty traces of the buildings remain in the vicinity of the early English church.  This village is the first of a long series of “Tarrants” that run up into the remote highlands of Cranborne Chase.  Buzbury Rings is the name of another prehistoric entrenchment north of the village; it is on the route of an ancient trackway which runs in a direction that would seem to link Maiden Castle, near Dorchester, with the distant mysteries of Salisbury Plain.

For the traveller who has the time to explore the Tarrant villages a delightful journey is in store.  Although there is nothing among them of surpassing interest, the twelve or fifteen-mile ramble would be a further revelation of the unspoilt character and quiet beauty of this corner of Dorset.  Pimperne village, on the Blandford-Salisbury road, where there is a ruined cross on the village green and a rebuilt church still retaining its old Norman door, is on the direct way to Tarrant Hinton, just over four miles from Blandford.  Here a lane turns right and left following the Tarrant-brook that gives its name to the seven hamlets upon its banks.  Hinton Church is beautifully placed on the left of this by-way which, on its way to Tarrant Gunville, presently passes Eastbury Park, a mile to the north.  Only a fragment of the once famous house is left.  The original building was a magnificent erection comparable with Blenheim, and built by the same architect—­Vanburgh—­for George Dodington, one time Lord of the Admiralty.  The property came to his descendant, the son of a Weymouth apothecary named Bubb, who had married into the family.  George Budd Dodington became a persona grata at court, lent money to Frederick Prince of Wales, and finished, at a cost of L140,000, the building his grandfather had commenced.  This wealthy commoner, after a career at Eastbury as a patron of the arts, was created Lord Melcombe possibly for his services to the son of George II.  At his death the property passed to Earl Temple who was unable to afford the upkeep and eventually the greater portion of this “folly” was demolished.  The lane that turns south from the Salisbury high-road goes through Tarrants Launceston—­Monckton—­Rawston—­Rushton and Keynston and finishes at Tarrant Crawford that we have just seen is in the valley of the Stour.

Two roads run northwards to Shaftesbury from Blandford.  One, the hill way, leaves the Salisbury road half a mile from the town and, passing another earthwork on Pimperne Down, makes for the lonely and beautiful wooded highlands of Cranborne Chase, with but one village—­Melbury Abbas—­in the long ten miles of rough and hilly road.  The other, and main, highway keeps to the river valley as far as Stourpaine, and then bears round the base of Hod Hill, where there is a