A Short Walk in Wareham, Dorset

On a warm, blustery spring day last week, I visited Wareham for a few hours, helping a young friend who is house hunting in the area.

Wareham is a pretty market town which has grown up at the place where the River Frome and the River Piddle meet, on their way to Poole Harbour. There has been settlement there since the Middle Stone Age, through the Bronze Age and then the Iron Age Celts. The Romans used Wareham as a port, as did the Saxons, who had to protect their town from Viking invasion. King Alfred the Great ordered the Saxon town walls to be built and they can still be seen today.

When the port of Poole began to grow, Wareham`s importance as a port diminished, but it remains as a thriving , traditional country town and is now known as the "Gateway to the Jurassic Coast" and the Purbeck Hills of Dorset.

There was a great fire in Wareham in 1762, so many of the buildings date from after that time. Georgian and Regency architecture predominates, although occasional thatched houses exist and there are Victorian and more modern developments at the outer reaches of the town.

We parked in a central car park, and as soon as we started walking we were entranced by the lovely old buildings around us. Houses of grey Purbeck stone or pastel painted brick. Higgeldy- piggeldy cottage roof tops and wide old walls.

Small, traditional shops and a red telephone box on a High Street pavement.

Williams the Bakers, a family business, on the corner of the crossroads where North Street, East Street, South Street and West Street meet.

The bell tower above The Almshouses.

The crossroads

A Georgian shop front on South Street.

Looking down South Street, across the Frome Bridge, to the edge of town and the Purbeck Hills beyond. This is the road to Corfe Castle and Swanage.

The Regency Black Bear Hotel....

...and a closer view of the Bear, who is sadly still chained to the railings!

The little square and terraced streets on St John`s Hill....

An ornamental ventilation grid in a cottage wall.

The narrow passageway that leads to the Quay beside the River Frome.

Pretty cottages in the back lanes.....

...a mass of white periwinkle....

.....a thatched roof....

...complete with thatched duck and her ducklings.

Rooftops.....

....and the tower of St Mary`s Church.

Iron railings have been removed from the churchyard wall. We wondered if they had been donated to the War Effort in WWII.

The East Window....

...and churchyard yew trees.

A Narnia Lamp post in the lane.......

....and Pond`s the Ironmongers in the square.

We walked through the passageway to find the Quay , where small boats were moored......

The Old Granary offered refreshment and a peaceful place to sit and watch the river flow by......

...while black headed gulls splashed and dived for food as a woman on holiday threw bread into the busy, rippling water.