Marshwood Vale
| Marshwood Vale | |
|---|---|
 Marshwood Vale viewed from Coney's Castle |
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 Marshwood Vale
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| Marshwood Vale shown within Dorset | |
| OS grid reference | SY410980 |
| District | |
| Shire county | |
| Region | |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | Bridport |
| Postcode district | DT6 |
| Police | Dorset |
| Fire | Dorset and Wiltshire |
| Ambulance | South Western |
| EU Parliament | South West England |
| UK Parliament |
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The Marshwood Vale (or Vale of Marshwood) is a low-lying, bowl-shaped valley of Lower Lias clay, in the western tip of the county of Dorset in south-west England. It lies to the north of the A35 trunk road between the towns of Bridport and Lyme Regis, and to the south of the two highest hills in Dorset, Lewesdon Hill (279m) and Pilsdon Pen (277m). It is drained by the River Char, which flows south-west to its mouth on the English Channel coast at Charmouth. All of the vale lies within the Dorset Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
There is an electoral ward with the same name stretching from Whitchurch Canonicororum north to Thorncombe. The total population of this ward is 1,717.
The landscape of the vale is agricultural and consists of narrow lanes winding between farms that lie amongst small fields, old hedgerows, copses and ancient semi-natural woods. The vale is virtually surrounded by hills, the most notable of which are Lewesdon Hill (279 m), Dorset's county top, Pilsdon Pen (277 m), Dorset's second highest point and site of an Iron Age hill fort, Lambert's Castle Hill (258 m), also with an Iron Age hill fort and spectacular views across the vale, and Hardown Hill (207 m). In recent decades the vale has escaped wholesale ploughing and large-scale agricultural intensification, leading to a landscape that still contains a wealth of wildlife.
Farming existed in the vale at least as early as the Iron Age, with early farmers keeping livestock such as sheep and cattle and also cultivating crops such as barley and peas. Later in the Middle Ages these agricultural activities expanded and forest clearance increased; several of the farms in the vale have names ending in '-hay', which means 'enclosure', and these have their origins in the forest clearances from this time, as does the vale's irregular pattern of many small fields. In the 13th century Marshwood Castle was built on a site now occupied by Lodgehouse Farm. It was a motte and bailey construction but only earthworks remain today.
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Wikipedia