Belief and Identity“Legend says a holy fish with a golden chain lived in the spring above Dorstone, put there by St Peter himself.”
Fish with the Golden Chain Power and Governance“Within a single generation, Dorstone's parish church gained two private chapels, each with its own priest singing a daily mass for the dead.”
Two Chapels in One Church Nature and Climate“Nearly six thousand years ago, people raised three great timber halls on the hilltop above Dorstone.”
Neolithic Halls and the Idea of Beginning Belief and Identity“William James Pikes of Dorstone enlisted in Canada's army on 14 August 1914, ten days into the First World War.”
Sergeant Jim Pikes People and Belonging“For most of the twentieth century Dorstone was emptying.”
Choosing the Valley Again People and Belonging“Before the organ arrived, by 1892, music at St Faith's was provided by a cornet player, a fiddler and, later, a harmonium.”
Popish Contraption in the Choir Land and Livelihood“In a parish where men had ploughed the same fields for a thousand years, one of them turned out to be the best in the world at it.”
World Champion Ploughman Nature and Climate“At about twenty past three in the morning on Tuesday 6 October 1863, the Golden Valley shook.”
When the Ground Shook People and Belonging“On the night of 22 January 1901, it is said, a dance at the Reading Room was stopped when the rector came in to tell the dancers that Queen Victoria had died.”
When the Queen's Death Stopped the Dance Land and Livelihood“In the early twentieth century, Thomas Minton of Coppice Alley in Dorstone worked at Rose Cottage and had one firm rule: he would not mend dirty boots.”
Thomas Minton the Shoemaker Belief and Identity“In 1397, a bishop's officials inspecting Dorstone parish recorded a chapel that has left no other trace: the chapel of St James, capella Sancti Jacobi.”
The Chapel of St James People and Belonging“Twice in living memory the Herefordshire parish of Dorstone has set out to write itself down: once on paper in 1990, once on the internet thirty years later.”
Writing the Parish Down People and Belonging“On the day the young Queen Victoria was crowned in 1838, Dorstone celebrated in style.”
Roast Beef for Three Hundred Belief and Identity“Around 3700 BCE, Dorstone Hill became a meeting ground.”
Gathering Place on the Hilltop Land and Livelihood“By the time of the first Elizabeth, Dorstone had written its landscape down, field by field and name by name, in two languages.”
Names Written on the Land Power and Governance“Snodhill Castle, on a ridge across the Golden Valley from Dorstone, was the more important of the two castles that faced each other over the fields.”
Snodhill, the Great Castle of the Valley Land and Livelihood“The family that owned much of Dorstone for two centuries did not live there.”
Cornewalls of Moccas Landlords of the Valley Belief and Identity“In 1524 a property survey recorded that Henry Myles held a house and a ploughland in a corner of Dorstone parish called Ditton.”
Ditton, the Lost Settlement People and Belonging“For a few years the parish's enemies were also its farmhands.”
Prisoners on the Cwm Road Belief and Identity“A churchyard is a parish's longest memory. At St Faith's, more than three hundred recorded inscriptions name the dead of Dorstone across the centuries.”
What the Churchyard Remembers Power and Governance“On 15 November 1853 an ancient ceremony was performed at Snodhill Court, as it had been for centuries.”
Court Leet at Snodhill People and Belonging“With its railway gone and its school closing, the post-war parish kept its common life the way it always had, by making its own.”
Borrowed Fields and Home-Made Pantomimes Power and Governance“The church you enter at Dorstone was built in 1889 and 1890.”
Rebuilding the Church in 1889 Power and Governance“In 1250 the Marcher baron Walter III de Clifford was hauled before Henry III for forcing the king's messenger to eat the king's letter, seal and all.”
Eating the King's Letter Belief and Identity“When the Primitive Methodists built their chapel at Dorstone in 1864, the rector was furious.”
Bethesda and the Rectors Fury Belief and Identity“Arthur's Stone, the Stone Age tomb on the ridge above Dorstone, has spent most of its life carrying other people's stories.”
Arthur, Narnia and the Stone Nature and Climate“Before there were halls or barrows on the hill, there was rock, then ice, then the first hunters in the woods.”
Before the Halls Belief and Identity“Across the Victorian years, gentlemen-scholars came out from Hereford to study Dorstone.”
When the Naturalists Came to Dorstone Land and Livelihood“On a single afternoon in September 1919, in a Hereford hotel, more than half of Dorstone changed hands.”
Half the Parish Sold in a Day Routes and Connections“In Britain's first farming centuries, the communities on Dorstone Hill worked rock crystal carried from mountains eighty miles away.”
Rock Crystal Carried from North Wales Land and Livelihood“Every ten years the Victorian census counted Dorstone house by house, and the count tells a quiet, steady story: a parish growing smaller.”
Counting a Shrinking Parish People and Belonging“Lizzie Watkins had served with a physician in her youth and inherited a book of potions from her father.”
Lizzie Watkins the Herbalist Nature and Climate“In 1819, Dorstone's burial register recorded twenty-eight burials: roughly two and a half times the normal annual rate.”
Twenty-Eight Burials in 1819 People and Belonging“The largest project Dorstone has taken on in living memory began with four neglected bells in the tower of St Faith's church.”
Bringing the Bells Back People and Belonging“In 1951 the electric light came on in Dorstone. Within a single generation the bathroom, the car, the telephone and the television had remade daily life in the parish, and a way of living that had run on oil lamps, candles and well water gave way to the modern home.”
When the Mains Came People and Belonging“Around 3800 BCE, three timber halls stood in a line on the hill above Dorstone.”
Three Halls, Three Traditions Routes and Connections“When a bishop's officials inspected Dorstone parish in 1397, most of the names they wrote down were Welsh.”
A Parish on Both Sides Power and Governance“Long after the Neolithic builders had finished with Dorstone Hill, people kept coming back to its high ground.”
Holding the High Ground Power and Governance“In 1256 a man had his name, a dedication and a date cut into stone at Dorstone church.”
His Name in Stone, 1256 People and Belonging“On Guy Fawkes night, 5 November 1860, a travelling showman named Temple brought an evening of conjuring, sleight of hand and ventriloquism to Dorstone National School, the building that is now the Village Hall.”
Sleight of Hand at the School Land and Livelihood“Two years after the Black Death reached Herefordshire, two brothers at Dorstone made a lease that still survives, the oldest document in a great Oxford college's archive.”
After the Black Death Routes and Connections“To Rome, this was border country, a valley to march through and watch, not a place to settle.”
Patrolling the Golden Valley Belief and Identity“The Second World War took fewer of Dorstone's men than the First, and most of those who went came home to a Welcome Home dinner in 1945.”
Parish at War, 1914-1945 People and Belonging“In the early twentieth century, Dorstone's sexton Tom Bowen took bell-ringing seriously.”
Tom Bowen the Bell-Ringer Belief and Identity“In January 1923, about twenty-two women gathered in the Reading Room for the first meeting of the Dorstone Women's Institute.”
Mrs Forster's Private Cinema Land and Livelihood“The estate that the Prosser-Powell family sold at Dorstone in 1919 began nearly three centuries earlier, in a London coach-maker's workshop.”
Snodhill Court and the Coachbuilders Fortune Routes and Connections“Offa's Dyke is the most famous border in Britain, a great earthwork raised by a Mercian king to divide the English from the Welsh.”
Where Offas Dyke Was Never Built Belief and Identity“During the Second World War, when Britain feared invasion, men too old or too young for the army joined the Home Guard: part-time volunteer soldiers who drilled, patrolled and kept watch in their own parishes.”
Hen-House on Dorstone Hill Belief and Identity“For three centuries the Golden Valley's British church stood on its own.”
When the Saxons Came to the Border Church Belief and Identity“Long before the Normans, before even the Saxons, the Golden Valley was Christian.”
First Christians in the Golden Valley People and Belonging“On the night of 31 October 1918, in the closing weeks of the First World War, the Parry family at the Cynygar, their farm at Snodhill, heard owls screeching round the house.”
Owls Round the House at Snodhill People and Belonging“In 1950 the church tower of St Faith's, Dorstone, was declared unsafe and reduced in height, and roughly five hundred tons of masonry came down.”
Seventy Years of Silent Bells Belief and Identity“Four thousand years separate the Stone Age monuments on Dorstone Hill from the medieval church in the valley below.”
From Sacred Hilltop to Valley Church Land and Livelihood“For three hundred years, a handful of gifts gave the poorest people in Dorstone a floor to stand on.”
Charities, Poor Relief and the Parish Safety Net People and Belonging“On a snow-blind afternoon in the war's final days, a training bomber fell out of the sky onto Moccas Park.”
Wellington Down at Moccas Land and Livelihood“Almost every cottage in nineteenth-century Dorstone kept a pig, and the pig was a serious matter.”
Acorns for the Rector's Pig Power and Governance“In the 1250s the rector of Dorstone was also the sheriff of Herefordshire, and he would die a bishop.”
Rector, Sheriff, Future Bishop Belief and Identity“A medieval cross stands on Dorstone's green. In 1812 its shaft was cut down and capped with an iron sundial; in 1906 it was restored as a memorial to a long-serving rector.”
How the Cross Told the Time People and Belonging“The capstone of Arthur's Stone, the Stone Age tomb on the ridge above Dorstone, weighs an estimated twenty-five tonnes.”
Raising the Capstone People and Belonging“In 1895 the rector's wife built Dorstone a Reading Room, on the very ground where a village pub had lately stood.”
Newspapers Read Aloud at the Reading Room Power and Governance“At one o'clock on the Sunday morning after Boxing Day in 1859, the village constable was set upon in the dark at Dorstone.”
Brought Before the Bench Land and Livelihood“For two centuries most of Dorstone's farmers had worked land they did not own, paying rent to an estate or a rectory.”
When the Farmers Bought Their Farms Routes and Connections“The Golden Valley got its railway in 1881 and ruined the company that built it within twenty years.”
Golden Valley Railway Built and Bankrupt Belief and Identity“In July 2011 the Primitive Methodist chapel on Chapel Lane closed for the last time, nearly a century and a half after it opened.”
Bethesda's Quiet End People and Belonging“By the 1870s the northern end of Arthur's Stone, the great Neolithic tomb on the ridge above Dorstone, was being used as a quarry.”
Quarrying Arthur's Stone Power and Governance“By the 1880s, Dorstone's church, built only in 1826, was failing.”
Chains Holding the Church Together People and Belonging“On 30 July 1863 the parish put on one of its finest days.”
When the Rector's Daughter Married Belief and Identity“On the first morning of the new year, the farm servants of Dorstone went out into the wheat fields before dawn with straw, lanterns and bottles of cider, lit a fire in a corner of each field and held a sprig of hawthorn in the flame.”
Burning the Bush and the Christmas Thorn Power and Governance“In 1303 the Crown gave Clifford Priory leave to take over Dorstone's church and its income.”
The Church Under the Priory People and Belonging“The first farmers on Dorstone Hill built three great timber halls, and then, within a generation or two, deliberately burned them to the ground.”
From Halls to Barrows - Destruction, Memory and Monument Power and Governance“After 1066 Dorstone became frontier country. The valley led straight into Wales, and the Normans answered it with castles: Dorstone's own motte, Snodhill on the ridge opposite, and a chain of smaller works guarding every crossing.”
Castles on the Norman Frontier Belief and Identity“From the rents of a few houses in London, a clergyman who had grown up in Dorstone gave his home parish a free school, a dole for the poor, a fund to marry its maids and a loan fund for its tradesmen.”
Meredith Maddy's Gift Power and Governance“For nearly three hundred years, whoever held the right to appoint Dorstone's rector effectively governed the parish, and for almost all that time it was held by one family.”
Advowson and the Governance of the Parish Belief and Identity“In the last twenty years Dorstone, a small parish in Herefordshire's Golden Valley, has gone back to its own foundations, spade in hand, and found them deeper and stranger than anyone expected.”
Reopening the Ground People and Belonging“Around the turn of the twentieth century, Liza Lloyd of Commonbach in Dorstone parish was a woman people talked about.”
Liza Lloyd the Suspected Witch Belief and Identity“In April 1917, while the headmaster was absent for reasons the record never explains, Florence Evelyn Manning took charge of Dorstone School.”
Florence Manning the Supply Head Land and Livelihood“In 1881 the census-taker counted more than thirty different trades at work in Dorstone, from the mole-catcher to the travelling chimney sweep.”
Thirty Trades in One Parish Belief and Identity“In Victorian Dorstone the rector's family, the Powells, kept what the parish called a "Love Plough." It was a pair of horses and a plough, stabled on Glebe Hill, the church's own farmland.”
Love Plough on Glebe Hill Belief and Identity“For centuries Dorstone told a story that its chapel was founded by Richard de Brito, one of the knights who murdered Thomas Becket.”
Richard Brito, Dean of Hereford People and Belonging“On a Sunday in November 1920, with an early snowstorm coming down hard, thirteen-year-old Edie Parry set out from Top Cottage at Snodhill to walk to Peterchurch and fetch the nurse.”
Through the Snow for the Nurse Land and Livelihood“Ditton was a real place in medieval Dorstone, a holding with its own name, fought over in the king's courts for two hundred years.”
Ditton in the Medieval Record Power and Governance“In 1055 a Welsh king and an exiled English earl marched on Hereford, sacked the city and burned its cathedral.”
Harold Godwinson and the Burning of Hereford Belief and Identity“Dorstone's first churches were given, the old charters say, to a saint.”
Saint Dyfrig and the Valley of the Dore Power and Governance“Before there was a Dorstone of lords, castles and a parish church, there was a conquest.”
Bernard de Neufmarche and the Conquest of the Border Belief and Identity“Read the walls of Dorstone church closely and they become a record of every building that stood here before.”
Architectural Fragments and Hidden Details Belief and Identity“When John le Breton rose from rector of Dorstone to Bishop of Hereford, his family did not leave the county he came from.”
The Bishop's Family Routes and Connections“For more than four centuries, a farm in Dorstone belonged to an Oxford college, and the parish's oldest surviving deed still rests in its archive.”
An Oxford College's First Farm Belief and Identity“Everything we know of Dorstone's earliest Christianity comes from one book, written around 1130 by a Welsh cathedral pressing a property claim.”
Six Centuries in the Book of Llandaff People and Belonging“The Stone Age builders of the burial mounds on Dorstone Hill finished their work around 3700 BCE.”
The Ridge Remembered People and Belonging“On the evening of 5 June 1916, in the middle of the First World War, a picture fell off the wall at Brook Cottage in Dorstone.”
Night Kitchener's Picture Fell Power and Governance“Dorstone did not govern itself. For two centuries its lords, the de Solers, held the manor of the lords of Clifford, the barony on the Wye to the north.”
Clifford, the Barony on the Wye Routes and Connections“For half a century a railway tied Dorstone to the wider world, carrying its milk to Cardiff, its people to Hay market and its post and parcels in and out of the valley.”
Last Train to Dorstone People and Belonging“Sarah Davies did one of the most intimate and necessary jobs in the parish: she laid out the dead.”
Sarah Davies Who Laid Out the Dead Land and Livelihood“The Pandy Inn still stands at the centre of Dorstone, a timber-framed inn of the seventeenth century that for most of two centuries was the working heart of the parish.”
Four Fairs a Year at the Pandy People and Belonging“Local tradition says that Oliver Cromwell once stopped at the Pandy Inn during the Civil War of the 1640s.”
Cromwell at the Pandy Inn Power and Governance“In 1825 the church at Dorstone was falling down, and the parish of fewer than six hundred people could not pay to rebuild it.”
House to House for a New Church People and Belonging“For more than three centuries Dorstone taught its own children, from a free school endowed in 1643 to the village school that stood at the centre of parish life.”
When the School Closed Power and Governance“When Dorstone's old church was demolished in 1889, three fragments of its 1256 dedication stone were found in the rubble and kept.”
The Stone That Survived People and Belonging“High on Merbach Hill, above the Golden Valley, a dwelling once stood with the name Worlds End.”
Lost Road on Merbach Hill People and Belonging“Dorstone taught its own children in its own school for more than three hundred years, from a London clergyman's will in the 1640s to its closing in 1966.”
Three Centuries of Schooling Routes and Connections“In 1903 Dorstone station handled 5,072 passengers, despatched 2,125 parcels and received 197 tons of coal.”
Train That Waited for the Teacher Belief and Identity“William Palin, a Cheshire man, came to Dorstone from Hay in 1881 and served as headmaster of Dorstone School for twenty-five years.”
William Palin and the Seven Strokes Belief and Identity“A chantry was not just a chapel. It was a machine for prayer: an endowment of land that paid a priest to sing mass for a named soul, day after day, for ever.”
Patronage and the Making of a Chapel Power and Governance“For some two hundred years the de Solers family held the manor of Dorstone, as tenants of the great Marcher barony of Clifford.”
The Lords of Dorstone Belief and Identity“In January 1851 the whole of Dorstone put its name to a single piece of paper.”
Every Parishioner Signed People and Belonging“When young Stan Morgan broke his arm about 1935, thrown off a home-made cart of sheep-crate wheels careering down a bank, he was not taken to a hospital.”
Set by Feel Land and Livelihood“The families who bought their farms in 1919 spent the next quarter-century finding out what owning them cost.”
Hard Years on the Land Land and Livelihood“John Hendy took over the Dorstone village forge, the blacksmith's workshop where horses were shod and tools mended, in 1906, and bought the premises around 1930.”
Sarah Hendy's Forge Land and Livelihood“For two centuries the families who farmed Dorstone did so on land owned by a family who rarely set foot in it.”
Land, Tenancy and the Cornewall Estate Belief and Identity“Snodhill Castle, on the ridge across the valley from Dorstone village, had its own chapel and its own priest, separate from the parish church below.”
The Chapel at the Castle Belief and Identity“On the night of 17 June 1846, James Price left the Pandy Inn after an evening of rum and cider.”
Highway Robbery at the Pandy People and Belonging“Dorothy Howells was known across the valley as "Dorothy the Bell", after the Dorstone inn she kept house for.”
Dorothy the Bell People and Belonging“Leonard Lewis died in 1985 aged ninety-three. He had served in the First World War and never let anyone forget it.”
Leonard Lewis the Old Soldier People and Belonging“From a parish of about four hundred and fifty people, sixty men went to the First World War.”
Dorstones Great War Routes and Connections“In 1901 the Great Western Railway reopened the Golden Valley line, and a valley that had moved at the pace of a carrier's cart was joined to the nation by three trains a day.”
When the Railway Reached Dorstone Power and Governance“On 17 September 1645, with his cause collapsing, King Charles I ordered his small army to gather at Arthur's Stone, the ancient tomb on the ridge above Dorstone.”
King Charles at the Stone Nature and Climate“The Second World War reached all the way down into the oldest ground in the parish.”
War Comes to Arthur's Stone Land and Livelihood“Two auction days at Bell Farm in Dorstone, 120 years apart, measure a revolution in farming.”
Two Sales at Bell Farm People and Belonging“Between the wars a converted cottage by the church was the place where a scattered farming parish came together.”
Village Life at the Reading Room Belief and Identity“For four hundred years Dorstone's church belonged not to the parish but to a monastery.”
When the Monks Lost the Church People and Belonging“Arthur's Stone, the great Stone Age tomb on the ridge above Dorstone, is not one monument.”
Arthur's Stone and the Ceremonial Ridge Nature and Climate“One afternoon in 1936 the postmaster William Morris, his wife Mary and their young niece Dorothy were having tea in the kitchen behind the Post Office when a thunderstorm broke.”
Fire in the Water-Butt Power and Governance“The Great Fire of London in 1666 burned down houses two thirds of the way across the country from Dorstone, and very nearly took the parish's school and charity with them.”
How the Great Fire Reached Dorstone Belief and Identity“During the demolition of Dorstone's old church in 1889, workmen opened a tomb in the chancel wall and found a tall man buried with a pewter chalice and paten.”
Buried with a Chalice 
