Evershot

I live near to Evershot and my children have attended school there so I see the stones most days. Occasionally you see people sitting there eating their sandwiches, somehow it just doesn’t seem right.

JS Udall in Dorsetshire Folklore 1922 said: “Amongst my notes I find a reference to a tradition attaching to a field called the “Dumb Maids’ Plot” in the parish of Evershot, not far from Stutcombe Bottom (the fine weather musketry range of the old Evershot Volunteers), according to which three dumb sisters used to meet to while away the time by dancing on the green. This tradition was mentioned by the late Mr. S.R. Baskett, who acted as cicerone [guide for sightseers] at a meeting of the Dorset Field Club in that neighbourhood in August 1895; but no further particulars appear to have been given, nor can I find any reference to it in the published accounts of that meeting either in the Dorset County Chronicle or in the Proceedings of the [Folklore?] Society.”

Stutcombe Bottom is a wooded area to the south west of Melbury House according to The English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest. It would not be far from the small village green on which the stones currently stand. Perhaps they have not been moved far if at all.

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