The landscape of the Parish is fairly complex. The land lies in a roughly north/south orientation to the east of Tolpuddle with the chalk stream of the River Piddle running west to east through it. The gently rolling chalk hills rise to the north, ideal for cereals, and commanding wide views to the Purbecks. To the south of the river the hills rise more steeply to the sands and gravels of Wareham Heath before descending through the ancient woodlands of Okers Wood and Sares Wood to the fertile alluvial soil of the River Frome.
The area has been inhabited for the last five thousand years, as can be witnessed by the many Bronze Age barrows on both the northern and southern ridges. The boundaries of the Parish have been defined since Saxon times and agriculture was of primary importance to the economy of the Parish, reaching a climax during the time of the Bladen Estate, owned and run by Sir Ernest Debenham in the first part of the twentieth century.
The villages of the Parish are strung along the south side of the river, which runs through what were originally managed water-meadows, some of the earliest in the country to be given a licence to control the flow of the river with channels and sluices. The meadows were flooded in the spring to flush up the lush grass for the cattle to graze on. The old ways of controlling the river have gone, but it is still a joy to see cattle grazing on those meadows that are still in use.
In the past much of the acid soils to the south on the heath have been conifer plantations for timber but the heath is now slowly being returned to it’s “natural state”, namely that originally created by man over millenium. The heath, bright with the yellow flowers of gorse, covered by a network of SSI’s and is host to hundreds of species of plants and ferns, 163 species of birds, insects, bees, butterflies and dragonflies and all six species of Britain’s reptiles. Not to mention deer, both roe and sika, badgers, foxes and other smaller fauna. The whole area has many paths and tracks which are much enjoyed by both riders and walkers.
The parish contains the bulk of the Purbeck Conservation Area associated with the River Piddle. From 1981 to 1987 this amounted only to the built environment at Briantspuddle and at Affpuddle, but it was expanded in 1987 to include the whole of the river valley from Tolpuddle to downstream of Throop. It included the water meadows on either side of the river and large tracts of farmland to the south of the river. In 2017 the area was reviewed and in 2018 the large tracts of farmland were removed. A map showing the details of the 2018 boundary can be found at: