The Dawson Pets ( VILLAGE TALES EP. 46 )

More Dawson catastrophes, this time in respect of the Dawson’s historic connection to steeplechasing, and Davinia Dawson’s interest in animal rights and her loss of several snakes.

It was while I was compiling some notes on ‘Our Best friends’, a compilation of stories regarding the village pets, that Rachael, our village historian mentioned what progress she was making with the Dawson’s history, a book she is writing with Gill Dawson, a local family steeped in academia that have had a long and illustrious past. For a century or more their interests have been to do with publishing and it is that arm of the family which resides locally. Besides their academic prowess, another area in which they excel is being accident prone. I have suggested that their family motto be ‘An accident waiting to happen’. Whether this mis-happish tendency is due to carelessness, bad luck, or just a lack of common sense, is difficult to tell, though Rachael has examples of them all. The Dawsons appear to have more than their fair share of what polite people might call ‘eccentrics’, what less polite people might call ‘nutters’. It is true though that to qualify as an ‘eccentric’, class and wealth make it easier, and the Dawsons have had plenty of both. It maybe those qualities that bring ‘eccentrics’ to our attention, their hare-brained schemes, or bizarre inventions that money and connections are able to support. Lesser folk would just be committed and their ideas of running cars on hydrogen, or powered flight, would be considered proof of their insanity. Icarus may well have been a ‘Dawsonii’. A bonkers idea carried out with enthusiasm that ended in failure, except that a real Dawson would have magically survived and the whole catastrophe would have benefitted mankind in some way, and Icarus Dawson would have been given his own saints day.

I asked Rachael if she had any examples of Dawson catastrophes involving animals, and she asked me how far I wanted to go back.

‘Did you know that it was Peregrine Dawson that brought Steeplechasing to England?’ She asked me, knowing full well I didn’t.

It would be unusual for a solidly middle-class family like the Dawsons not to have some equestrian connections. Amethyst and Brendon, the two eldest children, had ponies from a very early age. Rachael says that it was several ponies kept by their predecessors that escaped from an enclosure near Fritham that contributed to the initial pony herd of the New Forest, and that ‘The Children of the New Forest’, featured the Hampshire arm of the Dawson Clan. 

‘Tell me about the steeple chasing,’ I reminded Rachael.

She began explaining that Peregrine had been in County Cork, during 1752 when he witnessed a race between two horseman, O’Callaghan and Edmund Blake. As church steeples were the most prominent and tallest landmarks a race of some miles was easier to define. The race was four and a half miles long from Buttevant Church to the St. Leger steeple. On returning to Dorset, Peregrine put up some money for a race from Shaftesbury to Gillingham during Easter of 1753, the first steeplechase in England by some years. An attempt to re-create the event two hundred years later resulted in the abolition of the Motcombe Beagles, but that is another story.

Anything more recent regarding animals, I asked

Rachael told me that Davinia, Jack and Gill Dawson’s youngest daughter (she who only answers to Dave), had many pets. When she was only two, her pet Agouti was spun to death while asleep in some damp clothing, after which animal protection has been her cause-celebre. The eldest two children, Amethyst, known as Amy and Brendan, known as Dan, stuck to more conventional pets, if you count horses. Corin, known as Corin, has never kept pets he says, having seen what’s happens to them in the care of his siblings. Rachael told me he regularly argues with Davinia over the treatment of the pets she keeps, telling her that if she really cared about animals she wouldn’t keep any. 

Rachael then asked me if I was resident in the village when a quarry was planned at Croft Hill and I told her I wasn’t though I believed it was one of the occasions when Davinia was arrested.

‘The protest was successful wasn’t it?’ I asked, ‘I mean, it never went ahead, did it?’

Rachael gave me a peculiar look, and then said I was right, but there was still some speculation as to how that came about.

She explained that at the time Davinia had just completed her first year at Oxford and was home for the summer. She had brought home, unbeknownst to her mother, several snakes that she had ‘rescued’ from the university. Because Gill, her mother, had a horror of anything long and wriggling, Davinia had kept them hidden in the summerhouse in a heated vivarium. She had a habit of ‘rescuing’ animals without knowing what to do with them or how to keep them. She’d left with some friends for a protest regarding the site of a new railway line, and while absent somehow the snakes escaped, though Davinia maintains it was Corin who released them. 

She was away for several days having been arrested for a second time. Her first arrest had been for chaining herself to the fencing at the proposed quarry site on the slopes of Croft hill, not far from Brimstone, the Dawson’s Victorian home. Davinia was the instigator on social media and had therefore become one of the constabulary’s ‘usual suspects’.

When she returned, and found the snakes gone, a fight broke out between her and Corin. The siblings were seldom on good terms and after another incident bringing the family into disrepute and to the attention of the police, Amethyst, known as Amy, the eldest of the children, informed her mother. Amy puts herself up as the guardian of Dawson morality and has flirted with several religions, claims not to drink or do drugs, and is renown for over-reacting. Amy’s panic leads everyone to believe that the snakes are A, numbering dozens, and B, deadly poisonous, and C, that the village and the locality were at the risk of being wiped out as in some Hollywood disaster movie. 

It later transpired that there were only three snakes, and perfectly harmless, but this didn’t suit Amy’s purpose, who, like her mother, had no fondness for anything appearing slimy and snake like. Several people were called in to search for the escapees, including Rachael, who was telling me the story, Sally Pemberton, and the Todber boys. The activity soon caught the attention of Ross, the ex Daily Mail journalist and trouble maker, who you may remember did for the Bridge club. Whilst he was appearing to help search the surrounding countryside, he was gleaning what he could for an exclusive in the Shipston Post, a local rag that survives on gossip and innuendo, which could be said to be Ross’s stock-in-trade. It was probably Ross who publicised the search to help boost his story so that various organisations interested in health and safety, wild animals, animal protection, environmental protection, the local herpetologist society, as well as several zoos including Bristol, all sent representatives; all in turn interviewed by Ross for his exclusive. Both the Drum and the village shop took more in that week than they had done for the last six months. Amethyst and Gill didn’t help by appearing to be almost hysterical at the same time as knowing nothing about the identity of the creatures other than they were dangerous and everywhere. Davinia being persona non grata, had wisely made herself scarce returning to her digs. 

The search area began to be extended into neighbouring properties. The search of a barn was halted when a colony of horseshoe bats was found, in the other direction, two Jack Russells disappeared into a disused badger sett and the Todber boys had to dig them out. In doing so some human remains were found with burial goods. Shaftesbury Historical Society were quickly on the scene and announced the site was of particular interest being probably Saxon, and in any case ‘high status’.

Whereas the dogs were found alive and well, the snakes were never found. What was found were some rare legless lizards, related to the newt family, that were thought extinct in western Europe. There were also several species of rare Orchid and four types of earthworm never before found in Dorset. The area was immediately sealed off while a full survey could be carried out. It was then registered as a Site of Special Scientific Interest. It also meant that the proposed site where Davinia had been arrested protesting some weeks before, had their permission for the quarry development revoked. This led to Davinia’s standing within the animal rights movement soaring to stratospheric heights, and a prolonged period of prosperity and popularity for the village. Just another case of a Dawson catastrophe resulting in a triumph and the Dawson family coming up smelling of roses.

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Written and read by Barkley Johnson.