View from Oare Church

Image: © Tiger Taken: 4 Aug 1997

Looking out from the north door of the church of St Mary the Virgin across the valley of the Oare Water. It is from here that John Ridd pursued Carver Doone - who had shot the bride Lorna on her wedding day in Richard Doddridge Blackmore's novel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorna_Doone#Plot_summary - leading to Carver's sticky end in an Exmoor bog. Oare is the most westerly parish in Somerset or in the Diocese of Bath & Wells. Blackmore's grandfather John was Rector 1809-1842 and the writer knew the church and surrounding country intimately. A leaflet available in the church states: "If the visitor wishes to reconstruct the shooting scene in 'Lorna Doone', there are certain points about the building which should be remembered. At the end of the 17th century ... the church ended where the screen is now. Blackmore visualised the shooting as done through one of the single-light windows Image which still remain at the sides of the inner (or old) chancel west of the screen ... There must also have been a screen where the pulpit is now. The box pews were not yet in the nave, which was still seated with open benches like those of Culbone [though there are pews there too Image as seen in Philip Halling's photograph]. "Maybe the full truth, history versus fiction, will never be known, but to this day thousands of visitors come ... to link places with the names in Blackmore's book... Blackmore visualised the shooting through one of the ... windows ... [but] it is more likely that it would have taken place from the back of the church, the west end, which would have been open to the public in those days."

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