No it's not in Moreton on the Marsh, its in Dorset!…read more
I love coming here. The church is rather pretty with some unusual stained glass windows.
But this is not why I come at all, though the church is in a lovely situation.
No, what draws me here is T. E. Lawrence.
If that doesn't ring a bell, Lawrence of Arabia.
He had a cottage near Bovington called Clouds Hill, where he apparently lived upstairs, using the ground floor to store books and firewood and beverages.
He was great friends with Thomas Hardy, and several other notable people.
Lawrence left the army in order to seek refuge from his reputation, and joijned the RAF under the name of Shaw, and was based in Plymouth. This seems to have not been a happy time for him, though he made friends and found a bolthole on Dartmoor.
In 1932, he was mor bike riding near Clouds Hill when he had to swerve in order to avoid two teenage boys on their bycycles. He hit a tree and never regained consciousness.
The boys fled in shame, thinking he was already dead/
Lawrence is buried in Moreton Churchyard. He was 39.
Every year in June, a red rose arrives at his grave. No one has yet discovered from whom it comes, or whose estate it might be a legacy of.
A living mystery for a legend in his own lifetime.
