page_title: Briantspuddle
section_title: The Bladen Estate
hierarchical_section_title: Briantspuddle / History / The Bladen Estate
caption_attribution_description: Houses in Briantspuddle Bladen Valley
context_page_description: Briantspuddle is a small village in the Piddle Valley in Dorset, England, near the villages of Affpuddle and Tolpuddle and about 8 miles east of the county town of Dorchester. It forms part of the civil parish of Affpuddle and Turnerspuddle in the non-metropolitan district of Purbeck.
  The village takes its name from Brian de Turberville, who was lord of the manor during the reign of Edward III. It falls within the Piddle Valley Conservation Area and contains 35 listed buildings.
context_section_description: Briantspuddle once consisted of twelve cottages (which still exist within the village today) until Ernest Debenham expanded the village under the concept of creating a self-sufficient agricultural enterprise. By 1929 forty new cottages had been built to house the estate workers. His vision was that every house would have an inside toilet and at least a quarter of an acre of garden.  Work was delayed by the First War.
  Many of the houses in the village are constructed from specially hand made 'airspaced' concrete blocks which were produced locally.  These reduced the need for foundations and aimed to insulate by the air gaps and over 200,000 were produced annually. The consistency of the design of new houses and agricultural buildings is due to the use of Arts and Crafts style which was adapted to reflect the distinctive character of vernacular architecture in the area by the architects Halsey Ricardo and Leslie MacDonald Gill. Bladen Valley represents an interesting example of a 'model' estate, which has been listed in its entirety. Unusually, the house numbers in the village were based on the order in which rent was collected, rather that the more traditional sequence of odd and even numbers.
  The Bladen Farms were an experiment to prove that under modern conditions it was possible for Dorset to produce a larger proportion of home-grown foods, especially of animal origin, than it did previously.  Ernest Debenham argued that this would "readjust the balance of population and enable a larger number of workers to live on the land".  His plan was to support smaller neighbouring farms with special facilities that could provide economies of scale. This 'demonstration farm' replaced "middlemen and intermediaries" and the project was very successful at pasteurisation and other successes included egg production, electricity generation and selective breeding of livestock (as a result of which many prize winning sheep and cattle were produced), forestry, bee-keeping, and a farm veterinary service. Following Debenham's death in 1952 the estate was broken up and sold.
caption: Cottages in Bladen Valley clearly showing block construction
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