From "Lost Dorset" by David Burnett (Dovecote Press 2018): "The village policeman stands in the bottom of an empty Ashmore pond in September 1911. The pond is at least 300 hundred years old and is 16 feet deep at its deepest point. It rarely dries out, though only fed by rain, but the summer of 1911--the so-called 'Halcyon Summer'--was one of the driest and warmest on record. There was hardly any rain from May onwards, and the drought finally broke on September 12th, shortly after this photograph was taken. The villagers traditionally hold a feast when the pond dries. Cakes are baked and eaten in the bed of the pond. In the old days local farmers used to haul out the cartloads of mud that gathered on the bottom for manuring their land."