CAST your minds back to November and you may remember a wonderful series of articles that arose from a query about a cottage in the woods in Up Cerne, near Cerne Abbas.

Bristol resident Mark Foot got in touch because he was keen to see a photo of the isolated home in which his great great grandfather George Foot, a woodsman, lived.

George even hit the headlines for killing six adders in Up Cerne woods!

The cottage was demolished back in 1960 and we are delighted that Pat Kuestner, a great grandchild of George's, who got in touch late last year, has since furnished us with this lovely photo of the quaint cottage in the woods in Up Cerne.

Pat says: "It was taken from quite a distance away but I have done my best to give everyone some idea of how it looked.

"The photo is marked July 1962 and the cottage was then derelict."

Also enclosed in Pat's letter from Germany was a poem written by Pat's mother Constance about the cottage. Constance wrote the poem after her last visit there - and it's a pleasure to share it with you all.

The Derelict House in the Woods

It stands alone in a wooded glen,

Upright yet but without a friend.

The walls are tatters, windows, shattered,

Now it seems nothing mattered.

It's lost its people and their meetings,

No more handshakes or hello greetings,

The heartbreak known, its joys, its fun,

Have flown to another world unknown.

Dear house, keep upright, proud and ponder,

Let your spirit remain a little longer,

For it may be years again before I find,

That little house among the trees and woodland wild.