The seventeen miles between Wareham and Dorchester, through Wool and Warmwell Cross, traverse pretty country and encounter interesting places. Passing the “Pure Drop” Inn, we come to the hamlet of East Stoke. Half a mile to the left, across the River Frome, which runs parallel with the road thus far, are the scanty remains of Bindon Abbey, in a dark situation amid dense trees, and with black and stagnant moat. The stone sarcophagus of some forgotten Abbot of Bindon, resting on the grass, figures in Tess of the D’Urbervilles as that in which the sleep-walking Angel Clare laid Tess. We now come suddenly upon a delightful scene, as the road to Wool is resumed. There, on the right, on the other side of the sedgy Frome, rise the steep roofs and clustered chimneys of such a romantic-looking Elizabethan manor-house as those that were used years ago to make the fortunes of Christmas numbers, in tales of ghosts and hauntings. This is Woolbridge House. The bridge by which one crosses the Frome to it is much more ancient than the house itself, and is a fine, stone-built Gothic structure, with pointed arches and cut-waters up and down stream. The mansion, now a farmhouse belonging to the Erle-Drax family, was once the property of the Turbervilles, who became possessed of some of the lands of Bindon Abbey; and it is therefore with every warranty that Mr. Hardy made the old place figure in his greatest novel, Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Moreover, it does not merely look as though it should be haunted, but actually has, or had, that reputation. It is a particularly creepy and full-flavoured ghost-story that belongs to Woolbridge House—none other, indeed, than that of a passionate Turberville who murdered one of his guests when out for a drive in the family chariot. Unfortunately, this inhospitable deed was perpetrated “once upon a time,” which is the nearest thing the serious historian can make of it; and it will be conceded that this presents some difficulties for the inquirer. The guest, it appears, was one of the family. For many generations the awful apparition of the Turberville coach was believed in, but we do not hear so much of it in these times. It was accustomed to drive up at nights to the house, in every detail of ghastly horror. Ordinary persons—plebeian rustics and the like—might hear it, but only those in whose veins coursed the old hot Turberville blood might actually see the apparition; and as there is not anyone locally known to be of kin to that ancient family, it follows of necessity that ghostly manifestations have long since ceased. But in his novel Mr. Hardy has made splendid use of the old house and of the two life-size portraits of women, supposed to be Turbervilles, that are painted on upstairs walls.

The immediate neighbour of Woolbridge House, on this side of the Frome, is Wool railway-station, and on the left again is the village of Wool. The coast is reached in four and a half miles, at Lulworth, where those who do not feel equal to thoroughly tracing the wild and solitary and extremely beautiful coast-line of Dorset can at least sample it at one of its most delightful spots. There are two closely-neighboured Lulworths—East Lulworth, inland, where the curious castle, built about 1599–1650 by Lord Bindon and his successors, the Weld family, is seen; and West Lulworth, through which one descends to the Cove. This is an almost perfect circle, eaten out of the limestone rock by the sea, and surrounded on the landward side by bold treeless downs. Summer at Lulworth is a sheer delight for those who like quiet holidays. The Cove, with its light blue waters, looks a veritable bath of the Naiads, and should be, if such things were, the watery boudoir of mermaids. Here the cliffs rise up to sheer dizzy heights on the western horn of the tiny bay, with wildly contorted strata and truly awful chasms at Stair Hole. The like upside-down condition of the local geology may be observed at the romantic spot, some two miles farther west, called Durdle Door, where the cliffs plunge into the sea with their stratification perpendicular and streaked with the loveliest tints. The “door” of Durdle Door is a natural archway in the cliffs. If time and energy permit, there is a splendid field for exploration eastwards, past East Lulworth and on to Arishmill Gap, Worbarrow Bay, and Kimmeridge.

But to resume the inland road to Dorchester. From Wool we come in some four miles to Owermoigne, a rustic village of thatched cottages which figures as “Nether Mynton” in that diverting short story The Distracted Preacher, a tale of smugglers and their quaint ways with lace and brandy-tubs and the old church, founded on the actual doings of the “free-traders” who were accustomed to hide their contraband in the church tower, in the pulpit itself, or in the tombs of the rude forefathers of the village. At the cross-roads beyond Owermoigne, known as “Warmwell Cross,” a ready way lies into Weymouth, through Poxwell, Osmington, and Preston, a route with its own especial features—such, for instance, as the charming old manor-house of Poxwell, the “Oxwell” of The Trumpet Major, with the tall walls enclosing its grounds and the pretty architectural detail of a porter’s lodge. The mansion is now a farmhouse. From Osmington steep ways lead down to a favourite excursion from Weymouth, the romantic Osmington Mills, near the sea. Here one may observe on the steep grassy sides of the hills the martial equestrian effigy of George III., whose making is described so humorously in The Trumpet Major: “The King’s head is to be as big as our millpond, and his body as big as this garden; he and the horse will cover more than an acre.” Descending steeply through Preston, Weymouth is reached along some two miles of level, skirting the curving shores of Weymouth Bay.

Weymouth, created for all practical purposes by George III., just as Brighton arose under the patronage of his son, George IV., is a likeable place, and not at all out of touch with the real Wessex. For it is of the Weymouth of The Trumpet Major, that delightful end-of-the-eighteenth-century love-story, that one thinks as the town is entered. It is as “Budmouth” that it finds mention in those pages, and the “Budmouth” of the Georgian period it in all essentials remains, with the staid red-brick houses of that time still lining the curving shore, which enthusiasts liken to the curving shores of the Bay of Naples. And, indeed, the sea in Weymouth Bay is often of a wondrous opalescent blue, rare enough off our coasts. The inhabitants of Weymouth did well to raise a statue to “Farmer George,” as an acknowledgment of benefits received. It was unveiled in 1810, and has since that time aroused the mingled amusement and contempt of all sorts and conditions of men. For my part, I keep all my contempt for the public statues erected in London yester-year, and cherish a liking for that statue and its surroundings. It is at least a composition, and one ought to feel grateful to the sculptor, who represented the King in the ordinary dress of the age, instead of in an impossible Roman costume.

Behind this statue is St. Mary’s Street, narrow, with a congeries of narrower alleys leading out of it. This is the most picturesque corner of the town, and gives upon the harbour, past a house in whose gable wall still rests the cannon-shot fired in the siege of 1644. The harbour is really the sea-estuary of the River Wey. The old original Weymouth is on the other side, with the beautiful backwater on the right, reaching to Radipole.

The chief scenic asset of Weymouth is, of course, the great rock of Portland, the Gibraltar of Wessex, the “Isle of Portland,” tethered to the mainland only by the long shingly spit of the Chesil Beach. Thence comes the famous Portland stone, and there is the equally famous Portland Prison. There, too, are forts with heavy guns, the great breakwater, and various other appointments and developments that render this a strong naval rendezvous. A great assemblage of battleships in Weymouth Bay is not the least among the many attractions that Weymouth has to offer. On the crest of the steep hill at Wyke, as you leave the town for Portland, is the great church of Wyke Regis, the mother-church of Weymouth, with memorials of many sailors wrecked in Deadman’s Bay, which extends westward from Portland to Bridport. Here, too, the diligent may seek and find the epitaph of one “William Lewis, who was killed by a shot from the Pigmy schooner, 21st April, 1822. Aged 33 years.” Lewis was a smuggler, killed in the course of one of his illegal expeditions; but the verses upon his tombstone take no count of that, and call down curses upon whoever fired the shot.

From Wyke the road descends steeply, and, crossing the Fleet Bridge, leads along two miles of flat road across the Chesil Beach. The stranger would hardly expect to see so much shingle in the whole world as he finds here. It is a vast accumulation of pebbles running westward hence as far as West Bay, Bridport. Its total length is eighteen miles, and it varies from a hundred yards to more than a quarter of a mile in breadth, its pebbles ranging gradually in size from Brobdingnagian specimens, about the size of a breakfast-plate, at Portland to the tiniest particles at West Bay.