Description
Lulworth, East, a village and a parish in Dorsetshire. The village stands 1 mile from the coast, 3 1/2 miles SSE of Wool station on the L. & S.W.R., and 5 1/2 SW of Wareham, and has a post office under Wareham; money order and telegraph office, West Lulworth. Acreage of parish, 2304; population, 358. The property belonged to the Lnlworths, and passed to the Newburghs, the Howards, and the Welds. Lulworth Castle, the seat of the Weld family, was originally built in 1146 ; was rebuilt in 1588-1641, chiefly out of the ruins of Bindon Abbey; is a cube of 80 feet with two round corner towers, each 110 feet high; commands a beautiful sea view through a gap in the range of chalk hills ; was visited by James L, Charles II., and George III.; gave an asylum, in 1830, to Charles X. of France when driven from his throne; contains a state bedroom, some family portraits by Leiy, and others in pencil by Hussey; and stands in a park of about 5 miles in circuit, amid a very secluded tract of country, adjacent to a sequestered and very romantic reach of coast. A modern chapel is connected with the castle, but stands apart from it, and contains an illuminated psalter of the time of Edward I., a copy of Raphael's picture of the Transfiguration, and an altar decorated with porphyry, alabaster, and Italian marble. A Trappist monastery stood in the grounds prior to the peace of 1815. A tradition ascribed variously to Lulworth and to Painshill gave rise to O'Keefe's comedy of "The London Hermit, or Rambles in Dorsetshire." There are a treble-ditched camp of 5 acres and several barrows. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Salisbury; value, £130 with residence, in the gift of the University of Oxford. The church consists of a fine proportioned tower of rather Late Perpendicular work, a nave, N and S porches, and a semicircular apse. The chancel and nave were restored; the church contains some memorials of the Weld family. A large number of barrows, some of which have been opened, are in the parish.
Parish Church
The church of St. Andrew is a building of stone in the Late Perpendicular style, consisting of chancel, nave, south porch and an embattled western tower containing 3 bells, the earliest of which which dates from 1587: in the church are several escutcheons of the Weld family, and a tablet to William Baring esq. M.P. fourth son of Sir Francis Baring, who was drowned here 19 July, 1820: the chancel and nave were rebuilt in 1863, and the tower was restored in 1900: there are 188 sittings. The register dates from the year 1561.
