| Chaldon Herring |
| Chaldon Herring sits at the
top of a green hill and is one of those villages that nearly gets
forgotten! It is also known as East Chaldon and the name Chaldon means a
hill where calves are pastured while Herring is derived from Hanrang,
after the family who were lords of the manor during the 13th century.
Not far away is the Atomic power station at Winfrith and Ringstead . Here can be found five Mary's, which are line of five burial mounds. There are some spectacular views across the Frome Valley to the Great Heath at Winfrith. The Sailor's Return an attractive thatched country inn built in the 18th century in rolling downland lies not far from Durdle Door and Lulworth Cove. Original this was a pair of thatched cottages built of rubble and local stone and it became an Inn about 1860, and refurbished and enlarged in 1986. The alterations kept the character of the original buildings with a huge beam a tone end and a stone walled dining room at the other with flagstone flooring throughout. The Inn sign shows the story behind the name as three brothers had left the village after deciding to join the navy, unfortunately only one was accepted and when he returned home from sea it was to find is wife with a lover peering from the wardrobe where he had hidden himself on hearing the sailor return The Inn gained more fame when Theodore Powys one of three literary brothers moved to the village in 1904 and married a local girl. The stories he wrote were all about village life and most of it based on Chaldon he soon became successful and people like Thomas Hardy, Lawrence of Arabia and David Garnett used to call on him, in fact the latter when he came to visit Theodore used to stay at the pub and used it as a setting and title for his story of colour prejudice which was set in the middle of the 19th century and told the story of a sailor returning from his travels and bring a coloured wife and child to run the local village inn. Theodore Francis Powys (1875 - 1953) lived like a hermit for many years here and his books used Chaldon and its villagers to explore his obsessions with good and evil, love, death and cruelty. The church was built when the Normans were here but was rebuilt in the 15th cneutry and in a neighbouring farmyard in the 20th century a very rare Saxon font was found and placed in the church. A memorial can be found on the hillside between the village and the sea and is dedcated to Llewellyn Powys and an inscription on it reads: LLEWELLYN POWYS
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