CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE
I.Wareham—Bere Regis—The Heaths[5]
II.Corfe Castle—Swanage[12]
III.Woolbridge House-Culworth Cove—Owermoigne—Weymouth[16]
IV.“Under the Greenwood Tree”—Dorchester—Maiden Castle—Bridport—West Bay[24]
V.Cerne Abbas—The Vale of Blackmore—Sherborne—Shaftesbury[34]
VI.Yatton—Cheddar Cheese and Cheddar Cliffs—Wells—Glastonbury—The Isle of Athelney—Dunster[43]
VII.Norton St. Philip—Bath—Corsham—Castle Combe[54]
Index[63]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1.Sherborne Abbey Church[Frontispiece]
FACING
PAGE
2.Corfe Castle[9]
3.Bere Regis[16]
4.Wareham Church[25]
5.Near Maiden Castle, Dorchester[27]
6.Fordington, Dorchester[30]
7.Blackmore Vale from Shaftesbury[32]
8.The Bridport Arms[43]
9.The Almshouses, Corsham, Wiltshire[46]
10.The Market-Place, Wells[49]
11.Dunster Castle and Yarn Market[56]
12.Castle Combe, North Wiltshire[59]

WESSEX

CHAPTER I
WAREHAM—BERE REGIS—THE HEATHS

The Wessex of which I shall treat in these gossiping pages is that Wessex of romance and of the great dairy-farms, which has been little touched by the influence of railways. Hampshire and Wiltshire—Winchester and Salisbury—have become too closely in touch with London to stand so fully upon the ancient ways as does Dorset, with the greater part of its north-western neighbour, Somerset. But in these rural territories the countryman still talks the old broad Do’set and Zummerzet speech, in which the letter “o” in every possible circumstance becomes “a,” as you will perceive in that old rhyme beginning: