That thread across the quiet;
By the wild flowers in the coppice,
There the track like a sleep goes past,
And paven with peace and poppies,
Comes down to the sea at last.
E. G. Buckeridge.
Modern Weymouth is made up of two distinct townships, Weymouth and Melcombe Regis, which were formerly separate boroughs, with their own parliamentary representatives. Of the two Weymouth is probably the older, but Melcombe can be traced well-nigh back to the Conquest; and now, although it is the name of Weymouth that has obtained the prominence, it is to Melcombe that it is commonly applied. Many visitors to Weymouth never really enter the real, ancient Weymouth, now chiefly concerned in the brewing of Dorset ale. The pier, town, railway station and residences are all in Melcombe Regis. The local conditions are something more than peculiar. The little River Wey has an estuary altogether out of proportion to its tiny stream, called the Blackwater. The true original Weymouth stands on the right bank of the estuary at its entrance into Weymouth Bay. Across the mouth of the estuary, leaving a narrow channel only open, stretches a narrow spit of land, on which stands Melcombe. The Blackwater has thus a lake-like character, and its continuation to the sea, the harbour, may be likened to a canal. The local annals of the kingdom can hardly furnish such another instance of jealous rivalry as the strife between the two boroughs. Barely a stone's-throw apart, they were the most quarrelsome of neighbours, and for centuries lived the most persistent "cat and dog" life. Whatever was advanced by one community was certain to be opposed by the other, and not even German and English hated each other with a more perfect hatred than did the burgesses of Weymouth and Melcombe Regis. As they would not live happy single, it was resolved to try what married life would do, and so in 1571 the two corporations were rolled into one, the only vestige of the old days retained being the power of electing four members to Parliament from the joint municipality—a right which was exercised until 1832. Not until the union was the old-fashioned ferry over the Wey supplemented by a bridge, the predecessor of that which now joins the two divisions of the dual town. The union proved to be a success, and in this way Weymouth saved both itself and its name from becoming merely a shadow and a memory.
It is to George III. that Weymouth must be eternally grateful, for just in the same way as George IV. turned Brighthelmstone into Brighton, it was George III. who made Weymouth. Of course there was a Weymouth long before his day, but whatever importance it once possessed had long disappeared when he took it up. For many years the King spent long summer holidays at Gloucester Lodge, a mansion facing the sea, and now the sedate Gloucester Hotel.
Considering its undoubted age, Weymouth is remarkably barren in traces of the past, and a few Elizabethan houses, for the most part modernised, well-nigh exhaust its antiquities.
Weymouth, which figures as "Budmouth" in Hardy's romances, is the subject of many references. Uncle Bengy, in The Trumpet Major, found Budmouth a plaguy expensive place, for "If you only eat one egg, or even a poor windfall of an apple, you've got to pay; and a bunch of radishes is a halfpenny, and a quart o' cider tuppence three-farthings at lowest reckoning. Nothing without paying!"