Aldhelm in South Dorset

This year’s Wessex Society tour, led by Jim Gunter, was of sites on the Isle of Purbeck and took place on 22nd May, the Sunday before St Aldhelm’s Day. It began at Wareham, a burial place of Wessex kings and one of the towns fortified by Alfred against the Danes. The earthen ramparts (left) remain spectacular, even after a thousand years of erosion. An 1897 guide to the town described them as “a relic unique in the kingdom, and of which the town is justly proud”. The same booklet says of Wareham that “lately it is becoming more appreciated by those who have retired from business and are looking for a healthy spot with good communication to London in which to settle down”. Nothing new there then.

Two churches claim to be the one founded here by Aldhelm. Lady St Mary is the town’s largest church, with some surviving features of Saxon date within, but it was closed for repairs. The ‘Lady’ prefix is thought to be unique. St Martin-on-the-Wall (left) dates from about 1020. Today, perhaps rather incongruously, it is most famous for housing Eric Kennington’s stone effigy of Lawrence of Arabia, who is buried at Moreton. The effigy ended up here after St Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Abbey and Salisbury Cathedral had all rejected it. It had to go somewhere.

Lunch was at the Bankes Arms at Corfe Castle, named after the family who defended the castle against Parliament in 1646. Defeated, Lady Bankes got to keep the castle keys, which are preserved to this day at the family’s later home, Kingston Lacy, near Wimborne, where they are hung on the wall in the library.

Corfe Castle itself was not on the programme, though the beer garden provided an excellent view of the ruins (above) and of the steam traction on the Swanage Railway. The village has an unusual memorial (below) to King Edward the Martyr, murdered here in 978 by his step-mother. (And so the throne passed to her son, Ethelred, ready or not, and things were never so good again.)

Thence to the idyllic village of Worth Matravers, from where we walked to St Aldhelm’s Head. The chapel here (below) is Norman and may have replaced an earlier building. Oddly for a chapel, it is the angles, not the walls, that are oriented to the cardinal points. The walls are 7.77 metres long. Now I know that Aldhelm was very keen on the number seven, but to get the figures right in the metric system a thousand years before its invention is a pretty clever trick.

The chapel is St Aldhelm’s, and so, locally, is the headland. There is a St Aldhelm’s Quarry along the way. The coastal lookout thinks itself to be at “St Alban’s Head”, the name which Admiralty charts and those ignorant of Aldhelm have used for centuries, substituting for the truth a better-known Roman legionary martyred in 304. We look forward to the maritime authorities correcting this error, one that is now widespread but an error nonetheless. Some simple leadership from the top would get it sorted. (And then we might think about spelling it ‘St Ealdhelm’, as they do in Sherborne.)

The chapel, the coastal lookout and one-time coastguard cottages stand in a remote and very windswept spot about 3 miles from the village. Having followed a signpost that said it was 1½ miles, we eventually came to another telling us it was still 1½ miles. It does seem we can be imprecise about these things in Wessex. At other times, precision matters; the headland is home to a monument recording its pioneering role in radar research early in the Second World War. All trace of that presence has now gone, leaving the headland to nature and to history.

Purbeck is not in fact an island but a peninsula, crossed by a ridge with one broad gap in which stands the rocky stopper on which Corfe Castle is built. Returning from the coast the view of Corfe is one of the most dramatic in Wessex, but dangerous to photograph if you happen to be at the wheel. You’ll just have to experience it for yourself.