West Lulworth, Dorset
Historical Description
Lulworth, West, a village and a parish in Dorsetshire. The village stands under Bindon Hill, 6 miles SSW of Wool station on the L. & S.W.R., and 8½ SW by W of Wareham, and has a post, money order, and telegraph office under Wareham. It carves over a length of nearly a mile to the coast, has a good inn, contains some lodging-houses, is a coastguard station, and communicates by steamer with Weymouth. The climate of the place is healthy, and there is a good water supply. A cove at the end of the village is one of the most romantic inlets on the Dorset coast; has a circular outline, overhung all round by lofty cliffs of chalk and sand; opens to the sea by a narrow passage between two bluffs of Portland stone; and exhibits, in its engirdling cliffs, a section of all the geognostic formations between the oolite and the chalk. A rock about a mile from the cove is pierced with a natural arch about 40 feet high; and a face of cliff, about a furlong E of the cove, exhibits a number of petrified trees. Acreage of the civil parish, 2573; population, 464; of the ecclesiastical, 415. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Salisbury; net value, £103. Patron, the Bishop of Salisbury. The church was rebuilt in 1870, and is in the Early English style. There is a Congregational chapel.
Administration
The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.
Ancient County | Dorsetshire | |
Diocese | Bristol | 1542 - 1836 |
Diocese | Salisbury | 1836 - |
Liberty | Bindon | |
Poor Law union | Wareham and Purbeck | 1836 - |
Registration district | Wareham | |
Registration sub-district | Wareham |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Church Records
The parish register dates from 1745. The original register books are now deposited with the Dorset Archives Service, but have been digitised by Ancestry.co.uk and made available on their site (subscription required).
Churches
Church of England
The Holy Trinity (parish church)
The church of the Holy Trinity, rebuilt in 1870 from the designs of the late J. Hicks esq. is a building of Purbeck stone in the Early English style, and consists of chancel, nave, north aisle, transept and a western tower containing 6 bells; two of the original peal were in 1889 cast into one; four bells were added in 1892, and the sixth in 1903, and in 1888 the tower was enlarged, at a cost of £600: there are 300 sittings.
Civil Registration
For general information about Civil Registration (births, marriages and deaths) see the Civil Registration page.
West Lulworth was in Wareham Registration District from 1837 to 1937 and Poole Registration District from 1937 to 1974
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for West Lulworth from the following:
Land and Property
The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Dorset is available to browse.
Maps
Online maps of West Lulworth are available from a number of sites:
- Bing (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- Google Streetview.
- National Library of Scotland. (Old maps)
- OpenStreetMap.
- old-maps.co.uk (Old Ordnance Survey maps to buy).
- Streetmap.co.uk (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- A Vision of Britain through Time. (Old maps)
Newspapers and Periodicals
The British Newspaper Archive have fully searchable digitised copies of the Dorset County Chronicle and the Sherborne Mercury online.
Visitations Heraldic
The Visitation of Dorset, 1623 is available on the Heraldry page.