East Lulworth, Dorset

Historical Description

Lulworth, East, a village and a parish in Dorsetshire. The village stands 1 mile from the coast, 3½ miles SSE of Wool station on the L. & S.W.R., and 5½ SW of Wareham, and has a post office under Wareham; money order and telegraph office, West Lulworth. Acreage of parish, 2304; population, 358. The property belonged to the Lnlworths, and passed to the Newburghs, the Howards, and the Welds. Lulworth Castle, the seat of the Weld family, was originally built in 1146; was rebuilt in 1588-1641, chiefly out of the ruins of Bindon Abbey; is a cube of 80 feet with two round corner towers, each 110 feet high; commands a beautiful sea view through a gap in the range of chalk hills; was visited by James I., Charles II., and George III.; gave an asylum, in 1830, to Charles X. of France when driven from his throne; contains a state bedroom, some family portraits by Leiy, and others in pencil by Hussey; and stands in a park of about 5 miles in circuit, amid a very secluded tract of country, adjacent to a sequestered and very romantic reach of coast. A modern chapel is connected with the castle, but stands apart from it, and contains an illuminated psalter of the time of Edward I., a copy of Raphael's picture of the Transfiguration, and an altar decorated with porphyry, alabaster, and Italian marble. A Trappist monastery stood in the grounds prior to the peace of 1815. A tradition ascribed variously to Lulworth and to Painshill gave rise to O'Keefe's comedy of "The London Hermit, or Rambles in Dorsetshire." There are a treble-ditched camp of 5 acres and several barrows. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Salisbury; value, £130 with residence, in the gift of the University of Oxford. The church consists of a fine proportioned tower of rather Late Perpendicular work, a nave, N and S porches, and a semicircular apse. The chancel and nave were restored; the church contains some memorials of the Weld family. A large number of barrows, some of which have been opened, are in the parish.

Administration

The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.

Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.

Church Records

The parish register of baptisms, marriages and burials begins in 1561. 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

Civil Registration

East 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 East Lulworth from the following:

• Hunt & Co.'s Directory of Dorsetshire, Hampshire, & Wiltshire 1851

Land and Property

The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Dorset is available to browse.

Maps

Online maps of East 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.