Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 25, 2025
I was told that there were hundreds of acres of this earth all round the place earth so rich in iron that many a man's mouth had watered at the sight of it; also that every effort had been made to induce the owner of Abbotsbury to allow this rich mine to be worked. But, wonderful to relate, he had not been persuaded.
Though Portland stands a league off from the mainland of Britain, yet it is almost joined by a prodigious riff of beach that is to say, of small stones cast up by the sea which runs from the island so near the shore of England that they ferry over with a boat and a rope, the water not being above half a stone's-throw over; and the said riff of beach ending, as it were, at that inlet of water, turns away west, and runs parallel with the shore quite to Abbotsbury, which is a town about seven miles beyond Weymouth.
One day, in a meadow a few miles from Abbotsbury, I came upon a herd of about fifty milch cows scattered over a considerable space of ground, some lying down, others standing ruminating, and still others moving about and cropping the long flowery grasses.
She was 'tall and swarthy, a gipsy, and according to all witnesses inconceivably hideous, her underlip was 'the size of a small child's arm, and she was marked with some disease. 'Pray look at this face, she said; 'I think God never made such another. She was named Mary Squires. She added that on January 1 she was in Dorset 'at Abbotsbury, said her son George, who was present.
By far the most notable building in Abbotsbury is the fifteenth-century Monastic Barn, a fine structure 276 feet long. Its plan is as perfect as its simple but imposing architecture; the ecclesiastical appearance is heightened by the lancet windows between the heavy buttresses and the slight transeptal extensions that give the structure the form of a cross.
The route now bears right and soon reaches a high and desolate plateau littered with the debris of many years quarrying. The only saving grace in the scenery is the magnificent rearward view along the vast and slightly curving Chesil Bank which stretches away to Abbotsbury and the highlands of the beautiful West Dorset coast. The prison is still farther ahead to the left.
Westward of Portland Isle, on the southern coast near Abbotsbury, are the ruins of a monastery built by Canute, and St. Catharine's Chapel, perched on a steep hill overlooking the sea, while in the neighborhood is the Earl of Ilchester's castle, surrounded by attractive gardens.
This was that when the owner of Abbotsbury came down for the October shooting and found the starlings more numerous than ever, he put himself into a fine passion and reproached his keepers and other servants for not having got rid of the birds as he had desired them to do.
There is a gatehouse, with an arch of later date, remaining, besides the fragmentary portions in the farmhouse. Many houses in Abbotsbury have pieces of ecclesiastical stonework or carving built into their heavy walls, and arched windows seem to have been transplanted bodily from the dismantled abbey to the dwellings in the village.
The history of the Swannery takes us back to Elizabeth's days, when one John Strangeways was in possession not only of the swans but of the abbey and much else besides. It is still in the possession of his descendant, Lord Ilchester, to whom the new Abbotsbury Castle belongs. This was destroyed by fire about nine years ago and has since been rebuilt.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking