Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 20, 2025
When we got to the top of the long hill after Chideock I was bidden halt at a cross-roads, with a waggon full of ammunition, while the force moved on to the attack. The hills were showing up clearly above the mist; but the valley lay like a sea, a great grey formless level, like some world of the ghosts.
They said that he was a young farmer, in a small way, from somewhere out beyond Chideock. The war had been a kind of high-spirited frolic for him; he had entered into it thoughtlessly, in the belief that it would be a sort of pleasant ride to London, with his expenses paid. Now he was ended.
We spurred up our nags in a panic, till we, too, were going full tilt for Lyme, shouting out as we went any nonsense which came to our heads. We were in a panic fear; I believe that the horses in some way felt it too. We galloped back to Chideock as though we were chased by witches, while the gun-firing at Bridport steadily grew less, till at last it stopped altogether.
When he rode out with bound hands from the Carew house that evening, between two armed riders, he rode out of life. He never saw Chideock again, except in the grey light of dawn, after a long ride upon a hurdle, going to be hanged outside his home.
Chideock is a clean pleasant street of houses most of whose occupants let lodgings or cater for the passing traveller in one way or another. The Perpendicular church was restored in a rather drastic manner about forty years ago; this brought to light a crude wall painting. At the east end of the south aisle will be seen a black marble effigy of a knight in plate armour.
At Chideock, some of the cavalry came up with us. They were our own men, our own troop of horse, not an enemy after all. The riderless horses were a few of the militia charges which had been seized from a cavalry outpost to the west of the town. We had bolted from our own crazy terror. But we were not the only fleers. Our cavalry had bolted first, at the first volley outside the town.
Fear is a contagious thing; it seems to pass from spirit to spirit, like a flame along a powder train, till perhaps a whole army feels it. Our horsemen pulled up among us in Chideock in as bad a scare as you ever saw; it was twenty minutes before they dared walk back to find out what had happened to the foot at Bridport, after their retreat. Our foot came back very angry with the horse.
It was from this hill that Powell, the aeronaut, was blown out to sea in a balloon nearly forty years ago. After a long wind round the side of Chideock Hill the high road descends towards the village of that name. A stile on the left gives access to a footpath to the "Seatown" of Chideock.
The cider country is still far off, however; for Dorset, though the soil and climate are well suited to it, has not yet looked upon the culture of the apple as an important item in farming, and orchards of any sort are few and small in size. The Lyme road climbs up from Chideock round the steep face of Langdon Hill and reaches its summit level, over 400 feet, about a mile out of the village.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking