Last November, the Lonely Planet travel guide declared Charmouth beach the best beach in the world to visit in winter. This fossil strewn beach on Dorset’s Jurassic Coast beat Reynisfjara black-sand beach on the south coast of Iceland and Plage de la Conche des Baleines on the Île de Ré coast in France, as well as breathtakingly beautiful beaches in New Zealand, Canada and South Korea.
You may need to wrap up if you visit on a blustery winter’s day, but Lonely Planet claims that Charmouth’s beach is a wonderful spot to while away the hours beachcombing for prehistoric treasures. The village itself is well worth exploring too and has welcomed some unexpectedly famous names over the centuries.
The Abbots House in The Street is among the oldest buildings in Charmouth, and the only one that is Grade II* listed. Thought to have been built in the 16th century by Thomas Chard and fellow abbots of Forde Abbey (on the Dorset/Somerset border) as a resting place for travellers, the property became a private residence following the Dissolution of the Monasteries, before being converted into an inn, a church manse, a private home and another hotel.
An inn called The Queens Armes first appeared on the site in the mid-17th century, possibly given the name because it was believed that Katherine of Aragon stayed here in 1501 on her way to marry Henry VII’s oldest son, Prince Arthur. Whether she did actually stay, who can say? The County Record Office has no documentation and Katherine’s route from Plymouth was not due to pass through the village.
The building does have royal connections though, with Charles II visiting on 22 September 1651. Charles had been defeated by Cromwell’s New Model Army at the Battle of Worcester and was on the run. He was a wanted man - £1,000 had been offered as a reward for his capture. After hiding at the Sherborne home of Royalist Colonel Wyndham, he was introduced to Captain Ellesdon of Lyme Regis. It was agreed that Charles would set sail to St Malo in France on a boat owned by local seaman Stephen Limbry.
At six foot two inches, Charles was a distinctively tall man, some eight inches taller than the average man at the time, so he travelled to Charmouth in disguise, along with Juliana Coningsby, a niece of Lady Wyndham. Pretending to be an eloping couple, they booked a room at The Queens Armes and waited for Limbry to turn up. Alas he did not appear - his wife, suspicious he was up to no good, had locked him in the bedroom. Some claim he was locked in the toilet!
Charles would later successfully sail from Shoreham in East Sussex on October 15, landing in France the following day near Le Havre. The Monarch’s Way is a 625-mile waymarked footpath which roughly follows this escape route taken between September 3 and October 15. Starting at the battlefield in Worcester and finishing in Shoreham, a section runs through Dorset taking in the places where Charles II stayed during his flight...Trent, Charmouth, Bridport and Broadwindsor.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859 – 1930), the Scottish physician and author of the Sherlock Holmes novels, visited Charmouth in 1894 while investigating an apparent haunting in one of the village’s thatched cottages.
Conan Doyle travelled to Dorset with companions from the Society of Psychical Research — a Dr Scott of Norwood, London, and Mr Frank Podmore, a die-hard opponent of spiritualism. On the journey south, they tried to make sense of existing evidence, with Conan Doyle stating: ‘It consisted mainly of a record of senseless noises which made the place hardly habitable for the unfortunate family, who had the house on a lease and could not afford to abandon it.’
The family involved included an elderly mother, a married daughter and a grown-up son. The young man stayed awake for two nights with the investigating party. On the second night a fearsome noise broke out, as if someone was whacking a table with a heavy stick. The sound seemed to come from the kitchen, but nothing could be seen, and threads stretched across the stairs were unbroken. Conan Doyle continued to sit alone in the dark, hoping the noise would return. But it never did, and he was unable to cast a light upon the mystery.
Any hopes to revisit the property were dashed when the following year the house was burnt down one Sunday afternoon. At that point rumours came into play - was the haunting something to do with the skeleton of a young child that had, years before, been dug up in the garden?
Conan Doyle did not submit a report about the investigation, but Podmore did, blaming the unexplained noises as a mischievous hoax.
On Your Marks
Back in 1886, a village race in Charmouth was entered by Charles Burgess Fry (1872 – 1956), who later represented England in both cricket and football. The 12-year-old, who was staying in a local guesthouse, wrote a letter describing the event.
He recalled: ‘The athletic sports in which I won my first race ever were part of a regatta. The race was a steeplechase. The course, which was vague, started on the grassy incline on the right bank of the lower Char near the beach, went across some fields in the dip and finished on the grass slope where it started.’
Just over half a mile, the race ended in a sheer sprint. ‘I won easily and Kirby (the son of a doctor) - the only other competitor in proper running vest and knickers — was second. It was then I discovered I could run!’ Fry’s prize for crossing the line first was 10 shillings, which he had to collect from the chemist.
The scenic view towards Lyme Regis caught the imagination of Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775 - 1851), one of the greatest masters of British watercolour landscape painting. Lyme Regis, Dorsetshire: A Squall, dating from around 1812, by J.M.W. Turner is now kept at the Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow. Sketches of Lyme Regis from Charmouth Beach, done in graphite on paper, are part of the Tate Gallery collection. The painting was engraved in 1814 for Turner’s Picturesque Views on the Southern Coast of England which was published in 1826.
After King George III (1738 – 1820) fell in love with Weymouth and its invigorating sea bathing, citing it as the English Naples and a great place to recuperate from an illness, people flocked to the Dorset coast. Author Jane Austen (1775-1817) chose to spend time taking in the sea air of Charmouth and in 1803 stayed in the Mail Coach Inn (which after a fire became The Coach and Horses).
Austen described the village as a place of ‘high grounds and extensive sweeps of country, and still more, its sweet, retired bay, backed by dark cliffs where fragments of low rock among the sands make it the happiest spot for watching the flow of the tide; for sitting in unwearied contemplation.’ Sounds like she rather enjoyed her stay in Charmouth.
The handsome house that is now Charmouth Medical Practice, next to the Royal Oak pub, was once owned by Lord Herbert, Sidney Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Lea (1810 – 1861). In 1857 he set up a convalescent home with 20 beds in this property on The Street. His friend, a trailblazing nurse called Florence Nightingale, attended the opening ceremony. A couple of years earlier, in the Crimea, the Nightingale Fund was established for the training of nurses and Herbert, her close allay and confidant, served as honorary secretary of the fund. This was used to set up the first nursing school, the Nightingale Training School, at St Thomas’ Hospital in London in July 1860.
A Look Back at Charmouth by Lorna Cowan explores the history and heritage of the much-loved Dorset village. Price £7.50, available to buy in Charmouth shops and online at carnpublishing.com.
