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. This is Sir John Arundell, an ancestor of the
Lords Arundell of Wardour in Wiltshire. The de Chideocks were the
original owners of the countryside and in a field beyond the church to
the north-east is the moat which once surrounded their castle,
dismantled soon after the close of the Civil War as a punishment for
the annoyance it caused the army of the Parliament in interfering with
the communications of Lyme. It changed hands several times during the
war, but while held by the Royalists it seriously compromised their
opponents on the west.

The Manor House is a seat of the Welds, a Roman Catholic family. In
the grounds of the manor is a very ornate church belonging to that
communion and a cemetery that has an interesting chapel, the walls of
which are covered with paintings.

The scenery is now becoming Devonian in character, of the softly
pleasant aspect of the south, lines of hill occasionally rising into
picturesque hummocky outline; wide troughed valleys richly timbered,
with mellow old farmhouses here and there about their slopes,
connected by deep narrow flowery lanes extraordinarily erratic in
direction, or want of it. 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