The highroad from Wareham to Dorchester makes a wide loop southwards from the railway at Wool and approaches Chaldon a mile away to the north.  Between the village and the turnpike is a ridge upon which are the remarkable tumuli called “The Five Maries.”  From this spot is another wide and beautiful view embracing the greater part of Dorset, and in its absence of habitations emphasizing the loneliness of the central portion of the county.  The highroad may now be taken by Overmoigne to Warmwell Cross on the return to Weymouth, but a better way, covering about nine miles in all, is, for those who can sustain the fatigue of “give and take” roads with rather indifferent surface, to take the hill top to near Poxwell.  This is a delightful village with a very beautiful Manor House dating from 1654.  The situation of this house, backed by the smooth Down, is exquisite, and the building reminds one of many fine old houses that stand just below the escarpment of the Sussex Downs.  On the hill beyond the village is a small prehistoric circle of fifteen stones within a miniature wall and ditch; from this point there is a good marine view toward Weymouth and Portland.  The direct road to these places now passes through Osmington, rapidly becoming suburban, although three miles from the town centre.  The rebuilt church is of little interest, but its immediate surroundings are very pleasant.  In the churchyard is a small portion of the wall of the old Manor House.  An inscription on the church wall should be noticed, it runs thus: 

  MANS LIFE. 
  MAN IS A GLAS.  LIFE IS
  A WATER THATS WEAKLY
  WALLED ABOUT:  SINNE BRING
  ES DEATH:  DEATH BREAKES
  THE GLAS:  SO RUNNES
  THE WATER OUT
  FINIS.

Beyond the village, a startling apparition breaks upon the view to the right.  This is the hero of Weymouth on his white Hanoverian horse.  “Although the length is 280 feet and its heighth 323 feet, yet the likeness of the King is well preserved and the symmetry of the horse is complete.”  The fact that the horse is galloping away from Weymouth has often been remarked; this was a blunder on the part of “Mr. Wood, bookseller, who carried the great work to a successful conclusion.”

Sutton Poyntz, in a charming situation between spurs of the hills, has been spoilt by the erection of the Weymouth Waterworks.  This is the “Overcombe” of Hardy’s Trumpet Major.  Chalbury Camp, to the west of the village, is a prehistoric hill fort with traces of pit-dwellings within the entrenchment.  To the south-east of the camp, on a spur of the hill and in the direction of Preston, is a remarkable and extensive British cemetery, from which numbers of cinerary urns and other relics have been excavated.  It is to be hoped that this sort of curiosity has now exhausted itself and that these resting places of dead and gone chieftains will be allowed to remain unmolested in the peaceful solitudes which their mourners chose for them.