[Illustration:  BEAMINSTER.]

Charles II stayed at the “George” in his groom’s disguise during the flight after Worcester.  This inn was rebuilt during the last century.  About a quarter of a mile out of the town to the south-west is the Tudor Manor of the Strodes, standing in Parnham Park.  Certain portions of the house are older than the sixteenth century, and a window bears the name and date “John Strode 1449.”  Mapperton House is another fine old mansion.  It stands two miles to the southeast in a secluded dingle lined with closely-growing trees and the beautiful colour of the early sixteenth-century stone building is a delightful contrast to the greenery around.  The finely designed entrance gateway is surmounted by two eagles in the act of rising from the posts.  The old house forms two sides of a picturesque quadrangle, Mapperton church being on the third.

Three miles north-westwards of Beaminster is Broadwindsor, amidst scenery pleasant enough from the farmers’ point of view, for these are “fat lands,” but more tame than that seen between Toller and the former town.  Not far away, however, are the finely-shaped summits of Pilsdon Pen and Lewsdon Hill, nearly of the same height and remarkable alike from certain aspects.  “Pilsdon Pen,” says an old writer, “is no less than 909 feet above the sea, and therefore 91 feet short of being a mountain!” Who gave the 1,000 feet contour line that arbitrary nomenclature is unknown.  Usually in Britain double that height is taken as the limit, but it is perhaps more fair to allow each countryside its own standard.  Pilsdon is much more imposing than some of the “lumps” that are double its altitude on the table-land of central Wales, where the bed of the Upper Wye is not many feet below the height of the “Pen.”  That, by the way, is a Celtic suffix; it would be interesting to know if the word has continued in constant use since British times.

The chief claim to fame on the part of Broadwindsor is that the famous Thomas Fuller, witty writer and wise divine, was its royalist parson and that he preached from the old Jacobean pulpit in the parish church.  This building has been well restored by the son of a former vicar.  The usual Perpendicular tower surmounts a medley of Norman and Early English in the body of the church.

But this is a long way from the Tollers, and the road must now be taken by Mapperton, back to the train that provokingly burrows through cuttings, with an occasional flying glimpse of lovely wooded dell and tree-crowned hill, on the way to Powerstock or, according to Dorset—­“Poor stock.”

The well-restored church here is interesting.  There is a very early Norman arch in the chancel with beautifully sculptured pillars and capitals.  Upon the hill top above the village is the site of Powerstock Castle that was built within the ramparts of an ancient earthwork by King Athelstan.  A short distance to the south-east is Eggardon Hill (820 feet) with a great series of entrenchments upon its summit which deserve to rank with those of Maiden Castle and Old Sarum.  The fortifications have a strong resemblance, on a smaller scale, to the first-named stronghold.