East Lulworth Before the Weld Arms

What exactly is The Dorset Castles Research Group up to?

The history of the Weld Estate since the 17^th century has been well documented, incorporating the current castle, St Andrew’s church and the demolition and movement of East Lulworth Village. What is not so well known is the earlier history of the village which is first recorded in the Domesday Book in 1087 and was probably a late Anglo-Saxon village that was the focus of a large estate owned by the King. The next reference to Lulworth is in the mid-12^th century when the wars of Stephen and Matilda were partly fought in Dorset and the ‘castle’ changed hands. We cannot be sure what form this ‘castle’ took as there are no records from the time, but in the 16^th century we have an account of a manor house to the west of the church, believed to be St Andrew’s.

The Dorset Castles Research Group has obtained funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund to research the area to the west of St Andrew’s church to establish whether any remains of this building can be recovered using geophysical equipment. Further to the south of this site lies the western part of the earlier East Lulworth Village and we will also investigate this area for evidence of the extent of the village. Finally we hope to recover more details of the ornamental garden depicted by Margaret Weld in 1721 and reconstruct the history of East Lulworth Village between the 12^th and 16^th centuries. The group will be assisted in the surveying exercise by pupils from The Purbeck School who will be responsible for translating the data they collect into computer generated images.