LULLWORTH (EAST), a parish in the hundred of
WINFRITH, Blandford (South) division of the county
of DORSET, 6 miles (S. W.) from Wareham, containing
353 inhabitants. The living is a discharged vicarage,
in the archdeaconry of Dorset, and diocese of Bristol,
rated in the king's books at £11. 14. ?., endowed'with
£200 private benefaction, and £200 royal bounty. The
King presented by lapse in 178?. The church, dedicated
to St. Andrew, contains some ancient memorials
of the family of Newbtirgh, descendants of the
Earls of Warwick of the Norman line, who, in the reign
of Edward I., succeeded the De Lolleworths, possessors
of the place from an early period: it afterwards came
to the Howards, Earls of Suffolk, one of whom, in 1588,
on the site of an ancient castle, laid the foxtndation of
the present noble castle of Lullworth, which was completed
in 1641, and then purchased by the family of
Weld; it is a massive structure, forming an exact cube
of eighty feet, with a circular embattled tower rising
sixteen feet above the battlements of the walls, and the
east front decorated with the arms of Weld, several fine
statues, and two inscriptions commemorating the visits
of George III. and his Royal consort in 1789 * Near
the castle is a circular Roman Catholic chapel, of elegant
architecture, erected several years since by Thomas
Weld, Esq., and fitted up with much taste and magnificence.
This stately edifice was appropriated as the
temporary residence of Charles X., his family, and suite,
on the expulsion of that monarch from the throne of
France, and prior to his seeking an abode in some of the
continental states. Dr. Weld, the present proprietor,
has been lately raised to the dignity of cardinal in the
church of Rome. He liberally received many exiles at
the period of the first French revolution, who formed
a religious fraternity on his estate here, of the' order
of La Trappe, which returned to the continent at the
general peace. Within the parish are many vestiges
of antiquity, principally barrows found to contain human
and other skeletons, rude urns, trinkets, &c., supposed
to be British, from the coarseness of the urns and
the absence of all Roman relics; on one of these, a lofty
hill termed Flower's Barrow, is a triple intrenchment,
called the British Camp, enclosing an area of about five
acres, to which there are two entrances, one on the
south-east, the other on the south-west.