St Catherine's Chapel

The chapel on Chapel Hill was built by the abbey in the late 14th century for pilgrims. It survived the Dissolution because sailors needed it. It is a seamark, visible a long way out into Lyme Bay, and it served as a lookout later on. It is built of stone throughout, roof included, over a barrel vault, which is why it has outlasted everything round it. St Catherine was the patron saint of spinsters, and there is an old village tradition of unmarried women coming up here to pray for a husband. It is no longer consecrated, though a blessing is still held in it now and then, and the acoustic is so good that local choirs come up to sing in it. Try it yourself. Every year on the Sunday nearest 25 November, St Catherine's day, the hill is lit with candles in paper bags, an idea of the late Barbara Laurie's that the Friends of St Nicholas keep going. The chapel is Grade I, in the care of English Heritage, and free. It is about twenty minutes up Chapel Lane from the village, a fairly easy climb, and from the top you get the village, the Fleet and eighteen miles of Chesil Beach.