St Catherine's Chapel

The chapel stands on its own on Chapel Hill, south of the village, and you can see it from most of Abbotsbury. The monks of the abbey built it in the late 1300s for pilgrims. It is stone through and through, roof included, over a barrel vault, which is why it is still standing when nearly everything else the abbey built has gone. It survived the Dissolution because sailors needed it: it is a seamark, and a light was kept in the stair turret.

The path starts at Chapel Lane, off Market Street opposite Red Lane, and climbs about half a mile through grazed fields. Twenty minutes, steep but short. From the top you get the village and the abbey ruins below you, the Fleet, Portland and eighteen miles of Chesil Beach. Look for the wishing holes in the south doorway: village women used to put their knees and hands in them and ask St Catherine, the patron saint of spinsters, for a husband, a custom that lasted into the late 1800s.

In the care of English Heritage and free. The hill and the outside of the chapel are open any reasonable time in daylight. English Heritage now runs guided tours of the inside on selected days, booked on its website and free to members, so if the inside matters to you check the dates before you climb. There are no facilities at the top. Cattle graze the hill, so dogs on leads. Park in the village car park off Rodden Row, DT3 4JL.

Go up for the sunset. Every year on the Sunday nearest 25 November, St Catherine's day, the Friends of St Nicholas light the hill with candles in paper bags, the bags £2 from the village shops. The acoustic inside is good enough that local choirs are brought up to sing in it.

English Heritage, St Catherine's Chapel, Tour dates, The chapel's story