Remembrances of Lulworth This page is dedicated to those who have lived and loved Lulworth in their lifetimes. If you have stories to share about Lulworth, please contact the administrator via the contact page. If your story is accepted, it will appear here.
Memories of Lulworth
by Keith Britten
I visited East Lulworth with my late father when we were on holiday, probably the first time when I was about 8 or 9 years old, that would have been around 1955. When I was there in the 1960's it was quiet and peaceful apart from the shells flying over your head from the firing ranges. Most of the roads were just dirt tracks and East Lulworth was very picturesque.
I have found a photo of White Gate Lodge where my father and I used to visit the Sturmeys, even that has changed a lot but the old cattle grid outside is still there. I didn't live in Dorset but my father and I went there every year for our holidays for about 10 or 12 years of my childhood and I still have happy memories of the place.
It's all coming back. . . My father was a friend of the Sturmey's that lived and worked on the estate, I have no idea how they became friends but they knew about my mother who who died 6 weeks after I was born. I am assuming that my mother and father went there together at some time after their marriage in 1941. My father and I continued to visit them for the next 10 or 12 years. I remember that Mrs. Sturmey had reddish hair and that she was breeding Chinchilla's presumably for their pelts which I seem to remember them hanging to dry, not very pc today.
Mr. Sturmey, was always telling stories of the ghost of the castle, the Grey Lady. I remember doing a project for school one year and I was trying to find information about this Grey Lady, I found a book in the library, (no internet then), and it said that she was someone who lived at the castle who was murdered and her body throw out of a window into the moat and it floated down stream to a bridge where she was found and this is where her ghost is said to walk from the castle to the bridge which is no longer there. True or not, I don't know, but I have just found this online, “One of the estate workers, Alfred Sturmey, described how, on hearing cries from above, he spotted a distressed lady in one of the tower windows. With the help of a workmate, he ran up ladder to rescue her, but was amazed to discover that the floor of the room had collapsed hours before. He was convinced he had seen the Grey Lady, a ghost that has followed the Weld family for centuries.”
This is the story of the Grey lady after the fire, Strange how it was told by Alfred Sturmey.
My father and I always stayed in a boarding house in Swanage owned by a Mr. and Mrs.Green, it was from there that we took the bus to Lulworth, which stopped at West Lulworth and we walked the lanes to East Lulworth and the castle. If you arrived on the wrong day you were confronted with signs every where saying "Road Closed" and do not enter if red flag is flying. Some times we just ignored them if we couldn't hear gun fire and continued walking.
I remember at one time when we were at Lulworth Cove seeing a big hill overlooking the cove and I just had the climb it, that was my only experience of Bindon and I can't seem to remember seeing any ruins there. I always wanted to go and explore the ruins of Lulworth Castle but my father wisely wouldn't let me, we often looked around the outside of St Mary's Chapel but it was always closed so I never got to see the interior apart from a glimpse through the windows, I can't recall ever going into St. Andrews church either. ~Keith Britten, June 2017
by Keith Britten
I visited East Lulworth with my late father when we were on holiday, probably the first time when I was about 8 or 9 years old, that would have been around 1955. When I was there in the 1960's it was quiet and peaceful apart from the shells flying over your head from the firing ranges. Most of the roads were just dirt tracks and East Lulworth was very picturesque.
I have found a photo of White Gate Lodge where my father and I used to visit the Sturmeys, even that has changed a lot but the old cattle grid outside is still there. I didn't live in Dorset but my father and I went there every year for our holidays for about 10 or 12 years of my childhood and I still have happy memories of the place.
It's all coming back. . . My father was a friend of the Sturmey's that lived and worked on the estate, I have no idea how they became friends but they knew about my mother who who died 6 weeks after I was born. I am assuming that my mother and father went there together at some time after their marriage in 1941. My father and I continued to visit them for the next 10 or 12 years. I remember that Mrs. Sturmey had reddish hair and that she was breeding Chinchilla's presumably for their pelts which I seem to remember them hanging to dry, not very pc today.
Mr. Sturmey, was always telling stories of the ghost of the castle, the Grey Lady. I remember doing a project for school one year and I was trying to find information about this Grey Lady, I found a book in the library, (no internet then), and it said that she was someone who lived at the castle who was murdered and her body throw out of a window into the moat and it floated down stream to a bridge where she was found and this is where her ghost is said to walk from the castle to the bridge which is no longer there. True or not, I don't know, but I have just found this online, “One of the estate workers, Alfred Sturmey, described how, on hearing cries from above, he spotted a distressed lady in one of the tower windows. With the help of a workmate, he ran up ladder to rescue her, but was amazed to discover that the floor of the room had collapsed hours before. He was convinced he had seen the Grey Lady, a ghost that has followed the Weld family for centuries.”
This is the story of the Grey lady after the fire, Strange how it was told by Alfred Sturmey.
My father and I always stayed in a boarding house in Swanage owned by a Mr. and Mrs.Green, it was from there that we took the bus to Lulworth, which stopped at West Lulworth and we walked the lanes to East Lulworth and the castle. If you arrived on the wrong day you were confronted with signs every where saying "Road Closed" and do not enter if red flag is flying. Some times we just ignored them if we couldn't hear gun fire and continued walking.
I remember at one time when we were at Lulworth Cove seeing a big hill overlooking the cove and I just had the climb it, that was my only experience of Bindon and I can't seem to remember seeing any ruins there. I always wanted to go and explore the ruins of Lulworth Castle but my father wisely wouldn't let me, we often looked around the outside of St Mary's Chapel but it was always closed so I never got to see the interior apart from a glimpse through the windows, I can't recall ever going into St. Andrews church either. ~Keith Britten, June 2017
