Adventure and adventurers > Black's guide to the counties of Dorset, Devon, & Cornwall

16
FROM POOLE TO LYME REGIS.
Route 1.
with this projection runs a narrow strait, or natural canal, which
opens into an estuary of the Wey, called The Backwater ; and
this Backwater trends northward—behind the waste, as it were—
so as to turn a low tongue of land into a peninsula, with the sea
on one side, and the estuary on the other. Having realized this
picture in his “ mind’s eye,” the reader will next be pleased to
place a cluster of houses on the peninsula, and call it Melcombe
Begis, and another cluster of houses, but of an inferior character,
on the Nothe, and call it Weymouth, connecting the two towns
by. a stone bridge (designed by Donowell, and built in 1770).
Along the shore of the peninsula he will imagine a magnificent
Esplanade, 1 mile in length, and 30 feet in breadth, lined with
handsome houses, and defended by a substantial sea-wall; and he
will be good enough to remember that at low water it overlooks
a fine expanse of smooth firm sand, stretching seaward for nearly
180 yards, and commending itself both to bathers and prome-
naders. The principal streets are St. Mary’s, which is a sort of
sea-side Regent Street, and St. Thomas’, which rejoices in noble
marine views. The Baths have a frontage in each street; the
elevation in St. Mary’s being of the Doric order, and that in St.
Thomas’ of the Ionic. They were erected by the late Sir F. G.
Johnstone, and are certainly “ fitted up” in a superior manner.
Standing on the Esplanade, in front of Hamilton’s equestrian
statue of George III. (raised in commemoration of that monarch’s
fiftieth birthday by the grateful people of Weymouth), the tourist
will observe the two great thoroughfares we have spoken of
diverging before him at right angles, to effect a junction with St.
Edmund Street. Passing up St. Mary’s Street, he may notice, in
succession, St. Mary’s Church, built in 1815-17, whose altar-
piece—“ The Last Supper”—was painted by a native of Melcombe,
Sir James Thornhill, whose organ was a gift from George HI.;
and the handsome Lombardic elevation of the Market-House,
designed by Bury. Near St. Mary’s spreads a network of squalid
alleys, called the Friary, occupying the site of a Dominican
monastery. In St. Thomas’ Street stands the Museum of the
Weymouth Institute, containing a good collection of the fossils
found in its neighbourhood.
To the north-east lies the suburban district of Radipole
(population, 609), provided in 1850 with a remarkably graceful
Church, dedicated to St. John, from the designs of Mr. T. Bury.