It is a nine-mile journey by rail to Abbotsbury, on a branch line that has its terminus here. The little river Wey lends its name to two of the villages passed, Upwey and Broadwey, but the railway company is superior to derivatives, and spells the latter Broadway on all its time-tables and station furniture. There were few passengers for Abbotsbury, and none but ourselves were visitors. At our hotel our hearts sank when we saw, framed and glazed, in the passage, a year-old telegram from the Duke of Edinburgh to the proprietor, asking him to get lunch and beds for a party. It was not only the snobbery of it, but the thought that all subsequent visitors would have to pay for that Royal visit (ourselves included) that made us quail. And, true enough, a massive bill awaited our departure the next morning. XXV. Abbotsbury is a place of very great interest. It lies within half a mile of the sea, near by the Fleet Water and the Chesil Beach, and was at one time the site (as its name implies) of a very extensive and powerful abbey. The Dissolution of the Monasteries, and the appropriation of their funds, put an end to this religious house, among others, and very few remains of it are to be seen to-day. The Abbey Farm, a delightful old house, is built of its stones, and portions of the Gatehouse remain, with vestiges of the fish-ponds, here as elsewhere a great feature of the monastic settlement. All else is gone, even the great mansion built by Sir Giles Strangways upon the abbey lands that had been granted to him, and with the stones of its ruinated buildings, has disappeared. But the great tithe-barn of the monks still remains--a building of noble proportions, some 300 feet in length, built with sturdy buttresses and neatly-joined ashlar, with a great porch and a roof held up by massive timbers, every detail fashioned with exquisite taste, and over all a decided ecclesiastical feeling. Few modern churches are built so substantially, and fewer so tastefully, as Abbotsbury tithe-barn. Half of its length is roofless; the moiety of it suffices for the secular farmer who uses it to-day for the same purposes for which it was built many centuries ago: if it was not too large when built, how immense the products of these tithes must have been! The parish church still exhibits some good architectural details, particularly on the exterior of the north aisle, which shows some excellent Perpendicular windows, surmounted by a string-course and battlements. Pinnacles are corbelled out at intervals from the string-course, and have a very pleasing effect.