Close by is Puddletown, a pretty old village with a remarkable church, where, as at Athelhampton, everything is in harmony. It is the sort of church one reads about in novels, yet so seldom meets; and now we come to think of it, this village does figure in a popular Wessex novel. Doubtless there are some lovers of ecclesiastical architecture who would like to see the Jacobean woodwork cleared out and _modern_ Henry VII. benches introduced to make the whole coeval. The towering three-decker pulpit is delightful, and so are the ancient pews, and the old gallery and staircase leading up to it. Within the Athelhampton chapel are mailed effigies, and several ancient brasses to the Martin family who originally owned the mansion. Bere Regis church, some six miles to the east of Puddletown, is also remarkable, particularly for its open hammer-beam roof from which project huge life-size figures of pilgrims, cardinals, bishops, etc., and monster heads suggestive of the pantomime. The whole is coloured, and the effect very rich and strikingly original. One can imagine how the younger school-children must be impressed with these awe-inspiring figures looking down upon them with steady gaze. There are two fine canopied tombs (one containing brasses dated 1596) to the Turburvilles, who possessed a moiety of the lordship since the Conquest. Their old manor-house, a few miles south at Wool, a red-brick Jacobean gabled house with roomy porch in which a great pendant is conspicuous, picturesquely situated by an old bridge and the winding reed-grown river, has of recent years obtained notoriety by Mr. Thomas Hardy's pen. We photographed the old house some years ago before it had been thus immortalised. Upon a recent visit we found the house desolate and empty. Had the good farmer flown in consequence, and sought an abode that had not become a literary landmark? But the vicinity of Bere Regis had obtained notoriety of a tragic kind many centuries before the birth of _Tess of the d'Urbervilles_, for that very undesirable lady, Queen Elfrida, retired there for peace and quietness after various deeds of darkness, one of which, according to the _Annals_ of Ely, is said to have been inserting red-hot nails into Abbot Brithnoth's armpits; and from Lytchet Maltravers to the east of Bere came Sir John Maltravers to whose tender mercies the unfortunate Edward II. was delivered before he was done to death at Berkeley Castle. Sir John's monument is in the church; but as it was not the fashion in those days to enumerate the various virtues of the departed in laudatory verse, this particular act of charity is not recorded in suitable effusion. [Illustration: MONMOUTH'S TREE.]