Portisham is one of the most charming of Dorset's villages; the church having many points of interest that include a leaden roof and a very good tower; while grouped around it are old-fashioned thatched cottages, and ancient Tudor houses with the heavy dripstones and massive mullions so characteristic of their era. Portisham was the birthplace of Sir Andrew Riccard, "President of the East India and Turkey Companies". He left an only daughter, who became successively the wife of Lord Kensington and Lord Berkeley of Stratton. [Illustration: WEYMOUTH AND PORTLAND] Just beyond Portisham is Abbotsbury, where are some considerable remains of a monastic building founded originally, _circa_ 1044, for secular canons, and converted, in later days, into a noble Benedictine Abbey, of which the tithe barn, a very beautiful example, still exists. The little chapel perched on the summit of St. Catherine's Hill is an architectural gem of the Perpendicular period, and one that should not be missed by anyone with antiquarian tastes. The village church is also a good piece of building, with a curious representation of the Trinity let into the wall of the tower, and a fine Jacobean pulpit. While here, a visit should be paid to Lord Ilchester's famous Swannery and Decoy. As we are now a good deal out of the direct-road route from Dorchester to Weymouth, the visitor may be advised to take the rail motor from Abbotsbury to the maritime town, especially as, after passing through the Waddon Vale, the road leading thither is bare, treeless, and devoid of interest. Weymouth has been described a thousand times, and it is not unworthy of it, lying as it does in a long curve with the whole town visible from the sea. It is artistically placed, and is a brilliant if somewhat old-fashioned jewel set amid a sea of amethyst and turquoise. Modern Weymouth is made up of two distinct boroughs, Weymouth and Melcombe Regis, which were united by Queen Elizabeth. It is a town whose beginnings are lost in obscurity, although its early history is not of a very engrossing kind. After passing through various phases of fortune and misfortune, with a preponderance of the latter, the place was nothing but a decayed seaport until George III and his Court, coming here to reside in the closing years of the eighteenth century, instilled new life into the town, which has retained, despite the modern builder, considerable architectural remains of this period of its greatest prosperity. The shops have unfortunately been modernized, but the greater number of the old Georgian rows of dwelling houses are intact. Gloucester Lodge, now the Gloucester Hotel, was the royal residence, before which "a picket of a thousand men mounted guard every day". Queen Charlotte's Second Keeper of the Robes was Fanny Burney, who, in her _Diary_, has left us a very interesting account of the Court life at Weymouth.