Not until the union was the old-fashioned ferry over the Wey supplemented by a bridge, the predecessor of that which now joins the two divisions of the dual town. The union proved to be a success, and in this way Weymouth saved both itself and its name from becoming merely a shadow and a memory. It is to George III. that Weymouth must be eternally grateful, for just in the same way as George IV. turned Brighthelmstone into Brighton, it was George III. who _made_ Weymouth. Of course there was a Weymouth long before his day, but whatever importance it once possessed had long disappeared when he took it up. For many years the King spent long summer holidays at Gloucester Lodge, a mansion facing the sea, and now the sedate Gloucester Hotel. Considering its undoubted age, Weymouth is remarkably barren in traces of the past, and a few Elizabethan houses, for the most part modernised, well-nigh exhaust its antiquities. Weymouth, which figures as "Budmouth" in Hardy's romances, is the subject of many references. Uncle Bengy, in _The Trumpet Major_, found Budmouth a plaguy expensive place, for "If you only eat one egg, or even a poor windfall of an apple, you've got to pay; and a bunch of radishes is a halfpenny, and a quart o' cider tuppence three-farthings at lowest reckoning. Nothing without paying!" When George III. and the sun of prosperity shone upon the tradesfolk of Weymouth the spirit of pecuniary gain soon became rampant. The inflated prices which so roused poor old Uncle Bengy even staggered Queen Charlotte, and "Peter Pindar" (Dr John Wolcot) criticised her household thriftiness in bringing stores and provisions from Windsor: "Bread, cheese, salt, catchup, vinegar and mustard, Small beer and bacon, apple pie and custard; All, all from Windsor, greets his frugal Grace, For Weymouth is a d----d expensive place." Sandsfoot Castle, built by Henry VIII., on the southern shore of the spit of land called the Nothe, Weymouth Bay, is now a mere pile of corroded stone. It was built as a fort when England feared an invasion prompted by the Pope. The old pile plays a prominent part in Hardy's _The Well-Beloved_. The statue of King George, which is such an object of ridicule to the writers of guide-books, was the meeting-place of Fancy Day and Dick Dewy in _Under the Greenwood Tree_.