A pleasant journey may be taken through the Winterbourne villages that are strung along the line of that rivulet, which, as its name proclaims, flows only in the winter months. It is on the south side of Maiden Castle. The first village with the name of the river as a prefix is Came, two miles from Dorchester. Here Barnes was rector for the last twenty-five years of his life. His grave is in the quiet churchyard quite close to the diminutive tower. Within the church is a fine carved screen and several effigies. Proceeding westwards we come to Herringstone where there is an old house once the seat of the Herrings and, since early Jacobean days, of the Williams family. Then comes Monkton, close to Maiden Castle. The church is Norman, much restored. St. Martin follows; a picturesque hamlet with a fine church, the last in the west of England to dispense with clarionet, flute and bass-viol in the village choir. On sign-posts as well as colloquially this hamlet is known as "Martinstown." Steepleton boasts a stone spire, rare for Dorset, and a curious and very ancient figure of an angel on the outside wall declared by most authorities to be Saxon. The last of the villages is Winterbourne Abbas, seven miles from Winterbourne Came. The whole of the low hillsides around the hamlets of the bourne are covered with barrows, some of which have been explored with good results, though indiscriminate ravishing of these old graves is to be deplored. Another short excursion from Dorchester is up the valley of the Cerne. About a mile and a half from St. Peter's Church, proceeding by North Street, is Charminster, a pretty little place in itself and well situated in the opening valley of the sparkling Cerne. Here is a church with a noble Perpendicular tower, built by Sir Thomas Trenchard about 1510. The knight's monogram is to be seen on the tower. Within the partly Norman church are several monuments of the family, which lived at Wolfeton House, a fine Tudor mansion on the site of a still older building. Its embattled towers, beautiful windows and ivy-clad walls make up an ideal picture of a "stately home of England." Wolfeton was the scene of the reception in 1506 of Philip of Austria and Joanna of Spain, who were driven into Weymouth by a storm. (The incident is referred to in the next chapter.) This occurrence may be said to have founded the fortunes of the ducal house of Bedford. Young John Russell, of Bridport, a relative of the Trenchards, happened to be a good linguist, which the host was not. He was sent for, and so well impressed the royal couple that they took him with them to Windsor. Henry VII was quite as much interested, and young Russell's fortune was made. He stayed with the court until the next reign, and at the Dissolution got Woburn Abbey, a property still in the hands of his great family.