 Worth Matravers is a small village 3½ miles S.S.E. from Corfe Castle bounded by the English Channel on the south and the nearby seaside Swanage 4 miles east. The parish in 1898 comprised of an area of 2,645 acres and the soil being stiff clay with overlying limestone. The church, St Nicholas of Myra, stands close to the centre of the stone-built village and is one of the oldest in Dorset. With a Saxon door blocked up in the 12th century the church is memorable for its Norman nave, tower and windows and Early English chancel. It was extensively restored in 1869 after it had become so dilapidated that services had to be held in the village school. In the churchyard is the grave of Benjamin Jesty, a Dorset yeoman reputed to be the first person to inoculate anyone with cowpox to ward off smallpox. View some photos of the church while listening to the bells of St Nicholas. The 12th Century chapel of St Aldhelm which stands on St Aldhelm's Head overlooking the English Channel is thought to have once been a chantry where a priest would celebrate mass for the safety of sailors. It is also now believed that the chapel may have been built on an earlier timber structure that was the centre of a pre-Conquest Christian enclosure. |
 Photo displayed with kind permission of Michael Day. |
