Chaldon Herring - A Walk, Talk & Sunday Lunch

Sunday 25th October 2026
Starts 11:00 until 15:00
The Sailors Return, Chaldon Herring, Dorchester DT2 8DN

Chaldon Herring - A Walk, Talk & Sunday Lunch

The Literary and Artistic Bohemia in Chaldon Herring with lunch at the Sailors Return

Date: Sunday, 25th October 2026

Time: 11am to 3pm

Cost: Free to THS and Powys Society members + those attending the Hardy & Powys Study Day

£10 to non-members

£10 deposit for Sunday lunch (refundable against cost of Sunday lunch - payable separately)

Venue: Start/Return: The Sailors Return, Chaldon Herring

Mark Damon Chutter will lead this walk and talk around Chaldon Herring to discover the Literary and Artistic Bohemia created by The Powys Circle in the 1920s and 1930s, paired with hearty, locally sourced lunches at the village's historic thatched pub.

Thomas Hardy and T.E. Lawrence visited the Powys family in Chaldon Herring, where the remote chalk hills and striking coastline attracted a lively circle of artists, writers and freethinkers. The area became Bloomsbury in Dorset, an eccentric bohemian enclave, and was home to the Powys family, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Valentine Ackland, and sculptors Elizabeth Muntz and Stephen Tomlin.

The Sailor's Return is an 18th-century country pub formed from two thatched cottages. Local folklore says the name comes from three village brothers who joined the Royal Navy, one of whom came home from sea to find his wife with another man. Positioned near notorious Dorset smuggling coves like Osmington Mills and West Lulworth, the site served as a known base for regional smuggling networks. The interior floor features a rare pre-Reformation stone altar marked with a cross. The author David Garnett regularly stayed in the village and used the pub as the direct inspiration and title for his 1926 novel The Sailor's Return.