Chaldon Herring

Chaldon Herring or East Chaldon is a village in the English county of Dorset. It is situated within the Purbeck administrative district of the county, eight miles south-east of the county town of Dorchester. It is sited two miles from the coast amongst the chalk hills of the South Dorset Downs. It has a population of 166 (2001). 11.9% of dwellings are second homes.

Chaldon Herring is notable for being the home of Llewelyn Powys, and his wife, Alyse Gregory. In 1925 the couple moved to Dorset: firstly to the Coastguard Cottages on White Nore and then to the nearby farmhouse Chydyok, where his two sisters, the poet and novelist, Philippa Powys, and the artist, Gertrude Powys, occupied the adjacent cottage. Various other writers and artists lived in the village at different times, such as sisters Elizabeth Muntz, a sculptor, and author and historian Hope Muntz, who wrote The Golden Warrior, novelists Sylvia Townsend Warner and David Garnett, the poets Valentine Ackland and Gamel Woolsey, and the sculptor Stephen Tomlin. The novelist T. F. Powys, older brother of Llewelyn, lived in Chaldon from 1904 until 1940, when he moved to Mappowder because of the war. Chaldon Herring was the inspiration for the fictitious village of Folly Down in his novel Mr. Weston's Good Wine and other works. It was at Theodore Powys's house, that novelist Sylvia Townsend Warner first met the poet Valentine Ackland. Sylvia Townsend Warners's diaries record that they lived together in Frome Vauchurch from 1930 until Valentine's death in 1969. Sylvia Townsend Warner died May 1st 1978 at Frome Vauchurch.