History
All Saints' Church in the village is known to have been frequented by King George III during his summer visits to Weymouth between 1790-1805. The church was the main place of worship for Weymouth citizens until the first sizeable church was built in the main part of the town in the 19th century. The victims of the wreck of the Earl of Abergavenny, including its captain John Wordsworth, brother of poet William Wordsworth, are buried in the churchyard as are bodies recovered from the wrecked East Indiaman Alexander. Construction of the church started around 1451, it took 4 years to build and was dedicated on 19 October 1455. The church is constructed of local stone brought from quarries on Portland and at Upwey.
Thanks to treacherous local currents and the long sweep of Chesil Beach on which many ships ran aground, the village, as well as the neighbouring Isle of Portland gained a reputation for both smuggling and the looting of wrecks. This reputation is reflected today in the name of a local public house, the Wyke Smugglers previously known as the Wyke Hotel.
Read more about this topic: Wyke Regis
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“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“All history is a record of the power of minorities, and of minorities of one.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Revolutions are the periods of history when individuals count most.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)