Lone medieval chapel on a hill above Chesil.
Abbotsbury runs as a single street of honey-coloured stone and thatch just inland from Chesil Beach. Above it stands the roofless St Catherine’s Chapel, built by the monks of the medieval abbey as a hilltop retreat and later kept as a seamark. The same community founded the swannery down on the Fleet lagoon in the Middle Ages, and it still keeps a colony of mute swans. The subtropical gardens nearby grow tender plants in the mild coastal air.
