The Sailor's Return at East Chaldon

The Sailor's Return,  East Chaldon, Dorchester, 
Dorset DT2 8DN
Tel: 01305 853847  Fax: 01305 851677  Email: click

OPEN ALL DAY see Opening Hours

The Sailor's Return is an attractive 18th century thatched country inn set in rolling downland, close to Durdle Door, Lulworth Cove and miles of cliff walks. The restaurant serves best quality home cooked food and the bars  have a wide range of real ales, lagers, ciders, and wines. The Beer Garden and Patio look over the beautiful Dorset countryside.

 The village is also known as Chaldon Herring. The name Chaldon means a hill where calves are pastured and Herring comes from Harang, the name of the family who owned the land in the 13th century. 

The original part of the inn was a pair of thatched cottages built of stone and rubble which became a pub in about 1860. The inn was refurbished and enlarged in 1986, the alterations retaining the character of the original buildings with a large beamed bar at one end and a stone walled dining room at the other and a flagstone floor throughout. The original bars remain much as they were with solid walls and serving hatch in the wall.

The inn sign shows the story behind the name of The Sailor's Return. Three brothers left the village to join the navy, but only one was accepted. The two returned home and their father converted his two cottages into an inn to provide them both with work. When the sailor returned after his time at sea it was to find his unfaithful wife with her lover, peering from behind the door of the wardrobe where he had hurriedly hidden himself.

The inn became famous when Theodore Powys, one of three brothers of literary fame, moved to Chaldon in 1904 and married a village girl. He wrote stories of village life and after becoming successful  was often visited  by his literary friends and other well known persons such as Thomas Hardy, Lawrence of Arabia and David Garnett. It was David Garnett who, when he came to visit Theodore, stayed at   The Sailor's Return and used it as a setting and title for his story of colour prejudice. Published in 1926 but set in the mid nineteenth century, it told the difficulties of a sailor returning from sea  with a coloured wife and child  to run the village inn. The story was converted into a ballet which was performed at Covent Garden.