Morcombelake

Morcombelake is a small village in west Dorset, in the ancient parish of Whitchurch Canonicorum. It lies 4 miles west of Bridport, with Golden Cap rising to the south. The busy A35 runs through the hamlet.

Golden Cap is close by. At 191 metres (627 ft) it is the highest point within a mile of the south coast of Great Britain, and it forms part of the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site. The National Trust owns the hill. From Seatown a coastal footpath takes around 40 minutes to the summit. The base of the cliff is covered with boulders and is popular with fossil collectors, and on a clear day the views reach Portland Bill and, in Devon, Start Point Lighthouse and Dartmoor. Behind the cliff is Langdon Wood, mainly Corsican pine planted in the 1950s, with a circular walk of about a mile. The Anchor Inn stands right by the beach at Seatown.

The village has a small stone church, St Gabriel, built in 1840 to 1841 with some parts reused from an earlier chapel of the same name nearby. A bakery here made Moores Dorset Knob biscuits until the firm moved production to nearby Bridport in the mid-2000s.

The parish church stands at Whitchurch Canonicorum. It is dedicated to St Candida and Holy Cross and holds the shrine of St Wite. It is the only shrine in Britain to have survived the Reformation with its relics intact, apart from those of Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey and St Eanswythe in Folkestone.