In this direction a similar by-road also runs under the long line of
the Purbeck Hills, here so called, but on the south side of the range
through Church Knowle which has an old cruciform church pulled about
by "restorers" as far back as the early eighteenth century and several
times since. The village is pleasant in itself and beautifully
situated. A short distance farther is an ancient manor house dating
from the fourteenth century. Its name--Barneston--is said to
perpetuate a Saxon landholder, Berne, so that the foundations of the
house are far older than this period. Over three miles from Corfe is
the small church hamlet of Steeple; here a road bears upward to the
right, and if the hill top has not been followed all the way from
Corfe it should certainly be gained at this point. Not far away and
nearer Church Knowle is Creech Barrow, a cone-shaped hill commanding a
most extensive and beautiful view, especially north-westwards over the
heathy flats of the Frome valley to the distant Dorset-Somerset
borderlands. The narrow Purbeck range now makes obliquely for the
coast, where it ends more than six miles from Corfe in the magnificent
bluff of Flowers' Barrow, or Ring's Hill, above Worbarrow Bay.
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