The highest point in the area is Chaldon Hill about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) to the south, overlooking the sea.

These include the sisters Elizabeth Muntz, a sculptor and author, and Hope Muntz, a historian, who wrote The Golden Warrior; novelists Sylvia Townsend Warner and David Garnett; the poets Valentine Ackland and Gamel Woolsey; and the sculptor Stephen Tomlin.

The novelist Theodore "T. F." Powys, older brother of Llewelyn, lived in Chaldon from 1904 until 1940, when he moved to Mappowder because of the war.

[5] Chaldon Herring was the inspiration for the fictitious village of Folly Down in his novel Mr Weston's Good Wine and other works.

[6] It was at Theodore Powys's house that novelist Sylvia Townsend Warner first met the poet Valentine Ackland.