Dorchester
Dorchester or Casterbridge
The town of Dorchester is the county seat of Dorset and it has been likened to two towns in one, the present day one, and Thomas Hardy’s fictitious Casterbridge. These locations in his Wessex Novels of towns and surrounding places can still be seen as can the manuscript for the mayor of Casterbridge which is on display in the Dorset county museum.
The town of Bere Regis was home to the Turbeville family, hardy used the town and family name in his famous novel Tess of the D’Urbervilles. The novelist was born at Upper Brockhampton where his childhood home a cottage still stands.
In 1685, the town played host to the sinister judge Jefferies and his bloody assizes when he executed participants of the Monmouth rebellion he was renowned for his brutal sentences on innocent people. His lodgings the antelope hotel stood where the shopping centre now stands, just four years later he himself died in the tower of London.
The old shire hall still contains the Old court where the Tolpuddle martyrs the first trade unionists were sentenced to 7 years transportation to Botany Bay although after public outcry they were pardoned in 1836, a row of cottages was built as a memorial to them.
Dorchester has a long history as a settlement from the Stone Age through to the romans, and evidence of this is still easily visible. At nearby Maumbury rings there are remains of Stone Age fortifications.
Other nearby Places of interest nearby include:
Max gate Hardy’s house, which he designed and built himself.
Cerne Abbas Giant, a fertility symbol cut into the side of hill.
Maiden castle a hill fort that was the scene of a battle between the local British tribe and the invading romans in ad 43.
Chesil bank on the Dorset coast this long pebble ridge formed by wave action has graded the size of the stones with small at one end etc.
Activities in Dorchester
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