Dorchester

One of England’s most appealing county towns, Dorchester’s known history goes back to AD 74 when the Romans established a settlement called Durnovaria at a respectful distance from the River Frome. At that time the river was much broader than it is now and prone to flooding. The town’s Roman origins are clearly displayed in its street plan, in the beautiful tree-lined avenues known as The Walks which follow the course of the old Roman walls, at Maumbury Rings, an ancient stone circle which the Romans converted into an amphitheatre, and in the well-preserved Roman Town House behind County Hall in Colliton Park. As the town’s most famous citizen put it, Dorchester ‘announced old Rome in every street, alley and precinct. It looked Roman, bespoke the art of Rome, concealed dead men of Rome’. Thomas Hardy was in fact describing ‘Casterbridge’ in his novel The Mayor of Casterbridge but his fictional town is immediately recognisable as Dorchester. One place he describes in great detail is Mayor Trenchard’s House, easily identified as what is now Barclays Bank in South Street and bearing a plaque to that effect. Hardy made his home in Dorchester in 1883 and two years later moved into Max Gate (open April–October, Wednesday to Sunday) on the outskirts of the town, a strikingly unlovely ‘two up and two down’ Victorian villa designed by Hardy himself and built by his brother at a total cost of £450. Here Hardy entertained a roll-call of great names – Robert Louis Stevenson, GB Shaw, Rudyard Kipling and HG Wells amongst many others – to tea at 4 o’clock.

The most accessible introduction to the town and the county can be found at the excellent Dorset County Museum in High Street West. The award-winning museum houses a comprehensive range of exhibits spanning the centuries, from a Roman sword to a 19th century cheese press, from dinosaur footprints to fine art works dating from the 17th century. Founded in 1846, the museum moved to its present site in 1883, into purpose-built galleries with lofty arches of fine cast ironwork inspired by the Great Exhibition of 1851 at the Crystal Palace. The building was designed by GR Crickmay, the architect for whom Thomas Hardy worked in 1870. The great poet and novelist is celebrated here in a major exhibit which includes a fascinating reconstruction of his study at Max Gate, his Dorchester home. The room includes the original furnishings, books, pictures and fireplace. In the right hand corner are his musical instruments, and the very pens with which he wrote Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Jude the Obscure, and his epic poem, the Dynasts. More of his possessions are displayed in the Gallery outside – furniture, his watch, music books, and some of his notebooks. Also honoured in Writers’ Dorset, in the Literary Gallery, is William Barnes, the Dorset dialect poet, scholar and priest, who was also the first secretary of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society which owns and runs the museum. Plans to develop the Natural History Gallery are underway.

Just outside the museum stands a statue of William Barnes, and at the junction of High West Street and The Grove, is a statue of Thomas Hardy. There are more statues outside St George’s Church, a group of lifesize models by Elizabeth Frink representing Catholic martyrs who were hanged, drawn and quartered in the 16th century.

Opposite the County Museum, in the 17th century half-timbered building now a restaurant, is where Judge Jeffreys (1648-89) tried 340 Dorset men for their part in Monmouth’s Rebellion of 1685. As a result of this ‘Bloody Assize’, 74 men suffered death by being hanged, drawn and quartered. A further 175 were transported for life. Jeffreys’ ferociousness has been attributed to the agony he suffered from gallstones for which doctors of the time could provide no relief. Ironically, when his patron James II was deposed, Jeffreys himself ended up in the Tower of London where he died. A century and a half after the Bloody Assize, another infamous trial took place in the Old Crown Court nearby. Six farm labourers who later became known as the Tolpuddle Martyrs were condemned to transportation for their part in organising a ‘Friendly Society’ – the first agricultural trade union. The Court and Cells are open to the public where they are invited to ‘stand in the dock and sit in the dimly-lit cells...and experience four centuries of gruesome crime and punishment’. Blue Badge Guides take visitors on tours of the cells and stocks.

At the Dorset Teddy Bear Museum in Eastgate, on the corner of High East Street and Salisbury Street, visitors join Mr Edward Bear and his family of human-size bears as they relax around the house or busy themselves making teddies in the Old Dorset Teddy Bear Factory. Hundreds of the cuddly creatures are on sale in the exhibition’s period shop. In Salisbury Street, the Terracotta Warriors Museum is the only museum outside China dedicated to these astonishing figures, regarded as the 8th wonder of the ancient world. As well as the unique life-size museum replicas from China, the exhibition includes costumes, armour and multi-media displays.

Off High East Street, in Icen Street, is the Dinosaur Museum, where actual fossils, skeletons and life-size reconstructions combine with audio-visual and hands-on displays to inform and entertain. Also well worth a visit is The Keep Military Museum housed in an interesting, renovated Grade II listed building. Audio technology and interactive computerised displays tell the remarkable story of those who have served in the regiments of Dorset and Devon. An additional attraction is the spectacular view from the battlements across the town and surrounding countryside.

There can be few churches in the country with such a bizarre history as that of Our Lady, Queen of Martyrs, & St Michael. It was first erected in Wareham, in 1888, by a Roman Catholic sect calling themselves the Passionists, a name derived from their obsession with Christ’s passion and death. When they found that few people in Wareham shared their fixation, they had the church moved in 1907, stone by stone to Dorchester where it was re-assembled and then served the Catholic community for almost 70 years. By the mid-1970s the transplanted church had become too small for its burgeoning congregation. The Passionists moved out, ironically taking over an Anglican church whose communicants had become too few to sustain it. A decade later, their abandoned church was acquired by a Dorchester-based organisation called World Heritage, which has transformed its interior into the Tutankhamun Exhibition. It includes a reconstruction of the magnificent tomb of the boy-king including his famous golden mask, with ‘sight, sound and smell combining to re-create the world’s greatest discovery of ancient treasure’. With the help of a running commentary, visitors can follow the footsteps of the archaeologist Howard Carter who discovered the real tomb in 1922. The tour ends beside a life-size facsimile of the youthful Pharoah’s mummy constructed from a genuine skeleton covered with organic-substitute flesh and animal skin.