Dorchester

Dorchester, a municipal borough, the county town of Dorsetshire, on the Frome, 8 miles N. of Weymouth, and 110 by rail (by road 119) WSW. of London. Till 1867 it returned two members to parliament, till 1885 one. It has a trade in ale and beer, a large agricultural market of cattle and cereals on Saturdays, and sends much butter to London. It is the headquarters of the 39th Regimental district, and has also barracks for a battery of Royal Horse Artillery. The free grammar-school founded in 1579 has been rebuilt and reorganised under a scheme approved by the Charity Commissioners. The county museum is rich in geological specimens found in the county, including the fore-paddle of a Pleiosaurus 6 feet 3 inches in length, discovered at Kimmeridge. The museum also contains a fine piece of Roman pavement (almost perfect) found on the site of the old Dorchester Castle, when the county prison was built in 1793. Pop. (1841) 3249; (1891) 7946. Dorchester was the Roman Durnovaria or Durinum, a walled town with a fosse, and a chief Roman British station. Part of the wall, 6 feet thick, still remains and is carefully preserved. Near Dorchester are the remains of the most perfect Roman amphitheatre in England, 218 by 163 feet, and 30 feet deep, the seats rising from the arena, cut in the chalk, and capable of holding 13,000 spectators. There is also a Roman camp with a ditch and high vallum. Near Dorchester is a large British station with three earthen ramparts, a mile and a half in circuit, and pierced by intricate passages, and inclosing barrows. The inner rampart is 60 feet high. It is supposed that this great camp, one of the largest in the kingdom, was the Dumnum of Ptolemy and the origin of Dorchester. In March 1645 Cromwell held the town as his headquarters with 4000 men, and in 1685 Judge Jeffreys held his 'bloody assize' here, when 292 received sentence of death as being implicated in Monmouth's rebellion. In the porch of St Peter's Church the Rev. John White is buried. A leading Puritan, and known as 'the Patriarch of Dorchester,' he was the projector of the colony of Massachusetts, in New England, but did not join the expedition. He was a member of the Westminster Assembly and minister in Dorchester, with a short interruption from 1606 till his death in 1648. The original edition of Case's Guide to Dorchester was written by the Dorsetshire pastoral poet, William Barnes (q.v.), a bronze statue of whom was erected in 1889 in the centre of the town.