County in England
Dorset
Dorset has a hillside giant with a club, a village that sends biscuits flying, and a coast where a girl's family helped dig up the Jurassic.
Key information
- County
- Dorset
- Nation
- England
- Known for
- The Jurassic Coast, Durdle Door, Chesil Beach, Corfe Castle, Thomas Hardy's Wessex
- What locals are called
- Dorset folk
- Famous people
- Thomas Hardy, Mary Anning, T. E. Lawrence, George Loveless
- Football clubs
- AFC Bournemouth, Weymouth, Dorchester Town, Poole Town
About Dorset
The coast that rewrote the age of the Earth's story
Dorset sits on a 95-mile geological timeline. The Jurassic Coast runs from Exmouth in East Devon to Studland Bay in Dorset, and walking it from west to east takes you through roughly 185 million years of rock, from the Triassic to the Cretaceous. In 2001 it became England's first natural World Heritage Site. The postcards are Durdle Door, a limestone arch striding into the sea near Lulworth Cove, and Old Harry Rocks, chalk stacks standing off the Purbeck shore. Then there is Chesil Beach, an 18-mile bank of pebbles that sorts itself by size, with the smaller stones at the western end and the fist-sized ones near Portland. The most famous fossil hunter was Mary Anning of Lyme Regis. She and her brother Joseph uncovered an ichthyosaur skeleton in the early 1810s, and she went on to find a plesiosaur. Some of the most important early fossil finds in Britain came out of the crumbling cliffs around her town.
Thomas Hardy invented Wessex, and Dorset is it
Thomas Hardy was born in 1840 in a thatched cottage at Higher Bockhampton, near Dorchester. He turned his home county into 'Wessex', the setting for Far from the Madding Crowd, The Mayor of Casterbridge and Tess of the d'Urbervilles. Dorchester became Casterbridge, and the heath behind his cottage became Egdon Heath. Hardy's heart is said to be buried at Stinsford, while his ashes went to Westminster Abbey. The poet William Barnes, a Dorset parson, wrote in the county dialect and was a friend of Hardy. Literary Dorset doesn't stop there. Corfe Castle's ruins are often linked with Enid Blyton's Kirrin Castle in the Famous Five books, and T. E. Lawrence, 'Lawrence of Arabia', spent his last years at Clouds Hill near Bovington and is buried at Moreton.
The stone that built London, and a ghost village
Portland stone is a creamy-white limestone quarried on the Isle of Portland, which is joined to the mainland by Chesil Beach. It was used for St Paul's Cathedral, and Sir Christopher Wren's masterpiece is one of many famous buildings in the stone, including the United Nations headquarters in New York. In the Purbeck hills, the village of Tyneham was evacuated in December 1943 for wartime training and its residents never returned. Its church, school and empty cottages can still be visited. Nearby, the Tank Museum at Bovington holds one of the world's great collections of armoured vehicles. On Brownsea Island in Poole Harbour, Robert Baden-Powell held an experimental camp for boys in 1907, a trial run that led to the Scout movement.
Giants, hillforts and martyrs
Above the village of Cerne Abbas, a 55-metre naked man wielding a club is cut into the chalk hillside. Local tradition says that a childless couple sleeping on him will be blessed with children. Maiden Castle near Dorchester is one of the largest Iron Age hillforts in Europe, with ramparts that still dwarf visitors. Shaftesbury's cobbled Gold Hill became a national icon in a 1973 Hovis advert directed by Ridley Scott. In 1834 six Tolpuddle farm workers were sentenced to seven years' transportation to Australia. They were convicted under the Unlawful Oaths Act for the oaths used in their friendly society, which they had formed to resist wage cuts. The Tolpuddle Martyrs, led by George Loveless, became heroes of the trade union movement, and a festival is still held in the village every July.
Why Dorset throws its knobs
Dorset knobs are hard, crunchy bread biscuits, traditionally made from leftover bread dough. Knob throwing began as a festival at Cattistock, where contestants hurl them as far as they can. After a long break it returned in July 2024 as part of the Cattistock Countryside Show. The county's other signature food is Blue Vinny, a blue cheese made from skimmed milk, long a Dorset legend. Dorset apple cake, crab from the coast and Lyme Bay seafood fill out the menu. On the sporting side, football's biggest name is AFC Bournemouth, nicknamed the Cherries. Weymouth, Dorchester Town and Poole Town carry the flag at non-league level. Weymouth is also a sailing hotspot, hosting the 2012 Olympic sailing events, and its seafront owes its fame to George III, who holidayed there in the late 1700s.
Seaside towns with strong personalities
Bournemouth grew from a pinewoods and sand-dune settlement into a Victorian health resort, and its seven miles of beach still draw crowds. Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, is buried in St Peter's churchyard there. Next door, Sandbanks in Poole is famed for some of the priciest seafront property in Britain. Swanage has its Victorian pier and a heritage steam railway running toward Corfe Castle. Lyme Regis has the Cobb, a curving harbour wall made famous by Jane Austen's Persuasion and The French Lieutenant's Woman. Inland, the rolling chalk downs and village churches of Wimborne, Sherborne and Blandford keep Dorset's gentler, greener side.