Dorchester
If you're heading down to the beautiful county of Dorset, chances are you'll want to check out the county town, Dorchester—especially if you're a fan of Thomas Hardy. The town, which Hardy immortalized as "Casterbridge", is noted for its interesting museums, but what else does it have to offer?
Photo: Dorchester High Street is filled with small and disappointing branches of bland chain stores. Few independent shops remain.
The location
You have to remember that this is Dorset—a very rural county—and even the most urban areas barely qualify as what a city dweller would call urban! Dorchester is in the middle of wonderful countryside and only a very short distance from the South Coast. It's reasonably well connected to the road and rail networks, so it's accessible. But it's quieter and smaller than you might expect. If you're looking for "bright lights and big city", you're going to be very disappointed: Dorchester is really a quaint little market town. I'd suggest it's not so much somewhere you come to visit, per se, as a convenient little base from which you can explore a wide area of Dorset all around.
Economy
Dorchester County Council is based in Dorchester and one of the town's biggest employers; administration is one of Dorchester's biggest "industries". Tourism is obviously important too and so is farming. There's no university in Dorchester (though there are colleges in nearby Weymouth). The town has a sort of affluent, retired, rural, feel to it.
Things to do
Countryside and coast
There's stunning coastal countryside all around you, from the rolling green hills of Cerne Abbas (with its famously rude nude and a selection of very good places for morning coffee, lunch, or afternoon tea) down to the lovely Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site that stretches from Swanage into Devon. You'll want to visit seaside Weymouth with its marvellous Victorian esplanade and perhaps the lovely honey-stone market town of Sherborne about half-an-hour's drive to the north. How about a day-trip down to Bridport or Lyme Regis? If you're planning on walking or cycling, get yourself a copy of the Ordnance Survey Outdoor Leisure 15 map, which covers a huge swathe of eastern Dorset centered on Dorchester and running from Swanage in the east to Bridport in the west. Interesting "themed" walks include the 145-km (90-mile) Jubilee Trail and the South West Coastal Path.
Attractions
Photo: Dorset County Museum.
In Dorchester itself, there are at least three interesting museums,
including the Dinosaur
Museum, the Dorset
County Museum, and the Keep
Military Museum. Still on a heritage theme, Maiden
Castle, an Iron-Age hill-fort south west of Dorchester, is also
worth exploring. Lawrence of Arabia's cottage at Clouds
Hill is a short distance away, as is the famous Bovington Tank Museum. If
you're coming in late August, you might want to make a date with the Great Dorset Steam Fair in nearby
Blandford Forum. Monkey World,
towards Wareham, is great if you like animal rescue and conservation.
How could you visit Dorchester and not take a look at Thomas
Hardy's Cottage in Higher Bockhampton and Max
Gate? It's a National Trust property occupied by tenants and only
partially open to the public. There's also the view from the Hardy
Monument, but that commemorates another Hardy: Vice Admiral Sir
Thomas Masterman Hardy of Lord Nelson and HMS Victory ("Kiss me,
Hardy") fame.
Houses and gardens
If you like historic houses and gardens, you must visit nearby Athelhampton and Wolfeton
House (open on selected days in summer) near Charminster. Other
great houses nearby include Sandford Orcas (just
north of Sherborne) and Mapperton
(just outside Beaminster). Dorset is famous for its huge selection of
historic houses and gardens. If this is your sort of thing, you could
easily spend a whole week going from one to another. You're not far
from Somerset and places like Montacute,
Barrington
Court, and Tintinhull.
Even marvellous Forde Abbey
is only a short stretch away. Abbotsbury, just
outside Weymouth, has wonderful subtropical gardens, a famous swannery,
a children's farm, and some interesting little shops. The lovely Minterne gardens are between
Dorchester and Sherborne.
Sports and leisure
The Thomas
Hardye Leisure Centre is about a mile out of the town and shared
with a local school.
Shopping
Dorchester has some interesting independent shops (hurrah, there's still a hardware shop!) and chain stores, but it''s not the sort of place you'd head for large-scale high-street stores. There are chain stores, yes, but they're small and you'll almost certainly find them very disappointing compared to the big-city equivalents.
Photo: Some of Dorchester's historic buildings have a new lease of life as shops (left). If you want to see the house that inspired Hardy's Mayor of Casterbridge, you'll find it's now a branch of Barclays Bank (right).
Places to stay
There are some coaching-inn-style hotels in the town that could have
come straight out of the Mayor of Casterbridge. Otherwise, Dorchester
is (perhaps refreshingly?) rather short of big-chain hotels. There are
plenty of self-catering cottages in the countryside nearby. The Tourist
Net UK website has a varied selection of interesting looking places
to stay.
Places to eat
To my mind, Dorchester has an acute shortage of decent eating places. There are lots of lunchtime cafes, but they tend to be unremarkable and crowded.
Getting here
Dorchester is easily accessible by road from the A37, which runs around the top of the town, and the A35, which skirts around the bottom.
Dorchester has two small train stations. Dorchester South, the main station, is on the mainline from Weymouth to London Waterloo and offers direct services to Bournemouth, Southampton, Winchester, Woking, and Clapham Junction. Dorchester West is an even smaller station with trains tootling up through a very pretty branch line to Bristol. The two stations are about five minutes walk apart, so changing from one line to the other is not brilliantly convenient if you have lots of luggage. Buses run from Dorchester South station to Axminster (for Lyme Regis) and beyond.
Photo: Dorchester West Train station has definitely seen better days, but the community-driven Heart of Wessex line that runs through it gives a lovely scenic ride from Weymouth to Bristol through Dorset, Somerset, Wiltshire, and Avon.
Map
Here's a map of Dorchester from Google Images. You can use the "Find businesses" tab and search box to find local businesses, places to stay, and so on.
More information
- Dorset for You: Official Dorset County Council guide includes loits of information for tourists and visitors.
- Dorchester, Dorset: An introduction from Wikipedia.
- Rural Dorset: Covers the countryside area to the north-east of Dorchester.
