After his six wives, Henry VIII may be best known for shutting down the monasteries in around 1540 and pinching their land. It changed social life in England and the landscape, as many of the monastic buildings were knocked down or left to decay. This was the fate of Cerne

The centre was founded over 30 years ago by a teacher at Cranborne Middle School. His pupils helped build an accurate copy of an Iron Age roundhouse and since then further replicas have been added, from the Stone Age to the Viking era. Today, the centre is run by Dorset

We all have our favourite holiday spot, and kings of England are no different. George III’s was Weymouth. He visited first because sea bathing had been recommended by his doctor (a Weymouth man) as a cure for his recurring mental illness, and George became very fond of the town,

Still rather an isolated town, Beaminster was even more isolated before the building of the Horn Hill tunnel almost 200 years ago. To the north, in fact, it was almost cut off by the 600-ft Horn Hill. There was a road over the hill, but it was precipitously steep.  A

‘A megalomaniac folly,’ Pevsner calls Horton Tower. Megalomaniac maybe, but not a folly, because it did have a practical use when built by Humphrey Sturt of Horton Manor 200 years ago. A keen huntsman, he wanted to follow his hounds when he was too old to ride, so he watched

20 August 2011, 1.50 pm. The crowds watching the Bournemouth Air Festival are buzzing after a spectacular display by the RAF aerobatic team, the Red Arrows. The team is returning to its temporary base at Bournemouth International Airport. Making a tight turn, Red 4, Flight Lieutenant Jon Egging, blacks

Geologists love the Dorset coast for its variety and oddities. Among those oddities are the shale cliffs of Kimmeridge Bay. The shale is rich in oil, which can create spontaneous fires that smoulder for years. The shale has sometimes been commercially exploited and oil from it fuelled the street lights

In the course of its 30-mile journey from Evershot to Poole Harbour, the River Frome passes through many attractive spots, but none matches this ford. Easy to get to and on a public bridleway, it is a popular alternative to the beach for paddling and generally messing about by the

This 200-year-old notice is in St Andrew’s church in Trent. Most people know what clogs were, but pattens? They were wooden platforms with straps that fastened them over shoes. Often an iron ring was set in the sole to raise the wearer above the mud, and as some clogs

Many Dorset village crosses are very old, but one of the newest embraces its modernity, portraying Concorde, the double helix and a World War 2 bomb among ancient features such as vines and knots. It stands near St Nicholas’s church, Studland. This masterpiece was created by the late Trevor

The massive stone structure known as the Cobb conjures up in the modern mind the image of a windswept Meryl Streep in The French Lieutenant’s Woman, gazing out to sea as she awaits the return of her lover. Or Louisa Musgrove in Jane Austen’s Persuasion falling down the

Thomas Hardy sits permanently, wearing a slightly gloomy expression and with his hat and a book on his lap, on a tree stump at Top o’ Town where four roads meet. On the plinth are inscribed simply his name and dates, 1840-1928.  The great novelist and poet is inextricably linked