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Agriculture, button-making, blacksmithing, spinning, brewing: these were the jobs that occupied people in rural Dorset in the days before revolutions in transport and communications opened up the world and ended villages’ isolation for ever. They are all to be seen on Winterborne Stickland’s beautifully carved village sign, which

Stand in the middle of Bridport, and the view to the west is dominated by Colmers Hill. It is more than a mile away and not especially high (about 120 metres), but there is no higher ground nearby and the hill is in direct line of sight from the town.

Middle schools (for ages 8-13) are a rarity in Dorset now. Fondly remembered is King Alfred’s Middle School, Shaftesbury, which closed in 2004. As well as nostalgic regrets, there was concern about what would happen to its prized possession: the 2½-metre-high statue of King Alfred, who

Once there were over a hundred working quarries on the Isle of Portland. Today the number is in single figures. Tout Quarry was one of the casualties, the last stone being taken from there in 1982, but it lives on as a sculpture park run by the Portland Sculpture &

‘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

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

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