Population 7,314 | OS grid reference ST861228 Sovereign state United Kingdom Local time Friday 4:57 AM | |
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Weather 11°C, Wind SW at 21 km/h, 88% Humidity Points of interest Gold Hill - Shaftesbury, Gold Hill Museum, Shaftesbury Abbey | ||
Travels in britain episode 4 shaftesbury dorset
Shaftesbury /ˈʃɑːftsbəri/ is a town and civil parish in Dorset, England. It is situated on the A30 road, 20 miles (32 kilometres) west of Salisbury, near to the border with Wiltshire. It is the only significant hilltop settlement in Dorset, being built about 215 metres (705 ft) above sea level on a greensand hill on the edge of Cranborne Chase.
Contents
- Travels in britain episode 4 shaftesbury dorset
- Map of Shaftesbury UK
- Shaftesbury issue title is this england 1943
- Toponymy
- History
- Governance
- Geography
- Economy
- Demography
- Culture art and media
- Representations
- Sport and leisure
- Community facilities
- Notable people
- References
Map of Shaftesbury, UK
The town looks over the Blackmore Vale, part of the River Stour basin. From different viewpoints, it is possible to see at least as far as Glastonbury Tor to the northwest.
Shaftesbury is the site of the former Shaftesbury Abbey, which was founded in 888 by King Alfred and became one of the richest religious establishments in the country, before being destroyed in the Dissolution in 1539. Adjacent to the abbey site is Gold Hill, the steep cobbled street made famous in the 1970s as the setting for Ridley Scott's television advertisement for Hovis bread.
In the 2011 census the town's civil parish had a population of 7,314.
Shaftesbury issue title is this england 1943
Toponymy
Writing of Shaftesbury in 1906 in his book Highways & Byways in Dorset, Sir Frederick Treves referred to several different names for the town:
The city has had many names. It was, in the beginning, Caer Palladour. By the time of the Domesday Book it was Sceptesberie. It then, with all the affectation of a lady in an eighteenth-century lyric, called itself Sophonia. Lastly it became Shaston, and so the people call it to this day, while all the milestones around concern themselves only with recording the distances to "Shaston".
Some of these names may have been used more than others. The town was recorded in the Domesday Book as Sceptesberie, and the use of "Shaston" (/ˈʃæstən/) was recorded in 1831 in Samuel Lewis's A Topographical Dictionary of England and in 1840 in The parliamentary gazetteer of England and Wales. Thomas Hardy used both "Shaston" and "Palladour" to refer to the town in the fictional Wessex of his novels such as Jude the Obscure ("Caer Palladour" in the Brythonic language is "Caer Vynnydd y Paladr" or "The Hillfort of the Spears"), though the general use of "Palladour" was described by one 19th-century directory as "mere invention".
History
There is no substantive evidence that Shaftesbury was the "Caer Palladur" (or "Caer Palladwr") of Celtic and Roman times, and instead the town's recorded history dates from Anglo-Saxon times. By the early 8th century there was an important minster church here, and in 880 Alfred the Great founded a burgh (fortified settlement) here as a defence in the struggle with the Danish invaders. The burgh is recorded in the early-10th-century