Dorchester

Dorchester. 1. A municipal borough, county, and market-town of Dorsetshire, on the Frome, 8 miles N. of Weymouth, and 120 miles from London. It has breweries of ale and beer, and is thecentreof a good agricultural and cattle-producing district. The cattle-market is held on Saturday. The Elizabethan grammar school, founded 1579, has been rebuilt and re-organised under a scheme of the Charity Commissioners. There is a county museum containing some good geological specimens, and a fine piece of Roman pavement. Dorchester is the head of the 39th Regimental District, and has a Royal Horse Artillery barracks. There was here a Roman station consisting of walled town with ditch, and there are the remains of a Roman amphitheatre, 218 feet by 163 feet in area and 30 feet deep, with seats cut in the chalk, capable of holding 30,000 people. There is also a Roman camp with ditch and rampart, and also a large British station with three earthen ramparts. The town was Cromwell's headquarters in 1645, and in 1685 the Bloody Assizes made 292 victims.

2. A village near Oxford noted for its fine church, and as having been the seat of the Bishops of Mercia, and for a curious ridge of gravel which is, or was, to be seen in a field there, as to whose origin several theories have been formed.