The Derek Beauchamp Design Award 2024

As you may have seen in the local press, the Dorchester Civic Society has launched a campaign to reinstate The Derek Beauchamp Design Award in 2024 to mark the 50th anniversary of the society You can nominate a building or a project that has been completed since 2017...

Six men, one dog, a Queen and a horse!

Sounds like the start of a really bad dad joke, right…….? Join Dorchester Sheroes in their quest to erect Dorchester’s first non-royal female statue and celebrate an overlooked shero from our past. This project aims to be a collaborative, community-led campaign...

DORCHESTER TOWN PUMP – JANUARY 2024

By Ian Gosling, DCS Chair The Town Pump on Cornhill was erected in 1784, on the site of the cupola which served as the town’s Market House. It takes the form of a tall tapering square stone shaft obelix on a rectangular base, decorated with five horizontal...

DORCHESTER WORKHOUSES – October 2023

By Ian Gosling, DCS Chair There were three distinct phases in the provision of Workhouses in Dorchester. THE ELIZABETHAN AND JACOBEAN PERIOD. The Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601 confirmed earlier practices by creating a system of relief of the poor administered at Parish...

THE HISTORY OF MAUMBURY RINGS – SEPTEMBER 2023

By Ian Gosling, DCS Chair Whilst manning the DCS stall during Hengefest in late July I thought about how this ancient structure has been used in different ways by generations of Dorchester inhabitants over the past 4500 years. It was created in the late Neolithic...