1st June: Dorset Day

1 June was chosen as Dorset Day because it is the Feast Day of St Wite, an Anglo-Saxon holy woman thought to have been martyred by invading Danes in the 9th century. Here are some things you might not know about the county of Dorset.

1. The name of the county comes from the county town, Dorchester. The Romans established a settlement there in the 1st century and called it Durnovaria which may have meant "place with fist-sized pebbles".
2. Dorset is the location of the first natural UNESCO World Heritage Site in England - the Jurassic Coast, famous for its fossils. Chesil Beach in particular is a popular place with fossil hunters. It was near here, at Lyme Regis in 1826 that Mary Anning opened the first fossil shop in Britain. She and her family collected fossils to sell to tourists. She became quite an expert, consulted by academics and even visited by King Frederick Augustus II of Saxony, but she could never join the Geological Society because she was a woman. She is said to be the inspiration behind the tongue twister, “she sells sea shells on the sea shore”.
3. One of Dorset's selling points is that it is quiet and peaceful - it is one of only five counties in England not to have a motorway running through it. It does, however, have A roads, and also, at Cann Common, a 1.5km stretch of road said to be the bendiest in Britain.
4. It also has Gold Hill, a street in the town of Shaftesbury, which is the one the delivery boy in the Hovis Bread advert walks up pushing his Bicycles.
5. Writers have found Dorset inspiring. Thomas Hardy was born in Higher Bockhampton, near Dorchester, and locations in his novels are based on places in Dorset. Casterbridge is based on Dorchester; Weatherbury in Far from the Madding Crowd is based on Puddleton; Bathsheba’s farmhouse in the same book is thought to be based on Waterston Manor, a late 16th century house; characters from the novel Under the Greenwood Tree used a route called ‘Mellstock Quire’ - tourists can find and follow the route today. More recently, Enid Blyton is said to have bought Purbeck Golf Club for £1 and used it as a holiday home. The Famous Five books are set in an area similar to the Isle of Purbeck and Poole Harbour.
6. Talking of Poole Harbour, it is the largest natural harbour in Britain and the second largest in the world, after Sydney. It was formed at the end of the last ice age when a valley was filled with rising seas.
7. Dorset is home to: the oldest farmed flock (of Swans, at Abbotsbury. The swannery there is a tourist attraction today but the original flock of swans, which could have been established in the 11th century, were originally for monks at the abbey to eat); the hottest Chilli pepper (the Dorset Naga, which has an average score of 923,000 Scoville Heat Units and cannot be handled without gloves); and the most expensive land in Europe, and fourth the world (Sandbanks in Poole, where a plot of land was on sale in 2009 for £10,000 per square metre).
8. Famous people from Dorset, aside from Thomas Hardy, include Alan Carr, Anthony Blunt, David Mellor, John Le Carre and Virginia Wade. Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee, inventor of The Internet, moved to Dorset after he graduated in 1978, so you could argue that Dorset was the birthplace of the internet. Some say the game of Trivial Pursuit was born here too, as its inventors researched many of the questions in Weymouth's public library; and Bournemouth was one of three locations used for Marconi's first Radio transmissions in 1897.
9. The Cenotaph, St Paul's Cathedral and Buckingham Palace are all made of Portland Stone, which was quarried on the Isle of Portland.
10. Dorset's motto is "Who's Afear'd".

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