England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Dorchester All Saints

The Parish

The town of Dorchester, the county town of its county of Dorset, lies some 120 miles southwest of London and sits in the south of its county not too far from its English Channel coastline. Dorchester is divided into 3 parishes including that of All Saints. Dorchester sits on the A35 road, it thankfully now bypasses the town, which links it eastwards to Poole, Southampton and on to London whilst westwards it heads onward toward Exeter. Dorchester has a long history, the presence of "chester" in its name is indicative of its founding as a Roman settlement, the town largely kept within the bounds of the Roman site until modern times. Documentary evidence from as early as 789 describes Dorchester as the main town of its county and by Domesday times it had already become a Roman Borough. That Roman centre was founded within an already ancient landscape, the magnificent hill-fort of Maiden Castle sits immediate southwest of the town. Dorchester flourished though medieval times as both a regional market and centre for trade and specialist services as well as being an important site for the manufacture of cloth. Early gazetteers regale us with, perhaps apocryphal, stories of 600 thousand sheep residing within 6 miles supplying the wool to support that industry. By the 17th century Dorchester was the largest inland town within its county and exceeded only by the coastal ports. A major fire of 1613 saw an opportunity to re-layout the town centre which also accounts for the dearth of really ancient properties within. Modern developments arrived in 1847 when the railway arrived connecting Dorchester with Southampton and on to London, further lines arrived from Yeovil & Bristol granting Dorchester the unusual situation of two railway stations,West & South stations. Today Dorchester remains an important centre for regional trade, a tourist destination and a centre for light industry. Over the centuries the town has expanded greatly from its medieval & Roman core and now forms an oval shape roughly a mile deep and nearly two miles from west to east, only the bypass has constrained its expansion for now. Dorchester sits on the southern banks of the River Frome which drains it eastwards, passing through Wareham and reaching the English Channel through Poole Harbour. Dorchester's High Street stands at around 70 metres above the sea whilst its western suburbs rise to around 110 metres, land rises steadily onto chalk downlands to the south and southwest reaching 240 metres at the Hardy Monument. Dorchester's three parishes together formed a tiny acreage, of the 3 All Saints parish was the smallest, least populated and easternmost within the town, gazetteers state the population of All Saints to be roughly 700 parishioners. As stated above in Domesday times Dorchester was already a Royal Borough and returned as a holding directly of the King, it was one of the largest 20% of settlements recorded by population and offered a wealth of resources including an very impressive 56 ploughs, meadows, pastures & woodland and an equally impressive 12 mills, a very wealthy holding indeed and of great importance for the King's purse.

The Church

As befits the easternmost parish of the town All Saints sits in the eastern portion at the junction of High East Street and Church Street. Sadly today's church is a modern one built in the 1840s and, indeed, at least the third such church on this site, in consequence it was not the venue for these marriages. That church, the second, replaced the original medieval church which was destroyed in the terrible fire of 1613 which laid waste much of the original town. Today's church is built in a Decorated style from the early 14th century and is unconventional in placing its tower at the northwestern corner rather than at the western end. The tower is perhaps the church's main feature although somewhat matched by the ornate western doorway in a slightly earlier Early English Gothic styling. Even by the time of Pevsner's visit the church had ceased to needed for worship due to falling church attendance, it was functioning as a store for the town's museums, street-view today shows it as a boutique hair salon & spa (2023). For the photographer the church's constrained site presents the major problem with the northern face directly on the street-side, whilst the southern aspects are heavily wooded, a challenging building to adequately record.