England & Wales Hardwicke Marriage Index
Marriages 1754 - 1837
Dorchester Holy Trinity

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 Holy Trinity. 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 Holy Trinity parish was the largest, most populated and westernmost within the town, gazetteers state the population of Holy Trinity to be roughly 1,350 parishioners, besides the town portion allocated to the church a tract of countryside to the town's north is also a detached and larger area of the parish. 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

Holy Trinity church sits on High West Street almost opposite to its junction with Trinity Street. The church is no longer used for Anglican worship having been transferred for use by the Catholic community in 1976. Today's church is not the one used for these marriages having been completely rebuilt in the 1870s. The church is built using the style of the 13th century, Early English Gothic. There has been a church on this site since mention in Domesday of the 11th century and St Peter was once subservient to Holy Trinity as the main parish church of the town. Whilst Natural England speculates some material from the early church was re-used the church is almost entirely a product of the "Gothic Revival" fashion of its day. The tight site between adjacent buildings have the church a somewhat odd style with aisles of unequal length and breadth. The tight site also creates problems for the photographer as only views from immediately south are available, the traffic on the road also presenting a problem in gaining sufficient distance to frame the building.