County town: Dorchester
Dorset was established as a shire by the late 9th century, centred on the former territory of the Durotriges tribe. It takes its name from Dorchester, the Roman town of Durnovaria.
Dorset is a county of chalk downland, river valleys, and one of England's finest coastlines — the Jurassic Coast, whose cliffs expose 185 million years of geological history. Its landscape of hillforts and barrows — Maiden Castle, the Cerne Abbas Giant, Badbury Rings — reflects an exceptional density of prehistoric remains. Thomas Hardy, born near Dorchester in 1840, immortalised the county's landscapes and communities in fiction under the name 'Wessex'. Medieval Dorset was dominated by great abbeys at Sherborne, Abbotsbury, and Cerne Abbas. Its ports — Poole, Weymouth — were important for Channel trade throughout the medieval and early modern periods.
Dorset was surveyed in the Domesday Book of 1086, William the Conqueror's great census of England. The survey recorded 321 settlements in the county, with details of their lords, landholders, population, and resources.
Browse 321 Domesday settlements in DorsetEngland's 39 historic counties, established between the 9th and 12th centuries, are the framework through which English local history, legal records, and landscape have been organised for a thousand years. Most survive today as ceremonial counties, their boundaries deeply embedded in place identity.
An Aubrey report for a specific location in Dorset draws on historical maps, archaeological records, Domesday data and landscape history to tell the full story of any site in the county.
Start your Aubrey report