Settlement is the word applied to all human activity as it relates to the occupation, management and exploitation of the land from the earliest times to the present. The coastline of Dorset is today bordered by thirty eight rural ecclesiastical parishes, five borough/ports (the fifth, Christchurch, became part of Dorset in 1974), and includes five principal landed estates, namely Bankes (now National Trust), Strangways, Weld, Pitt-Rivers and Calcraft-Ryder. In the Bournemouth area, the pattern is more complex.

Katherine Barker & Vincent May

Introduction to the study of settlement

The historical geography of settlement, its origins, its development - and sometimes its demise or deliberate removal - uses many of the same source materials as local history but uses them rather differently. Social and statistical elements play their part, but the stress lies with attempting an understanding of what it is we see on the ground in the plan and pattern of things. As Hoskins wrote, 'to him that reads it aright, the landscape is the richest archive we possess.' But it is not the only one and the landscape needs as much assistance as it can get in its 'reading.' For prehistory, we may be able to turn to archaeology and palaeo-ecology for information from buried soils, fabric analysis and pollen sampling. But we can never be wholly certain we have read things 'aright.'

No documentary source material is ever specifically designed for the purpose in the mind of the researcher, even if - like an early estate survey - it pertains to what we now call 'landscape.'

The 1843 Tithe Map of Symondsbury provides us with a snapshot of the way land was divided between different owners and tenants and its use. It summarises an active landscape.

All documents were written for a specific use, to a specific formula, for a specific audience. The researcher must be aware of the document’s purpose and what therefore might be missing. What we see and read was selected by the document’s originator (and patron).

A modern example of a specific purpose is the map of Requisitioned Buildings dated 1944 (Bournemouth Borough Council).

To understand it, we need to know what was requisitioned, why and by whom. During the Second World War, as in all wars before and afterwards, buildings are taken over for the use of military staff and government officials. Records are rarely kept!

The survival of written material from the past is at best ‘patchy.' Most documentary material has survived because it has been deemed significant, and most of this, if not of actual intrinsic value, is of some legal import. (This is the origin of the County Record Office, originally set up for safe-keeping of shire deeds and accounts). Damp, fire and insect life have destroyed much. Where old documents survive as copies, inaccuracies (deliberate or otherwise) may have been included. Any major social change is associated with a loss of material; notably the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII.

In selecting an area for study, it is important to establish the administrative area - or areas - within which it falls. On this will depend, to a very large extent, the class of material available for consultation. Among the most formative of influences, and one of the most fundamental in the development of human settlement, is the demarcation of territories related to the collection of revenue and/or to the definition of rights and obligations. The study of settlement morphology - the shape things take in plan - is closely related to the fixing of boundaries. Indeed, the vested interest in the maintenance of boundaries is one of the most powerful and long-lasting features of permanent human settlement that followed the establishment of farming in the Neolithic or New Stone Age. Such boundaries relate to the smallest house plot at one end of the scale and to extensive tracts of Royal Common and Forest at the other.

Table 1; Pre 1832 Coastal Parishes reading west from Lyme (left) and landholders of manors recorded in the Domesday Book, 1086 (right). (Some parishes have two coastlines and appear for the second time in italic)

Thus the basic pattern of settlement was already established by the eleventh century. Later changes in land holding, the growth of the towns and the much later expansion and establishment of the resorts and the Bournemouth-Poole-Christchurch conurbation have not significantly changed this underlying pattern of coastal settlement.

A brief introduction to the settlement geography of the Dorset Coast

Coastal Habitation

The Dorset coast was formerly deemed an inhospitable place for permanent settlement: vagaries of the weather, tides, cliff falls and landslips, raiders and pirates gave rise to habitation a safe distance inland. Coastal activity tended to be seasonal by those with rights to work its resources not unlike the management of inland commons. Set against this is the impact on settlement of, first, the slow but relentless rise of about 3 m in sea level over the last two or more millennia, and second, the silting up of rivers and streams. Archaeological survey at Poole Harbour has demonstrated a significant change since the later Iron Age. Similarly, deposition filled Radipole, the 'reed pool' behind Weymouth, site of a one-time Roman harbour, necessitating the setting out of a new grid-plan port further downstream at Melcombe in the 1280s. Hengistbury Head near Christchurch was a major port (now silted up) before the Roman Conquest.

Coastal Estates

For the Dorset coast there is evidence, albeit circumstantial, that the earliest estate units were based on the catchment area of seaward flowing streams, e.g. the Lyme, Char and Brit. A Sherborne charter of AD 774 for Lyme suggests the early subdivision of a single estate between Crown and Church for purposes of salt-panning, the single estate possibly earlier based on the Roman villa in Uplyme (in Devon) at Holcombe.

Plotting coastal parish boundaries provides us with some rather curiously shaped, truncated land units, perhaps indicating loss of land to the sea. The Lyme stream divided the coastal manors of Crown and Church certainly by 1086, and a similar division of ownership occurred at West Bay. The west bank was held by Symondsbury for the Abbey of Cerne and the east bank, Burton Bradstock, by the Crown.

This Ordnance Survey map shows part of Symondsbury parish including the village where one of the most prominent buildings, the church, reflects this early ownership (Dorset County Museum).

Medieval disputes over both beach and harbour are recorded as involving a third party, the Borough of Bridport, upstream.

A late tenth century document, the Burghal Hidage, drew up liability for defence of the kingdom from the Danes setting out standard requirements for a network of fortifications, the urban origins of Bridport, Wareham and Twynham (later Christchurch). Poole does not figure, but both Wareham and Twynham occupy coastal sites giving access to once-navigable Dorset rivers.

Land grants associated with the medieval church were legally confirmed by charter, e.g. Uplyme (held by Glastonbury Abbey) where we find a boundary recital of 936 re-surveyed in 1516. Boundary surveys, always reading clockwise, can provide clues as to the state of the contemporary landscape. The geographical arrangement of the four Lyme estates listed in Domesday may be reconstructed from this earlier charter material complemented by later - still existing - topographical evidence.

The importance of the coast for both continental trade and for defence is a continuing story that takes us almost to the present. Royal Manors included Wyke Regis and Portland. It has recently been observed that the history of Portland is the history of the defence of the kingdom; major nineteenth century 'Palmerston' harbour works were re-furbished for World War II. Royal coastal manors were equipped with harbours, managed the quarrying and movement of stone, and, at Bridport, the manufacture of hemp rope and linen for sails.

Complementary to coastal industry was the royal afforestation of large tracts of land in the immediate hinterland providing timber, underwood, stone and ball clay, in addition to deer, game and rabbits. Nearest the coast were Powerstock Forest upstream from Bridport, Bere Forest upriver on the Frome, and Purbeck, centred on Corfe Castle. These afforested areas were subject to a specialist system of management administered directly by the Crown, their resources in the gift of the King. The local population held various Rights of Common, principally those of grazing and fuel gathering. Formally afforested areas (which include heathland) form very distinctive settlement landscapes. The heathland commons may at least in part be manmade through intensive management of furze and underwood for pottery kilns. Salt-water panning, and boiling, also demanded a constant supply of fuel.

The Manor of Canford was temporarily afforested by King John to increase royal revenues, associated perhaps with his proposed building of a new port in Purbeck, Newton (which failed). Canford was subsequently deafforested - while remaining privately emparked - and the burgesses of Poole became the major players.

The thirteenth century was a period of growth and prosperity and the coast saw the plantation of new suburbs at Lyme [Abbas], Charmouth, and Bridport and probably at Poole, and a new grid-plan port at Melcombe (1280). Here, in 1348, the Black Death arrived with a Gascon ship. There seems to have been major desertion of settlement but harbours were closed by order of the King to anyone who was not authorised to travel: not for reasons of health, but to prevent the wholesale removal of bullion.

The Dissolution of the Monasteries had a considerable impact on coastal settlement. Former church estates were sequestered by the Crown and then granted - or sold - to landed families already resident or incoming. Systematic map survey began in the later sixteenth century and gained momentum during the next century with the 'improvement' and enclosure of former open field areas and common land for profit. Gentleman's houses made an appearance; their sites all tell a story. The legal requirements spawned a series of Enclosure Maps and Awards which are found for many estates/parishes, either by private agreement or by Act of Parliament.

This map of Coombe Keynes shows “the Common Fields and the Old Inclosures…” in 1770 (Dorset County Records Office).

A year later (1771) a new survey has been carried out by the same surveyor to show “ the old and new Inclosures and the Common Heath.” (Dorset County Records Office).

The Tithe Commutation Act of 1836 required the large-scale mapping of all parishes in the conversion of tithe to a rent charge. The first truly 'national' survey, the Tithe Map and Award, is frequently the earliest [parish] map available.

Enclosure of commons and heath continued into the nineteenth century; Talbot Village in what is now Bournemouth was built as a 'model' village for those who had lost common rights on Wallisdown. Substantial monies were to be made in the building of seaside residences in a once-empty coastal landscape for the cure of tuberculosis, setting the scene for the growth of a coastal health spa with social cachet, which it retains. A new borough was created, and new parishes: then new trading areas and new parks - but no port.

Administrative Divisions in the Settlement Landscape

Parish

By origins a defined area served by a priest from a parish church to whom tithes and other church dues were payable. Some parishes represent discrete estates/land units of pre-Christian origin. A parish could contain more than one township/be part of a much larger manor. Successive Acts of Parliament in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries promoted the secular importance of the parish gradually superceding manorial courts. Parish vestries took over the raising and distribution of the Poor Rate. The parish appointed churchwardens, the Clerk supervised the keeping of registers and accounts, and sometimes had powers to appoint a Highways Surveyor and Constable. Parish Councils were the creation of the 1894 Act, reformed in 1974.

Borough

Before 1835, Boroughs achieved their status by charter, drawn up at the Court of Chancery. The five (six) Dorset coastal boroughs, Lyme, Bridport, Melcombe Regis, Weymouth and Poole (and Christchurch from 1974) have different origins and histories, but at some point each had purchased from the medieval Crown a number of 'liberties' and rights sufficient to manage their own trade, market and port tolls and justice, in return for a fixed rent payable to the Crown. Boroughs were good record keepers with a clerk or recorder appointed for the purpose. They all sent burgesses to Parliament from medieval times. The Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 regularised the constitution/responsibilities of Boroughs and re-defined their boundaries. Further re-organisation was effected in 1974.

Manor and Estate

There is an essential legal difference between the two although they are often used indiscriminately. A manor was an area of land held by a lord. Various types of tenure allowed for a wide variety of customs, rights and obligations placed on each manor and those who lived there. Services due could be heavy; many people in the countryside were essentially 'unfree.' The lord was usually empowered to hold a Court Baron and Court Leet; court rolls may survive. Records may also include terriers [lists of lands], rentals, title deeds, enclosure or other surveys/maps. An estate can be a term used in a non-manorial context for an area of land - a holding - either in single ownership or attached to a small community; an important aspect is the ground plan and character of its boundary in relation both to others and to the natural 'lie' of the land.

County / Shire

The Shires of Southern England, including Dorset, were in existence by the tenth century, literally 'divisions' of the land created for purposes of defence of the kingdom against the Danes, and for the administration of justice. Shires became counties to the Normans. Shire courts met twice a year presided over by an ealdorman. The Normans established the sheriff or shire reeve - their crown officer. Among dues levied there was the county-rate or corpus comitatus. The Hearth Tax was levied between 1662-89. Shire courts became less important with the growth of Justices of the Peace sitting at Quarter Sessions. The shires were divided into smaller administrative areas or Hundreds which also held local courts, the Hundred Reeve acting on the part of the King. Hundreds were subdivided into tithings, each nominally, at least, represented by a tithingman. Hundreds formally existed until the late nineteenth century; Hundred Court Rolls, Rotuli Hundredorum, may survive. Dorset Coastal Hundreds, west to east; are Whitchurch, Loders, Godderthorne, Uggescombe, Chalbury, Winfrith, Hasler, Aylswood/Rowbarrow, Charborough, and Cogdean. There were also several extra-hundredal Liberties.

Royal / Chancery

All national administration began in the royal Household divided after the Norman Conquest into two offices, the Chancery and the Exchequer. Pre-Norman survivals for the Dorset coast are most notably Anglo-Saxon charters particularly those relating to church manors, the Burghal Hidage and the Domesday Book. There are several references to the Dorset coast in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle relating to incursions by the Danes. Many important post Norman/medieval sources are published, although not necessarily in translation, including Close Rolls, Charter Rolls, Patent Rolls, Liberate Rolls, Feet of Fines, Inquisitiones Post Mortem, Pipe Rolls, Pleas, Ecclesiastical Assessments of 1254, 1291, and 1341, Curia Regis Rolls, Subsidy Rolls, Muster Rolls and, after the Dissolution, the Valor Ecclesiasticus.

Table 2: Public record sources

An example of a Tithe Map for the parish of Tyneham dated 1840 (Dorset County Records Office).

Settlement plans related to administrative divisions

Settlement presents a number of distinctive plan types in which the location of the church and the shape of its churchyard may be of significance. The plan of the settlement will provide some clues as to its origins and development. Settlements may present a grid-plan, a plan based on a castle, a nucleated plan or 'poly-focal' plan with clearly more than one phase of development, a linear or single street plan, or present an area of abandoned settlement, evidence of a move. The siting and location of hamlets, dispersed and single dwellings and farms/farmsteads each tell a story. All are defined by their boundaries, patterns of open spaces, gardens, plots, tenements, ring-fenced farms, fields, woodlands etc comprising a number of different types depending both on age and on area. Discrete groups of fields or enclosures may be termed a 'field system' and these, too, may present the distinguishing features of their age in relation to the settlement round-about.

A photograph of strip fields on the Isle of Portland in the Colonel Drew Collection but undated (Dorset County Museum).

Strip fields also on Portland but showing Col. Drew himself and dated between 1929 and 1940 (Dorset County Museum).

The rectilinear field-scape surveyed and set out in the wake of an eighteenth century Enclosure Act will be quite different from an irregular patchwork of small thirteenth century closes cut ('assarted') from the borders of a one-time area of woodland. The former is likely to present a thorn hedge, descendent of one deliberately planted, the latter may present a species-rich hedge descended from the former woodland.

Boundary categories include civil, judicial and ecclesiastical with some overlap. Historic boundaries until the middle of the nineteenth century comprised those of the diocese, shire, hundred, borough, manor, parish (civil/ecclesiastical), and parliamentary constituency, and from 1974 all but the last were replaced by county, town, parish and district.

Administrative divisions on the ground

Boundary type is often related to location (availability of local materials), age and significance and includes wood banks, bank and double-ditch, single bank with ditch, with or without a hedge - its age may be related to the number of different species growing in it - stone walling, bank and wall, brick wall, bound stones, mile stones. The nature of a boundary in the field will also be related to its management; e.g. overgrown coppice stools may represent a former laid hedge, a straight wide country road with a wide overgrown verge may be the survivor of Inclosure - the verges left for the grazing of animals belonging to those deprived of grazing rights on the former common. Bound stones may have disappeared!

This aerial photograph of Tyneham taken in 1946 shows not only some of these very old hedgerow boundaries , but also the evidence of early occupancy of the land in the strip lynchets (Dorset County Museum).

Outline of research potential starting in the Dorset Record Office

Each of the coastal boroughs has an important and extensive archive and at least one published 'History' (of variable quality). The DRO has borough records for Bridport, Lyme, Weymouth and Melcombe, Poole and Christchurch, each with a detailed catalogue. Some of this can be consulted on microfiche.

The principal estates along the Dorset Coast of today comprise the Weld, Pitt-Rivers and Calcraft-Ryder and the former Bankes. These are also fully catalogued and some contain early material. Each of these is worthy of attention.

For manors/parishes/estates the archives vary considerably. For example, Chideock has a full and interesting archive; deeds date from 1248, court rolls from 1429, accounts 1455-1536, a court book of 1556-1571: there are rentals of 1567, 1626 and 1659. Parish records start in 1654, there is an 1800 perambulation of the manor and several 19c maps. Chickerell has an Enclosure Award of 1792 of the tithing of Putton, and an Inclosure Act, Award and Map for the rest of the parish of 1803/4. Corfe has a number of later eighteenth century maps. Kimmeridge has papers of 1613-1621 relating to Sir William Clavell's alum works. Steeple, once held by Bindon Abbey, has charters of 1279-1293. The parishes of Abbotsbury, Wyke, Chickerell, Fleet and Langton Herring claimed rights to a fishery in the Fleet in 1636.

An extract from the Court Leet and Court Baron of the Langton Herring manor concerns boundaries and bearing of bound stones. A pre-Inclosure parish survey shows open arable strip fields and further material relating to the Enclosure of the estate in 1761. For Lulworth, there is a letter of 1586 concerning a pirate ship and crew apprehended there. The first court roll surviving for Lulworth is 1410 and a number of surveys dating to between 1640 and 1865. There is a compotus or accounts register for Flowers Barrow Manor of 1464-6 and 1770s surveys of all the farms on the estate.

A Notice to the Parishes 'from Weymouth to Chaldon dated 17 September 1796 is a return made by the Farmers residing there 'to fix on proper places for driving their stock in case of any Invasion of our Coast . . . '

A detailed 1838 parish map of Preston includes additional detail of the coast including details for the proposed water source/Weymouth Water works. For Radipole we find a copy of the Poor Rate for 1835 and School Log Books between 1871 and 1964. There is an early account for John Morton's estate, including 'Wey Rewald alias Cauxway [Causeway Farm] 1510-24'. Cavalry barracks are mentioned in Radipole in 1820 in an estimate of the value of land held by Edward Herring, which also includes 'shops brewhouses, bakehouse etc.' The Turnpike put a road through in 1835, and by mid-century the impact of all this on property development is well-evidenced in the archive - and in the field!

For Purbeck, a survey of the acreage and boundaries of the Isle of Purbeck and a unique document entitled 'Articles and Rules of the Ancient Order of Purbeck Marblers. . . ‘of 1649-51 survives. For Tyneham there is a deed of 1426 and later we hear about tobacco pipe clay extraction in Povington Heath 1665-1763. Isaac Taylor surveyed Boltington Farm about 1770 with a detailed map of this small cliff top holding.

This 1986 photograph shows part of Tyneham parish with old boundary hedgerows (possibly dating from Saxon times) still intact (Dorset County Museum).

The Calcraft estates in Wareham and Purbeck are documented between 1715-1923, and we find an interesting valuation of land in Studland between 1756-1771.

Maps

There is also a catalogue of maps in the DRO relating to Dorset. Very useful to the historical geographer is the 1:2500 six inches to the mile series, first edition dating from the 1870s. Early surveys should be consulted against the background provided by a mathematically accurate survey. Of interest will be the OS 1" map of the Dorset Coast from Christchurch Bay to Portland, Sheet XVI, 1811.

County maps give some information about the coastline, e.g. maps in John Hutchins especially of towns are useful. Isaac Taylor's Map of Dorset 1765, 2nd edn 1795 gives coastal detail, cf John Bayly's Map of Dorset 1773 which is published in the first edition of Hutchins. Treswell's Survey of Purbeck is 1586, and there is a map of Portland and Weymouth about the same date. These maps were all drawn in response to a specific commission - which is what they show. The fact that features or places are absent does not mean they did not exist, rather, that they were not part of the subject of the survey. These are 'private' maps. You got what you paid for!

Reading old documents

Medieval documents are almost all written in Latin. Some have been translated and published. The originals may not necessarily be that difficult to decipher if the Latin is not heavily abbreviated. Latin remains the language of the law until the time of the Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell; there is a brief reversion with the Restoration before the approved use of English returns.

Early handwriting can, nevertheless, be difficult to decipher: there are a number of helpful texts published to assist the reading of the chancery and secretary hands of the medieval and Tudor worlds.

Field Walking

Is a matter of observing the relations between features on a map – or as described in a survey – and how they present on the ground. The only ‘fixed point’ in settlement studies is today. And from today, the inquirer works backwards. An outline knowledge of wild plants (see Theme 1 Topic 1 Dorset’s Coastal and Marine Habitats), of soils, of building stone and architectural styles are all helpful. This is essentially a matter of learning some of the techniques of ‘above-ground’ archaeology. What can be seen, how did it come about, and what does the written record have to offer?

Recommended Reading

A selection of Recommended reading in this section includes more specialist works on specific topics: all works will include further reading.

Victoria History of the Counties of England [VCH] 'A History of the County of Dorset', (ed) R B Pugh, Institute of Historical Research/Oxford University Press, Vol I (1912), Vol II (1968). Vol I includes a useful section on Dorset’s Maritime History (pp. 175-228). Vol II contains the index to both volumes, in addition to the text and translation of the Domesday Book [1086] as it pertains to Dorset, arranged by landowner/manor, and the text and translation of the Dorset Geld Rolls preserved in the Exeter Domesday which are arranged by Hundred. The Phillimore Domesday Book Series, with facsimile text and translation and full notes, remains without equal (see Domesday Book Dorset 1983).

Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England) The County of Dorset Vol 1 (West) 1952, covers the coast as far as and including Abbotsbury. The coast from Checkrail to Poole is in Vol II, Dorset South-East, not published until 1970 it explores its subject in much greater detail, issued in 3 parts.

Volumes of the Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society [DNHAS] are indexed from 1876-1988; thereafter individual volumes; many papers on a wide variety of coastal topics each containing original research. Longer papers will be found in the DNHAS Monograph series: useful for the coast is Vol 5 by Jarvis K, 'Excavations in Christchurch 1969-1980'. Vol 6 is Sunter M and Woodward P, Romano-British Industries in Purbeck. Shorter topics are in the volumes of Dorset Notes and Queries. For transcription and translation of lengthier Dorset archive material see the Dorset Record Society volumes, for example the Dorset Lay Subsidy [tax levied on land and goods by the Crown], 1327 (ed Rumble) and of 1332, (ed Mills).

There is a series of PRO [Public Record Office] Readers Guides, some of which will be useful. PRO Reader Guide No 6 is by Mary Ellis, Using Manorial Records (1994). Guide No 9 is William Foot, Maps for Farming History, a guide to the records of the Tithe Valuations Office and National Farms Surveys of England and Wales, 1836-1943, (1994). Kelvin Smith, Guide No 20 is Records of Merchant Shipping and Seamen, (1998).

The Federation of Family History Societies publishes a useful series of leaflets on, for example, Poor Law Union Records.

Growth of towns; Bridport as an Example.

The investigative methods outlined above, that is, a careful consideration of cartographic, documentary, archaeological and field evidence, provides us with a useful insight into the growth and development of Bridport on which future work may be based.

Bridport has recently marked the seven hundredth and fiftieth anniversary of the granting of its borough charter in 1253.

. . . 'confirmasso probis hominus nostris de Brideport quod villa nostra
de Brideport decetero sit liber Burgus . . .'

. . . 'confirmed to our worthy men of Bridport that our town of Bridport
be in future a free Borough . . . '

Not only is it clear that Bridport is already a town in 1253 and that the burgesses had the money to buy a charter of privileges from the King, we know that Bridport pre-dates this charter by many centuries, and further, can suggest that the essential elements of the medieval and later town plan were already in existence by the end of the ninth century.

As part of the defence of the Kingdom against the Danes, Alfred the Great set up a system of defended places or burhs, the record of which is found in a document known as the Burghal Hidage. The relative size of each burh can be ascertained from the rate (hidage) at which it was assessed, the stated length of the defended boundary and the number of armed men required. The burh was thus an assembly point for the local levy and a refuge, and we find Bridport called Bridian or the place at Bridi. The name may intimate the one-time existence of a later prehistoric valley-based estate bordering a now lost coastline. A secure place, by the time of King Athelstan, it was licensed to mint coins, numbers of which have been found, and the presence of such implies mercantile and trading interest - a market. The addition of port to the name by the time of the Domesday Book implies as much.

Entries made by the Norman commissioners in the Domesday Book (1086) tell us that upstream from Bridport the valley comprised a number of church manors, their status itself the legacy of grants made by earlier Anglo-Saxon kings, whereas upstream along the Bride valley we find a string of royal manors. Below Bridport, the river - and harbour - divided the royal manor of Burton Bradstock on the east bank, from the Cerne Abbey manor of Symondsbury on the west.

Domesday Book records the scale of damage to BRIDEPORT between 1066 and 1086. 'Before 1066 there were 120 houses . . . now there are 100 houses there, twenty have been so neglected that those who live in them are not able to pay tax.' Further along the coast at Wareham, a rather larger burh, we find that of 285 houses, 150 had been destroyed. The bitter conflict between English townsmen and their new Norman masters had left several Dorset towns in ruins.

By the early thirteenth century the fortunes of Bridport were on the up. King John commissioned large supplies of both oats and rope, in 1211 he ordered '3000 bottells of hempen thread according to Bridport weight' for making ships' ropes and cables.' War with France was imminent, and in 1213 there is another order that there 'be made at Bridport night and day, as many ropes for ships both large and small as they could, and twisted yarns for cordage for ballistae.' Bridport was also known for flax production and the making of sails.

There is every indication that the charter of 1253, which agreed to a huge rise in the annual rent payment (firma) paid by the Borough to the Crown in return for a number of 'liberties' (see below) reflects the recent planned extension of the town in terms of burgage [borough] tenements ['holdings'] - houses gable-end onto the street with a long narrow plot at the rear, each let out at a fixed annual rent. This is very much a time of new town 'plantation'.

Once established, burgage boundaries were protected by borough legislation. Plots may be subdivided or 'doubled up' but the basic framework is one that endures to the present day. The careful comparison of two very different surviving eighteenth century maps of Bridport suggests that it may be possible to go so far as to identify the location of the 120 houses recorded in 1086 in relation to the defended boundary of the earlier burh, and further, to suggest the location of the 'new town' extension in the earlier part of the thirteenth century that led up to the 1253 charter. And which creates the basic town centre plan of today with its two deliberately planned wide market streets, the one north-south (burh) and the other west-east (eleventh century and later phases) and meeting at the T-junction occupied by the present Town Hall formerly the site of St Andrew's church set on one side of a courtyard of small houses.

The next formative phase in urban development comes in the wake of the Corporations Act of 1835 when the limitations imposed by the Borough boundary were, in effect, lifted. The boundary was extended north to include Allington and south as far as and including the harbour - both banks. The tradition of the medieval hospital and almshouse - of which there were many in medieval Bridport - may find later expression in the growth and importance of both community and non-conformist movements in the town.

This Ordnance Survey map dated 1888 shows well the plan of Bridport with many of the main features intact since the twelfth century (Dorset County Museum).

The 1253 charter does not mention either market or harbour. These interests, we take it, are implied in the terms of the charter and did not require special mention. At this date flat-bottomed craft may well have been able to bring supplies upstream as far as the town. Regarding the harbour proper at West Bay, the surviving legal record suggests its management gave rise to continuing disputes. 'Right of Wreck' could be a contentious issue anywhere along the Dorset coast. The Abbot of Cerne (west bank) and the Prior of Frampton (for Burton Bradstock on the east) took legal action against Borough 'for taking wreck of the sea from the foreshore' within the bounds of their respective manors (source, Hundred Rolls). In 1280 Bridport claimed right to 'tolls of sea, sand and stones' and 'which liberties they and their ancestors had always had whenever the sea ebbs and flows.' In 1288 the borough claimed 'to take tolls from all ships' (source, Plea in the Treasury of Receipt).

The relations of the Borough with its downstream neighbours and harbour are reflected today in the pattern of roads and the former railway line. By the sixteenth century attempts to construct a proper harbour were finally abandoned. In 1721 by Act of Parliament, harbour and piers were built and a sluice for flushing away Chesil sand. Trade increased and from 1835 it became known as Bridport Harbour, the main road route running up the east bank. The railway arrived in 1884; it became West Bay, and tourism started. The railway station is long closed but the harbour is still accessed principally down the east bank. Following the changes of the mid sixteenth century the Symondsbury bank, the former Cerne Abbey estate, never really re-established itself.

Table 3: The freedoms of a liber burgus – a ‘free borough’ – usually included