History
LOST DORSET
NO. 21 STURMINSTER NEWTON
T
David Burnett, The Dovecote Press
his view of a busy Monday market in 1906 perfectly depicts ‘Stur’ as the bustling provincial capital of the Blackmore Vale. It was then a world of yeoman farmers, Hardy’s ‘Vale of the Little Dairies’, whose small dairy herds grazed the Vale’s wellwatered clays. The arrival of the railway in 1863 transformed their fortunes, opening up a new market for liquid milk, to London and Bournemouth, as well as the creamery that opened in the town shortly before the First World War. In Tales of Dorset Olive Knott, born in Rixon Hill in 1903, gives an account of the fortnightly market as described by her father. ‘Pigs, cows, sheep and dairy produce were bought and sold under the watchful eye of all and sundry, midst hearty greetings and backchat, a jovial gathering of folks from miles around all clad in their ‘second best’.’ A policeman watches proceedings from outside the police station. The livestock market finally closed in 1997, and the more recent closure of Shaftesbury Cattle Market in January 2019 means that there are now no livestock markets in Dorset, ending a once vital link in the rural economy that stretches back to medieval times. dovecotepress.com Lost Dorset: The Towns 1880-1920, the companion volume to Lost Dorset: The Villages and Countryside, is a 220-page large-format hardback, price £20, and is available locally from Winstone’s Books or directly from the publishers.
68 | Sherborne Times | March 2022
