WALKS AND AVENUES OF DORCHESTER. 31 



LONDON ROAD AVENUE. A very fine avenue of magnifi- 

 cent elm trees formerly overshadowed this road, but in 1887 

 they were, by order of the then Duchy Steward, Mr. George 

 Heriot, removed as dangerous, with the exception of seven 

 trees on the north side, which were pollarded and may now 

 be seen as evidence of what the former avenue was like ; the 

 present trees were planted by the Duchy a year later. 



Prior to 1746, the road from Dorchester to Blandford and 

 London went through Fordington. Passing along Hollo way, 

 leaving St. George's church on the south, it ran through the 

 Ford below the East or Abbey Mill, thence over the " Old 

 Bridge," which stood about 120 yards southward from the 

 present " Grey's " Bridge, as indicated by the grass-grown 

 mounds of debris on the east side of the river there, and 

 joined what is now the new London Road, near where the 

 road from Waterson intersects the same. 



" Grey's " Bridge, as the date upon it shows, was built in 

 1747-8, when a new road was made by Mrs. Lora Pitt from 

 the bottom of High East Street to " Stowham " Bridge, thus 

 enabling travellers to Blandford and London to avoid the 

 dangerous and circuitous route through Eordington over the 

 " Old Bridge." 



An interesting presentment relative to the making of this 

 road was made at a Court Baron of the manor holden the 

 26th day of February, 1746, when, after reciting that by an 

 Act of Parliament made the nineteenth year of his present 

 Majesty, King George the 2nd, intituled an Act to enable 

 Lora Pitt, widow, to erect a bridge or bridges over the river 

 Frome and to make a causeway over Forthington Moor in 

 the county of Dorset, it was among other things enacted that 

 it should be lawful for the said Lora Pitt, at her own expense, 

 to make a new road or causeway to branch out of the common 

 highway between Stowham bridge and Loudon* bridge within 

 the Manor, over and through part of the meadow ground 

 and other the common cow pasture, belonging to the manor, 



* Louds Mill and Louds Estate are in this locality. 



