n tlu i0t0r}) of ribport. 



By WILLIAM COLFOX, B.A. 



T is difficult to compress even a sketch of the 

 history of the town within the narrow limits to 

 which I am confined, but I will endeavour to give 

 some of its salient features. It cannot be pro- 

 fessed that there is anything of any great, any 

 national, importance to be told of the place. 

 Bridport has never been the scene of any great events, has had 

 little to do with war and war's alarms, and has for the most part 

 led as uneventful a life as other towns of its size and importance. 

 But equally perhaps with many of them, if one searches into its 

 records of by-gone days, one may find many matters of interest, 

 and such as one would not willingly allow to be forgotten. And 

 fortunately we have a more or less accurate account of the town 

 for centuries past in the pages of Hutchins, whose History of our 

 County ranks so high among similar works in England, and it is 

 from his work, so well and so extensively enlarged by Messrs. 

 Shipp and Hodson, that I draw the greater part of what I have 

 to present. 



Of Bridport in Roman times I am not aware that there is any 

 mention, but the road from Durnovaria to Moridunum must have 

 pitted somewhere this way, and Mr. Warne gives the high street 

 of the town as on the line of the Via Iceniana. There are some 



