POLITICAL HISTORY 



DORSET is tripartite, the three sections being feHx, petraea, de- 

 serta; clay, chalk, sand; vale, down, heath. ^ Sahent high ground 

 stretches between the Axe and the Stour, thrusting to Poole 

 Harbour a southern arm, the Chaldon and Purbeck downs, un- 

 broken but by the gap of Lulworth. ' Dorset fehx ' is the alluvial fringe of 

 this central mass, the valleys of the Stour and Char, and the land drained by 

 the Birt and the Wey. The Frome valley, between the main plateau and the 

 northern hills, is heathland. Dorchester guards it on the west, Wareham on 

 the east, for it is the natural inlet into the heart of the county. 



Such an area is a geographical nucleus, but lacks naturally defined 

 boundaries. Its borders will impinge on the adjoining districts. Hence 

 Dorset is ever closely connected with Somerset and Wiltshire. But the 

 watershed of the Char and the Axe tended to strengthen the fortuitous 

 circumstances dividing Devon from the West Saxon kingdom ; while the 

 development of Dorset and Hampshire was long differentiated by the 

 marshes and heaths of the Avon, geographical features possibly reproduced in 

 an old tribal boundary.^ 



Dorset does not, like Hampshire, centre round its main water system. 

 Unlike that of the Avon, the lower Frome valley is sterile, and its estuary 

 difficult of navigation. The marshy flats running west from Chesil ' cause the 

 county to look north, towards the fertile vale of Blackmoor, and to turn its 

 back upon the seaboard, even as Weymouth long faced inland, away from the 

 bay. Dorchester,* communicating at ease with north and south, east and 

 west, is the obvious political centre : Weymouth, called into being for its 

 natural harbour,^ and separated from Dorchester only by the Ridgeway, gave 

 access to the continent. 



Of the British inhabitants little is known. The Druidic worship of 

 the Poxwell temple, and the phallic rites connected with the Cerne giant, 

 examples of the two types of British remains, point perhaps to occupation 

 by diffisrent tribes (Goidel and Brython), perhaps merely to the Celt and the 

 pre-Celtic Iberian of the round and long barrows respectively, ° 



Roman exploratory expeditions were succeeded by Roman colonization, 

 but Dorset lay on the western fringe of both movements, and their influence 



'H. M. Moule, in Quart. Rev. 1862. 



'See Guest, The Four IVays, Be/gic Ditches ; Early Engl. Settlements ; Warne and Smart, Ancient Dorset; 

 Warne, Map of Ancient Dorset ; Camden, Britannia (ed. Gibson, 1722), i, 51 ; Hubbard, Early Man on the 

 Diwns ; Neolithic Dewponds and Cattleivays. 



^ Middendorf, Altenglische Flurnamen (WUrzburg, 1900), i, 27. 



* For the origin of the names Dorset and Dorchester, see Guest, Orig. Celt, i, 46, 372 ; Freeman, Norm. 

 Conq. i, 49, 571. 



' It would seem that Weymouth was always the sea-station for Dorchester ; Warne, Celtic TumuR 

 of Dorset, 1,2. 



° See Rhys and Brynmor-Jones, Welsh People, map, p. 75 (ed. 1902) ; see also p. 83 ; Seebohm, Tribal 

 Custom in Anglo-Saxon Law, 397 (ed. 1 902) ; Willls-Bund, Celtic Church in Wales, 12. 



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