Dorchester Town Council

Elizabethan and Stuart

Elizabethan and Stuart The Chideock Martyrs are executed for their faith - statues by Elisabeth Frink.  Fire strikes the town in 1613 - design by St Osmund's Middle School pupils.  Puritan Rector John White founds the Nappers Mite Almshouses and Grammar School, and sends a Pilgrim ship to the New World.

Top left represents Elisabeth Frink's statues of two Elizabethan Catholic martyrs facing Death.  The statues are in South Walks, near the site of the old gallows.

The Great Fire of 1613 destroyed much of the largely wooden medieval town.  Pupils from St Osmund's Middle School designed the fire.

Dorchester has been altered rather than rebuilt and the town holds layers of hidden history in many of its buildings.

Puritan Rector of Dorchester, Reverend John White founded the Nappers Mite Almshouses, the Boys Grammar School and girls schools.  He arranged for one of the first Pilgrim Fathers' ships, the Mary and John, to sail to the New World.