List of Hundreds in Dorset

List Of Hundreds In Dorset

This is a list of hundreds in the county of Dorset, England. Between the Anglo-Saxon period and the Local Government Act (1888), the county of Dorset was divided into hundreds and boroughs (and from the mediaeval period, liberties as well). The Local Government Act (1888) replaced the hundreds and liberties with urban and rural districts, based on the sanitary districts of the Poor Law Unions which existed in parallel with the hundreds/liberties from 1834.

While numerous minor changes took place during that period, the general pattern remained stable. The subdivisions below within hundreds and liberties are the old civil parishes, into which the tithings (the original sub-divisions of the hundreds) came to be fitted. (Civil parish is used here in the sense of an "area for which a poor rate is or can be assessed", a unit which has thus been in existence de facto from the establishment of the Elizabethan Poor Law; the term itself dates from mid 19th century legislation such as the Poor Law Amendment Act 1866.)

The following are the units existing immediately prior to the Act of 1834, with some additional changes noted up to the reforms of the Local Government Act 1894 and their immediate aftermath. Liberties and Boroughs are listed for completeness.

Prior to the 1834 Act, the hundreds were grouped, mostly for taxation purposes, by divisions, which were rearranged by local Act of Parliament in 1830. See List of divisions in Dorset.