History
The town is situated at a historic fording point on the Stour. The ford was replaced in the 16th century with a six-arch stone bridge, and a quarter kilometre embankment crossing the flood plain. The bridge was widened from 12 to 18ft in 1820. A 19th century plaque affixed to the bridge states that anyone damaging the bridge would have been transported to Australia as a felon. On the south bank of the river is the watermill which was restored in 1980 and is now a museum.
Hidden on the hill above the bridge are the ruins of Sturminster Newton Castle, a manor house rather than a defensive building. The 14th century building stands on a crescent shaped mound which could be the site of an Iron Age hill fort. The town and castle were part of Sturminster Newton hundred.
The town was recorded in the Anglo Saxon charter in 968 as Nywetone at Stoure, and in the Domesday Book as Newentone. Newton refers to a new farm or estate, and Sturminster to a church (minster) on the Stour. Originally the two parts of the name referred to the settlements on the north and south of the river, but were combined to distinguish the town from Sturminster Marshall and other Newtons.
The town is set in the vale Thomas Hardy based his fictional Vale of the little dairies on, and Sturminster had the largest livestock market in Britain, which stood close to the town centre until it was closed and demolished in 1998.
The town centre is built in a mixture of styles, including 17th and 18th century thatched cottages, Georgian stone buildings, and 19th century brick buildings. Set back from the main road is the market square and parish church, which was rebuilt in 1486 by the abbots of Glastonbury. The church was heavily modified in the 19th century, but the carved wagon roof remains.
From 1863 the Somerset and Dorset Railway ran through the town until 1966 when it was dismantled as part of the Beeching Axe. The station and goods yard were demolished in the mid 1970s.
The railway goods yard gave milk trains access to the private sidings of the local creamery. Started in 1913 by local farmers to produce cheddar cheese and pasteurized milk, it was taken over by the Milk Marketing Board in 1937. Milk trains ceased in 1966 on closure of the line, with the creamery remaining in operation until 2000 under successor Dairy Crest.
The town is the home of the annual UK Boogie Woogie Festival, which in 2009 saw an appearance from veteran boogie woogie star Little Willie Littlefield.
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The whole history of civilisation is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)