Kingston Maurward House

Kingston Maurward College is a college for land-based studies situated two miles east of Dorchester, Dorset, England. The college is a member of the Landex group [1], an association of institutions that provide courses in agriculture and horticulture. Kingston Maurward House on the college grounds is used for administration purposes and private functions.

Stinsford is a village and civil parish in southwest Dorset, England, about 1 mile (1.6 km) east of Dorchester. The parish includes the settlements of Higher and Lower Bockhampton. The name Stinsford may derive from stynt, Old English for a limited area of pasture. In the 2011 United Kingdom census, the parish had a population of 334.The parish has five large country houses - Birkin House, Frome House, Kingston Maurward House, the Elizabethan era Old Manor House and Stinsford House. Much of the land in the parish is occupied by Kingston Maurward College, a further education college.

Mount Pleasant henge is a Neolithic henge enclosure in the English county of Dorset. It lies southeast of Dorchester in the civil parish of West Stafford. It still partially survives as an earthwork.

Frome Billet is a former village in Dorset, just to the north of West Stafford.It is mentioned in the Domesday Book. There is slight archaeological evidence of a mediaeval settlement. It is now represented only by Stafford House.

Old Came Rectory is a former rectory on the A352 road in Winterborne Came, Dorset, England. It was built in the 19th century for the Reverend William England in a rustic cottage orné style from a plan by the architect John Nash. It is a two-storey building with a thatched roof and walls of cob and rendered rubble. It was subsequently the home of William Barnes, who became the rector in 1862 and lived there until he died in 1886. Thomas Hardy visited him there many times, and other literary tenants and guests have included Tennyson, Coventry Patmore, Edmund Gosse, Francis Palgrave, Siegfried Sassoon, Edmund Blunden and T. E. Lawrence.The building was listed for protection as Grade II in 1956. Features include three thatched verandas, french windows and a large garden which contains an orchard and well.

Max Gate is the former home of Thomas Hardy and is located on the outskirts of Dorchester, Dorset, England. It was designed and built by Thomas Hardy for his own use in 1885 and he lived there until his death in 1928. In 1940 it was bequeathed to the National Trust by Hardy's sister and is now open to the public. It was designated as a Grade I listed building on 8 May 1970.

Flagstones is a late Neolithic interrupted ditch enclosure (similar to a causewayed enclosure) on the outskirts of Dorchester, Dorset, England. It derives its name from having been discovered beneath the site of the demolished Flagstones House. Half of it was excavated in the 1980s when the Dorchester by-pass was built; the rest of it still exists under the grounds of Max Gate, Thomas Hardy's house.

West Stafford is a village and civil parish in southwest Dorset, England, situated in the Frome valley 2 miles (3.2 km) east of Dorchester. In the 2011 census the parish had a population of 291. The village contains the public house 'The Wise Man Inn', and St Andrew's Church. The river Winterbourne runs beside the village and 2 miles south lies the village of West Knighton. Thomas Hardy, when training as an architect, assisted in the design of Talbothays Lodge and the cottages opposite. The village is also accepted as the setting for part of Hardy's novel Tess or the D'Urbevilles, during the period when Tess works at the Talbothays Dairy. Reginald Bosworth Smith, schoolmaster, author and President of the Oxford Union, was born in West Stafford on 28 June 1839. His father, Reginald Southwell Smith, was the fourth son of Sir John Wyldbore Smith, Baronet, of Sydling St Nicholas, Dorset.

Thomas Hardy's Cottage, in Higher Bockhampton, Dorset, is a small cob and thatch building that is the birthplace of the English author Thomas Hardy. He was born there in 1840 and lived in the cottage until he was aged 34—during which time he wrote the novels Under the Greenwood Tree (1872) and Far from the Madding Crowd (1874)—when he left home to be married to Emma Gifford. The cottage was built by Hardy's great-grandfather in 1800. It is now a National Trust property, and a popular tourist attraction. The property has a typical cottage garden, and the interior displays furniture which, although not from the Hardy family, is original to the period. The property is situated on the northern boundary of Thorncombe Wood. It is only three miles from Max Gate, the house that Hardy designed and lived in with Emma Gifford from 1885 until his death in 1928. The cottage was given listed building status in 1956 and is listed Grade II the National Heritage List for England.In 2012 the go ahead was given to a project to build a new visitor centre near the cottage. The project also included new trails in Thorncombe Wood. The project, which secured £525,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund, was a joint partnership between Dorset County Council and the National Trust. The visitor centre opened in September 2014.

Fordington Liberty was a liberty in the county of Dorset, England, containing the following parishes: Fordington Hermitage Minterne Magna (part) Stockland (part) (i.e. Dalwood, transferred to Devon 1844)

St George's Church is a Church of England church in Dorchester, Dorset, England and the parish church of the suburb of Fordington. St George's has been Grade I Listed since 1950.The earliest parts of the church have late 11th century origins, although much of the building dates from the 12th-15th centuries, with later alterations in the 18th-20th centuries. The vicar Rev Henry Moule was the architect of extension work carried out in 1833 while some rebuilding and extension occurred in 1907 to the designs of Jem Feacy. Internal features of note include a 14th-century altar from Salisbury Cathedral and a pulpit dated 1592.The site of the church was once occupied by a Roman cemetery. A tombstone from this period was discovered under the church's porch and is now displayed in the nave.

Fordington is a part of the town of Dorchester, Dorset; originally a separate village, it has now become a suburb. Taking its name from a ford across the River Frome, it grew up around the church of St. George (where Henry Moule was once Vicar), though the parish was much larger and surrounded Dorchester on three sides. It was part of the liberty of Fordington. The will of Alfred the Great is said to make an early reference to Saint George of England, in the context of the church of Fordington, Dorset. Certainly at Fordington a stone over the south door records the miraculous appearance of St George to lead crusaders into battle.At West Fordington is St Mary's Church, built in 1911–12 to the designs of Charles Ponting. It replaced Christ Church as parish church in 1929.