Shaftesbury Town Hall

Shaftesbury () is a town and civil parish in Dorset, England. It is on the A30 road, 20 miles (32 kilometres) west of Salisbury and 19.4 miles (31 kilometres) southeast of Longleat, near the border with Wiltshire. It is the only significant hilltop settlement in Dorset, being built about 215 metres (705 feet) above sea level on a greensand hill on the edge of Cranborne Chase. The town looks over the Blackmore Vale, part of the River Stour basin. Shaftesbury is the site of the former Shaftesbury Abbey, which was founded in 888 by King Alfred and became one of the richest religious establishments in the country, before being destroyed in the dissolution in 1539. Adjacent to the abbey site is Gold Hill, a steep cobbled street used in the 1970s as the setting for Ridley Scott's television advertisement for Hovis bread. In the 2021 census the town's civil parish had a population of 9,162.

North Dorset is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2015 by Simon Hoare, a Conservative.

Gold Hill is a steep cobbled street in the town of Shaftesbury in the English county of Dorset. The view looking down from the top of the street has been described as "one of the most romantic sights in England."At the top of the street is the 14th-century St Peter's Church, one of the few buildings remaining in Shaftesbury from before the 18th century. Adjacent to the church is the former Priest's House (Sun and Moon Cottage), which is still part of the Gold Hill Museum building but now houses a shop.The cobbled street runs beside buttressed walls of the precinct, which are the grounds surrounding ancient Shaftesbury Abbey, built by King Alfred the Great. The walls are a scheduled monument. Their origins are not known, but are presumed to have been built in the 1360s, when the abbess or other authority was given royal permission to build town defences.Each year the town hosts the Gold Hill Fair to raise money for local charities.

Shaftesbury Abbey was an abbey that housed nuns in Shaftesbury, Dorset. It was founded in about 888, and dissolved in 1539 during the English Reformation by the order of Thomas Cromwell, minister to King Henry VIII. At the time it was the second-wealthiest nunnery in England, behind only Syon Abbey.

The Westminster Memorial Hospital is a small community hospital in Shaftesbury, Dorset, England. It provides about 20 in-patient beds, a minor injuries department, a range of out-patient clinics and other support services. It opened in 1874.

Shaftesbury Football Club are a football club based in Shaftesbury, Dorset, England. The club is affiliated to the Dorset County Football Association and is a FA chartered Standard club. They are currently members of the Wessex League Premier Division.

Greatest Hits Radio Dorset (North Dorset) is an Independent Local Radio station serving North Dorset.

Shaftesbury School is a coeducational secondary day and boarding school located in Shaftesbury in the English county of Dorset.Previously a voluntary controlled Church of England school administered by the Diocese of Salisbury and Dorset County Council, The school converted to academy status under the Diocese of Salisbury in June 2014. The origins of the school date back to 1718 when the original ‘Blue Coat School’ was founded in Shaftesbury, and the school has offered boarding since 1898. It is one of only thirty-nine state boarding schools in England.The school currently has around a thousand students who each belong to one of four houses. Melbury (Green), Duncliffe (Red), Hambledon (Blue) and Gold (Yellow). The boarding house underwent a £3 million refurbishment and expansion in 2012 and now has over one hundred students from around the world. Shaftesbury School offers GCSEs, and BTECs as programmes of study for pupils. Shaftesbury School's sixth form provision has links to Sturminster Newton High School in Sturminster Newton, and students in the sixth form have the option to study from a range of A Levels and further BTECs on two sites.

St John's Church is a Church of England parish church in Enmore Green, Dorset, England. The church was designed by George Alexander and built in 1842–43. It is a Grade II listed building.

Higher Wincombe is a farm and small hamlet in the parish of Donhead St Mary, Wiltshire, England. It lies at the head of the Nadder Valley, just beyond the north-east edge of the town of Shaftesbury, Dorset and within the Cranborne Chase and West Wiltshire Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Cann is a village and civil parish in the county of Dorset in southern England. It is situated on the A350 road in the North Dorset administrative district, 1 mile (1.5 kilometres) south of Shaftesbury. The civil parish covers 2,600 acres (1,100 hectares) and has an underlying geology of Kimmeridge clay, greensand and gault clay. In the 2011 census the parish—which includes HM Prison Guys Marsh—had a population of 822.

Alcester, a village in Dorset, England, is a liberty in the parish of St. James Shaftesbury, within the parliamentary borough of Shaftesbury, but without the municipal borough, Dorset. Pop., 342. Houses, 76