BEAMINSTER, a market-town and chapelry in
the parish of NETHERBURY, hundred of BEAMINSTER-FORUM-and-REDHONE,
Bridport division of the county
of DORSET, 17 miles (W. N. W.) from Dorchester, and
137 (W. S. W.) from London, containing 2806 inhabitants.
During the civil war in the reign of Charles I.,
Prince Maurice, commanding a party of royalists engaged
in besieging Lyme, took up his quarters in this
town, which, in a few days after, was nearly reduced to
ashes by a fire, stated by some historians to have been
occasioned by accident, whilst others assert that it was
the result of a quarrel between the French and the
Cornish men in the service of the king, who set fire to
it in five different places. It was rebuilt by means of
a parliamentary grant of £2000, but was again nearly
destroyed by a fire which occurred in 1684: in 1781,
it experienced a similar calamity, but the greater part
of the buildings having been insured, it soon recovered
its former prosperity. The town is pleasantly situated
on the river Birt, which is formed by the union of
several small springs that rise in the immediate vicinity:
the houses are in general modern and well built,
and the inhabitants are amply supplied with water.
The manufacture of woollen cloth, which formerly
nourished here, is at present on the decline, and that
of sail-cloth is now the principal source of employment:
there is also a pottery for the coarser kinds of earthenware.
The market, granted to William Ewel, prebendary
of Sarum, in the 12th of Edward I., is on Thursday;
and a fair is held on September 19th, for cattle. Constables
and other officers are appointed at the court leet
of the lord of the manor. The quarter sessions for the
county, now held at Bridport, were formerly held here)
and, in 1638, an order of session was issued for building
a house of correction at the expense of the division.
The town hall is a neat and commodious edifice, in
which the public business is transacted.
This chapelry contains the manors of Beaminster
Prima and Beaminster Secunda, forming two prebends
in the Cathedral Church of Salisbury; the former is
rated in the king's books at £20. 2. 6., and the latter
at £22. 5. 7. The chapel, founded in honour of the
Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, is a stately edifice in the
later style of English architecture, with a fine tower,
one hundred feet high, and richly ornamented with
sculptured designs of the Crucifixion, the Resurrection,
the Ascension, and other subjects of scriptural history.
There is a place of worship for Independents. The free
school was founded in 1684, by Mrs. Frances Tucker,
who endowed it with £20 per annum for the master,
leaving also £30 per annum for apprenticing boys, one
or two of whom she directed should be put to the sea
service. The endowment now produces £ 150 per annum;
the master's salary has been advanced to £40,
and the present number of scholars is one hundred,
who are instructed on Dr. Bell's system: it is under
the direction of trustees, each of whom, on his appointment,
receives £10. The Rev. Samuel Hood, father
of Lords Hood and Bridport, was master of this school
early in the eighteenth century, and subsequently a
prebendary in the Cathedral Church of Wells. An
almshouse for eight aged persons was founded, in 1630,
by Sir John Strode, of Parnham, Knt., the income of
which amounts to £20 per annum. Gilbert Adams, of
Beaminster, Esq., in 1626, gave £200 to the poor of
the parish, directing the produce to be applied to their
use, at the discretion of his executors; and the Rev.
William Hillary, in 1712, bequeathed the reversion,
after ninety-nine years, of land in the parish of Corscombe,
worth £30 per annum, for the benefit of twelve
distressed families in the parish. Dr. Thomas Spratt,
Bishop of Rochester, and the Rev. -Thomas Russel,
Fellow of New College, Oxford, who distinguished
himself by his defence of Warton's History of English
Poetry, were natives of this town.