Beaminster

Beaminster  is a small town and civil parish in the West Dorset district of Dorset in South West England, at the head of the valley of the River Brit. Beaminster is 45 mi south of Bristol, 38 mi west of Bournemouth, 35 mi east of Exeter and 15 mi northwest of the county town Dorchester. The 2011 Census recorded a parish population of 3,136.

History
In the Domesday Book of 1086 the manor of Beaminster was recorded as being owned by the See of Salisbury. Bishop Osmund gave it as a supplement to two of the Cathedral prebends in 1091. In the English Civil War the town declared for Parliament and was sacked by Royalist forces in 1644. Prince Maurice stayed in the town on Palm Sunday, though his stay was brief because a fire, caused by a musket being discharged into a thatched roof, almost totally destroyed the town. The town suffered further accidental fires in 1684 and 1781. The town did not get a railway and thus remained relatively small.

Horn Park, about 1.5 mi north-west of Beaminster, is a neo-Georgian country house of five bays and two-storeys designed by architect T. Lawrence Dale and completed in 1911. Inside the house the central corridor is barrel vaulted and leads to a drawing room whose groin vault is reminiscent of the work of Sir John Soane (1753-1837). The drawing room includes Jacobean features re-used from a 16th-century country house at nearby Parnham, which was being altered and restored at about the time that Horn Park was being built. Horn Park is Listed Grade II. Its gardens are occasionally open to the public as part of the National Gardens Scheme.

Economy & society
The town hosts the Beaminster Festival, an annual music and art festival. Whitcombe Disc Golf Course at Beaminster has hosted the British Open Disc Golf Championship on a number of occasions and the European Disc Golf Championship in 2003. Clipper Teas Ltd is based in Beaminster. It is currently held by the Dutch company Royal Wessanen. The town is twinned with the town of St James on the Brittany / Normandy border in France.

Transport
The nearest railway station is 5 mi north of the town at Crewkerne. Exeter International Airport is 30 mi to the west. The main road through the town is the A3066, which leads to Bridport to the south and Mosterton and Crewkerne to the north. The road north passes though Horn Hill tunnel, which opened in June 1832 and is the sole pre-railway age road tunnel that is still in daily public use.

Education
St Mary's Church of England Primary School

Beaminster secondary school is a small school with about 700 pupils, from year 7 to year 11. It has a combined sixth form with the Sir John Colfox secondary school, in the nearby town of Bridport.

Now Beaminster Technology College, it "is a good school that is well-led and managed" (Ofsted report 2008) and is set to receive Bridport's Mountjoy Special School into its curtilage when the latter moves in the near future. More future plans include a new emphasis on training for facets of sustainable agriculture.

In literature
Beaminster is described as "Emminster" in the fictional Wessex of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles.

Dorset's 19th-century dialect poet William Barnes wrote of Beaminster: Sweet Be'mi'ster, that was bist a-bound By green and woody hills all round, Wi' hedges, reachen up between A thousand vields o' zummer green.

Notable people
Beaminster is the adopted hometown of actor Martin Clunes, and was where singer PJ Harvey went to school. Mat Follas had his first restaurant The Wild Garlic in the town square, though now moved to larger premises nearby. Beaminster is also home of Lynne Reid Banks, author of The L-Shaped Room and The Indian in the Cupboard.

Twin towns
Beaminster is twinned with:
 * 🇫🇷 Saint-James, France