Sherborne

Sherborne is a market town in north-west Dorset, on the River Yeo at the edge of the Blackmore Vale, 6 miles east of Yeovil. The A30 runs through it, and the 2021 census counted about 10,400 residents. Sherborne station is on the West of England Main Line, with South Western Railway trains between London Waterloo and Exeter St Davids via Salisbury.

The town centres on Sherborne Abbey, a site of Christian worship since AD 705, when St Aldhelm founded a Saxon cathedral here. For many it is still the cathedral of Dorset. Much of the old town, including the abbey, is built from distinctive honey-brown Sherborne Stone. The town has hundreds of listed buildings.

There are two castles. In the 12th century Roger de Caen, Bishop of Salisbury, built a fortified palace here. Parliamentary forces under Sir Thomas Fairfax besieged it in 1645 and it was left in ruins, which English Heritage now looks after. In 1594 Sir Walter Raleigh built an Elizabethan mansion in the grounds, today known as Sherborne Castle. Its Grade I listed gardens were one of Capability Brown’s first commissions, giving an English landscape garden that survives largely unaltered today; see Sherborne Castle and Gardens for details.

Sherborne School was refounded in 1550 as King Edward’s Grammar School, using some of the old abbey buildings.