How well do you know Dorset's landscape, history, places and people? Test your knowledge with this challenging end of year quiz by our walks writer Edward Griffiths
1 Who painted Bridport Town Hall’s ‘Spirit of Bridport’ murals depicting local trades?
2 Whose stone effigy by Eric Kennington lies in St Martin’s Church, Wareham?
3 What were Portland mackerel fishermen’s traditional rowing boats called?
4 On which hill-fort were General Wolfe’s troops trained for the Battle of the Heights of Abraham and the capture of Quebec?
5 What was Bournemouth Town Hall before it became the Town Hall in 1921?
6 In which village church is the healing shrine of St Wite (aka. St Candida)?
7 At which end of Chesil Beach are the largest graded pebbles?
8 In which Weymouth street would you find a Civil War cannon-ball embedded high in a house wall?
9 In 1842 county boundary changes, which Devon abbey found itself in Dorset?
10 Where would you have to cross the River Divelish by ford or medieval footbridge?
11 Who built Sherborne New Castle as a hunting lodge in 1594?
12 In William Barnes’ poem, which village church bells ‘be good vor sound, an’ liked by all the näighbours round’?
13 What baked dough delicacies were named after handmade high-top Dorset buttons?
14 What Cranborne Chase deer observatory was built by Humphrey Sturt in 1700?
15 In the grounds of which country house would you find an Egyptian obelisk from Philae’s Temple of Isis?
16 Which prehistoric hill-fort has a Roman military camp in its north-west corner?
17 Where is ‘Hangman’s Cottage’ close by the River Frome?
18 Where is St Augustine’s Well, a freshwater spring emanating from the chalk hills?
19 Who compiled the mammoth History and Antiquities of the County of Dorset published in 1774?
20 In which year was the biennial Milton Abbas Street Fair started, and why?
21 At Lydlinch, what river joins the River Lydden which then flows to the River Stour?
22 Who does the Hardy Monument on Black Down commemorate?
23 Two stone-block seats inscribed ‘D.J.1852 were donated by David Jardine in 1852. One on Ballard Down in Purbeck is named ‘Rest and be Thankful. Where is the other?
24 What was Bournemouth Square’s late-Debenhams store before it was Debenhams?
25 Where is Dorset’s fossil forest?
Click here for a special festive walk taking in dinosaur footprints and a Star Wars film location
ANSWERS: 1 Francis (Fra) Newbery; 2 T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia); 3 Lerrets; 4 Hambledon Hill; 5 Mont Dore Hotel; 6 Whitchurch Canonicorum; 7 Portland; 8 Maiden Street; 9 Forde Abbey; 10 Fifehead Neville; 11 Sir Walter Raleigh; 12 Lydlinch; 13 Dorset Knobs; 14 Horton Tower; 15 Kingston Lacy; 16 Hod Hill; 17 Dorchester; 18 Cerne Abbey churchyard; 19 Rev. John Hutchins; 20 1973 to commemorate the bi-centenary of the founding of the ‘new’ village; 21 Caundle Brook; 22 Admiral Sir Thomas Masterman Hardy (1769 – 1839), Nelson’s flag-captain at Trafalgar; 23 Peveril Down, Swanage; 24 Bobby’s; 25 Lulworth Cove
