Bridport town, which is prettily situated, and has an old-world flavour hanging about it, lies chiefly in a hollow of the hills and on the well-wooded slopes. Nowadays, except when market folk have flocked in from the surrounding country, bringing with them a temporary air of industry and bustle, it has a somewhat “sleepy hollow” atmosphere, apparently undisturbed by the happenings of the great world which lies beyond it. In its streets on market days, at all events, one sees many true Wessex types--farmers who might have stepped right out of the pages of one of Thomas Hardy’s novels; sun-tanned and buxom dairymaids, whose joys in the glory of the girt (big) shops is only equalled by their love of gaudy colours and cheap finery on Sundays and at fair times; gaitered drovers with weather-beaten faces, still happily some of them wearing the picturesque smocks of their fore-fathers, give an air of added picturesqueness to a picturesque calling; shepherds that remind one of Gabriel Oak in _Far from the Madding Crowd_; and the Darbies and Joans of neighbouring villages and hamlets, hale and hearty old Wessex folk who have seen many years but few changes, with their crinkled russet cheeks and country gait. Bridport is surrounded by one of those dairy districts for which Dorset is noted, and not a little of the famous “blue-vinny” cheese finds its way into the market. [Illustration: BRIDPORT] The town has on several occasions since its foundation been upon the very verge of attaining to a position of some importance, and but for ill-fortune might have become one of the more prosperous ports of the southern coasts. But it has, one must admit, in the end sadly lagged behind, and at the present time is merely a fairly well-to-do country town, not over-burdened with life or activity of any kind. Centuries ago, at any rate, in the reign of Edward the Confessor, when it possessed a mint and a priory, Bridport was of some considerable standing as a trading town; and in the reign of Henry III the town and surrounding lands, which formed a royal demesne, received a charter, although not actually incorporated till some three centuries later. It has always been noted for its manufacture of hemp ropes, cords, and sail cloth; and so highly were these articles of Bridport production esteemed, that the greater proportion of the canvas and cordage used for the rigging and sails of the English Navy from early times, as well as that of the ships which so bravely attacked and gloriously defeated the Spanish Armada, were of local manufacture.