This peculiarity of Dorchester, a four-square clearly-defined _appliqué_ of town upon a pastoral country, has been gradually disappearing during many years past, owing to an increase of population that has burst the ancient bounds imposed by the town being almost completely surrounded by the Duchy of Cornwall lands. This property, known by the name of Fordington Field (and not the existence at any time of a ford on the Frome), gives the eastern end of Dorchester its title. The land, let by the Duchy in olden times, in quarters or ‘fourthings’ of a carucate, gave the original name of ‘Fourthington.’ A great deal of this property has now been sold or leased for building purposes, and so the avenues that once clearly defined with their ramparts of greenery the bounds of Dorchester are now of a more urban character. [Sidenote: _THE BLOODY ASSIZE_] Dorchester shares with Blandford and with Marlborough a solid architectural character of a sober and responsible kind. As in those towns, imaginative Gothic gables and quaint mediæval fancies are somewhat to seek amid the overwhelming proportion of Renaissance, or neo-classic, or merely Queen Anne and Georgian red-brick or stone houses. The cause of this may be sought in the recurrent disastrous fires that on four occasions practically swept the town out of existence, as in the case of Marlborough and Blandford. The earliest of these happened in 1613. Over three hundred houses were burnt on that occasion, and property amounting to nearly a quarter of a million sterling lost. This insistent scourge of the West of England thatched houses visited the town again, nine years later, and also in 1725 and 1775. Little wonder, then, that mediæval Dorchester has to be sought for in nooks and corners. But if like those other unfortunate towns in these circumstances, it is very different in appearance, the streets being comparatively narrow and the houses of a more stolid and heavy character; so that only in sunny weather does Dorchester strike the stranger as being at all a cheerful place. XXXVIII [Illustration: JUDGE JEFFREYS’ CHAIR.] All the incidents in Dorchester’s history seem insignificant beside the tremendous melodrama of the ‘Bloody Assize.’ The stranger has eyes and ears for little else than the story of that terrible time, and longs to see the Court where Jeffreys sat, mad with drink and disease, and sentenced the unhappy prisoners to floggings, slavery, or death. Unhappily, that historic room has disappeared, but ‘Judge Jeffreys’ chair’ is still to be seen in the modern Town Hall, and one can approach in imagination nearer to that awful year of 1685 by gazing at ‘Judge Jeffreys’ Lodgings,’ still standing in High West Street, over Dawes’ china shop.