Milton Abbas

Until 1780 the area to the south east of the 10th century abbey church was the town of Milton Abbas, which developed around the abbey (see below for a description). Joseph Damer (later Lord Milton, 1st Earl of Dorchester) had the whole town demolished because he disliked its proximity to his great house (built adjacent to the abbey), and employed a rather famous man called Capability Brown to erect a new model village half a mile away. Damer moved those inhabitants he could not drive away to the new village. Only one thatched cottage of the old town survives under the hill, and most of the old village is under the lake. One stubborn inhabitant refused to move and was flooded out by Mr Damer. The villager later won his case in court.

The "new" village was built all at once in the 1780's along the sides of a single sloping street. The thatched cottages are evenly spaced (see panoramic view above), in an artificial way which makes it almost professionally picturesque. Most of the houses are now single dwellings instead of double - in the 19th century they were very overcrowded - it is said that 36 people lived in one of the cottages (see one of them in the picture).

Nowadays some of the cottages can be rented for vacationing - only one family at a time, though