The Dorset County Fair

Rural county brings the show to town

Dorset is a rural county with many small villages, quaint market towns, few large towns and no cities. Farming, horticulture food and the countryside are important to Dorsettlers and the County Show is held annually just outside Dorchester with markets being held in the county since Saxon times.

The Dorset County Show formed in 1840 when a group of local farmers sets up the Dorchester Agricultural Society by advertising in the First Annual Exhibition held in August of that same year. Novelist and poet Thomas Hardy is born in 1840 in Higher Bockhampton near Dorchester in the same year of 1840 and is best known for his novels portraying fictional Wessex county and its fairs. His writings evoke a bygone rural Dorset and his passionate imagery is still very much revered today.