County in SW England
area 1,023 sq mi/2,650 sq km
cities Dorchester (administrative headquarters), Poole, Shaftesbury, Sherborne; resorts: Bournemouth, Lyme Regis, Weymouth
features Chesil Bank, a shingle bank along the coast 11 mi/19 km long; Isle of Purbeck, a peninsula where kaolinite and Purbeck “marble” are quarried, and which includes Corfe Castle and the vacation resort of Swanage; Dorset Downs; Cranborne Chase; rivers Frome and Stour; Maiden Castle; Tank Museum at Royal Armoured Corps Centre, Bovington, where the cottage of T E Lawrence is a museum; Canford Heath, the home of some of Britain’s rarest breeding birds and reptiles (including the nightjar, Dartford warbler, sand lizard, and smooth snake)
industries Wytch Farm is the largest onshore oil field in the UK

famous people Thomas Hardy, the novelist, born at Higher Bockhampton (Dorchester is “Casterbridge”, the heart of Hardy country).

1st Earl of Dorset; Title of English poet Thomas Sackville.

Any of a breed of domestic white-faced sheep originally developed in Dorset, England