From the Stone Age to King George III, Weymouth and its neighbours enjoyed a rich, sad, prosperous, poor and fascinating past. The kings and queens of England have used this part of Dorset as a military recruitment centre for their many wars as well as their personal playground. The harbours of Weymouth and Portland have seen the arrival of Vikings, the Spanish Armada, French fleets, pirates and the plague. The Celts built impressive hill forts, the Romans invaded, and the Saxons introduced the shire system. Wool was the primary export for centuries, wine the favourite import for longer. Pirates, smugglers, wreckers and excise men were common sites from the 13th century into the 19th. Religion played a vital part in the lives of locals and once Christianity was firmly established by the 9th century, local quarrymen and stone masons spent centuries building beautiful churches throughout the community. Local quarrymen also supplied enough Portland stone to build some of the most important structures in the United Kingdom. When the plague hit Europe, it arrived in England through the port of Melcombe Regis in the 1340s; whole villages were wiped out and the population of Dorset was cut in half. Coastal defence was a problem throughout the history of the local area; during Henry VIII’s reign, he funded the construction of two defensive castles to help protect the harbours and both still stand today. Local towns Weymouth and Melcombe Regis had argued over access to the River Wey, which separated the tiny communities, for hundreds of years. When Elizabeth I took the throne, she united the two and gave them the right to elect their own members of Parliament. Sir Walter Raleigh was a frequent visitor to the area, serving as an MP and launching most of his experimental voyages to the New World from Weymouth harbour. Many of those who decided to leave England for religious reasons were local residents and began their move to the New World on local ships from the same harbour. Local gentry were deeply entrenched in the slave trade and built their grand houses with the fortunes they made from their Caribbean plantations. Famous naval battles were fought at Portland Bill and the most famous fishing fleet in history, which brought huge quantities of seafood from Newfoundland to England and Europe, began in local waters. The English Civil War brought fierce loyalties to the surface, with local men choosing sides and fighting bloody battles over who should rule. Gruesome punishments were ordered by Judge Jeffries, England’s most brutal magistrate, when local men supported the Monmouth Rebellion. When the local shipping industry lost ground because of a silted up harbour, lurking pirates and poor local leadership, fortunes diminished, only to be revived by the arrival of the Duke of Gloucester, King George III’s brother, who introduced the king to the newest trend: sea bathing. The king visited regularly and with him, the British aristocracy followed, bringing their money and their tastes with them, helping to restore and revive the community.
