Blandford St Mary
Blandford St Mary has a busy Tesco supermarket and fuel station and a Homebase DIY store which attracts shoppers from the many villages that surround the Blandford area. In addition there are a number of offices in Stour Park. In the residential area there is a new housing estate and primary school. An older area of the village near the river bridge to Blandford Forum has a traditional public house and a village green. Opposite is the old stone gate at the entrance of the Bryanston School estate. Outline planning permission has been given to redevelop the Hall & Woodhouse brewery site to include new offices and 200 new homes.
Lower Blandford St Mary is a rural outpost of Blandford St Mary, in the farm fields to the south across the bypass road, with a small church and graveyard, and one or two historic houses.
The Dorset Central Railway, which opened on 1 November 1860 from the LSWR station at Wimborne, had a station in the village, serving the neighbouring important market town of Blandford Forum. This was demolished when the line amalgamated to be part of the Somerset & Dorset Railway, and a bridge was built over the river Stour to the station at Blandford.
References
- ^ "Area: Blandford St. Mary CP (Parish) — Parish Headcounts", Neighbourhood Statistics, Office for National Statistics, retrieved 3 August 2011
- ^ "Portman ward 2011". Retrieved 28 February 2015.
- ^ Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway, Stephen Austin, Ian Allan Publishing, 1999.
External links
Media related to Blandford St Mary at Wikimedia Commons