Dorset's Military Heritage

The making of Dorset¿s military heritage has been a dramatic, brutal, and often turbulent affair. From the time of the Durotriges tribes and their spectacular Iron Age strongholds, to the more modern sea forts and blast-proof nuclear bunkers of the Cold War, Dorset¿s landscape has been shaped by generations of defensive countermeasures.Successive and bloody invasions by Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Viking and Norman forces have paved the way for revolution, civil uprising, insurrection and rebellions that history defines as the Peasants¿ Revolt, the Swing and Monmouth Rebellions, the rise of the Dorset Clubmen, the Anarchy and English Civil Wars.In Tudor times the ships of Elizabeth I¿s navy dropped anchor in Dorset¿s waters before engaging the Spanish Armada off Portland. Men of the local volunteers, militias, yeomanry, and Dorsetshire¿s Regiment of Foot have fought bravely and with distinction at home and abroad, from the Peninsular War to South Africa, and through two world wars. The Royal F