Milton Abbas
Milton Abbas, the model village built by Joseph Damer, c.1780, to replace the ancient village of Middleton, which he had razed. Where the original village of Middleton once stood, there is now a lake, in a park landscaped by Capability Brown. The new village of Milton Abbas was built, tucked away in a little steep-sided valley, half a mile to the south east. It looks idyllic.
Born in 1718 to a wealthy family, and heir to a notorious Dublin money-lender, Joseph Damer bought the Milton Abbey estate in 1752. He disliked the proximity of the local village to his property and set about clearing it, evicting the tenants as their leases fell due, and even on one occasion opening the sluice gates on the old abbey pond to flood out one stubborn occupant (who was, unfortunately for Damer, a lawyer, and who took Damer to court and won). According to the guidebook to Milton Abbey Church, 'by 1779, Damer had razed the entire town of Middleton and created a new model village on a site half a mile to the southeast'. Fanny Burney, on visiting the model village in 1791, thought the houses too good for 'the Poor'. (Source: 'Dorset - the Complete Guide' - Jo Draper).
The cottages of the model village are indeed pretty. But there were over a hundred properties in the ancient village, and only 36 cottages and an almshouse in the new. And in the 19th century there are reports are severe overcrowding in the cottages. (Several websites report that 36 people lived in one of the cottages, but none of them give a source for this. Certainly, by the time of the 1851 census, there's nothing like that sort of overcrowding).
"Accommodation was very limited, however, for each box is a pair of cottages, just a room front and back on each floor, and a midget communal vestibule." 'Dorset - Newman & Pevsner. It is, when you think of it, quite a cunning deception: most landowners would have just put two front doors on the cottages, one at each end. But these cottages are built to give the appearance of generosity.
Almshouses, built 1674 (by a previous owner of the estate), and rebuilt here when the old town of Middleton was demolished.
St James, 1786.
The Old Chapel, 1896.
The Hambro Arms, c.1780, enlarged to rear in the 19th century. (The name changed several times through the years: "the Milton Arms, the Dorchester Arms, Portarlington Arms and finally the Hambro Arms, after Baron Hambro, who bought the Abbey and Estate of 8,000 acres, in 1850." http://www.hambroarms.com/glorious-dorset/)
