It once boasted a castle besides
the Hostel of St. John Baptist and its many churches. It may have been
in this castle that Canute died in 1035.
The station for Shaftesbury is Semley, just over the Wilts border, but
it is proposed to take the longer journey to Gillingham, nearly four
miles north-west, which is the next station on the South Western main
line. This was once the centre of a great Royal "Chase," disforested
by Charles I. It was also the historic scene of the Parliament called
to elect Edward Confessor to the throne, and at "Slaughter Gate," just
outside the town, Edmund Ironside saved Wessex for the Saxons by
defeating Canute in 1016. The foundations of "King's Court Palace,"
between Ham Common and the railway, show the site of the hunting lodge
of Henry III and the Plantagenet kings. Gillingham church was spoilt
by a drastic early nineteenth-century restoration. The chancel belongs
to the Decorated period. There are several interesting tombs and a
memorial of a former vicar over the arch of the tower. He was
dispossessed as a "malignant" during the Commonwealth, but returned at
the Restoration.
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