Things to Do in Cerne Abbas

Cerne Abbas owes its name to two things at once. The "Cerne" is older than the abbey, taken from an ancient Celtic word for the stony stream the village still sits beside; the "Abbas" is simply the Latin for abbot. Put them together and you get the abbot's Cerne, which is exactly what this was: a settlement that grew up in the shadow of the Benedictine abbey founded here in 987.

Legend reaches back further still. Local tradition says St Augustine passed through and blessed the spring that still carries his name, St Augustine's Well, below Giant Hill. There is no proof, but the story has held for centuries, which is rather the point of a good legend.

Closer to living memory, the village remembers Lord and Lady Digby, who lived at the abbey and ran a dairy farm in its grounds. Between them they were, in effect, the village milkman and milk lady, delivering door to door. The short film below tells it better than we can.

After the abbey was dissolved in 1539, Cerne Abbas did not fade. It became a busy little market town, and above all a brewing one. The local water made beer good enough to sell in London and even ship across the Atlantic to the Americas, and at its peak the village kept as many as 14 pubs for around 1,500 people. The same clear water drove milling, tanning, and a trade in gloves and hats.

Then the railways arrived in the 19th century and ran straight past. Trade drained to the towns on the line, the village shrank, and the building largely stopped. The happy accident is that Cerne Abbas was left almost untouched, which is why its streets still look the way they do. In 2008 it was voted Britain's Most Desirable Village.

It has drawn its share of names since. Painters have settled here, the broadcaster Kate Adie has called it home, and Thomas Hardy folded it into his Wessex novels under the disguise of Abbots Cernel.

For the abbey's own thousand-year story, from its founding to the Dissolution, read the full history.