Shaftesbury
Shaftesbury is a town and also civil parish in Dorset, England. It is situated on the A30 road, 20 miles (32 kilometres) west of Salisbury, close to the border with Wiltshire. It is the only significant hilltop settlement in Dorset, being developed about 215 metres (705 ft) over sea level on a greensand hillside on the edge of Cranborne Chase. The town looks into the Blackmore Vale, part of the River Stour container. From various viewpoints, it is feasible to see a minimum of as for Glastonbury Tor to the northwest. Shaftesbury is the site of the former Shaftesbury Abbey, which was founded in 888 by King Alfred and also turned into one of the richest religious establishments in the country, prior to being ruined in the Dissolution in 1539. Adjacent to the abbey site is Gold Hill, a steep cobbled road used in the 1970s as the setting for Ridley Scott's tv advertisement for Hovis bread. In the 2011 census the town's civil parish had a population of 7,314.