Shaftesbury is a community and also civil parish in Dorset, England. It is located on the A30 road, 20 miles (32 kilometres) west of Salisbury, near to the border with Wiltshire. It is the only substantial hilltop negotiation in Dorset, being constructed regarding 215 metres (705 feet) over sea level on a greensand hill on the edge of Cranborne Chase. The community looks into the Blackmore Vale, part of the River Stour basin. From different perspectives, it is possible to see a minimum of as far as Glastonbury Tor to the northwest. Shaftesbury is the site of the previous Shaftesbury Abbey, which was founded in 888 by King Alfred and also turned into one of the richest spiritual facilities in the nation, before being damaged in the Dissolution in 1539. Adjacent to the abbey site is Gold Hill, a high cobbled street 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.