West Stafford
West Stafford is a village and civil parish in southwest Dorset, England, situated in the Frome valley 2 miles (3.2 km) east of Dorchester.
In the 2011 census the parish had a population of 291. The village contains the public house 'The Wise Man Inn', and St Andrew's Church. The river Winterbourne runs beside the village and 2 miles south lies the village of West Knighton. Thomas Hardy, when training as an architect, assisted in the design of Talbothays Lodge and the cottages opposite. The village is also accepted as the setting for part of Hardy's novel Tess or the D'Urbevilles, during the period when Tess works at the Talbothays Dairy.
Getting around West Stafford the local way
- Get inDespite its history as a cross-Channel ferry port, these days the furthest you can get on a passenger vessel from Weymouth is Portland; ships from the Channel Islands and France dock at Poole.
- Get inServices to Poole from the Channel Islands of Guernsey and Jersey, as well as Cherbourg in Normandy and Saint-Malo in Brittany by fast or traditional ferry are provided by Brittany Ferries and Condor Ferries.
- Go nextIsle of Portland – take the A354 south or a ferry to Portland, a tied island known for its stone.
From Wikivoyage: Weymouth, CC BY-SA. Not yet checked by us. Last edited 2026-09.
Text adapted from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Photograph: mattbuck (see Commons), Wikimedia Commons.