The trio of the Mitre Inn, the church of St Peter and the Town Hall, anchor the sweeping corner of Shaftesbury High Street. Left off the railway map (no doubt due to its hilltop location) and therefore spared large-scale Victorian expansion, Shaftesbury remained tightly clustered, its greensand buildings centred around the High Street, Bell Street and Bimport. After the First World War, Lord Stalbridge sold virtually the whole of Shaftesbury for £75,000. Just four days later the city buyers flipped a quick profit, selling on for £80,000 to a group of Shaftesbury men. In the second 1919 sale, the town’s residents agreed to bid only on the properties they lived in, and the town acquired the fire station, market hall, cattle market, cricket ground and allotments. The two historic postcards were never dated, though vehicles, shops and street life suggest the late 1950s or early 1960s.
Now images by Courtenay Hitchcock The BV
