cottages dorset selfcatering

Mill Cottage Dorset
Mill Cottage
cottages dorset
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The principal industry in Dorset was once agriculture. It has not, however, been the largest employer for many decades as mechanisation has substantially reduced the number of workers required. Agriculture has become less profitable and the industry has declined further. Between 1995 and 2003 GVA for primary industry (largely agriculture with some fishing and quarrying) declined from £229 to 188 million 7.1% to 4.0% of the county's GVA. In 2002, 1,903 km² (735 sq mi) of the county was in agricultural use, down from 1,986 km² (767 sq mi) in 1989, although the figure has fluctuated somewhat. Cattle is the most common animal stock in the county, their numbers fell from 240,413 to 178,328 in the same period; the dairy herds fell from 102,589 to 73,476. Sheep and pig farming has declined similarly.

West Dorset General Hospitals NHS Trust employs around 2,500 multi-disciplinary staff; the majority at the 500-bed Dorset County Hospital which provides a turnover of £76 million. This new hospital was a larger replacement for Dorchester Hospital, which was built in 1840, and closed in 1998.

One of Dorset's famous products is the Dorset Knob, a hard biscuit. It can be used as an accompaniment to cheese, especially the local Dorset cheese, Blue Vinney.

Tourism has grown as an industry in Dorset since the early 19th century. 4.2 million British tourists and 260,000 foreign tourists visited the county in 2002, spending a combined total of £768 million. Foreign tourism declined in 1999 (310,000, down from 410,000 in 1998), and again in 2002 (down from 320,000 in 2001), the latter decline being blamed on the effects of the global economy and security.

Dorset has little manufacturing industry, at 14.6% of employment (compared to 18.8% for the UK), and is ranked 30th out the 34 non-metropolitan English counties. The gross domestic product for the county is 84% that of the national average.

Dorset will host an Olympic event at the 2012 Summer Olympics sailing at the Weymouth and Portland National Sailing Academy in Portland Harbour. Weymouth and Portland's waters have been credited by the Royal Yachting Association as the best in Northern Europe.

Dorset is not especially famous in sport, though Football League One A.F.C. Bournemouth, Conference National Weymouth F.C., and minor county cricket club Dorset CCC play in the county. The county is notable for its watersports, however, which take advantage of the sheltered waters of Weymouth and Poole bays, and Poole and Portland Harbours.

Dorset is famed in literature for being the native county of author and poet Thomas Hardy, and many of the places he describes in his novels in the fictional Wessex are in Dorset. The National Trust owns Thomas Hardy's Cottage, in woodland east of Dorchester, and Max Gate, his former house in Dorchester. Several other writers have called Dorset home, including Douglas Adams (author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), who lived in Stalbridge for a time; Ian Fleming (James Bond), who boarded at Durnford School, poet William Barnes; Theodore Francis Powys; John le Carré, author of espionage novels; Tom Sharpe of Wilt fame lives there as does P.D. James (Children of Men); satirical novelist Thomas Love Peacock; John Fowles (The French Lieutenant's Woman), lived in Lyme Regis before he died in late 2005; John Cowper Powys, who set a number of his most famous novels in Dorset and Somerset; and Robert Louis Stevenson wrote The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde while living in Bournemouth.