Bere Regis Village Website

PigotsTrade Directories 1830 - 1939


Between 1830 and 1939 various trade directories were printed every few years.
They detail the gentry as well as traders in the village.
The period covered coincides with a time when many shops were operating in the village.
At the height of commercial activity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there were between fifteen and twenty shops of all kinds.
Today there is just one.

Pigot's 1830 Description of Bere Regis

"Is a village and parish in the hundred of its name, 112 miles from London, and 8 from Blandford.
Its name is derived from the small river Beer, upon which it is seated; and from its having been anciently a royal demesne.

Queen Elfrida had a seat here, to which she retired immediately after the murder of her son-in-law, Edward the Martyr.
This place had the charter of a market granted to it by King John, and was constituted a borough by Edward 1.

It may hence be supposed that Beer was of more importance in those days than at present, for it is now so inconsiderable that the market has fallen into disuse.
The inhabitants are mostly employed in agriculture, and the cutting of wood for making faggots ; the country around here being more rich in wood than any other part in the south of Devon.

The parish church is a small edifice; the living is a vicarage, of which the Rev. Carrington Ley is the incumbent.
Here are two meeting-houses for dissenters, and an endowed school for educating and clothing eight boys.

A fair is held at Woodbury hill, about half a mile distant, on the 18th of September and three following days.

The parish of Beer-Regis, including the tything of Shy-Herton, contained by the last returns, 1,080 inhabitants."
GENTRY & CLERGY
Rev Thomas Burgess Barker
William Brewer, esq., Milborne
John Stanley Wanley Sawbridge Erle Drax, esq., Charborough Park
Mr Frampton, esq., Moreton
Rev Carrington Ley (vicar)
Rev George Pickhard, Bloxworth
Thomas Pickhard, esq., Bloxworth House
Morton Pleydell, esq., Watcombe

PUBLIC HOUSES
Drax's Arms, James Kitcat
Royal Oak, John Casher

SHOPKEEPERS & TRADERS
James Bryer Ash, carpenter
John Battrick, shoemaker
William L. Bellows, shopkeeper
William Biles, smith
Joseph Brydle, tailor and draper
Peter Case, linen draper
Joseph Clinch, tailor
Joshua Gallop, grocer & Henry Gaulton, cabinet maker
John Gould, grocer and confectioner
Edward Hibbs, smith
Edward Hibbs, linen draper
Robert Hoare, bricklayer
Giles Homer, tin-plate worker
Henry House, carpenter
Thomas Lane, tailor
William Lane, shoemaker
Benjamin Whitehead Lewis, grocer, draper, and spirit merchant
William Northover, painter &c
Thomas Nott, surgeon
James Rossiter, miller, Beer Marsh
John Shave, saddler &c
Francis Shepherd, painter & glazier
Thomas Shepherd, bricklayer
Robert Strand, miller
Ann Vincent, shopkeeper
John Vincent, bricklayer
William White, cooper
John Winshall, carpenter
James Winsor, ironmonger
John Woolfreys, shoemaker