Find your ancestors in Dorset Memorial Inscriptions

There are over 110,000 records transcribed by the volunteers of the Dorset Family History Society and Dorset & Somerset Family History Society.

For more information about the records you can contact the family history societies directly. They will often have maps and further details for the memorial inscriptions transcribed. For a full list of the places available in this collection, consult the Dorset memorial inscriptions parish list

Dorset is a rural county in the south west of England, bordered on the English Channel coast. On the west, it borders Devon, with Somerset to the north-west, Wiltshire to the north-east and Hampshire to the east.

It has been inhabited since Stone Age times. More recently the Industrial Revolution largely by-passed the county and it remains largely rural to this day. The farming economy, however, provided the spark for the trade union movement when, in the 1820s, a group of farm labourers formed one of the first unions. Unions were outlawed in 1832 and the six men, known now as the Tolpuddle Martyrs, were transported.