Blandford Forum is a small market town in Dorset, set in the Stour valley in the rolling chalk downlands of central Dorset. Much of the town centre was rebuilt after a devastating fire swept through in 1731, leaving it with a remarkably uniform Georgian character — red-brick townhouses, a fine church, and a market place that give it an elegance unusual for a town of its size. It is, by some measures, the finest intact example of Georgian town planning in rural England.
The rebuilding was the work of two local brothers, John and William Bastard, who designed almost everything — the church, the town hall, the merchants' houses — in a consistent and dignified style over the decades following the fire. The result is a town that reads as a single composition rather than the usual layered muddle of English market towns. Walking through the centre, you feel the hand of a consistent architectural vision in a way that is genuinely rare.
Beyond the Georgian townscape, Blandford has the Royal Signals Museum at the nearby military camp (one of the best regimental museums in the country), a specialist fashion museum, and the Hall & Woodhouse brewery just south of town — producer of the Badger range of ales that you'll find in pubs across Dorset. The River Stour runs along the edge of town, and the Stour Valley Path provides easy walking into the surrounding chalk downlands. Blandford makes a quiet and underrated base for exploring north Dorset, the Cranborne Chase, and the coast.