All Saints' Church and High East Street

All Saints' Church and High East Street. . There has been a church here since medieval times. The medieval church was damaged by the great fire of 1613 and was rebuilt., In 1685, when the County Gaol was full, the second church was used as a prison for two or more years, housing some of the Duke of Monmouth's rebels awaiting trial in Judge Jeffreys Bloody Assizes'. The building was much damaged and had to be fumigated when fever broke out., The second church had been demolished by the 1840s. Thomas Hardy wrote in 1910 that "Old All Saints' was, I believe, demolished because its buttresses projected too far into the street. What a reason for destroying a record of 500 years in stone!", The architect of the present church was Benjamin Ferrey, who also designed Dorchester's Town Hall and the old County Hospital, as well as planning Bournemouth town centre. It is Victorian Gothic in style and was built at a cost of £3,000., The first curate of the new church was the Reverend Osmond Fisher, a pioneering geologist and a friend of the painter, John Constable., All Saints' has not been used as a church since 1970. It now houses the Dorset County Museum's archaeological research collections.