Gillingham, Dorset : Historical writing

Descriptive gazetteer entries

These other entries in our collection of descriptive gazetteers are also about Gillingham. You may be able to find further references to Gillingham in the descriptive gazetteers by doing a full-text search here.

Place Type of entry Source
Gillingham market town Bartholomew
GILLINGHAM a town, a parish, a sub-district, and a liberty Imperial

This additional information from our descriptive gazetteers is for locations within the parish or parishes associated with Gillingham.

Place Type of entry Source
BOURTON a chapelry Imperial
Bugley hamlet Bartholomew
BUGLEY a hamlet Imperial
Huntingford hamlet Bartholomew
Milton on Stour village Bartholomew
MILTON-UPON-STOUR a hamlet Imperial

Travel writing

This website includes the complete texts of books describing journeys around Britain, written between the twelfth and nineteenth centuries. Selecting one of the links below will take you to the first reference to Gillingham within the selected text. This will not always be a description of a visit: travellers often mention places other than where they are, for example as a basis for comparison.

Traveller Section No. of Refs.
Daniel Defoe Letter 4, Part 2: Somerset and Wiltshire 2
William Camden Dorset and Somerset 1

This website includes two large libraries, of historical travel writing and of entries from nineteenth century gazetteers describing places. We have text from these sources available for these places near your location:

Place Mentioned in Travel Writing Mentioned in Historical Gazetteer
Silton 0 2
East Stour 0 3
Bourton 0 2
Motcombe 0 2
Cucklington 1 2
Zeals 0 2
West Stour 0 2
Buckhorn Weston 0 2
Clapton Forms 0 2
Mere 3 3
Penselwood 1 3
Stour Provost 0 2
Sedgehill 0 2
Kington Magna 0 2
Stoke Trister 1 2
Fifehead Magdalen 0 2
Todber 0 2
Alcester 0 2
Stourton 2 2
West Knoyle 0 2

Names from historical writing

The following appear as names for Gillingham. Follow the links for what the author actually said:

Name Author Source
GILLINGHAM John Bartholomew Gazetteer of the British Isles (Edinburgh: Bartholomew, 1887).
John Marius Wilson Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (Edinburgh: A Fullarton & Co., 1870-72).

NB: These variant names come from our collections of historical travel writing and descriptive gazetteers:

  • The above links take you to the first reference to this particular version of the name within a book of travel writing, or to the relevant gazetteer entry.
  • Some names may derive from research by antiquarian writers such as William Camden and Thomas Pennant into the Roman, Saxon and medieval names of places. Their claims are not always supported by modern place-name researchers.
  • References by travel writers to the place using its "normal" name are not included. Descriptive gazetteer entries are included only if the name does not appear anywhere else.