It is a sleepy country town, deeply seated among hills, near the head-waters of the _Birt_, which flows through it. It is a place of some antiquity, but not remarkable for much, if we except its sufferings by fire. In 1644, when Prince Maurice was quartered here, it was burnt completely to the ground, having been fired by a drunken soldier. The greater part of it was a second time destroyed in 1684, and again in 1788.
Very prominent landmarks of the Beaminster district are Pilsdon Pen and Lewesdon Hill, two eminences of green sand remarkable for their likeness to one another. The singularity of their appearance has naturally excited much attention. Sailors, whom they serve as a landmark, call them the _Cow and the Calf_; the Rev. William Crowe has sung the praises of Lewesdon in a descriptive poem, and the two hills together have given rise to a proverbial saying current in this country and applied to neighbours who are not acquainted:
"... as much akin As Lew'son Hill to Pil'son Pen."
These hills command a charming prospect, and Pilsdon is further interesting as the site of an ancient camp, of oval form, encompassed by three strong ramparts and ditches. It is the highest point in the county, nine hundred and thirty-four feet above the sea. Crowe's _Lewesdon Hill_ was much admired by Rogers, who says in his _Table Talk_: "When travelling in Italy I made two authors my constant study for versification, Milton and Crowe."
Beaminster is in a centre of a district famous for its great dairies, flowers, bees and rural industries, and here is produced the famous Double Dorset and Blue Vinny cheese which has always a place on the table of the true Dorset family. The word "vinny" means mouldy; thus when the rustic thinks his cheese is in a fine ripe condition he will be likely to remark: "This yer cheese is butvul now; tez vinnied through and through." The same word is also used in Devonshire for "bad-tempered," thus, "You vinnied little mullybrub, git out of my sight this minut!" The large dairies where the cheeses are made are called "soap factories" by the facetious natives, and one frequently meets motor lorries grinding up the sharp hills beneath the burden of a hundred or so freshly pressed rounds of cheese.