page_title: Wimborne Minster
section_title: Notable people
hierarchical_section_title: Wimborne Minster / Notable people
caption_attribution_description: English: Thomas Hardy's house The famous author, Thomas Hardy, lived in this house in Avenue Road between 1881 and 1883.
context_page_description: Wimborne Minster is a market town in Dorset in South West England, and the name of the Church of England church in that town. According to Office for National Statistics data the population of the Wimborne Minster built-up area as of 2014 is estimated as 15,552 inhabitants and is situated at the confluence of the River Stour and River Allen, 5 miles north of Poole, on the Dorset Heaths. The town is also recognised as part of the South East Dorset conurbation.
context_section_description: Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web
  Lieutenant William Cox (1764–1837), Australian pioneer born in Wimborne. He was responsible for building the first road across the Blue Mountains west of Sydney and thus allowed the expansion and development of the new colony.
  Montague Druitt, suspect in the Jack the Ripper murders
  Robert Fripp, guitarist in the prog rock band King Crimson
  Jimmy Glass
  George W. Gray
  Isaac Gulliver
  Thomas Hardy lived in a house in Avenue Road, which bears a blue plaque recording that this was where he wrote A Pair of Blue Eyes.
  Josephine Kermode, the Manx poet and playwright (better known by her pen name Cushag) lived the last five years of her life in Wimborne.
  Saint Leoba (c. 710 – 28 September 782) was an oblate at Wimborne Minster
  George Douglas-Hamilton, 10th Earl of Selkirk (1906–1994), Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Commissioner for Singapore and Southeast Asia, was born at Merley House
  Walter Parke (1891–1914), first-class cricketer and British Army officer
  Walter Shaw (1868–1937), former Chief Justice of the Straits Settlements and Chairman of the Shaw Commission
  Al Stewart, the Scottish musician and singer-songwriter, grew up in the town.
  William Charles Wentworth, Australian explorer and statesman, died in Wimborne in 1872.
  Wimborne is the origin of the stoner rock/doom metal band Electric Wizard.
  Jus Oborn lead singer and guitarist of Electric Wizard
  James McVey, one quarter of the band The Vamps, grew up in Wimborne.
caption: Thomas Hardy's house (1881 to 1883), Avenue Road
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