page_title: Joseph Damer, 1st Earl of Dorchester
section_title: Building
hierarchical_section_title: Joseph Damer, 1st Earl of Dorchester / Building
caption_attribution_description: English: Milton Abbas, Dorset, England on 1 September 2015. These houses are near the top of the main street in the 18th-century planned village.
context_page_description: Joseph Damer, 1st Earl of Dorchester was a country landowner and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1741 to 1762 when he was raised to the peerage as Baron Milton. He was particularly associated with the reshaping of Milton Abbey and the creation of the village of Milton Abbas in Dorset, south-west England.
context_section_description: In 1751, Damer commissioned architect John Vardy to build him a London residence on Park Lane. He also purchased Milton Abbey and embarked on an ambitious project to reshape the surrounding valley. He replaced some existing buildings at the Abbey with a mansion house (designed initially by Vardy, then by Sir William Chambers, and completed by James Wyatt) for his own use. Landscape gardener Capability Brown was commissioned to remodel the surrounding grounds.
  As a wealthy landowner Damer also set about the systematic removal of the neighbouring small town of Middleton and its residents. By 1780, most of the residents had been relocated to a new purpose-designed and built model village, Milton Abbas, approximately half a mile south-east of the Abbey; the town's school was moved to Blandford Forum, 7 miles (11 km) away. The original town was razed to the ground and landscaped, most of the site disappearing beneath a new ornamental lake.
caption: Milton Abbas main street
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