Gold Hill is a steep

cobbled Cobblestone is a natural building material based on cobble-sized stones, and is used for pavement roads, streets, and buildings. Setts, also called Belgian blocks, are often casually referred to as "cobbles", although a sett is distinct fr ...

street in the town of

Shaftesbury Shaftesbury () is a town and civil parish in Dorset, England. It is situated on the A30 road, west of Salisbury, near the border with Wiltshire. It is the only significant hilltop settlement in Dorset, being built about above sea level on a ...

in the

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

county of

Dorset Dorset ( ; archaically: Dorsetshire , ) is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the unitary authority areas of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole and Dorset. Covering an area of , ...

. The view looking down from the top of the street has been described as "one of the most romantic sights in England." At the top of the street is the 14th-century St Peter's

Church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a building for Christian religious activities * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian communal worship * C ...

, one of the few buildings remaining in Shaftesbury from before the 18th century. Adjacent to the church is the former Priest's House (Sun and Moon Cottage), which is still part of the Gold Hill Museum building but now houses a shop. The cobbled street runs beside

buttress A buttress is an architectural structure built against or projecting from a wall which serves to support or reinforce the wall. Buttresses are fairly common on more ancient buildings, as a means of providing support to act against the lateral ( ...

ed walls of the precinct, which are the grounds surrounding ancient

Shaftesbury Abbey Shaftesbury Abbey was an abbey that housed nuns in Shaftesbury, Dorset. It was founded in about 888, and dissolved in 1539 during the English Reformation by the order of Thomas Cromwell, minister to King Henry VIII. At the time it was the second ...

, built by King Alfred the Great. The walls are a

scheduled monument In the United Kingdom, a scheduled monument is a nationally important archaeological site or historic building, given protection against unauthorised change. The various pieces of legislation that legally protect heritage assets from damage and d ...

. Their origins are not known, but are presumed to have been built in the 1360s, when the abbess or other authority was given royal permission to build town defences. Each year the town hosts the Gold Hill Fair to raise money for local charities.

In media

Gold Hill has been used as a setting for film and television. It appears in the 1967 film version of Thomas Hardy's '' Far from the Madding Crowd''. The street is the main setting for the 1973 "Boy on Bike" television advertisement for

Hovis Hovis Ltd is a British company that produces flour and bread. The brand originated in Stoke-on-Trent and was first mass-produced in Macclesfield, Cheshire, in 1886. It became part of Rank Hovis McDougall (RHM) in 1962 after a succession of merge ...

bread, which has been voted Britain's favourite advertisement of all time. It was directed by Ridley Scott, and includes the main theme from the slow movement of Antonín Dvořák's Symphony No. 9. For this reason, the hill is still sometimes referred to as "Hovis Hill". ''

The Two Ronnies ''The Two Ronnies'' is a British television comedy sketch show starring Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett. It was created by Bill Cotton and aired on BBC1 from April 1971 to December 1987. The usual format included sketches, solo sections, seria ...

'' spoofed the Hovis advert in a sketch filmed in 1978, also filmed at Gold Hill.

References

{{Commons category Hills of Dorset Tourist attractions in Dorset Shaftesbury Roads in Dorset