It was all about Dorchester's history at a recent club meeting.

Speaker Tony Moore had members of the Poundbury Rotary Club on the edge of their seats as he launched into the fascinating - and sometimes graphic - history of the county town in the 17th Century.

Mr Moore started his talk on the great fire of Dorchester, which happened on August 6 1613. He said: "The summer of 1613 was especially hot, and most of the people were out of the town in the fields gathering in the harvest. The town was effectively empty, except for a very few, including the candle maker, a Mr Baker. He rather overenthusiastically built up his fire, which caught the roof alight, and all went on from there. A key factor was to remove some gunpowder from a store very close by." He added that about half the town was destroyed.

Mr Moore went on to talk about the names of the people involved, and how today many of the families are still involved with the town. Of special note was one Reverend White, who as a staunch puritan overseeing the way people should run their lives, decided to take his cause to a wider world, and created a group to set of for the USA – landing near Boston, and creating towns in the USA such as Dorchester, Weymouth and more.

Among the Rotary Club guests was Mayor of Dorchester, Cllr Susie Hosford - and it turned it that she is a trustree of a charity set up during the 1600s.

The Poundbury Rotary club have a series of fascinating speakers, as part of their involvement with the community – and the next speaker will be Joan Cullington, a club member, who has lived in many places in Europe, in the times between leaving Dorchester with her husband Geoff some three or four decades ago and returning to Dorchester recently.

For more information visit rotary-ribi.org/clubs