Within 2001, the town experienced the population of 6,665 with 3,112 domicile, sole the little increase from either 1991. There are presently Four foremost schools, the middle school & an upper school, however this is shortly to vary to V elementary school & an hypertrophied secondary school. Major employers include Dorset Chilled Foods, Stalbridge Linen (a commercial cleaning), HMP Guy's Marsh, Wessex Electrical and the Royal Mail.

Several of a older buildings in the town come of the local greensand, when others built from either the grey Chilmark limestone, much of which was salvaged from either a razed Shaftesbury Abbey, & keep close at hand thatched roofs. Tourism is one of the independent industries in the town.

A town looks across a Blackmore Vale, part of the flow of any stream Stour basin. From either different viewpoints, these are conceivable to watch at least when far when Glastonbury Tor to a north-west, & the Isle of Purbeck to the south.

A town is notable for Gold Hill, a steep cobbled street featured on the cover of unnumbered books just about Dorset & rural England. A town is likewise renowned for its ruined Abbey & nearby Wardour castle.

The market is held in the town on Thursdays. A Blackmore Vale is Thomas Hardy's Vale of the Little Dairies, & until 2004 Shaftesbury was a location of one of the previous remaining livestock markets in Britain. A places has since been redeveloped as a Supermarket.

A town features around Thomas Hardy's Wessex as Shaston, of particular significance in Jude the Obscure.

History
Although Shaftesbury's recorded history dates from either Anglo-Saxon times, it may use at times been a Celtic Caer Palladur. Its 1st written record as a town is in the Burgal Hideage. Alfred the Great founded a Burgh (fortified settlement) on this text around 880 as a defence in a struggle with the Danish encroacher. Alfred & his girl Ethelgiva founded Shaftesbury Abbey in 888, which was a spur to the growing importance of the town. Athelstan founded three royal mints, which smitten pennies bearing a town's title, & a abbey became a moneyed Benedictine nunnery in England. In February 20th 981 the relics of St Edward the Martyr were translated from Wareham & received sustaining swell ceremony, thenceforth turning Shaftesbury into the major places of pilgrim's journey for miracles of healing. Inside 1240 Cardinal Otto, legate to the Apostolic See of Pope Gregory IX visited the abbey & confirmed the charter of 1191, the number one entered in the Glastonbury chartulary.

King Canute died here inside 1035. In the Domesday Book, the town was referred to as Scaepterbyrg; its ownership was equally shared between King & Abbey. A Abbey was in the middle ages the central focus of the town. A shrine of St Edward, who is interred on this text, attracted pilgrims from afar.

Around 1260, the charter to hang on to a market was granted. Around 1392, Richard II confirmed a grant of deuce markets in different times.

By 1340, the mayor had become the recognised figure, sworn around per Steward of the Mother superior.

Per period of a reformation the Abbey got turn into extremely loaded. It was said at a instance of the Dissolution of the monasteries that "if the Abbess of Shaftesbury and the Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey had been able to wed, their son would have been richer than the King of England" such were a lands that experienced been bequethed. Inside 1539, the survive Prioress of Shaftesbury, Elizabeth Zouche, signed the deed of surrender, a abbey was demolished, & its lands sold, leading to a irregular decline in the town. Sir Thomas Arundel of Wardour purchased the abbey & very much of the town around 1540, but whenever he was late exiled for treason his lands were forfeit, and a lands passed to Pembroke so Cooper, and finally to the Grosvenors.

Shaftesbury was the parliamentary constituency returning two members from either 1296 to the Reform Act of 1832, when it was reduced to of these, & around 1884 the separate constituency was abolished.

A town was broadly Parliamentarian in the Civil War, but was inside Royalist hands. Wardour Castle fell to Parliamentary forces in 1643; Parliamentary forces surrounded the town within August 1645, when it was the centre of local Clubmen activity. A clubmen were arrested & sent to test inside Sherborne. Shaftesbury took there is no a share in the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685.

A town hall was built within 1827 by Earl Grosvenor after a Guildhall was pulled down to widen a main street.

A major employers in the Eighteenth & Nineteenth centuries were buttonmaking & weaving. the previous became a victim of mechanisation, & this driven unemployment & out-migration.

A 5 turnpikes which met at Shaftesbury ensured that a town experienced a good coaching job trade. A railways, nonetheless, bypassed Shaftesbury, & this infuenced a subsequent pattern of its incubation.

Inside 1919, Lord Stalbridge sold the big part of the town, which was purchased by a syndicate & auctioned piece by piece over triplet years.

Virtually all of the Saxon and Medieval buildings have nowadays been ruined, by owning virtually all of a town dating from either the 18th century to present. Thomas Hardy wrote: