Bere Regis () is a village and civil parish in Dorset, England, situated north-west of Wareham. In the 2011 census the civil parish had a population of 1,745. The village has one shop, a family-owned cheese barn, a post office, and two pubs, The Royal Oak and The Drax Arms. The parish church is St. John the Baptist Church. The village features in the Domesday Book of 1086. History Woodbury Hill, east of Bere Regis village, is the site of an Iron Age contour hill-fort, the ramparts of which enclose on a flat-topped spur of land. The original settlements in the parish were Shitterton, Bere Regis village and Dodding's Farm, which are all sited by the Bere or Milborne Stream. Later settlements were small farms in the Piddle Valley to the south, first recorded between the mid 13th and mid 14th centuries. Edward I made Bere Regis a free borough and it was an important market town for a long period, though all domestic buildings built before 1600 have since been destroyed by serious fires in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Governance Bere Regis is in an electoral ward that bears its name and includes neighbouring Bloxworth. The ward population in the 2011 census was 1,945. The ward forms part of the parliamentary constituency of Mid Dorset and North Poole. Its Member of Parliament since 2015 is the Conservative Michael Tomlinson. Locally, Bere Regis is governed by Dorset County Council at the county level, Purbeck District Council at the district level, and Bere Regis Parish Council at the parish level. The parish council meets once per month. Geography Bere Regis village is sited by the side of the small Bere River or Bere Stream, a tributary of the River Piddle, where the chalk of the Dorset Downs, to the north, dips beneath newer deposits of clay, sands and gravels. The village is situated at the western terminus of the A31 road (Guildford – Bere Regis), where it joins the A35 (Southampton – Honiton), although both roads now bypass the village. The local travel hubs are Wareham railway station, from the village, and Bournemouth Airport, away. To the south-east of the village a large conifer plantation, Wareham Forest, stretches several miles to Wareham. To the west is Dorchester, north is Blandford Forum and east is Bournemouth. Further to the south is the chalk ridge of the Purbeck Hills, and to