Footbridge over the River Divelish - geograph

Fifehead Neville is a village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

in the county of Dorset in southern England, situated in the

Blackmore Vale The Blackmore Vale (; less commonly spelt ''Blackmoor'') is a vale, or wide valley, in north Dorset, and to a lesser extent south Somerset and southwest Wiltshire in southern England. Geography The vale is part of the Stour valley and part of ...

about southwest of the town of

Sturminster Newton Sturminster Newton is a town and Civil parishes in England, civil parish situated on the River Stour, Dorset, River Stour in the north of Dorset, England. The town is at the centre of the Blackmore Vale, a large dairy agriculture region around w ...

. In the 2011 census the population of the parish was 147.

Toponymy

The first part of the name Fifehead Neville derives from the

Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

''fīf'' and ''hīd'', meaning '(estate of) five

hide Hide or hides may refer to: Common uses * Hide (skin), the cured skin of an animal * Bird hide, a structure for observing birds and other wildlife without causing disturbance * Gamekeeper's hide or hunting hide or hunting blind, a structure to hi ...

s of land'. It was recorded as ''Fifhide'' in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book ( ; the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book") is a manuscript record of the Great Survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 at the behest of William the Conqueror. The manuscript was originally known by ...

of 1086. The second part derives from the de Neville family who were here in the 13th century; in 1287 the name ''Fyfhud Neuyle'' was recorded. This differentiated this Fifehead from other Dorset manorial holdings called Fifehead (Fifehead St Quintin and Fifehead St Magdalen).

History

In a field bordering the

River Divelish The River Divelish is a Dorset watercourse of that rises on the north slope of Bulbarrow Hill, near to the source of the Devil's Brook (Dorset), Devil's Brook. It is a tributary of the River Stour, Dorset, River Stour, which it joins upstream of S ...

the remains of two wings of a Roman villa were found in 1880 and 1903. Floor mosaics and part of a

hypocaust A hypocaust () is a system of central heating in a building that produces and circulates hot air below the floor of a room, and may also warm the walls with a series of pipes through which the hot air passes. This air can warm the upper floors a ...

system were uncovered. The archaeological findings are on view in the

Dorset Museum The Dorset Museum (also known as the Dorset Museum & Art Gallery) is located in Dorchester, Dorset, England. It was known as the Dorset County Museum until 2021. Founded in 1846, the museum covers the county of Dorset's history and environment. ...

in Dorchester. The Domesday Book records that in 1086 the estate of Fifehead Neville had eight households and was part of

Pimperne Hundred Pimperne Hundred was a hundred in the county of Dorset, England, containing the following parishes: *Bryanston *Durweston *Fifehead Neville *Hammoon *Hazelbury Bryan *Iwerne Stepleton *Langton Long Blandford *Pimperne *Stourpaine *Tarrant Hinton ...

. The

tenant-in-chief In medieval and early modern Europe, a tenant-in-chief (or vassal-in-chief) was a person who held his lands under various forms of feudal land tenure directly from the king or territorial prince to whom he did homage, as opposed to holding them ...

of the estate was

Waleran the Hunter Waleran the Hunter (floruit 1086) (Latin: ''Waleran Venator'') was an Anglo-Norman magnate who held 51 manors as recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086, including Whaddon in Wiltshire and several in Hampshire, including West Dean, within the New ...

whose tenant was Ingelrann.Victoria County History, A History of the County of Wiltshire, volumes 4, 11, 12, 15, A History of the County of Dorset, volume 3 The overlordship descended to Walter Walerand (d. 1200–1) and to his daughter and co-heiress Isabel de Waleran who married William de Nevill. The overlordship was inherited by Isabel de Nevill's daughter Joan de Nevill (d. 1263), wife of Jordan de St. Martin. Crossing the Divelish is an old

packhorse bridge A packhorse bridge is a bridge intended to carry packhorses (horses loaded with sidebags or panniers) across a river or stream. Typically a packhorse bridge consists of one or more narrow (one horse wide) masonry arches, and has low Parapet#Bridg ...

that has two pointed arches and is probably

medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with the fall of the West ...

. Before 1920 the parish was in two parts, each with its own settlement—Fifehead Neville in the north and Lower Fifehead or Fifehead St Quentin in the south. It is probable each settlement had previously had its own

open field system The open-field system was the prevalent agricultural system in much of Europe during the Middle Ages and lasted into the 20th century in Russia, Iran, and Turkey. Each manor or village had two or three large fields, usually several hundred acr ...

. Fifehead St Quentin (or Fifehead St Quintin) was previously a detached part of

Belchalwell Belchalwell is a small village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Okeford Fitzpaine in the Blackmore Vale, in the Dorset district, in the ceremonial county of Dorset, England. It lies south of Sturminster Newton and northwest of Bl ...

, a former parish that is now part of the parish of

Okeford Fitzpaine Okeford Fitzpaine is a village and Civil parishes in England, civil parish in the English county of Dorset, situated in the Blackmore Vale south of the town of Sturminster Newton. It is sited on a thin strip of greensand under the escarpment ...

Geography

Fifehead Neville parish is in the North Dorset administrative district in the Blackmore Vale, sited next to the River Divelish which drains land north of the

Dorset Downs The Dorset Downs are an area of chalk downland in the centre of the county Dorset in south west England. The downs are the most western part of a larger chalk formation which also includes (from west to east) Cranborne Chase, Salisbury Plain, ...

around

Bulbarrow Hill Bulbarrow Hill is a hill near Woolland, five miles west of Blandford Forum and north of Dorchester, Dorset, Dorchester in Dorset, England. The chalk hill is part of the escarpment, scarp of Dorset Downs, which form the western end of the South ...

. The parish, which covers at an elevation of , is also drained by a small tributary of the River Lydden in the west. The underlying geology is mostly

Corallian Limestone The Corallian Group or Corallian Limestone is a geologic group in England. It is predominantly a coralliferous sedimentary rock, laid down in the Oxfordian stage of the Jurassic. It is a hard variety of " coral rag". Building stones from this g ...

, with a small amount of

Kimmeridge clay The Kimmeridge Clay is a sedimentary rock, sedimentary deposit of fossiliferous marine clay which is of Late Jurassic to lowermost Cretaceous age and occurs in southern and eastern England and in the North Sea. This rock formation (geology), form ...

in the east and some

Oxford clay The Oxford Clay (or Oxford Clay Formation) is a Jurassic marine sedimentary rock formation underlying much of southeast England, from as far west as Dorset and as far north as Yorkshire. The Oxford Clay Formation dates to the Jurassic, specific ...

at Deadmoor Common in the west. Measured directly, Fifehead Neville village is about SW of Sturminster Newton, NNW of

Blandford Forum Blandford Forum ( ) is a market town in Dorset, England, on the River Stour, Dorset, River Stour, north-west of Poole. It had a population of 10,355 at the United Kingdom 2021 census, 2021 census. The town is notable for its Georgian archit ...

and NNE of the county town, Dorchester.

Demography

In the 2011 census Fifehead Neville civil parish had 61 dwellings, 56 households and a population of 147. The population of the parish in the censuses between 1921 and 2001 is shown in the table below: In 2013 the estimated population of the parish was 180.

References

External links

{{Authority control Villages in Dorset