Mapperton is a hamlet 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 ...

Dorset Dorset ( ; Archaism, archaically: Dorsetshire , ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by Somerset to the north-west, Wiltshire to the north and the north-east, Hampshire to the east, t ...

, England, south-east of Beaminster.

Dorset County Council Dorset County Council was the county council of Dorset in England. It was created in 1889 and abolished in 2019. Throughout its existence, the council was based in Dorchester. Bournemouth and Poole were made independent from the county counci ...

estimated that the population of the parish was 60 in 2013.

Parish

The parish of Mapperton is comparatively small at . The population has always been low, rising to a peak of 123 in 1821, before falling to 76 in 1901 and 50 in 1931. After the Second World War it dropped further; only 21 residents remained in 1961. Listed as ''Malperetone'' 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 ...

, the name means "farmstead where maple trees grow".

Mapperton House

Mapperton is noted for its manor house, with both house and gardens open to the public during the summer months. The house is

Grade I listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

, as is the attached All Saints' Church which dates from the 12th century. The manor had been owned since the 11th century by only four families (Brett, Morgan, Brodrepp, Compton), all linked by the female line, before it was sold to Ethel Labouchere in 1919. When she died in 1955 it was acquired by Victor Montagu, Viscount Hinchingbrooke. When he died in 1995 it passed to his son, the 11th Earl of Sandwich. Robert Morgan built a Tudor manor on the present site in the 1540s, and part of it remains as the north wing of the present building. The house was largely rebuilt in the 1660s by Richard Brodrepp, with the addition of the hall and west front, as well as the dovecote and stable blocks. A second Richard Brodrepp created the Georgian staircase in the 18th century. In 2006 the house was voted the "Nation's Finest Manor House" by '' Country Life'' magazine. The tomb of Richard Brodrepp in the church dates from 1739 and was designed by

Peter Scheemakers Peter Scheemakers or Pieter Scheemaeckers II or the Younger (10 January 1691 – 12 September 1781) was a Southern Netherlands, Flemish sculptor who worked for most of his life in London. His public and church sculptures in a classicism, classici ...

. The grounds and formal gardens are Grade II* listed. An Italianate garden laid was out in the 1920s and a wild garden in the 1950s. In 2020, the gardens were named Historic Houses Garden of the Year. The house is run by the current

Earl Earl () is a rank of the nobility in the United Kingdom. In modern Britain, an earl is a member of the Peerages in the United Kingdom, peerage, ranking below a marquess and above a viscount. A feminine form of ''earl'' never developed; instead, ...

and

Countess of Sandwich Count (feminine: countess) is a historical title of nobility in certain European countries, varying in relative status, generally of middling rank in the hierarchy of nobility.L. G. Pine, Pine, L. G. ''Titles: How the King Became His Majesty'' ...

. In January 2023, they announced plans to open the house for a limited number of private tours.

Gallery

File:Mapperton parish church, window detail - geograph.org.uk - 517667.jpg, All Saints' church, Mapperton File:Mapperton Manor House Tudor Wing Gable - detail - geograph.org.uk - 868285.jpg, A lion representing the Morgan family is one of two heraldic beasts at Mapperton, sitting atop barley-twist columns on the gable end of the Tudor wing

Filming location

The manor house was used in the filming of the 1996 film '' Emma'', in which it became Randalls, the home of Mrs Weston; the 1997 BBC version of '' The History of Tom Jones''; and the 2015 version of

Thomas Hardy Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Literary realism, Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry ...

's '' Far from the Madding Crowd''. The manor was used again in ''

Rebecca Rebecca () appears in the Hebrew Bible as the wife of Isaac and the mother of Jacob and Esau. According to biblical tradition, Rebecca's father was Bethuel the Aramean from Paddan Aram, also called Aram-Naharaim. Rebecca's brother was Laban (Bi ...

'' as

Manderley Manderley is a fictional estate in Daphne du Maurier's 1938 novel ''Rebecca'', owned by the character Maxim de Winter. Located in Southern England, Manderley is a typical country estate: it is filled with family heirlooms, is run by a large dom ...

's garden, which is open to the public from Spring to Autumn.

References

External links

{{Authority control Civil parishes in Dorset Hamlets in Dorset