Melcombe Horsey is a

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 A county () is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposesL. Brookes (ed.) '' Chambers Dictionary''. Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, 2005. in some nations. The term is derived from the Old French denoti ...

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 ...

South West England South West England, or the South West of England, is one of the nine official regions of England, regions of England in the United Kingdom. Additionally, it is one of four regions that altogether make up Southern England. South West England con ...

. It contains the small settlements of Melcombe Bingham, Bingham's Melcombe and Higher Melcombe, the last being the site of the deserted village of Melcombe Horsey. In the 2011 census the parish had a population of 141. Bingham's Melcombe is a medieval house. It takes its name from Robert Bingham who acquired the property through marriage in the 13th century. It remained in the Bingham family until 1895. The house is believed to date from the early 16th century. It was substantially restored and remodelled in 1893-4 by Evelyn Hellicar (1862-1929)

Melcombe Bingham

Melcombe Bingham is a village in central

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

, situated approximately northeast of Dorchester, southeast of

Sherborne Sherborne is a market town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in north west Dorset, in South West England. It is sited on the River Yeo (South Somerset), River Yeo, on the edge of the Blackmore Vale, east of Yeovil. The parish include ...

and west-southwest 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 ...

.Bartholomew 1:100,000 National Map Series, sheet 4 (Dorset), published 1980, It is surrounded by

chalk Chalk is a soft, white, porous, sedimentary carbonate rock. It is a form of limestone composed of the mineral calcite and originally formed deep under the sea by the compression of microscopic plankton that had settled to the sea floor. Ch ...

hills 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, ...

, though the village itself is sited in a basin of

greensand Greensand or green sand is a sand or sandstone which has a greenish color. This term is specifically applied to shallow marine sediment that contains noticeable quantities of rounded greenish grains. These grains are called ''glauconies'' and co ...

and

gault The Gault Formation is a geological formation of stiff blue clay deposited in a calm, fairly deep-water marine environment during the Lower Cretaceous Period (Upper and Middle Albian). It is well exposed in the coastal cliffs at Copt Point in Fo ...

Ordnance Survey The Ordnance Survey (OS) is the national mapping agency for Great Britain. The agency's name indicates its original military purpose (see Artillery, ordnance and surveying), which was to map Scotland in the wake of the Jacobite rising of ...

Landranger 1:50,000 map series. The names of places in this area are frequently muddled, with published sources providing different information. Melcombe Bingham is the name of the current village, though in the fields near the church there is an abandoned

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 ...

village called Bingham's Melcombe, and this latter name is sometimes used to describe the church and its adjacent manor. Writing in 1980, writer Roland Gant stated "whichever form I use, I always find that the person to whom I am speaking uses the other". Either way, the name of both the

civil Civil may refer to: *Civility, orderly behavior and politeness *Civic virtue, the cultivation of habits important for the success of a society *Civil (journalism) ''The Colorado Sun'' is an online news outlet based in Denver, Colorado. It lau ...

and ecclesiastical parishes is Melcombe Horsey. There are two manor houses within the parish: the one by the church—owned for six hundred years (until the late 19th century) by the Bingham family—and another a couple of miles to the west in a coombe at Higher Melcombe (which is also called Melcombe Horsey by some sources). Between the two manors is another settlement, situated along the road running north into the neighbouring parish of Hilton. This settlement is called either Hartfoot Lane or Ansty (including Lower Ansty, Ansty Cross, Higher Ansty, and Little Ansty), and, according to the

, at its southern end it merges into part of Melcombe Bingham. Melcombe Horsey parish has an area of 2,151 acres. Its

population Population is a set of humans or other organisms in a given region or area. Governments conduct a census to quantify the resident population size within a given jurisdiction. The term is also applied to non-human animals, microorganisms, and pl ...

in 1871 was 190 and in 1911 only 151. The parish church, St. Andrew's, is located at the southeastern edge of the parish and its records date to 1690.

References

{{Authority control Villages in Dorset

Melcombe Bingham

See also

References