Motcombe is a village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of Parish (administrative division), administrative parish used for Local government in England, local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below district ...

in north

Dorset Dorset ( ; archaically: Dorsetshire , ) is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the unitary authority areas of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole and Dorset. Covering an area of ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

. It lies about north of

Shaftesbury Shaftesbury () is a town and civil parish in Dorset, England. It is situated on the A30 road, west of Salisbury, near the border with Wiltshire. It is the only significant hilltop settlement in Dorset, being built about above sea level on a ...

. It is sited on

Kimmeridge clay The Kimmeridge Clay is a 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 is the major source rock for Nor ...

soil beneath hills at the edge of 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, part of t ...

. The parish is one of the largest in Dorset. In the 2011 census the parish had 611 dwellings, 564 households and a population of 1,474. In 1905 Sir Frederick Treves described Motcombe as "a hamlet of gardens at the foot of the hill" and wrote of the village houses that they "are facing all ways, as if they were shy of the road or were undecided which way to turn." The parish church of St Mary was rebuilt in 1846, although its font dates from Norman times. On the south-west edge of the village is Motcombe Park. Within the park is Motcombe House, built in 1893 in Tudor style, and now home to Port Regis, a large private preparatory school. Motcombe is within the Motcombe and Ham electoral ward, which also covers Ham, a neighbourhood of Gillingham to the west. The ward's population in the 2011 census was 3,216. The nearest railway station is at Gillingham, although the line itself cuts through the outskirts of the village.

References

External links

Motcombe CE Primary School

Motcombe Village Website

Motcombe Community Shop

Villages in Dorset Civil parishes in Dorset {{Dorset-geo-stub