Ansty Cross

Ansty is a village in Dorset, England, north of Cheselbourne and west of Milton Abbas. It consists of the settlements of Higher Ansty, Lower Ansty, Pleck (also known as Little Ansty) and Ansty Cross. The Hall & Woodhouse brewing company founded a brewery in the village in 1777, and brewing continued here until the 1940s. The village hall used to be a brewery building, and the old malthouse became Malthouse Cottages.

Bulbarrow Hill is a 274 metres (899 ft) hill near Woolland, five miles west of Blandford Forum and ten miles (16 km) north of Dorchester in Dorset, England. The chalk hill is part of the scarp of Dorset Downs, which form the western end of the Southern England Chalk Formation. Part of the hill is used for arable agriculture, but most is calcareous grassland. The hill overlooks the Blackmore Vale, and offers views of Dorset, Somerset, Wiltshire and Devon. Rawlsbury Camp, a five acre Iron Age hill fort, is situated on a promontory of the hill. Little remains of the camp except the twin embankments and intermediate ditch which surrounded it. The hill gets its name from the several barrows that adorn the hill. Additionally, a medieval trackway crosses the ridge. The hill is a popular launch site for paragliders. The TV presenter Jack Hargreaves who died in 1994 had his ashes spread on Bulbarrow Hill above his home, Raven Cottage.

Hilton is a village and civil parish in the county of Dorset in southern England. It is sited at an elevation of 135 metres (443 feet) in a small valley which drains chalk hills in the eastern part of the Dorset Downs, approximately 8 miles (13 kilometres) west-southwest of the town of Blandford Forum. The summit of Bulbarrow Hill (274 m or 899 ft) is 1+1⁄2 miles (2.5 kilometres) north of the village. In the 2011 census the parish—which includes the settlement of Ansty to the west—had 231 dwellings, 206 households and a population of 477.Hilton used to form a part of the estate of the nearby Milton Abbey when it was owned by the rich Hambro family; the Hambros, who often used to entertain Edward VII, planted woods on the surrounding hills, to provide cover for pheasants. However the woods surrounding Hilton today are mostly post-war plantations of beech (Fagus sylvatica) and ash (Fraxinus excelsior) as the hills were cleared during WW2. Large areas are privately owned, although there are open access areas owned and managed by the Forestry Commission.The church of All Saints is a typical Dorset country church and is mainly in the late Gothic style. In the north aisle a fine range of windows from the cloisters of Milton Abbey have been reused. The fan vault in the porch probably comes from the same source. Also from the abbey are a set of 12 panels with paintings of the Apostles: these are of high quality and early 16th century in date.In 1870–72, John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales described Hilton like this: HILTON, a parish in Blandford district, Dorset; under Bulbarrow camp, 7+1⁄2 miles [12 kilometres] WSW of Blandford town and r. station. It contains the hamlets of Aller, Anstey, and Hartsfoot-Lane; and its post town is Milton-Abbas, under Blandford. Acres, 2, 974. Real property, £3, 945. Pop., 833. Houses, 162. The property is divided among a few. Orchards and gardens occupy considerable space. Slate, coal, and bog iron abound; and some gold has been found. There are many mineral springs. Druidical remains, Roman urns and coins, early English coins, and other ancient relics have been found. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Salisbury. Value, £.273.* Patron, the Bishop of Salisbury. The church is tolerable, and has a tower.

Stoke Wake is a hamlet and civil parish, formerly part of the Whiteway hundred in north Dorset, England. It is situated under Bulbarrow Hill on the edge of the Blackmore Vale, west of Blandford Forum. Dorset County Council's 2013 mid-year estimate of the parish population is 60.In 1086 Stoke Wake was recorded in the Domesday Book as Stoche; it had 15 households, 4 ploughlands, 15 acres (6 hectares) of meadow and one mill. It was in the hundred of Hilton and the lord and tenant-in-chief was Shaftesbury Abbey.The parish church was built in 1872.

Melcombe Horsey is a civil parish in the county of Dorset in South West England. 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)

Woolland is a village and civil parish in north Dorset, England, situated in the Blackmore Vale under Bulbarrow Hill 7 miles (11 km) west of Blandford Forum. In 2013 the estimated population of the civil parish was 50. The village had a population of 76 in 2001. The village is first mentioned in Cartularium Saxonicum from the year 939 Wonlond, the Domesday Book from the year 1086 Winlande and the Pipe Rolls from the year 1170 Wunlanda. The name is interpreted as Old English wynn-land meadow land or pasture land. The sculptor Elisabeth Frink had a studio in the village during the 1970s.

Delcombe Manor is a Grade II*-listed manor in Milton Abbas, Dorset, England.

Cheselbourne (sometimes spelled Chesilborne or Cheselborne) is a village and civil parish in Dorset, England, situated in the Dorset Downs, 7 miles (11 km) north-east of Dorchester. The parish is at an altitude of 75 to 245 metres (approximately 250 to 800 feet) and covers an area of 1,175 hectares (2,900 acres); the underlying geology is chalk. In the 2011 census the parish had a population of 296. The village, which contains a mix of buildings of different ages and styles, is spread along four lanes which meet here. It has a public house called the Rivers Arms. The 13th- to 14th-century parish church has a pinnacled tower with battlements, numerous gargoyles and a canonical sundial. In 1086, in the Domesday Book Cheselbourne was recorded as Ceseburne; it had 36 households, 10 acres (4.0 ha) of meadow and one mill. It was in the hundred of Hilton and the lord and tenant-in-chief was Shaftesbury Abbey. Cheselbourne used to be the site of a tradition known as "Treading in the Wheat", in which young women from the village would walk the fields on Palm Sunday, dressed in white. At Lyscombe Farm in the northwest of the parish are the remains of an early 13th-century chapel. The nave was once used as a bakehouse and then a farmworker's dwelling. In 1957, a Dutch barn was built over the ruins.

Dorset is a unitary authority area, existing since 1 April 2019, in the ceremonial county of Dorset, England. It covers all of the ceremonial county except for Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole. The council of the district is Dorset Council, which is in effect Dorset County Council re-constituted so as to be vested with the powers and duties of five district councils which were abolished, and shedding its partial responsibility for and powers in Christchurch.

Dorset ( DOR-sit; archaically: Dorsetshire DOR-sit-sheer, -⁠shər) is a 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, the Isle of Wight across the Solent to the south-east, the English Channel to the south, and Devon to the west. The largest settlement is Bournemouth, and the county town is Dorchester. The county has an area of 2,653 km2 (1,024 sq mi) and a population of 772,268. Around half of the population lives in the South East Dorset conurbation, which contains three of the county's largest settlements: Bournemouth (183,491), Poole (151,500), and Christchurch (31,372). The remainder of the county is largely rural, and its principal towns are Weymouth (53,427) and Dorchester (21,366). Dorset contains two unitary districts: Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP) and Dorset. The county did not historically include Bournemouth and Christchurch, which were part of Hampshire. Dorset has a varied landscape of chalk downs, steep limestone ridges, and low-lying clay valleys. The majority of its coastline is part of the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site due to its geological and palaeontologic significance, and features notable landforms such as Lulworth Cove, the Isle of Portland, Chesil Beach and Durdle Door. The north of the county contains part of Cranborne Chase, a chalk downland. The highest point in Dorset is Lewesdon Hill (279 m (915 ft)), in the southwest. There is evidence of Neolithic, Celtic, and Roman settlement in Dorset, and during the Early Middle Ages the region was settled by the Saxons; the county developed in the 7th century. The first recorded Viking raid on the British Isles occurred in Dorset in 789 AD, and the Black Death entered England at Melcombe Regis in 1348. The county has seen much civil unrest: in the English Civil War an uprising of Clubmen vigilantes was crushed by Oliver Cromwell's forces in a pitched battle near Shaftesbury; the doomed Monmouth Rebellion began at Lyme Regis; and the Tolpuddle Martyrs, a group of Dorset farm labourers, were instrumental in the formation of the trade union movement. During the Second World War, Dorset was heavily involved in the preparations for the invasion of Normandy, and the large harbours of Portland and Poole were two of the main embarkation points. Agriculture was historically the major industry of Dorset, but is now in decline in favour of tourism.

Milton Abbey school is an independent school for day and boarding pupils in the village of Milton Abbas, near Blandford Forum in Dorset, in South West England. It has 224 pupils as of September 2023, in five houses: Athelstan, Damer, Hambro, Hodgkinson and Tregonwell. The school was founded in 1954 and is co-educational.The school has a stunning rural campus, with facilities that include a gym, swimming pool, golf course, a 320-seat theatre, art department and design block including fashion suite, an astro turf hockey pitch, an outward bound area, a 15th-century dining hall, an Abbey chapel that can be traced back to the 10th century and grounds designed by Lancelot "Capability" Brown. Recent building developments include a turbo cycling training facility and interactive golf simulator. The main house, which was built by Joseph Damer, 1st Earl of Dorchester from 1780 onwards, houses the administrative hub of the Estate, classrooms, the Staff Common Room, the King's Room, two of the boys' boarding houses (Athelstan and Hambro) and a girls' boarding house (Hodgkinson). Two newer buildings finished in 2013 hold the remaining girls' (Damer) and boys' (Tregonwell) boarding houses.

Lyscombe Hill (262 metres, 860 feet high) is a hill near Melcombe Bingham about 14 kilometres north-northeast of Dorchester in the county of Dorset, England. It is part of the Dorset Downs and is listed as a so-called HuMP. There is evidence of ancient settlement in the area, including tumuli, dykes and an Iron Age hillfort, known as Nettlecombe Tout (258 m), near the summit at grid reference ST 7368 0309, and at the end of the hill spur of the same name. Nearby, on the summit ridge of the Dorset Downs, are Ball Hill to the west and the Dorsetshire Gap to the east.