Whitcombe Church

Whitcombe is a small village and civil parish in the Dorset unitary authority area of Dorset, England, situated 2 miles (3.2 km) southeast of Dorchester. Dorset County Council's 2013 mid-year estimate of the population of the parish is 20.Whitcombe village is next to the A352 main road between Broadmayne and Dorchester, between the parishes of West Knighton and Broadmayne to the east, West Stafford to the north, and Winterborne Came to the west. Whitcombe does not form an ecclesiastical parish, although Whitcombe Church has registers dating from 1762. The earlier registers were destroyed in a fire. The church, now redundant, is in a "modest but perfect location" according to Pevsner.In the surrounding area there are a number of prehistoric earthworks. Whitcombe was originally recorded as Widecome, with a land measurement of two hides. King Athelstan gave it to the Milton Abbey. At the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries, its ownership passed to the King. Around 1600, it was sold to a Mr Hull from Tolpuddle. Whitcombe Hill is located 0.25 miles (0.40 km) west of the church. A Portland stone relief of a bearded man on horseback, dating from 2nd–3rd century AD, was found here in 1963 and subsequently added to the collection of the Dorset County Museum in Dorchester. There are a Grade II listed manor house, riding stables and a tithe barn at Whitcombe.

Old Came Rectory is a former rectory on the A352 road in Winterborne Came, Dorset, England. It was built in the 19th century for the Reverend William England in a rustic cottage orné style from a plan by the architect John Nash. It is a two-storey building with a thatched roof and walls of cob and rendered rubble. It was subsequently the home of William Barnes, who became the rector in 1862 and lived there until he died in 1886. Thomas Hardy visited him there many times, and other literary tenants and guests have included Tennyson, Coventry Patmore, Edmund Gosse, Francis Palgrave, Siegfried Sassoon, Edmund Blunden and T. E. Lawrence.The building was listed for protection as Grade II in 1956. Features include three thatched verandas, french windows and a large garden which contains an orchard and well.

Winterborne Came is a small dispersed settlement and civil parish in the county of Dorset in England, situated in the west of the county, approximately 1 mile (1.6 km) south-east of the county town Dorchester. Dorset County Council's 2013 mid-year estimate of the parish population was 40.Winterborne Came derives its name from the seasonal stream ('winterborne') by which it is sited, and from the town of Caen in France, as it was once owned by the Abbey of St. Stephen there. The parish consists of Came House, built in 1754 in the Palladian style, the nearby Perpendicular St. Peter's Church, a couple of farms, and an old rectory on the Dorchester to Wareham road, where for 25 years the Dorset dialect poet William Barnes lived when he was the incumbent rector. Barnes died in the rectory and is buried in the churchyard. About 100 metres west of the church is the site of the deserted village of Winterborne Farringdon, which has been depopulated since at least the 18th century.

Came House is a privately owned country house next to the village of Winterborne Came, in Dorset, England. Built in the mid-18th century, it is a Grade I listed building.

St Peter's Church in Winterborne Came, Dorset, England was built in the 14th century. It is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade I listed building, and is now a redundant church in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust. It was vested in the Trust on 1 March 1989.The nave dates from the 14th century and the current chancel is from a 15th-century rebuilding. Later in the 15th century the west tower was added and the nave refenestrated. The interior includes an octagonal 14th century font and an oak pulpit from 1624.The Revd William Barnes, the English writer, poet, minister, and philologist, was the rector of the church from 1862 to 1886. He is buried in the churchyard beneath a Celtic cross. The plinth of the cross has the inscription: 'In Memory of William Barnes, Died 7 October 1886. Aged 86 Years. For 24 Years Rector of this Parish. This Memorial was raised to his Memory by his Children and Grandchildren."

West Stafford is a village and civil parish in southwest Dorset, England, situated in the Frome valley 2 miles (3.2 km) east of Dorchester. In the 2011 census the parish had a population of 291. The village contains the public house 'The Wise Man Inn', and St Andrew's Church. The river Winterbourne runs beside the village and 2 miles south lies the village of West Knighton. Thomas Hardy, when training as an architect, assisted in the design of Talbothays Lodge and the cottages opposite. The village is also accepted as the setting for part of Hardy's novel Tess or the D'Urbevilles, during the period when Tess works at the Talbothays Dairy. Reginald Bosworth Smith, schoolmaster, author and President of the Oxford Union, was born in West Stafford on 28 June 1839. His father, Reginald Southwell Smith, was the fourth son of Sir John Wyldbore Smith, Baronet, of Sydling St Nicholas, Dorset.

Mount Pleasant henge is a Neolithic henge enclosure in the English county of Dorset. It lies southeast of Dorchester in the civil parish of West Stafford. It still partially survives as an earthwork.

Frome Billet is a former village in Dorset, just to the north of West Stafford.It is mentioned in the Domesday Book. There is slight archaeological evidence of a mediaeval settlement. It is now represented only by Stafford House.

Flagstones is a late Neolithic interrupted ditch enclosure (similar to a causewayed enclosure) on the outskirts of Dorchester, Dorset, England. It derives its name from having been discovered beneath the site of the demolished Flagstones House. Half of it was excavated in the 1980s when the Dorchester by-pass was built; the rest of it still exists under the grounds of Max Gate, Thomas Hardy's house.

Max Gate is the former home of Thomas Hardy and is located on the outskirts of Dorchester, Dorset, England. It was designed and built by Thomas Hardy for his own use in 1885 and he lived there until his death in 1928. In 1940 it was bequeathed to the National Trust by Hardy's sister and is now open to the public. It was designated as a Grade I listed building on 8 May 1970.

West Knighton is a village and civil parish in Dorset, England, situated 3 miles (4.8 km) southeast of the county town Dorchester. It has an 11th-century church and a village pub. In the 2011 census the civil parish had a population of 375.The village name derives from the Old English cniht and tūn, meaning the village or farmstead of the young men or retainers. At Little Mayne Farm 0.5 miles (0.80 km) southwest of the village is the site of a deserted medieval village, which was recorded in the Domesday Book as Maine and in 1201 was known as Parva Maene.West Knighton parish historically developed out of the amalgamation of four medieval settlements within the ancient hundred of Cullifordtree: the existing main village, the previously mentioned Parva Maene, another medieval settlement at Friarmayne to the south—also deserted and now within neighbouring Broadmayne civil parish—and the fourth at Lewell to the north (now just a farmhouse).

Mayne Preceptory was a medieval house of Knights Hospitaller in Dorset, England, which caused the name of the settlement to change from Domesday-era Maine (one of two manors named Maine in Cullifordtree Hundred) to Friar Mayne by the mid-14th century. It was located formerly in West Knighton parish, now in modern Broadmayne parish. The preceptory was established between 1290 and 1338. It declined in activity until 1533, where it began leasing its bailiwick to provide stipends for rectories, vicarages and the larger preceptories in other locations. Its lands were forfeited to the crown at the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the early 16th century and were eventually sold. The preceptory also owned a property at Kingston in Stinsford, given to the Hospitallers by Thomas del Boys, sometimes described as the 'camera' of Kingston (camera meaning in this context an estate with no community and farmed out to a tenant). In 1338 it comprised a house (messuagium) and garden, 68 acres of arable land, an acre and a half of meadow, pasture for 6 oxen, 8 cows and 100 sheep, and the church of Stinsford. The preceptory also owned further property at Waye (i.e., somewhere in Upwey or Broadwey).