Shute House, Donhead St Mary

Donhead St Mary is a village and civil parish in southwest Wiltshire, England, on the county border with Dorset. The village lies about 2+1⁄2 miles (4.0 km) east of the Dorset town of Shaftesbury and stands on high ground above the River Nadder, which rises in the parish. In the south of the parish, on the A30 Salisbury-Shaftesbury road, are the village of Ludwell and its neighbouring hamlet of Birdbush; Charlton hamlet is south of the road. To the north are the hamlets of Coombe, comprising Higher Coombe, Middle Coombe and Lower Coombe. In the north-west of the parish, near Shaftesbury, is the hamlet of Higher Wincombe.

Gutch Common (grid reference ST896259) is a 35.1 hectare biological Site of Special Scientific Interest in Wiltshire, notified in 1951.

Donhead St Andrew is a village and civil parish in Wiltshire, England, on the River Nadder. It lies 4 miles (6.4 km) east of the Dorset market town of Shaftesbury. The parish includes the hamlets of West End, Milkwell and (on the A30) Brook Waters. Ferne House, on the site of a former manor house, is within the parish.

Ludwell is a small village in south Wiltshire, England, approximately 3 miles (5 km) east of the Dorset town of Shaftesbury. It lies within the Cranborne Chase and West Wiltshire Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, on the A30 Salisbury-Shaftesbury road. For the purposes of local government, Ludwell is part of Donhead St Mary civil parish. Peckons Hill, Birdbush and Brook Waters are neighbouring hamlets to the northeast of Ludwell, along the A30 towards Ansty and Swallowcliffe. The village has a primary school which was established in 1875, and an Anglican church, St John the Baptist, built in 1839 in Neo-Norman style with a two-tower west facade.Notable buildings are Ludwell Stores & Post Office, a late 18th-century house with attached former bakery; and the Grove Arms public house, from the early 17th century with additions in the early 18th and 19th. Other businesses include T. Buttlings traditional butchers and Greenacre farm shop.

Lower Coombe and Ferne Brook Meadows (grid reference ST916236) is an 11.34 hectare biological Site of Special Scientific Interest in Wiltshire, England which sits on the Upper Greensand and Gault Clay. The site is home to rare fen meadow and neutral grassland communities in an unimproved grassland. Species such as Triglochin palustris, Caltha palustris and Oenanthe pimpinelloides can be found at the location. Three streams, which form headwaters of the River Nadder flow through the site. It was notified in 2002.

Castle Rings is a univallate hill fort in the parish of Donhead St Mary in Wiltshire in England. The fort is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, with a list entry identification number of 1005698. Castle Rings has been dated to the Iron Age and is situated at an altitude of 228 metres (748 ft) upon Upper Greensand sandstone beds. The main bulk of the fort enclosure lies within the boundaries of Donhead St Mary parish but some of the outlying earthworks are situated in the neighbouring Sedgehill and Semley parish. In the mid-1980s a metal detectorist unearthed a hoard of stater coins of the Durotriges tribe within the hill fort.Lady Theodora Grosvenor described the fort in her 1867 book Motcombe, Past and Present: ...a fine encampment, enclosing a space of about 12 acres, and considered to have been originally British, which exists within the angle where the roads from Semley Church and Donhead to Shaftesbury unite by Wincombe Lodge. It bears the name of Castle Rings, and its embankments and ditches are strongly defined, though, from being overgrown with copse-wood, seldom observed.

Semley is a village in Sedgehill and Semley civil parish in Wiltshire, England, about 3 miles (4.8 km) north-east of Shaftesbury in neighbouring Dorset. The hamlet of Sem Hill lies about a quarter of a mile west of the village. The River Sem, from which the village takes its name, forms part of the northern boundary of the parish.

St Mary's School was a private Roman Catholic day and boarding school for girls, founded in 1945 in a rural setting near Shaftesbury, England. The school had a sixth form and was a member of the Girls' Schools Association. After operating at a loss for some time, the school closed in July 2020. Although the school's postal address was in Dorset, its site lay just over the county border in Wiltshire, within the parish of Donhead St Mary.

Pythouse, sometimes spelled Pyt House and pronounced pit-house, is a country house in southwest Wiltshire, in the west of England. It is about 2+1⁄2 miles (4.0 km) west of the village of Tisbury. Described as a "fine classical house", Pythouse is set in parkland with a ha-ha separating the formal house lawn from surrounding parkland on which livestock may graze. It has an Ionic portico, and the front elevation may have inspired the design of Philipps House at nearby Dinton, which was begun in 1813 and designed by Sir Jeffry Wyatville. Leigh Court in Somerset was later built to the plans used for Pythouse.

Breeze Hill is a prominent, largely treeless, rounded summit, 262 metres high, on the edge of Cranborne Chase about a mile east of the village of Melbury Abbas, Dorset.Breeze Hill is 2 miles northeast of Compton Abbas and some 2+1⁄2 miles southeast of the town of Shaftesbury. The county boundary with Wiltshire runs past the summit some 200 metres to the northeast on the upper slopes of Charlton Down. The terrain drops steeply on three sides; the ridge on the fourth side running away to the southeast and east in a gentle curve towards Win Green hill, the highest point on Cranborne Chase. On the steep western scarp is Zig Zag Hill with the hairpin bends of the B3081. Near the hill is evidence of prehistoric activity in the form of tumuli, long barrows, earthworks and cross dykes. About a mile and a half away to the west-southwest is another prominent summit, Melbury Beacon

Wardour is a settlement in Wiltshire, England, about 13 miles (21 km) west of Salisbury and 4 miles (6 km) south of Hindon. Formerly a parish in its own right, it is now part of the civil parish of Tisbury.

Higher Wincombe is a farm and small hamlet in the parish of Donhead St Mary, Wiltshire, England. It lies at the head of the Nadder Valley, just beyond the north-east edge of the town of Shaftesbury, Dorset and within the Cranborne Chase and West Wiltshire Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.