Bincombe is a small village, or

hamlet ''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...

, and

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 below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authority ...

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 (unitary authority), Dors ...

, England, north of Weymouth. The village is from Upwey railway station and from

Bournemouth International Airport Bournemouth Airport (previously known as Hurn Airport and Bournemouth International Airport) is an airport located north-northeast of Bournemouth, in southern England. The site opened as RAF Hurn in 1941, but was transferred to civil contr ...

. The main road running through the village is Icen Lane. The civil parish, which includes a small part of the settlement of

Broadwey Broadwey was a former village in the northern suburbs of Weymouth, Dorset, England. It lies on the B3159 road. In 2001, Broadwey and Upwey ward had a population Population typically refers to the number of people in a single area, whe ...

to the west, had a population of 514 in the 2011 census. The village stands on a

limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms whe ...

ridge south of Dorchester. Holy Trinity Church dates from the early 13th century. Large military camps for the observation of the

English Channel The English Channel, "The Sleeve"; nrf, la Maunche, "The Sleeve" (Cotentinais) or ( Jèrriais), (Guernésiais), "The Channel"; br, Mor Breizh, "Sea of Brittany"; cy, Môr Udd, "Lord's Sea"; kw, Mor Bretannek, "British Sea"; nl, Het Kana ...

were formed on the hills in this parish in the reign of

George III George III (George William Frederick; 4 June 173829 January 1820) was King of Great Britain and of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of the two kingdoms on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Br ...

, and two deserters, in trying to escape with details of the different camps, were captured in the

, tried by court martial and shot on Bincombe Down. Their remains are buried in the churchyard, where the stone can still be seen.Kelly’s Directory of Dorset, 1895, p25. The same incident, differently interpreted, forms the basis of

Thomas Hardy Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry of William Word ...

's short story, ''

The Melancholy Hussar of the German Legion ''Wessex Tales'' is an 1888 collection of tales written by English novelist and poet Thomas Hardy, many of which are set before Hardy's birth in 1840. In the various short stories, Hardy writes of the true nature of nineteenth-century marria ...

''. The Master and Fellows of

Caius College Gonville and Caius College, often referred to simply as Caius ( ), is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1348, it is the fourth-oldest of the University of Cambridge's 31 colleges and one of th ...

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

, are the principal landowners.

References

External links

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Bincombe
local history Villages in Dorset {{Dorset-geo-stub