Iwerne Courtney (), also known as Shroton, is a village and civil parish in the

English county The counties of England are areas used for different purposes, which include administrative, geographical, cultural and political demarcation. The term "county" is defined in several ways and can apply to similar or the same areas used by each ...

of Dorset. It lies approximately north-west of

Blandford Forum Blandford Forum ( ), commonly Blandford, is a market town in Dorset, England, sited by the River Stour, Dorset, River Stour about northwest of Poole. It was the administrative headquarters of North Dorset District until April 2019, when this ...

. It is sited by the small River Iwerne between Hambledon Hill to the south-west and the hills of Cranborne Chase to the east. In 2001 the parish had 187 households and a population of 400. In 2013 the estimated population of the parish was 410.

Toponymy

The names Iwerne Courtney and Shroton both have long histories. Iwerne () is a

Celtic Celtic, Celtics or Keltic may refer to: Language and ethnicity *pertaining to Celts, a collection of Indo-European peoples in Europe and Anatolia **Celts (modern) *Celtic languages **Proto-Celtic language * Celtic music *Celtic nations Sports Fo ...

rivername that perhaps refers to a goddess or may mean "yew-river". The village was recorded as ''Ywern'' in 877 AD, and in 1086 in the Domesday Book it was ''Werne''. The addition of Courtney is a result of land by the Iwerne stream being owned in the 13th century by the Courtenay family, the Earls of Devon. The name Shroton derives from the

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, Anglo ...

''scīr-rēfa'' and ''tūn'', meaning "sheriff's estate" or "sheriff's town",North Dorset District Council, ''Official District Guide'', Home Publishing Co. Ltd., c.1983, p36 and its use is due to the lord and tenant-in-chief at the time of Domesday being Baldwin of

Exeter Exeter () is a city in Devon, South West England. It is situated on the River Exe, approximately northeast of Plymouth and southwest of Bristol. In Roman Britain, Exeter was established as the base of Legio II Augusta under the personal comm ...

, the sheriff of Devon. In 1403 the name was recorded as ''Shyrevton''. The name Shroton is preferred locally; in his 1980 book ''Dorset Villages'', Roland Gant stated that "I have heard only visitors to Dorset call it Iwerne Courtney".

History

At the time of the Domesday Book, Iwerne Courtney had 17 households and was in the hundred of Gillingham. It had 2 mills, of meadow, 8 ploughlands, and its value to the lord of the manor was £10. In 1261 the village received a grant from Henry the Third, enabling it to hold two annual fairs and a weekly market. The autumn "Shroton Fair" used to be "one of the main Dorset events of the year". It is mentioned in Owen's book of fairs (1788), under the name Shroton. In 1965 Dorset-born broadcaster Ralph Wightman wrote of the fair that "For many years time was dated in this part of Dorset by Shroton Fair. Old men recalled events by the number of months they had happened before or after this event." However the fair has now "vanished without a trace". The civil parish of the village was formed by the joining of three settlements: Iwerne Courtney in the centre, Farrington to the northwest and Ranston immediately east of the river. Each settlement had its own open field system. Farrington now consists of a few farms, and at Ranston only the manor house remains.Ordnance Survey (2013). 1:25,000 Explorer Map, Sheet 118 (Shaftesbury & Cranborne Chase).

Governance

The parish of Iwerne Courtney or Shroton is within the Dorset Council ward of Beacon and the parliamentary constituency of North Dorset. The MP since 2015 is

Simon Hoare Simon James Hoare (born 28 June 1969) is a British Conservative Party politician. He has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for North Dorset since May 2015. Education Hoare was educated at the Bishop Hannon High School, Cardiff, a Roman Catho ...

of the Conservative Party.

Geography

Iwerne Courtney civil parish covers nearly in an L-shaped area on either side of the River Iwerne. To the east it extends over the chalk hills of Cranborne Chase, reaching an elevation of over . To the west it extends north-west over greensand, gault and Kimmeridge clay at an altitude of about , although in the south-west it rises to over on the slopes of Hambledon Hill, an outlier of the chalk.

References

External links

{{authority control Villages in Dorset Civil parishes in Dorset