Mappowder is a village 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 authorit ...

in the

county A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposes Chambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...

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. Covering an area of , ...

in southern

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. The parish lies approximately southeast of the town of

Sherborne Sherborne is a market town and civil parish in north west Dorset, in South West England. It is sited on the River Yeo, on the edge of the Blackmore Vale, east of Yeovil. The parish includes the hamlets of Nether Coombe and Lower Clatcombe. ...

and covers about at an elevation of . It is sited on

Corallian limestone The Corallian Group or Corallian Limestone is a geologic group in England. It is predominantly a coralliferous sedimentary rock, laid down in the Oxfordian stage of the Jurassic. It is a hard variety of "coral rag". Building stones from this geol ...

soil at the southern edge of the

Blackmore Vale The Blackmore Vale (; less commonly spelt ''Blackmoor'') is a vale, or wide valley, in north Dorset, and to a lesser extent south Somerset and southwest Wiltshire in southern England. Geography The vale is part of the Stour valley, part of th ...

, close to the northern scarp face of the

Dorset Downs The Dorset Downs are an area of chalk downland in the centre of the county Dorset in south west England. The downs are the most western part of a larger chalk formation which also includes (from west to east) Cranborne Chase, Salisbury Plain, H ...

. In the 2011 census the parish had 71 dwellings, 69 households and a population of 166. The village name comes from ''mapuldor'', Old English for 'maple tree'. In 1086 in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manus ...

Mappowder was recorded as ''Mapledre'' and appears in four entries; it was in Buckland Newton Hundred, had 33.3 households and a total taxable value of 8.3 geld units. The church, dedicated to St Peter & St Paul, is

Perpendicular In elementary geometry, two geometric objects are perpendicular if they intersect at a right angle (90 degrees or π/2 radians). The condition of perpendicularity may be represented graphically using the ''perpendicular symbol'', ⟂. It ca ...

and was built in the late 15th and 16th centuries. However, it includes features remaining from an earlier 12th-century church. The chancel was extended in 1868 by the Wingfield Digby family of

Sherborne Castle Sherborne Castle is a 16th-century Tudor mansion southeast of Sherborne in Dorset, England, within the parish of Castleton. It stands in a park which formed a small part of the Digby estate. Old castle Sherborne Old Castle () is the ruin ...

, who owned the village in Victorian times. Mappowder was once the home of the Coker family, who built a large mansion here in 1654,Treves, Sir F., ''Highways and Byways in Dorset'', Macmillan, 1905, p331 although this was pulled down in the mid-eighteenth century. The building which occupies the site now, Mappowder Court, is mostly of mid-eighteenth-century origin, with some earlier remnants. The stone gateposts at the entrance remain from the original Coker manor; these are topped by carved human heads which in 1905

Sir Frederick Treves Sir Frederick Treves, 1st Baronet (15 February 1853 – 7 December 1923), was a prominent British surgeon, and an expert in anatomy. Treves was renowned for his surgical treatment of appendicitis, and is credited with saving the life of K ...

described as " Blackamore's" these being "those indefinite natives of the tropics having been used for the crest of the Coker family." In 1559

Henry Coker Henry Coker (December 24, 1919 – November 23, 1979) was an American jazz trombonist. Biography Coker was born in Dallas, Texas, United States. He made his professional debut with John White in 1935. From 1937 to 1939 he played with Nat Towles' ...

(c.1528–1596) was

member of parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members o ...

for the constituency of

Shaftesbury Shaftesbury () is a town and civil parish in Dorset, England. It is situated on the A30 road, west of Salisbury, near the border with Wiltshire. It is the only significant hilltop settlement in Dorset, being built about above sea level on a ...

. Mappowder Court is

listed Listed may refer to: * Listed, Bornholm, a fishing village on the Danish island of Bornholm * Listed (MMM program), a television show on MuchMoreMusic * Endangered species in biology * Listed building, in architecture, designation of a historicall ...

English Heritage English Heritage (officially the English Heritage Trust) is a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places. These include prehistoric sites, medieval castles, Roman forts and country houses. The charity states that i ...

as Grade II*, with the gateposts and courtyard walls as Grade II. Novelist and short story writer

Theodore Francis Powys Theodore Francis Powys (20 December 1875 – 27 November 1953) – published as T. F. Powys – was a British novelist and short-story writer."Powys, Theodore Francis" in Christine L. Krueger, ''Encyclopedia of British Writers, 19th and 20th Ce ...

lived in Mappowder for the last 13 years of his life; he died and was buried here in 1953.

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