Melbury Abbas 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 authority ...

in north

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 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 ...

, 3 km SSW of the town 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 ...

, east of the A350 Shaftesbury to

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 ...

road.

Local Features

Melbury Abbas is on the western edge of

Cranborne Chase Cranborne Chase () is an area of central southern England, straddling the counties Dorset, Hampshire and Wiltshire. It is part of the Cranborne Chase and West Wiltshire Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). The area is dominated by, ...

in hilly terrain.

Melbury Hill Melbury Hill, whose summit is also called Melbury Beacon,Breeze Hill (262 metres ASL) is 2 km to the east of the village. The grass airfield of

Compton Abbas Compton Abbas is a village and civil parish in north Dorset, England. It lies south of the town of Shaftesbury. It is sited on greensand strata on the edge of the Blackmore Vale, below the chalk downs of Cranborne Chase. On top of these hills ...

(247 metres ASL) is 2 km to the SE of the village.

History

In 1086 Melbury Abbas was recorded 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 manusc ...

as ''Meleberie''. It was in Sixpenny Hundred and had 47 households, 12

ploughland The carucate or carrucate ( lat-med, carrūcāta or ) was a medieval unit of land area approximating the land a plough team of eight oxen could till in a single annual season. It was known by different regional names and fell under different forms ...

s and 4 mills. The lord and

tenant-in-chief In medieval and early modern Europe, the term ''tenant-in-chief'' (or ''vassal-in-chief'') denoted a person who held his lands under various forms of feudal land tenure directly from the king or territorial prince to whom he did homage, as op ...

was

Shaftesbury Abbey Shaftesbury Abbey was an abbey that housed nuns in Shaftesbury, Dorset. It was founded in about 888, and dissolved in 1539 during the English Reformation by the order of Thomas Cromwell, minister to King Henry VIII. At the time it was the second ...

The Village Today

In the 2011 census the civil parish (CP) had 147 dwellings. The CP includes West Melbury and part of Cann Common. 134 households and a population of 305. Melbury_Abbas_-_Church_of_St_Thomas

Church of St Thomas

This is on the south side of the village and as well as a square tower at the south west end, has a large spire mounted on the SW corner of the top of the tower. The original stone church of Norman times had a tower with three bells, at least one transept, and a west door. It survived until 1852 when it was in poor condition and was demolished. The present church is said to cost Sir Richard Glyn £2500.00. At this time Sir Richard owned most of the village. On 21 December 1852 the Bishop of Salisbury dedicated the new church to St Thomas, whose feast day it was.

Road Connections

Melbury Abbas village is on an unclassified road that follows a hilltop route roughly parallel to the A350

primary route The United Kingdom has a network of roads, of varied quality and capacity, totalling about . Road distances are shown in miles or yards and UK speed limits are indicated in miles per hour (mph) or by the use of the national speed limit (NSL) sy ...

that passes west of the village between Shaftesbury and Blandford. The A350 follows a lower route through villages in 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 t ...

. However, much traffic uses the hilltop route as an alternative because it is straighter and passes through fewer villages. Melbury Abbas is the only bottleneck on this road, where it dips down into the valley and becomes narrower. Dorset County Council have considered bypass schemes, but none has got further than preliminary because Melbury Abbas village is surrounded by conservation land.

References

External links

Villages in Dorset {{Dorset-geo-stub