Mapperton is a hamlet 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, south-east of

Beaminster Beaminster ( ) is a town and civil parish in Dorset, England, situated in the Dorset Council administrative area approximately northwest of the county town Dorchester. It is sited in a bowl-shaped valley near the source of the small River ...

Dorset County Council Dorset County Council (DCC) was the county council for the county of Dorset in England. It provided the upper tier of local government, below which were district councils, and town and parish councils. The county council had 46 elected council ...

estimated that the population of the parish was 60 in 2013.

Parish

The parish of Mapperton is comparatively small at . The population has always been low, rising to a peak of 123 in 1821, before falling to 76 in 1901 and 50 in 1931. After the Second World War it dropped further; only 21 residents remained in 1961. Listed as ''Malperetone'' 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 ...

, the name means "farmstead where maple trees grow".

Mapperton House

Mapperton is noted for its manor house, with both house and gardens open to the public during the summer months. The house is

Grade I listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

, as is the attached All Saints' Church which dates from the 12th century. The manor had been owned since the 11th century by only four families (Brett, Morgan, Brodrepp, Compton), all linked by the female line, before it was sold to Ethel Labouchere in 1919. When she died in 1955 it was acquired by

Victor Montagu Alexander Victor Edward Paulet Montagu (22 May 1906 – 25 February 1995), known as Viscount Hinchingbrooke from 1916 to 1962, as the Earl of Sandwich from 1962 to 1964 (when he disclaimed his peerages) and as Victor Montagu from 1964 to 1995, ...

, Viscount Hinchingbrooke. When he died in 1995 it passed to his son, The 11th Earl of Sandwich. Robert Morgan built a Tudor manor on the present site in the 1540s, and part of it remains as the north wing of the present building. The house was largely rebuilt in the 1660s by Richard Brodrepp, with the addition of the hall and west front, as well as the dovecote and stable blocks. A second Richard Brodrepp created the Georgian staircase in the 18th century. In 2006 the house was voted the "Nation's Finest Manor House" by '' Country Life'' magazine. The tomb of Richard Brodrepp in the church dates from 1739 and was designed by

Peter Scheemakers Peter Scheemakers or Pieter Scheemaeckers II or the Younger (10 January 1691 – 12 September 1781) was a Flemish sculptor who worked for most of his life in London. His public and church sculptures in a classicist style had an important influenc ...

. The grounds and formal gardens are Grade II* listed. An Italianate garden laid was out in the 1920s and a wild garden in the 1950s. In 2020, the gardens were named Historic Houses Garden of the Year. The house is run by Viscount and Viscountess Hinchingbrooke. In January 2023, they announced plans to open the house for a limited number of private tours.

Gallery

File:Mapperton parish church, window detail - geograph.org.uk - 517667.jpg,

All Saints' church All Saints Church, or All Saints' Church or variations on the name may refer to: Albania *All Saints' Church, Himarë Australia * All Saints Church, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory * All Saints Anglican Church, Henley Brook, Western Aust ...

, Mapperton File:Mapperton Manor House Tudor Wing Gable - detail - geograph.org.uk - 868285.jpg, A lion representing the Morgan family is one of two heraldic beasts at Mapperton, sitting atop barley-twist columns on the gable end of the Tudor wing

Filming location

The manor house was used in the filming of the 1996 film '' Emma'', in which it became Randalls, the home of Mrs Weston; the 1997 BBC version of ''

The History of Tom Jones ''The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling'', often known simply as ''Tom Jones'', is a comic novel by English playwright and novelist Henry Fielding. It is a ''Bildungsroman'' and a picaresque novel. It was first published on 28 February 1749 in L ...

''; and the 2015 version 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 ''

Far from the Madding Crowd ''Far from the Madding Crowd'' (1874) is Thomas Hardy's fourth novel and his first major literary success. It originally appeared anonymously as a monthly serial in ''Cornhill Magazine'', where it gained a wide readership. The novel is set in ...

''. The manor was used again in ''

Rebecca Rebecca, ; Syriac: , ) from the Hebrew (lit., 'connection'), from Semitic root , 'to tie, couple or join', 'to secure', or 'to snare') () appears in the Hebrew Bible as the wife of Isaac and the mother of Jacob and Esau. According to biblical ...

'' as

Manderley Manderley is a fictional estate in Daphne du Maurier's 1938 novel '' Rebecca'', owned by the character Maxim de Winter. Located in southern England (often said to be Cornwall as this was where the author lived, and explicitly stated as such in ...

's garden, which is open to the public from Spring to Autumn.

References

External links

Mapperton House
– official site {{Authority control Civil parishes in Dorset Hamlets in Dorset