Winterborne Clenston is a small 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 ...

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 ...

, around southwest 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 ...

. In 2013 the civil parish had an estimated population of 40. The first part of the village name comes from the

River Winterborne There are two River Winterbornes in Dorset, England. The rivers only flow overground during the winter, hence the name. They both flow through a number of villages with a first name of "Winterborne" or “Winterbourne”. The North Winterbor ...

, which flows from north to south through the village. The river only flows overground during the winter, hence the name. In 1312 the patron of the church was Roger de Clencheston, who most likely had a farm here, after which the second part of the village name derives. To the north of the village is

Winterborne Stickland Winterborne Stickland is a village and civil parish in the county of Dorset in southern England. It lies about west of the town of Blandford Forum. In 2013 the civil parish had an estimated population of 520. In the 2011 census the parish, comb ...

and to the south is

Winterborne Whitechurch Winterborne Whitechurch, also Winterborne Whitchurch, is a village and civil parish in central Dorset, England, situated in a winterbourne valley on the A354 road on the Dorset Downs southwest of Blandford Forum. In the 2011 census the civi ...

. The river flows through both these villages as well. The parish church of St Nicholas dates from 1840. It is built in bands of stone and flint and has a spire on top of a narrow tower. It stands alone above the Winterborne on the site of an earlier church. The village manor is a late-15th- to early-16th-century building of Purbeck and

Portland stone Portland stone is a limestone from the Tithonian stage of the Jurassic period quarried on the Isle of Portland, Dorset. The quarries are cut in beds of white-grey limestone separated by chert beds. It has been used extensively as a building sto ...

with courses of

flint Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Flint was widely used historically to make stone tools and start fir ...

. It was built in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and is a Grade I listed building. It has

mullion A mullion is a vertical element that forms a division between units of a window or screen, or is used decoratively. It is also often used as a division between double doors. When dividing adjacent window units its primary purpose is a rigid supp ...

ed windows and a gabled staircase turret on the west side. Nearby is a sixteenth-century tithe-barn with a hammerbeam roof, also a listed building but falling into disrepair. In 2008, Historic England funded the erection of scaffolding and temporary repairs to the structure, but by 2016, a permanent repair had not been made. About east of the manor house is a field barn which is also a Grade II listed building. It is also built in bands of flint and stone and has a door made of planks and a thatched roof. It forms an important group with the Manor House and the Manor House Barn.

References

{{authority control Villages in Dorset

See also

References