Buckland Newton 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 ...

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 , ...

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 ...

. It is situated beneath the scarp slope 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 ...

, south 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. ...

. In the 2011 census the civil parish had a

population Population typically refers to the number of people in a single area, whether it be a city or town, region, country, continent, or the world. Governments typically quantify the size of the resident population within their jurisdiction using a ...

of 622. The village covers around 6000 acres. The village lies within the Buckland Newton Hundred. Amenities in the village include a pub (The Gaggle of Geese), shop, primary school and village hall. Approximately three quarters of the parish lies within the Dorset

Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty An Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB; , AHNE) is an area of countryside in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, that has been designated for conservation due to its significant landscape value. Areas are designated in recognition of ...

History

The name 'Buckland' derives from ''bōc-land'',

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 settlers in the mid-5th c ...

for 'charter land' or land with special privileges created by royal diploma, while 'Newton' is a more recent addition taken from Sturminster Newton, a nearby town. Evidence for prehistoric settlement comes from

Bronze Age The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second prin ...

barrows at Gales Hill and the

Iron Age The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age ( Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age ( Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostl ...

hill fort of Dungeon Hill. The parish originally had five settlements, each with their own

open field system The open-field system was the prevalent agricultural system in much of Europe during the Middle Ages and lasted into the 20th century in Russia, Iran, and Turkey. Each manor or village had two or three large fields, usually several hundred acr ...

: Buckland Newton, Brockhampton, Duntish, Henley (perhaps previously known as Knoll) and Minterne Parva, the last now part of Minterne Magna parish. Farms based on small mediaeval enclosures include Chaston Farm, Revels Farm, and possibly Bookham. Although the Parish Church of the Holy Rood was

restored ''Restored'' is the fourth studio album by American contemporary Christian music musician Jeremy Camp. It was released on November 16, 2004 by BEC Recordings. Track listing Standard release Enhanced edition Deluxe gold edition Standard ...

in the 19th century, it has a 13th-century

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may terminate in an apse. Ov ...

and 15th-century

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

, west tower and

aisle An aisle is, in general, a space for walking with rows of non-walking spaces on both sides. Aisles with seating on both sides can be seen in airplanes, certain types of buildings, such as churches, cathedrals, synagogues, meeting halls, par ...

s, plus fragments of 12th-century sculpture which are evidence of an earlier structure. In 1980 the writer and literary director Roland Gant described Holy Rood as "a lovely church", but that the first impression it created was not favourable due to its exterior having been rendered in cement, "giving the Perpendicular square tower the look of a Foreign Legion fort". The church has six bells, the oldest having been cast around 1380. Duntish Court, sited about north of the main village, was a compact, classical country house built in 1764 beside the main Weymouth to Bath turnpike road. Designed by

Sir William Chambers __NOTOC__ Sir William Chambers (23 February 1723 – 10 March 1796) was a Swedish-Scottish architect, based in London. Among his best-known works are Somerset House, and the pagoda at Kew. Chambers was a founder member of the Royal Academy. Bio ...

for Fitzwalter Foy, the Court — originally named Castle Hill — had notable plasterwork, grounds of and played a role in the arrest of agricultural labourers in Dorset's ' Captain Swing' riots of 1830. It was demolished in 1965.

Geography

Prominent nearby hills at the top of the escarpment to the southeast include the

Ball Hill Ball Hill is an area within the Stoke district of Coventry, West Midlands, England. It is to the east of Coventry city centre. Walsgrave Road is the main street that runs through Ball Hill, which is a name that primarily defines the shoppin ...

and the

Lyscombe Hill Lyscombe Hill (262 metres, 860 feet high) is a hill near Melcombe Bingham about 14 kilometres north-northeast of Dorchester in the county of Dorset, England. It is part of the Dorset Downs and is listed as a so-called HuMP. There is evidence ...

near the

Dorsetshire Gap The Dorsetshire Gap, also called the Dorset Gap, is an important, historic track junction - once the hub of central Dorset in southern England - and a well known beauty spot and magnet for ramblers.

Ordnance Survey Ordnance Survey (OS) is the national mapping agency for Great Britain. The agency's name indicates its original military purpose (see ordnance and surveying), which was to map Scotland in the wake of the Jacobite rising of 1745. There was a ...

1:50,000 Landranger series The southern part of the parish is mainly

chalk Chalk is a soft, white, porous, sedimentary carbonate rock. It is a form of limestone composed of the mineral calcite and originally formed deep under the sea by the compression of microscopic plankton that had settled to the sea floor. Ch ...

with an elevation ranging from . The northern lies between above sea-level and is mainly clay with

Gault The Gault Formation is a geological formation of stiff blue clay deposited in a calm, fairly deep-water marine environment during the Lower Cretaceous Period (Upper and Middle Albian). It is well exposed in the coastal cliffs at Copt Point in ...

and

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 ...

beds. The River Lydden rises in the numerous springs round the village, principally Buckland Bottom and Bladeley Bottom There are 11 locally recognised Sites of Nature Conservation Interest within or close to the parish, as well as areas of Ancient Woodland. The main habitat types for sites of wildlife interest are deciduous woodland and calcareous grassland (the latter is particularly significant for butterflies). There is also a small area of lowland meadows within Buckland Newton Itself.Neighbourhood Plan - http://www.planvu.co.uk/wdwp/written/cptbnnp3.htm

References

External links

Buckland Newton Community
{{authority control Villages in Dorset