Farnham 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 ...

North Dorset North Dorset was a local government district in Dorset, England. It was largely rural, but included the towns of Blandford Forum, Gillingham, Shaftesbury, Stalbridge and Sturminster Newton. Much of North Dorset was in the River Stour vall ...

, in the south 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 ...

, on

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, ...

, northeast of Blandford Forum. In the 2011 census the parish had a population of 183.

Toponymy

The name Farnham derives from the

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 ...

''fearn'' (fern) and ''ham'' (homestead) and means an enclosure or homestead where ferns grow. 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 ...

of 1086 Farnham was recorded as ''Ferneham'' or ''Fernham''.

History

The early settlement history of Farnham isn't clear.

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 ...

and

Romano-British The Romano-British culture arose in Britain under the Roman Empire following the Roman conquest in AD 43 and the creation of the province of Britannia. It arose as a fusion of the imported Roman culture with that of the indigenous Britons, ...

field systems were created in the surrounding area generally, though traces haven't survived at Farnham. The present-day Farnham village has emerged from five separate settlements associated with clearings in hazel

coppice Coppicing is a traditional method of woodland management which exploits the capacity of many species of trees to put out new shoots from their stump or roots if cut down. In a coppiced wood, which is called a copse, young tree stems are repeate ...

; in the Domesday Book ''Ferneham'' or ''Fernham'' is recorded five times, though not all the entries refer to the present-day settlement. The book records 12 households with a total taxable value of 6 geld units. The county's sheriff at the time, Aiulf the chamberlain, owned some of the land. For much of its history Farnham has been closely connected with

Tollard Royal Tollard Royal is a village and civil parish on Cranborne Chase, Wiltshire, England. The parish is on Wiltshire's southern boundary with Dorset and the village is southeast of the Dorset town of Shaftesbury, on the B3081 road between Shaftesbur ...

, the adjacent village and parish in the neighbouring county of

Wiltshire Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershire ...

. Tollard Farnham (or Farnham Tollard), a

tithing A tithing or tything was a historic English legal, administrative or territorial unit, originally ten hides (and hence, one tenth of a hundred). Tithings later came to be seen as subdivisions of a manor or civil parish. The tithing's leader or ...

to the north of Farnham village, was previously owned by the de Tollard family of Tollard Royal, and until 1885, when it was joined with Farnham, its dead were taken along a track named Burials Drove to be buried at Tollard Royal. The old museum building - geograph

Augustus Pitt Rivers Lieutenant-general (United Kingdom), Lieutenant General Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers (14 April 18274 May 1900) was an English officer in the British Army, ethnologist, and archaeologist. He was noted for innovations in archaeological met ...

lived nearby on the Rushmore Estate. Following his donation of some 20,000 antiquities to the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

in 1884, forming the nucleus of the

Pitt Rivers Museum Pitt Rivers Museum is a museum displaying the archaeological and anthropological collections of the University of Oxford in England. The museum is located to the east of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, and can only be accessed ...

, he continued to collect archaeological and

ethnological Ethnology (from the grc-gre, ἔθνος, meaning 'nation') is an academic field that compares and analyzes the characteristics of different peoples and the relationships between them (compare cultural, social, or sociocultural anthropology). ...

specimens for his personal collection, which was held in the former Orphan Gypsy School at Crossways, about from Farnham village centre. The village's inn became the Museum Hotel to cater for visitors, which numbered 12,000 per year at the peak of the museum's popularity. The Farnham collection was dispersed in the 1970s, with the British items going to the Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum, and the ethnographic collections sold.

Geography

Farnham parish is situated at the head of the valley of the small Gussage Brook, on the

dip slope A dip slope is a topographic (geomorphic) surface which slopes in the same direction, and often by the same amount, as the true dip or apparent dip of the underlying strata.Jackson, JA, J Mehl and K Neuendorf (2005) ''Glossary of Geology.'' Amer ...

of the hills of Cranborne Chase. It covers at an approximate altitude of 75 to 150 metres (250 to 500 feet) and geologically comprises

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 ...

, overlain by clay-with-flints in places. Measured directly, Farnham village is northeast of Blandford Forum, southeast 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 ...

, north-northwest of

Wimborne Minster Wimborne Minster (often referred to as Wimborne, ) is a market town in Dorset in South West England, and the name of the Church of England church in that town. It lies at the confluence of the River Stour and the River Allen, north of Poo ...

and southwest of

Salisbury Salisbury ( ) is a cathedral city in Wiltshire, England with a population of 41,820, at the confluence of the rivers Avon, Nadder and Bourne. The city is approximately from Southampton and from Bath. Salisbury is in the southeast of ...

Demography

In the 2011 census Farnham civil parish had 105 dwellings, 92 households and a population of 183. The population of the parish in the censuses between 1921 and 2001 is shown in the table below:

References

External links

{{authority control Villages in Dorset