Kingston is a small

village A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred ...

on the

Isle of Purbeck The Isle of Purbeck is a peninsula in Dorset, England. It is bordered by water on three sides: the English Channel to the south and east, where steep cliffs fall to the sea; and by the marshy lands of the River Frome and Poole Harbour to the no ...

in the county of

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 , ...

in southern

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 ...

Location

Kingston is situated about two miles south of

Corfe Castle Corfe Castle is a fortification standing above the village of the same name on the Isle of Purbeck peninsula in the English county of Dorset. Built by William the Conqueror, the castle dates to the 11th century and commands a gap in the P ...

and five miles west of Swanage. The village of Kingston is situated on a hill near Swyre Head, the highest point of the

Purbeck Hills The Purbeck Hills, also called the Purbeck Ridge or simply the Purbecks, are a ridge of chalk downs in Dorset, England. It is formed by the structure known as the Purbeck Monocline. The ridge extends from Lulworth Cove in the west to Old H ...

. The village is surrounded by woods and stands at a height of over 400 ft (120 Metres) above sea level and can be seen from far away. Kingston lies within the

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 ...

. The parish forms part of the Purbeck

local government district The districts of England (also known as local authority districts or local government districts to distinguish from unofficial city districts) are a level of subnational division of England used for the purposes of local government. As the st ...

History

The village is notable because it has two churches. Since the 12th century, up until 1877, Kingston had been a chapelry of Corfe Castle. A chapel stood on the east side of the village and it was served by the Rector of Corfe Castle or his assistant. In 1833 John Scott, the first Earl of Eldon, (later Lord Chancellor Eldon) replaced the chapel, at his own expense, with the present church building standing on the site. It was designed by his son-in-law, George Repton, and largely followed the ground plan of the replaced chapel, embodying most of the old building material. The church was surrounded by many graves. The first Earl and his wife are buried in the churchyard. The old church remained in use as the church hall for many years, later it became disused and is now a private residence. Many of the gravestones were transferred to a separate graveyard, while others were used for paving or broken up. The other church, St James's Church, is quite elaborate. It was built in 1874, completed in 1880, by the third

Earl of Eldon Earl of Eldon, in the County Palatine of Durham, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1821 for the lawyer and politician John Scott, 1st Baron Eldon, Lord Chancellor from 1801 to 1806 and again from 1807 to 1827. H ...

, the architect was

George Edmund Street George Edmund Street (20 June 1824 – 18 December 1881), also known as G. E. Street, was an English architect, born at Woodford in Essex. Stylistically, Street was a leading practitioner of the Victorian Gothic Revival. Though mainly an eccl ...

(1824–1881). St James's Church resembles a miniature of an early English cathedral. It is a cruciform building, with an apse, central tower and narthex, built throughout of Purbeck stone. Its tower dominates the landscape. The tower, which is somewhat disproportionate in size to the rest of the church, was made large enough to contain a full ring of eight bells, which were cast and installed by

John Taylor & Co John Taylor Bell Foundry (Loughborough) Limited, trading as John Taylor & Co and commonly known as Taylor's Bell Foundry, Taylor's of Loughborough, or simply Taylor's, is the world's largest working bell foundry. It is located in Loughborough, ...

., of Loughborough, in 1880. Two more bells were added in 2000 to make a ring of 10 bells.
Dove's Guide - Kingston St James Inside the clustered pillars and other details are made of Purbeck marble, quarried from Lord Eldon’s estate and worked by his own craftsmen. It did not replace the existing church immediately and in effect for over forty years it was the private chapel of the Eldon family. In April 1921 Lord Eldon conveyed the church and churchyard to the Church Commissioners. On 11 October 1921 they were consecrated by the Rt. Rev. Bishop Jocelyne. In January 1922 the new church substituted the old one by the Church Commissioners. There was also a

Wesleyan Wesleyan theology, otherwise known as Wesleyan– Arminian theology, or Methodist theology, is a theological tradition in Protestant Christianity based upon the ministry of the 18th-century evangelical reformer brothers John Wesley and Charle ...

Chapel, built in 1861, at the foot of Kingston Hill. The building still stands and now it is a private residence. The first school in Kingston was established on 24 September 1786. The school house for up to 100 children with residence for the school master, was erected in 1856, in memory of the Earl and Countess of Eldon, by their children. The old school house building is now a private residence. The village pub dates from 1787. Originally it was known as the ‘New Inn’. Its name was changed to the Eldon Arms in the early 19th century. After the Second World War the name was changed to The Scott Arms.

Gallery

Image:Kingston purbeck church to church.jpg, The tower of the old church Image:St james church tower kingston dorset.jpg, The tower of the new St James's Church

References

External links

{{authority control Villages in Dorset Corfe Castle