Woodnesborough ( ) is a village in the

Dover District Dover is a local government district in Kent, England. The port town of Dover is its administrative centre. It was formed on 1 April 1974 by the merger of the boroughs of Deal, Dover, and Sandwich along with Dover Rural District and most of East ...

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

, England, west of

Sandwich A sandwich is a food typically consisting of vegetables, sliced cheese or meat, placed on or between slices of bread, or more generally any dish wherein bread serves as a container or wrapper for another food type. The sandwich began as a po ...

. The population taken at the 2011 census included Coombe as well as Marshborough, and totalled 1,066. There is a

Grade II* 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 I ...

Anglican church dedicated to St Mary the Virgin.

History

Its name is first attested 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 ...

of 1086 as ''Golles-Wanesberge'', with forms like ''Wodnesbeorge'' being attested a little later, around 1100, and as 'Wodnesbergh' in 1484. The name is believed to have meant ''Woden's hill/mound'' (Old English ''Wōdnes burh'') after

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons were a cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo-Saxons happened wit ...

god

Woden Odin (; from non, Óðinn, ) is a widely revered god in Germanic paganism. Norse mythology, the source of most surviving information about him, associates him with wisdom, healing, death, royalty, the gallows, knowledge, war, battle, victor ...

(the English cognate of the Norse

Odin Odin (; from non, Óðinn, ) is a widely revered god in Germanic paganism. Norse mythology, the source of most surviving information about him, associates him with wisdom, healing, death, royalty, the gallows, knowledge, war, battle, victory, ...

, known in

Proto-Germanic Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. Proto-Germanic eventually developed from pre-Proto-Germanic into three Germanic br ...

as Wodanaz); though some of the spellings also suggest *''wænnes beorg'' ('hill of the mound'), from Old English ''wenn'', ''wænn'' 'a tumour, blister, mound'. At the end of the eighteenth century there is a record of a burial mound beside the church, but the settlement also boasts a hill which could equally well have been described as a ''burh'' in Old English. The village was once served by

East Kent Light Railway The East Kent Light Railway was part of the Colonel Stephens group of cheaply built rural light railways in England. Holman Fred Stephens was engineer from its inception, subsequently becoming director and manager. The line ran from Sheph ...

and can now be reached by bus services from Sandwich. There was also a post office, which closed at the end of January 2008.

Listed buildings

St Mary the Blessed Virgin Church: the village's 13th-century Anglican church is

, with 14th-century alterations and a Victorian restoration in 1884 by

Ewan Christian Ewan Christian (1814–1895) was a British architect. He is most frequently noted for the restorations of Southwell Minster and Carlisle Cathedral, and the design of the National Portrait Gallery. He was Architect to the Ecclesiastical Commiss ...

. The building is made of flint and rubble and boasts an unusual

ogee An ogee ( ) is the name given to objects, elements, and curves—often seen in architecture and building trades—that have been variously described as serpentine-, extended S-, or sigmoid-shaped. Ogees consist of a "double curve", the combinat ...

cupola In architecture, a cupola () is a relatively small, most often dome-like, tall structure on top of a building. Often used to provide a lookout or to admit light and air, it usually crowns a larger roof or dome. The word derives, via Italian, f ...

, a design feature shared by nearby Sandwich's

St Peter's Church St. Peter's Church, Old St. Peter's Church, or other variations may refer to: * St. Peter's Basilica in Rome Australia * St Peter's, Eastern Hill, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia * St Peters Church, St Peters, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia ...

.British Listed Buildings
retrieved 20 July 2013 Woodnesborough Village Hall: the building, a former school, dates from the 19th century. Sundial north of the Church of St Mary the Virgin: dating from 1738 with the inscription "Woodnesborough W IB RG 1738". Tomb Chest to Harrison family: situated about 2 metres W of Church of St Mary, and dating from 1777. Summerfield House: an early 18th-century house with red brick and plain tiled roof. Barn about 20m E of Summerfield House: a 17th-century barn now converted to a garage.

References

External links

Villages in Kent Dover District Civil parishes in Kent {{Kent-geo-stub