Litton Cheney

DIRECTORY ENTRIES

These extracts have been transcribed from actual directories or photocopies of them.

1865         1880         1895          1935

Description from the 1895 Kelly's 

Litton Cheney is a parish near the Bredy river and the road from Bridport to Dorchester, 7 miles east-south-east from Bridport station on the Great Western railway and 10 west from Dorchester, in the western division of the county.  Uggescombe hundred, Bridport Union and County Court district, Dorchester petty sessional division, rural deanery of Bridport (Abbotsbury portion), archdeaconry of Dorset and diocese of Salisbury.  The church of St Mary is an ancient stone building, in the Perpendicular style, in good preservation, and consists of chancel, nave, transepts, south porch and a lofty embattled western tower, containing 6 bells and a clock: the chancel arch is panelled like those of Sherborne: the nave is wide, and the roof, formerly barrell-shaped, has been altered to an open pointed roof: the font is formed of the inverted base of a Norman circular pier; the pulpit has traceried perpendicular panels: there is a monument to George Dawbeny, of Gorwell, who died in 1612: and brasses to Anna Henvill and Margaret Henvill, d. 1681: and to Ralph Henvill of Looke, gent. d. 9 Dec 1644:  there are 220 sittings.  The register dates from the year 1624.  The living is a rectory, average tithe rent- charge £485, gross yearly value £650, net £560, with 109 acres of glebe and residence, in the gift of and held since 1893 by the Rev. Frederick William Crick M.A. of Pembroke College, Cambridge.  Here is a Primitive Methodist chapel.  There is no manor.  The principal landowners are Henry Brinsley Sheridan esq. And Mrs Legge, of Court House.  The soil is chalk; subsoil, gravel. The chief crops are wheat, barley and some land in pasture.  The area is 3,817 acres; rateable value, £3,671; the population in 891 was 427.

Nether Combe is a hamlet one mile west : Stancombe is a hamlet 1½  miles north; Higher Eggardon, a hamlet 4 miles north, where there are the remains of an extensive Roman encampment, was by Local Government Board Order transferred to Askerswell, March 24^th 1884: Ashley, 1½  miles, and Gorwell, 2 miles south-east, have been transferred to Longbredy.
Sexton,  George Fry. 

Post Office.-Robert Bligdon, sub-postmaster.  Letters from Dorchester arrive at 8.30 a.m.; dispatched at 6 p.m.; sundays, arrive at 8.30 a.m.; dispatched 10.30 a.m.  Postal orders are issued here, but not paid.

The nearest money order office is at Abbotsbury & telegraph office at Littlebredy. 

Parochial school (mixed), endowed with £30 yearly from Thorner's charity, with residence for master, built in 1878, for 80 children; average attendance, 63; Wm. Stephen Miller, master. 

Carriers. 

George Gale,  Dorchester, wed. & sat.

Charles Webber,  Bridport, wed. & sat.

Bligdon & Pitcher,  Dorchester, sat.