Longburton

Longburton St James the Great Church
© OPC Project 2010

Longburton is a parish in the hundred, union and division of Sherborne, 3 miles South East by South from Sherborne, and 14 miles North of Dorchester. The village is a ribbon development along the old turnpike road from Dorchester to Sherborne in the western end of the Blackmore Vale. Its neighbouring villages are Castleton, Folke, Holnest, Leweston, and North Wootton. The dominant industry is dairy farming, other local industries have included stone-quarrying and more recently land has been given over to orchards

The church is dedicated to St James the Great. It was originally a chapelry of Sherborne Minster. Most of it was built in the fifteenth century although the square tower was built of local rubble with freestone dressings. about two hundred years earlier. The tower's upper storey with the crenellated parapet was added as part of the main fifteenth century development.

The seventeenth century houses are traditional two-storeyed Dorset cottages, and some retain their thatched roofs. The southern extent of the village is marked on opposite sides of the road by the Methodist chapel built in 1878 and the Temperance Hall built in 1907.

The population in 1861 was 336 (435 in 2001), and the parish comprised 1025 acres. The present form of the name as a single word seems to have arisen in the late nineteenth century.

The Reverend Charles Herbert Mayo [1845-1929] vicar of Longburton [1872-1912] and son of Folke's rector, William Mayo, devoted his life to studying local history and encouraging others to do the same. He published many books and articles on the subject including his masterpiece the Bibliotheca Dorstiensis [1885], which even today remains the standard reference work on Dorset's antiquarian books.

Rose & Crown, Longburton
© OPC Project 2010

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