Stoke_Abbott
Stoke Abbott
Human settlement in England
Stoke Abbott is a village and civil parish in west Dorset, England, 2 miles (3.2 km) west of Beaminster. In 2013 the estimated population of the parish was 190.[1]
The author Ralph Wightman, agriculturist, broadcaster, and native of Dorset, described the village as "a beautiful place of deep lanes, orchards and old houses, with a church of quiet charm",[2] and, in a similar vein, Sir Frederick Treves in 1906 considered it "as pretty a village as any in Dorset".[3]
On Waddon Hill to the northwest of the village are the remains of earthworks of an early settlement, consisting of a low bank 9 metres (30 ft) wide and traces of a ditch, though historic quarrying around the hill may have destroyed more. Mid-1st-century Roman and Romano-British military artefacts were found on the hill's southern slopes in 1876–1878.[4] In the Domesday Book in 1086 the village was recorded as Stoche[5] and had 32 households.[6]
The parish church of St Mary the Virgin has Norman origins but has been altered and added to over the centuries. The 12th-century font is notable.[4] The poet William Crowe was rector here between 1782 and 1786; at the end of his incumbency he published his most well known piece, Lewesdon Hill, about the hill to the west of the village.[7] The Very Rev Hedley Robert Burrows (1887–1983), who later became Archdeacon of Winchester and then Dean of Hereford, was incumbent at Stoke Abbott for a time.
