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Charborough
Dorset

St Mary's Church, Charborough
Location
Grid reference: SY925978
Location: 50°46’50"N, 2°6’24"W
Data
Local Government
Council: Dorset

Charborough is an historic former parish and manor in south-eastern Dorset which survives today as a hamlet. Charborough stands beside an affluent of the River Stour, six miles west of Wimborne Minster,[1] and is today part of the parish of Morden.

The surviving former parish church is dedicated to St Mary.[2]

The centrepiece of the hamlet is the manor house; Charborough House.

St Mary's Church

The mediæval church of the former parish of Charborough stood immediately south-west of the manor house (in its latest form Charborough House). The mediæval church was demolished and rebuilt on the same site in 1775 in the Gothic Revival style,[3] by Thomas Erle Drax, and dedicated to St Mary, and was remodelled in 1837 by John Sawbridge Erle-Drax who in 1826 had married the heiress Sarah Frances Erle-Drax of Charborough,[4] and had assumed her surname and arms.

The church faces almost due east, as is usual, whilst the front façade of the house faces north-east. It is a Grade II* listed building, but the listing relates only to its furnishings.[2] Today it serves as a mausoleum and burial place for the Drax family, the functioning parish church being at Morden.

Above the door of a small arched building nearby is an inscription, dated 1686, commemorating the meeting of the "Patriotic individuals who concerted the plan of the Revolution in 1688".

Charborough Tower

Charborough Tower

Charborough Tower is a Grade II* listed octagonal folly tower dating from 1790, extended in 1839 into a five-storey building. It stands on a hill south-east of the house (50°46’39"N, 2°6’6"W)[5] with the vista of a triumphal way running between them.[6]

Charborough with its tower is the model for "Welland House" in the novel Two on a Tower by Thomas Hardy.[7]

References

  1. Wilson, John M., Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales, London, 1870
  2. 2.0 2.1 National Heritage List 1120553: Parish Church of Saint Mary, Charborough
  3. Listed building text
  4. www.historyofparliamentonline.org
  5. National Heritage List 1120555: Charborough Tower
  6. Nikolaus Pevsner: The Buildings of England: Dorset, 1972 Penguin Books ISBN 978-0-300-09598-2pages 139–141
  7. Letter from Hardy to Bertram Windle, transcribed by Birgit Plietzsch