Iwerne Minster ( ) is a village and civil parish in Dorset, England. It lies on the edge of the Blackmore Vale, approximately midway between the towns of Shaftesbury and Blandford Forum. The A350 main road between those towns passes through the edge of the village, just to the west. In the 2011 Census the civil parish had a population of 978.

History

Evidence of prehistoric human activity in the parish consists of five round barrows on the chalk escarpment in the east, and the site of an Iron Age settlement in the southwest, near Park Farm. The settlement, which takes the form of several pits, was excavated by General Pitt-Rivers in 1897; finds included a bronze brooch and silver coins. It was in Sixpenny Hundred and the lord and tenant-in-chief was Shaftesbury Abbey.

thumb|right|A gold [[noble (English coin)|half-noble coin of Edward III, dating to , found in Iwerne Minster in 2011]]

The early settlements in the parish—Iwerne and Preston—were sited by the River Iwerne. There may have been a third settlement contemporary with these, called Hulle. Pegg's Farm in the northwest of the parish is probably a secondary settlement; it was in existence by the early 14th century, though the present buildings are mostly 18th-century. he had a village hall, pump and shelter built, designed clothes for the village children and gave the village shops hand-painted signs, all resulting in the village having a "model" appearance. The estate was sold in 1929 and the mansion became Clayesmore School. From the 1940s until the 2000s, the school was the venue for the influential Evangelical Christian Iwerne camps.

thumb|The Chantry, a Grade II* listed building

There are 44 structures in the parish that are listed by Historic England for having particular historical or architectural interest. These include the parish church of St Mary (Grade I) and The Chantry (Grade II*). The village noticeboard was designed by Giles Gilbert Scott.

Geography

Iwerne Minster civil parish covers an area of at an elevation of about . From east to west the geology of the parish comprises chalk hills in the east, then upper greensand and gault, through to lower greensand around the Fontmell Brook in the northwest.

Measured directly, Iwerne Minster village is about north of Blandford Forum and south of Shaftesbury.

Governance

Iwerne Minster is in the northern part of the electoral ward called the Beacon Ward, which extends to includes Sutton Waldron, Fontmell Magna, Ashmore, Melburry Abbas & Cann, Twyford, Hartgrove, Compton Abbas, Todber, Stour Row, Stour Provost, East Orchard Shroton. The ward falls within the North Dorset parliamentary constituency and in the 2011 Census had a population of 4,818.

Demography

In the 2011 Census the civil parish had 326 dwellings, 298 households and a population of 978.

The population of the parish in the censuses between 1921 and 2001 is shown in the table below:

{| class="wikitable" style="width:800px;"

! colspan= "15" style="background:; color:" | <span style="margin-left: 80px; color: ">Census Population of Iwerne Minster Parish 1921—2001 <small>(except 1941)</small></span>

|- style="text-align:center;"

! style="background:; color: height:15px;"| Census

! style="background:;"| 1921

! style="background:;"| 1931

! style="background:;"| 1951

! style="background:;"| 1961

! style="background:;"| 1971

! style="background:;"| 1981

! style="background:;"| 1991

! style="background:;"| 2001

|- style="text-align:center;"

! style="background:; color: height:15px;"|Population

| style="background:#F2F2F2;"| 501

| style="background:#F2F2F2;"| 411

| style="background:#F2F2F2;"| 520

| style="background:#F2F2F2;"| 467

| style="background:#F2F2F2;"| 650

| style="background:#F2F2F2;"| 650

| style="background:#F2F2F2;"| 900

| style="background:#F2F2F2;"| 880

|- style="text-align:center;"

| colspan="15" style="background:#F2F2F2; color: text-align:center;"| <small>Source:Dorset County Council</small>

|}

In literature

Virginia Woolf and her husband spent five days in Iwerne Minster in April 1926; she wrote to her friend Raymond Mortimer about how, even though the appropriation of images of rural England for patriotic purposes made her "almost ashamed of England being so English", she and her husband had nevertheless been enchanted by the Dorset landscape in spring. It is possible that the name of the fictional village Bolney Minster in Woolf's 1941 novel Between the Acts was partly inspired by Iwerne.

A pre-Norman conquest Iwerne Minster is imagined, along with neighbouring village Shroton, in Julian Rathbone's 1997 novel The Last English King.

See also

  • Lord Wolverton
  • Talbot (dog)

References

  • Clayesmore School Website