Kington Magna is a village and civil parish in the Blackmore Vale area of Dorset, England, about southwest of Gillingham.
History
The name Kington Magna means 'great King's Town'; it derives from cyne- (later cyning) and tūn, Old English for 'royal estate or manor'. The affix magna, Latin for great, was added to distinguish it from Little Kington, a smaller settlement nearby. In 1086 in the Domesday Book these were recorded together in three entries as Chintone, which had 27 households and a total taxable value of 13 geld units, and was in the hundred of Gillingham. In 1243 it was recorded as Magna Kington. The main village is sited on the slopes of a Corallian limestone hill, overlooking the flat Oxford Clay valley of the small River Cale, which drains into the Stour. In 1906 Sir Frederick Treves wrote in his Highways & Byways in Dorset that the village "straggles down hill like a small mountain stream." 169 households and a population of 389.