Melcombe Horsey is a civil parish in the county of Dorset in South West England. It contains the small settlements of Melcombe Bingham, Bingham's Melcombe and Higher Melcombe, the last being the site of the deserted village of Melcombe Horsey. In the 2011 census the parish had a population of 141. The house is believed to date from the early 16th century. It was substantially restored and remodelled in 1893-4 by Evelyn Hellicar (1862-1929)
Melcombe Bingham
Melcombe Bingham is a village in central Dorset, England, situated approximately northeast of Dorchester, southeast of Sherborne and west-southwest of Blandford Forum. It is surrounded by chalk hills of the Dorset Downs, though the village itself is sited in a basin of greensand and gault.
The names of places in this area are frequently muddled, with published sources providing different information. Melcombe Bingham is the name of the current village, though in the fields near the church there is an abandoned medieval village called Bingham's Melcombe, and this latter name is sometimes used to describe the church and its adjacent manor. Writing in 1980, writer Roland Gant stated "whichever form I use, I always find that the person to whom I am speaking uses the other". Either way, the name of both the civil and ecclesiastical parishes is Melcombe Horsey.