Sydling St Nicholas is a village and civil parish in Dorset within southwest England. The parish is northwest of the county town Dorchester and covers most of the valley of the small Sydling Water in the chalk hills of the Dorset Downs. The parish has an area of and includes the hamlet of Up Sydling in the north.
Sydling St Nicholas village was recorded in the 11th-century Domesday Book, though evidence of much earlier human occupation has been found in the surrounding area. Over the last thousand years the village has been owned by Milton Abbey, Sir Francis Walsingham and Winchester College.
The whole of Sydling St Nicholas parish lies within the Dorset National Landscape area. In addition, parts of the parish lie within the Hog Cliff National Nature Reserve and the Cerne and Sydling Downs Special Area of Conservation.
In the 2011 census the parish had a population of 414. and refer to the hills around the village. In the 10th century the village was recorded as Sidelyng and in the Domesday Book of 1086 it was Sidelince. The second part of the name comes from the dedicated saint of the parish church. though in pre-Roman times human habitation was confined to the hilltops. about 0.75 miles (1.25 km) to the south-east of the current village. Remains of Celtic field systems have been found in the north and west of the parish. Saxon settlers arrived in the valley in the 7th or 8th century; In 933 AD land was given to the monks at Milton Abbey, who provided the village with a priest. In subsequent centuries the village has been owned by Sir Francis Walsingham, Secretary of State to Queen Elizabeth, and by Winchester College.
Sir John Smith, 1st Baronet, lived in Sydling St Nicholas and the Smith family remained a leading local family through the 18th and 19th centuries, with a number of memorials in the parish church.
Sydling St Nicholas once constituted a liberty, containing only the parish itself.
Geography
Sydling St Nicholas is sited in the valley of Sydling Water, a tributary of the River Frome. The valley is one of several roughly parallel valleys which cut into the dip slope of the Dorset Downs, a line of chalk hills that span the centre of the county. The village lies at an altitude of and the surrounding chalk hills rise to at Gore Hill to the north. The hills and all of the civil parish lie within the Dorset National Landscape area. In the south of the parish and within the Cerne and Sydling Downs Special Area of Conservation are two parts of the three-part Hog Cliff National Nature Reserve (the third part lies within the neighbouring parish of Maiden Newton).
Measured directly, Sydling St Nicholas village is NW of Dorchester, ENE of Bridport and SSE of Yeovil. The A37 Dorchester-Yeovil main road runs along the top of the hills about to the west of the village.
Sydling Water
Sydling Water is a chalk stream that rises just to the north of Sydling St Nicholas in the hamlet of Up Sydling. The stream divides upon entering the village, and many cottages are reached across small bridges. The stream used to flow along the High Street in an open course, In 1905 Sir Frederick Treves described the village as "the most charming in the district". The south aisle has settled since construction, so the south wall is buttressed and has only a small door. The church is a Grade I listed building.
Next to the church are Court House and Court Farm. Court House is the village manor house and was the venue for meetings of the local Court leet. Court Farm has a large Elizabethan tithe barn which overlooks the churchyard; it was built in 1590 and constructed from flint, with stone buttresses and oak roof beams. In his 18th-century History and Antiquities of the County of Dorset, John Hutchins stated that one of the beams in the barn was inscribed with 'L.V.W. 1590', the initials being those of Lady Ursula Walsingham,
In literature and film
thumb|240px|Looking ENE from Combe Hill across the Sydling valley towards Eastfield Hill and Cowdown Hill.
Thomas Hardy names the village as Sidlinch or Broad Sidlinch in his story 'The Grave by the Handpost' (1897)
and 'Brodesedelyng', in a legal record, in Latin, dated 1440, where John Tidde was a clerk.
The parish church was used as a location in the 1967 film adaptation of Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd, in a scene that involved water pouring from one of the church's gargoyles onto the grave of Fanny Robin.
The Sydling valley is used as a location within Geoffrey Household's 1939 novel Rogue Male.
Demography
In the 2011 census Sydling St Nicholas parish had a population of 414 The average age of the population was 46.6, compared to 39.3 for England as a whole; 26.1% of residents were 65 years old or older, compared to 16.4% for England as a whole.
The historic population of Sydling St Nicholas parish from 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 Sydling St Nicholas 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;"| 346
| style="background:#F2F2F2;"| 341
| style="background:#F2F2F2;"| 383
| style="background:#F2F2F2;"| 338
| style="background:#F2F2F2;"| 320
| style="background:#F2F2F2;"| 320
| style="background:#F2F2F2;"| 380
| style="background:#F2F2F2;"| 400
|- style="text-align:center;"
| colspan="15" style="background:#F2F2F2; color: text-align:center;"| <small>Source:Dorset County Council</small>
|}
See also
- List of liberties in Dorset.