Marshwood

including Marshalsea

Church of St Mary - Marshwood
  © Copyright Chris Downer and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence
St Mary's Church, Marshwood

Marshwood is a village and civil parish in west Dorset, situated on the northern edge of the Marshwood Vale approximately 5.5 miles northeast of Lyme Regis. The village stands on a line of hills between Birdsmoorgate and Lambert's Castle, and from the churchyard the whole Vale can be viewed to the south, with the coastal hills and the English Channel beyond. Marshwood has shrunk to a parish church, public house and school away from its main community, now around Marshalsea hamlet, which lies a mile away towards Crewkerne. Marshalsea Estate was provided with a 120-seat Congregational Chapel in 1832.

Marshwood is surrounded by (from north, clockwise) the parishes of Bettiscombe, Pilsdon, Stoke Abbott, Netherbury, Symondsbury, Whitchurch Canonicorum, Hawkchurch, Thorncombe and Broadwindsor. Figures published from the 2011 census are for Marshwood parish combined with the small neighbouring parish of Bettiscombe: the combined population was 346.

Marshwood Castle was once a motte-and-bailey fortified house built by William de Mandeville on being created Baron of Marshwood by King John in 1205. What little evidence remains can be found near Lodgehouse Farm, 'Marshwood is one of Dorset’s vanished medieval castles and one of the most forgotten' [Rev. R. Grosvenor Bartelot, 1944]. The original church for the Parish of Marshwood was a Norman chapel enclosed within the moat at Marshwood Castle. For approximately 200 years Marshwood was an outlying parish attached to Whitchurch Canonicorum

The church of St Mary's was built in 1840-41 on land donated by Charles Benjamin Tucker, and was dedicated on 26 September 1841. By 1884 it was in need of extensive restoration. The nave and chancel were restored by G. Vialls, only the tower is earlier. The village school was opened in 1842 and covers the catchment areas of Marshwood, Pilsdon, Bettiscombe, and Blackdown Ward of Broadwindsor. It was one of the earliest schools in Dorset. The thatched Bottle Inn hosts the annual ‘World Stinging Nettle Eating Competition’.

Bottle Inn - Marshwood
  © Copyright Chris Downer and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

The new Online Parish Clerk (OPC) for Marshwood is Ruth Hawkins
Please place the words 'OPC Marshwood' as your subject for e-mails (click on Ruth's name above to generate a pre-addressed email)