Monument record MDO33255 - Medieval settlement, Wakeham, Isle of Portland

It has been suggested that Wakeham was the primary settlement of Portland in the medieval period. Around 1540 Leland <2> noted that were about 80 houses on the Isle of Portland, but only one street of houses, located close to to the castle and church and where the 'personage' [parsonage] was located. The settlement can be identified as Wakeham, which extends north from the sites of St Andrew's church and Rufus Castle and incorporates the 'Parsonage House'.

Wakeham was first recorded as a place-name in 1608 <3> and was evidently a settlement of some status in Portland in the seventeenth century. The RCHME survey <1> records several substantial seventeenth-century buildings there and a former dovecote, possibly of similar date, is located on the west side of the principal street (MWX3599). A seventeenth-century house at the north end may have been constructed by the Governor of Portland as an official residence (MWX385).

<1> Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England), 1970, An Inventory of Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset, Volume II (South East) Part 2, 247 (Monograph). SDO149.

<2> Leland, J, Itinerary, Smith 1907, pt 3, 252 (Monograph). SDO10304.

<3> Mills, A D, 1977, The place-names of Dorset, Part 1: the Isle of Purbeck, the hundreds of Rowbarrow, Hasler, Winfrith, Culliford Tree, Bere Regis, Barrow, Puddletown St George, 220 (Monograph). SWX972.

Record last edited

Aug 22 2024 7:56PM