Place record MDO43233 - Winfrith Newburgh parish

Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England), 1970, An Inventory of Historical Monuments in the County of Dorset, Volume II (South East) Part 2, 376-380 (Monograph). SDO149.

‘Winfrith Newburgh is a roughly rectangular parish of 5,015 acres lying across the S. edge of the S. Dorset Heath 7½ miles W.S.W. of Wareham. The whole of the S. two-thirds of the parish is on Chalk and slopes gently N. from about 500 ft. to 150 ft. above O.D. This gradual slope is etched into a series of deeply cut dry valleys all draining N. Beyond the Chalk are narrow outcrops of Reading Beds and London Clay which in turn give way to extensive heathland on Bagshot Beds and River Gravels and not rising above 170 ft. Until recent times the parish extended further N. to the river Frome and N.E. to include East Burton, but this is now in the parish of Wool.
Winfrith Newburgh village, the original settlement, lies at the junction of the Chalk and Reading Beds along a small N.-flowing stream, and extensive remains of its former open fields lie in the Chalk valleys to the S. Other small settlements further N. are probably earlier than their first documentary references. These are East Fossil, now East Fossil Dairy (1456), East Knighton (1279) and West Burton (1210), all on the edge of the heathland near the Dorchester-Wool road, and Broomhill (1227) in the extreme N. of the parish on the banks of a small tributary of the river Frome. East Burton (1210) on the S. bank of the Frome, and now in Wool parish, was another.
The parish church and Winfrith Fields Farm are the principal monuments.’

Record last edited

Apr 7 2026 12:32PM