Description
Wimborne Minster, a town and a parish in Dorsetshire. The town stands at the confluence of the rivers Allen and Stour, with a station on the L. & S.W.R., 110 miles from London, and 6 N of Poole, and a post, money order, and telegraph office. It is supposed to occupy the site of a Roman winter-station,was known to the Saxons as Winburnhamynstre, was taken in 901 by Edward the Elder from Ethelwald, and acquired in 705 a nunnery, which was destroyed by the Danes and refounded as a collegiate church by Edward the Confessor. It ranks nominally as a borough, is governed by an urban district council of twelve members, is a seat of petty sessions and county courts, presents a clean and airy appearance, and has two banks, three chief inns, three bridges over the Alien and two over the Stonr, a grand ancient cruciform minster, a free grammar school rebuilt in 1851, an endowed school and almshouses, an almshouse hospital, other charities, and a weekly market on Friday. The minster was founded for a dean, prebendaries, and other officers; is now managed, as to its temporalities, by twelve governors; had once ten altars and many relics, and was entirely covered with frescoes; measures 185 feet from E to W, and 97 feet along the transepts; comprises a very Early English nave 68 feet by 53, a Later English W tower 95 feet high, a Norman central tower 85 feet high, and a choir and a presbytery 36 and 30 feet-long; includes, beneath the choir, a crypt 29 1/2 feet long, 20 1/2 wide, and 10 high; was restored in 1854-55; and contains a brass of King Ethelred, an altar-tomb of the Marchioness of Exeter who died in 1558, an alabaster tomb of the Duke of Somerset who died in 1444, and some other interesting monuments. There are numerous good residences in and around the town. The parish comprises 13,393 acres; population of the civil parish, 6203; of the ecclesiastical, 5312. Badbury Hill, Cole Hill, Corfe Hill, and Pamp Hill command fine views, and the first is crowned by an interesting ancient camp, noticed in our article BADBURY. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Salisbury; net value, £220 with residence, in the gift of the Church Governors. The church of St John the Evangelist was built in 1876, and is a plain building of brick in the Early English style. The living is a vicarage; gross value, £90. There are Congregational, Baptist, and Wesleyan chapels. The Victoria Cottage Hospital was erected in 1887, and has ten beds.
Villages, Hamlets, &c.
Badbury, a tithing in Dorset. The tithing is in Wimborne-Minster parish, 4 1/2 miles NW of Wimborne. An ancient camp here, called Badbury Rings, crowns a naked hill; commands an extensive panoramic view; is planted with firs; consists of three concentric ramparts, each with an outer ditch, the outermost a mile in circumference; occurs on the line of a Roman road to Old Sarum; seems to have been originally British, but to have been afterwards occupied by both the Romans and the Saxons; and was held by Edward the Elder after the death of Alfred the Great.
Holt, formerly a chapelry in Wimborne Minster parish, Dorsetshire, 3 1/2 miles NE of Wimbome Minster station on the L. & S.W.R., with a post office under Wimbome; money order and telegraph office, Wimbome. It includes the hamlet of Petersham. Population, 815. The surface was formerly forest. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Salisbury; gross value, £240 with residence. The church has been rebuilt.
Kingston Lacy takes its name from its ancient lords the Lacys, Earls of Lincoln, who held it together with Shapwick and Blandford. It lies about two miles north-west from Wimborne Minster, and has for a long period been the seat of the family of Bankes, whose mansion-house stands here nearly in the centre of a nobly wooded park. The house was originally built by Sir Ralph Bankes, commencing immediately after the Restoration in 1660, on the supposed site of a palace of the West-Saxon Kings, under the superintendence of John Webb architect, after designs bequeathed by Inigo Jones. The original plan of the handsome and well-proportioned suite of reception rooms and principal arrangement of the interior remain nearly the same, but the whole of the exterior, which was formerly of red brick with stone quoins, was faced over with Caen stone, and embellished with decorations and details in the purest Italian style under the care of the late William John Bankes, esq. who, commencing his extensive improvements and alterations immediately upon his accession to the property in 1834 (with the assistance of the then rising architect of the day the late Sir Charles Barry, R. A.) did not live to see the completion of a work which, fully carried out, may now be ranked among the purest specimens of this style of architecture in the kingdom. The magnificent staircase of white Carrara marble, 30 feet in width, mounting from the entrance-hall to the second floor, with all the rich art-treasures with which it is profusely decorated and furnished, the bronze vases on highly-wrought pedestals, statues by the late Baron Marochetti, exquisite groups of fruits and game, and relievo's in Italian stone and marbles, the rare and very perfect Grecian antique candelabrum which terminates the upper flight of the balustrade of variegated marbles, are all results of the foreign travels and unequalled taste and genius of the same member of the family who in his day deservedly held a place in the very first rank of the acknowledged connoisseurs and dilettanti of this country.
The illustrious James, Duke of Ormond rented Kingston Lacy for some years, during the minority of the successor of Sir Ralph Bankes, and died in the house 1688.
Leigh, a tithing, with a village, in Wimborne Minster parish, Dorsetshire, 1 mile E of Wimborne Minster. There was anciently a chapel.
