6 9 



Magna were all royal manors. Kingston, which formerly included 

 Corfe and the knoll on which the castle was afterwards built, came 

 into the possession of Shaftesbury Abbey, and it is on record that 

 William the Conqueror obtained, by exchange, from the Abbey, a 

 piece of land in Kingston. Possibly this land formed the site of 

 the castle. 



Names with the suffixes -ton, -worth and -ham are plentiful. 

 All are more or less of interest, but in a condensed paper of this 

 description mention can be made of only a few. Athelhampton 

 formerly belonged to iEthelhelm, one of the Saxon Earls of Dorset, 

 who in 837, commanded the men of the county in an engagement 

 with the Danes at Portland, where he lost his life. Warbarrow is 

 a corruption of Worth Barrow. Hammoon is an abbreviation of 

 Ham Mohun, the place having been given to William do Moion who 

 came to England, with forty-seven knights, to assist the Conqueror, 

 for which service he was rewarded with eleven manors in this county 

 and fifty-five others in Devon and Somerset. 



To increase the revenues of many of the religious houses grants 

 of land were made in Saxon times. Winterbourne Abbas and many 

 other places were given to Cerne Abbey, Stoke Abbas and Bradford 

 Abbas to Sherborne Abbey, Shaftesbury received Compton Abbas 

 and Melbury Abbas, while Buckland Abbas was bestowed on 

 Glastonbury. 



It will be as well to record here the history of the name 

 Whitchurch Canonicorum. The place in Alfred's time was called 

 Whitchurch after St. White, a martyr registered in the Roman 

 Calendar by the name of Saint Candida, and in whose honour a 

 church had been built there. In 1065 the Canons of Wells received 

 the revenues of a part of the manor, but before 12 15, either by gift 

 or purchase, the church passed to the Bishop and Chapter at Sarum, 

 In the reign of Henry III commissioners were appointed to settle 

 the disposition of the revenues, and the Chapter of Wells was 

 awarded one moiety and that at Sarum the other. 



Most of the Saxon names survived the Danish invasions and 

 there are few names belonging to the latter period. Swanage 

 (Swain's wic) and Tolpuddle are the only two of note. Tolpuddle 

 was the property of Tola, the wife of Orcus, the founder of the 

 religious settlement at Abbotsbury and a great officer under Canute. 

 Tola naturally gave the manor to Abbotsbury, to which place it 

 belonged when Domesday Book was compiled. 



The Norman Conquest brought a change of ownership in the 

 case of a great many places in Dorset, William giving the various 

 manors to Norman religious houses or his Norman favourites. In 

 1064 William had founded the Abbey and Church of St. Stephen at 

 Caen and to it, after the Conquest, he gave Winterbourne Came 

 (corruption of Caen), Bettescombe, Bincombe, Burton Bradstock, 

 and Frampton. The Priory of Le Vast, near Boulogne, received 

 Winterbourne Monkton, the Monastery of St. Mary Villaris, in the 

 Diocese of Rouen was given Friar Waddon, Stour Provost became 

 the property of the Nunnery of Preaux or Preveaux, in Normandy, 



