Wynford Eagle
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wynford Eagle is a hamlet and small parish in Dorset, anciently in the hundred of Tollerford, and now in the District of West Dorset, 1.4 miles to the south west of Maiden Newton and 7.5 miles to the north west of Dorchester.
The parish contains barrows, and Roman remains have been unearthed here, including mosaic pavements, which have led to its identification as a villa site.
The name Eagle commemorates the mediaeval lords, the family de l'Aigle (de Aquila).
The manor house, now Manor Farm, rebuilt in 1630, was from 1551 for many years the seat of the Puritan Sydenham family, to which belonged the distinguished physician Thomas Sydenham (1624 – 1689). The family lost the property in scandalous circumstances, the last Sydenham owner dying in Dorchester prison in 1709.
The estate was later acquired by the Best family, originally of Somerset, to whom in 1829 the village gave the title of Baron Wynford. The same family remain the principal landowners.
The church of Saint Lawrence, formerly a chapelry of the church of Toller Fratrum, and later annexed to it as a perpetual curacy, was rebuilt in 1842 but preserves a striking Norman tympanum, carved with two wyverns, probably intended to represent eagles, as a pun on the name of Matilda de l'Aigle, who presumably commissioned it, according to one of the two inscriptions; the other names the sculptor, Alvy or Alvi.
