Whitchurch Canonicorum

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Whitchurch Canonicorum or Whitechurch Canonicorum is a village in south-west Dorset, England, situated in the Marshwood Vale five miles northwest of Bridport.

The village has a population of 647 (2001); 10.1% of dwellings are second homes. It is also the burial place of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov.

The church is noteworthy as containing the only shrine in Britain to have survived the Reformation with its relics intact, apart from that of Saint Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey. The saint in question is the somewhat obscure Saint Wite (latinised as Saint Candida) after whom the church and the village are named. Some have trued to identify her as the Breton Saint Gwen Teirbron. However a local tradition considers her to be a Saxon woman, probably a hermit or anchoress martyred by Danes in the course of a raid in the year 831^[1].