Oborne is a village in north west Dorset, England, situated in the Blackmore Vale close to the border with Somerset, on the A30 road adjacent to the town of Sherborne. The village has a population of 115 (As of 2001[update]).[1] Oborne is in the group parish of Yeo Head together with the three villages of Castleton, Goathill and Poyntington. This parish is within the district of West Dorset.[2]
A new parish church, designed by William Slater, was built on a fresh site in 1862. The volume on Dorset in the Buildings of England series by John Newman and Nikolaus Pevsner describe this as having "nave with bellcote, chancel and apse ... Slater's and Carpenter's typical single and twin lancets with pointed-trefoiled cusping."[3] The remains of the Old St Cuthbert's Church are half a mile south, on the other side of the A30. Only the chancel remains. Oborne had been given to Sherborne Abbey by the Saxon King Edgar in the 10th century and it remained a 'chapel of ease' to the abbey until the Dissolution in 1539.[4] Above the lintels of windows on the east and north sides are inscriptions entreating prayers for the good standing of Abbot John Myer (1533) and Sacristan John Dunster of Sherborne.[4] The interior of the chancel contains a 17th century pulpit and communion rails as well as a piscina and font from the former church at North Wootton. Nothing now remains of the medieval nave that was demolished in the 1860s. The chancel lay neglected until the 1930s, when a new incumbent began to restore it, taking advice from A. R. Powys (secretary of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings) who was also responsible for the restoration of the church at Winterborne Tomson, Dorset.[5]
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