Over Compton (St. Michael)

St. Michael's Church, Over Compton, Dorset (May 2010)

St. Michael's Church can be found next to Compton House, a Tudor-style mansion designed by the younger John Pinch of Bath. The church itself has a fantastic Perpendicular west tower, with what Newman and Pevsner call Somerset tracery. The porch and nave have wagon roofs, but the most interesting things about the interior are the two-decker pulpit (Jacobean), hatchments and memorials, the last including a very large statue of Robert Goodden dating from the 1820s. It is a short walk across fields away from its neighbour Nether Compton.

Sources:

• John Hutchins, The history and antiquities of the County of Dorset, 3rd ed., edited by William Shipp and James Whitworth Hodson, Westminster: J.B. Nichols and Sons, 1861-1873.
• John Newman and Nikolaus Pevsner, The buildings of England: Dorset. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972, pp. 308-309.
• Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England), An inventory of historical monuments in the County of Dorset, Vol. 1, West Dorset. London: HMSO, 1952, pp. 102-103.

Bells:

Four; Treble dated 1618; 2nd unhung and cracked, 17th century, uninscribed; 3rd from the Salisbury foundry, early 16th century, inscribed "Intersede pia pro nobis Virgo" 4th dated 1596.

St. Michael's Church in its parkland setting, Over Compton, Dorset (May 2010)

To Dorset Churches Index Page

Maintained by Michael Day, Last updated: 9 June 2010.