Tincleton

St John the Evangelist Church, Tincleton
All photographs courtesy of Kim Parker, ©2010

Tincleton  is a small village surrounded by meadows in the flat open valley of the River Frome, five miles east of Dorchester. The name Tincleton is a corruption of the Old English "Tin la Ton", which means "farm in a valley". In the Domesday Book it was valued at twenty shillings. The population of Tincleton was 142 in 2001, compared to 145 in 1901.

Consecrated by the Bishop of Salisbury in November 1850, the church of St John the Evangelist at Tincleton dates from 1849. It was designed by Benjamin Ferrey in the architectural style of the thirteenth century and built of limestone rubble with dressings of Ham Hill stone. An elegant double bell-cote houses two bells - the lighter one of which is the same age as the church and was cast at the Whitechapel foundry, while the heavier one is of unknown origin – and a mechanical clock. The old church on a more southerly site was demolished when the new one was built but many of its fixtures, including a Norman font, were incorporated into the new church. Behind the altar there is an elaborate alabaster reredos from 1889, while at the other end of the church there is an organ of similar date paid for by donations from the congregation.

Tudor-style Clyffe House, half a mile to the northeast of the church, was also designed by Benjamin Ferrey. Built in 1842 for Charles Porcher, it replaced an older manor house, which had been the birthplace of the controversial seventeenth century lawyer and politician, Clement Walker. He was a Member of Parliament and, under the pseudonym Theodorus Verax ("lover of truth"), author of books such as, "Anarchia Anglicana" and "The History of Independency", the third volume of which was entitled: "High Court of Justice or Cromwell's New Slaughter House". Walker's open criticism of Oliver Cromwell on the one hand, and his willingness to come to terms with King Charles I on the other, lead to his expulsion from Parliament through "Pride's Purge" in 1648 and his imprisonment in the Tower of London, where he died in 1651 without ever having been brought to trial. Paradoxically, this man who appears to have availed himself of every opportunity to publicly express his opinion, terrorised his wife and forbade her to speak with her friends unless he was present.

Clyffe Farm, Tincleton

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