Description
Cattistock, a parish in Dorsetshire, on the Frome, 1 1/2 mile from Maiden-Newton station on the G.W.R., and 5 miles WSW of Cerne-Abbas. It has a post and money order office under Dorchester; telegraph office, Maiden-Newton. Acreage, 8073; population, 520. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Salisbury; value, £879 with residence. The church is good, contains a beautiful peal of bells, and a magnificent clock with Westminster chimes. A handsome tower, 108 feet, designed by Sir Gilbert Scott, was completed in 1878. Thirty-three new bells were presented to the church in 1882, forming one of the most perfect carillons that ever passed out of the foundry of the famous Severan Van Aerschodt of Louvain. There is a Methodist chapel.
Parish Church
The church of SS. Peter and Paul, repaired and nearly rebuilt at the entire cost of the Rev. H. Still, a former rector, is of stone, in the Early English, Decorated and Perpendicular styles, and consists of chancel, nave, aisles, transepts, north porch and a massive embattled tower with pinnacles, erected at the cost of the family of the Rev. K.H. Barnes, a former rector, and containing a superb carillon of 35 bells, cast at Louvain by the celebrated founder Van Aerschodt, and a clock with Westminster chimes: the seven windows in the chancel, the large west window, three in the south aisle and one in the baptistery are all stained: there are 276 sittings.
The register dates from the year 1558.
