Description
Cerne Abbas, a small town and a parish in Dorsetshire. The town stands on the river Cerne, 5 miles NE from Maiden Newton railway station, and 7 1/2 N by W of Dorchester. It includes four or five streets, is a seat of petty sessions, and has a workhouse, a church, two dissenting chapels, and some remains of a Benedictine abbey. It has a post, money order, and telegraph office under Dorchester. Acreage, 3140; population, 834. The abbey was founded and richly endowed by Aylmer, Earl of Cornwall, in 987, but a monastery was known to have existed here before 871, Edwald, brother of Edmund the Martyr, having been buried here in that year. The abbey was plundered in 1015 by Canute, and occupied in 1471 by Queen Margaret on her way to Tewksbury. St Augustine is said by some to have founded it; Edwald, the brother of St Edmund the Martyr, is said by others to have founded it, and to have been buried in it, and Cardinal Morton, born at Bere Regis, was one of its monks. The remains of it are a gatehouse bearing escutcheons, a long buttressed barn, still used as a granary, and some traces of the gardens and park. An ancient earthwork, unknown to record, is north of the churchyard. A lofty eminence, called Trendle Hill or the Giant's Hill, rises adjacent to the town, has the figure of a man, 180 feet high, cut on its chalky surface, and is crowned by an ancient camp. Some trade is carried on in brewing. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Salisbury; value, £181. The church is Perpendicular English, and has a tower. The burial ground was enlarged in 1886.
Parish Church
The church of St. Mary is a handsome edifice of flint, with stone dressings, in the Perpendicular style, and consists of chancel, nave, aisles, south porch and a fine embattled western tower, with pinnacles, containing a clock and 5 bells with chimes: there are 500 sittings.
The register dates from the year 1653.
