Description
Morden, a village and a parish in Dorsetshire. The village stands 3 1/2 miles SW of Bailey Gate station on the Somerset and Dorset Joint railway, and 5 1/2 N by E of Wareham. It has a post office under Wareham; money order and telegraph office, Wareham. Acreage of the parish, 7512; population, 730, The parish council consists of seven members. The manor, with Charborough Park, belongs to the Erle-Drax family. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Salisbury; value, £250. The church of St Mary was erected on the site of the old one in 1873, and contains monuments to the Erle family. There is a Wesleyan chapel.
Parish Church
The church of St. Mary, erected on the old site in 1873, at the sole cost of the late Miss Drax, comprises chancel, nave, aisles, south porch, and an embattled western tower containing a clock and 5 bells; there are two monuments to the Erle family, dated 1597; the stained east window was presented by the late J.S.W. Sawbridge-Erle-Drax esq.; the church affords 220 sittings.
The register dates from the year 1575.
Villages, Hamlets, &c.
Charborough, a hamlet in Morden parish, Dorsetshire, on an affluent of the river Stour, 6 miles W of Wimborne-Minster. It was formerly a separate parish, and it still yanks as a rectory, in the diocese of Salisbury. Charborough House, formerly the seat of the Eries, now the seat of the Draxes, has on the ceiling of the staircase a painting of the Judgment of Paris by Thornhill, and the park contains a small building in which the revolution of 1688 was concerted, and a conspicuous obelisk.
