Description
Pimperne, a parish in Dorsetshire. The parish lies 2 1/2 miles NE by N of Blandford station on the Somerset and Dorsetshire Joint railway, and has a post office under Blandford 7 money order and telegraph office, Blandford. Acreage, 3058 ; population of the civil parish, 420 ; of the ecclesiastical, 391. There is a parish council consisting of seven members and a chairman. The manor belongs to Viscount Portman. The N tract is occupied by Pimperne Down. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Salisbury; gross value, £430 with residence. Patron, Viscount Portman. The church is partly Norman and all good, and contains an old font and a brass of 1688. The building was almost entirely rebuilt in 1874. There are a Wesleyan chapel and a reading-room. Christopher Pitt, the translator of the " Æneid," was rector.
Parish Church
The church of St. Peter is a handsome edifice of stone, chiefly in the Gothic style, consisting of chancel, nave of three bays, aisles, south-east porch and an embattled western tower, with pinnacles, containing 5 bells, one of which was recast and two added in 1891: the proch has a fine Norman arch: the stained east window was presented in 1868, by Alice and Elizabeth Wright, and on the south side is one to John and Emily M. Matthews, erected by their children in August, 1874: the brass lectern was given by Robert Hewett esq. of Reading, in 1893, in memory of his wife, who died 18 May, 1891: the church was rebuilt, with the exception of the tower, in 1874, at the expense of the late Viscount Portman, and affords 210 sittings.
The register dates from the year 1559.
