Long Crichel

Long Crichel is a small village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Crichel, in east Dorset, England, situated on Cranborne Chase five miles northeast of Blandford Forum. In 2001 it had a population of 81. The civil parish was abolished on 1 April 2015 and merged with Moor Crichel to form Crichel.[1]

Long Crichel

St Mary's Church
Long Crichel
Location within Dorset
Population81 
OS grid referenceST977102
Civil parish
District
Shire county
Region
CountryEngland
Sovereign stateUnited Kingdom
Post townWIMBORNE
Postcode districtBH21
Dialling code01258
PoliceDorset
FireDorset and Wiltshire
AmbulanceSouth Western
UK Parliament

Long Crichel village and surrounding lands were once part of the Crichel Estate for many centuries, before it was broken up. The estate's owners lived at Crichel House in Moor Crichel.[2]

St Mary's Church

The village church is St Mary's Church, Long Crichel. The tower of the church dates from the 15th century, and the rest of the church was rebuilt in 1851.[3] It closed in 2001 and was declared redundant on 1 July 2003,[4] and was vested in the Friends of Friendless Churches in 2010.[5] The Friends restored the Grade II listed church's medieval tower and east stained glass window. Christian services can still take place in the church and burials are still allowed in the churchyard, which is now the responsibility of the neighbouring Witchampton church council.[2]

Long Crichel House
Long Crichel House, Dorset, built 1786

Long Crichel House, the Grade II listed Georgian rectory, was bought jointly in 1945 by Edward Sackville-West, the music critic Desmond Shawe-Taylor and artist and art dealer Eardley Knollys,[2] who along with architectural historian James Lees-Milne, literary critic Raymond Mortimer and the gay activist and eye surgeon Patrick Trevor-Roper, established "one of the last great post-war salons, hosting guests including Sibyl Colefax, Anthony Asquith, Graham Sutherland, Lord Berners, Nancy Mitford, Benjamin Britten, Laurie Lee, Ben Nicolson, Cecil Day-Lewis and Graham Greene." [6] Somerset Maugham and E.M. Forster were also visitors.[7]

Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant stayed at the house; Bell did a number of paintings of it and made painted plates for it, while Grant designed the dining room curtains.[7] Sackville-West died in 1965 and Knollys and his friend Mattei Radev bought another country home in Hampshire in 1967.[6] Shawe-Taylor remained at Long Crichel House until he died there, aged 88, on 1 November 1995, following a country walk.[8][9]

See also

References
  1. "The East Dorset (Reorganisation of Community Governance) Order 2015" (PDF). Lgbce. Archived from the original (PDF) on 15 October 2017. Retrieved 10 March 2018.
  2. Fight for your rights - Friends of Friendless Churches. Retrieved 8 October 2020
  3. Historic England. "Church of St Mary, Long Crichel (1323488)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 10 September 2011.
  4. Diocese of Salisbury: All Schemes (PDF), Church Commissioners/Statistics, Church of England, 2011, p. 6, retrieved 10 September 2011
  5. New Vestings, Friends of Friendless Churches, archived from the original on 1 July 2011, retrieved 10 September 2011
  6. "Life and times of artist in public gaze". Farnham Herald. Retrieved 8 October 2020.
  7. News. InSight No. XVI in Piano Nobile, 1 June 2020. Retrieved 11 November 2020
  8. Warrack, John (2004) "Taylor, Desmond Christopher Shawe- (1907–1995)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, online edition, May 2009. Retrieved 30 May 2010 (requires subscription)
  9. "Desmond Shawe-Taylor – Obituary" (3 November 1995) The Times

Media related to Long Crichel at Wikimedia Commons


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.