Introduction

It is our intention to include articles here relating to West Stour village.

In May 2021 we completed the stories of WW1 soldiers featured on Gillingham and Milton-on-Stour memorials.

Research for West Stour WW1 soldiers was completed and posted on 1 July 2024 - see We Remember Them''.

Please contact the Museum if you have any story to tell about West Stour life - office@gillinghammuseum.co.uk

The website manager reserves the right to include/amend or reject such articles and if included, to remove them at a future date.

Any articles received and accepted will be placed in the Museum's Digital Archive.

1895 Kelly’s Directory of Dorsetshire

WEST STOWER (or Stour) is a small parish, pleasantly situated on the river Stour and high road from Shaftesbury to Sherborne and Yeovil, 4 miles south-west from Gillingham station on the London and South Western railway, and 5½ miles west from Shaftesbury, in the Northern division of the country, hundred of Redlane, petty sessional division, union and county court district of Shaftesbury, rural deanery of Shaftesbury (Shaftesbury portion), archdeaconry of Dorset and diocese of Salisbury.

The church of St. Mary is a stone structure, having an ancient Decorated chancel, a modern nave, south porch and a square embattled tower of Perpendicular date, containing 3 bells; it has an organ and a gallery at the west end. The register dates from the year 1654. The living is a chapelry, annexed with East Stower to the vicarage of Gillingham, average tithe rent-charge £1,146, joint gross yearly value £1,152, net £318, in the gift of the Bishop of Salisbury, and held since 1891 by the Rev. Sidney Edmund Davies, M.A. of Worcester College, Oxford, rural dean of Shaftesbury, and surrogate, who reside at Gillingham. Here are small chapels for Baptists and Primitive Methodists.

J.K.D. Wingfield-Digby esq. M.P. of Sherborne Castle is the principal landowner. The soil is sand and clay: subsoil, stone and gravel. The land is chiefly in pasture. The area is 998 acres; rateable value, £1,854 ; the population in 1891 was 158.