Once a very small, intensely agricultural market town, the village is on chalkdownland called Cranborne Chase, part of a large expanse of chalk in southern England which includes the nearby Salisbury Plain and Dorset Downs.
History
The village dates from Saxon times and was recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Creneburne, meaning stream (bourne) of cranes.
In the 10th century the Benedictine abbey known as Cranborne Abbey was founded by a knight by the name of Haylward Snew (or Aethelweard Maew)[3] who made it the parent house of the religious foundation at Tewkesbury.[4] This arrangement lasted until 1102, when Robert Fitz Hamon greatly enlarged the church of Tewkesbury and transferred the community from Cranborne there transforming Cranborne Abbey into a priory subject to Tewkesbury Abbey.[4] The priory was fully subject to Tewkesbury until the dissolution of the abbey in 1540.[4] The priory buildings were demolished in 1703, but the Norman priory church of St Mary and St Bartholomew survives as the parish church.[5]
The village was a market town in times when it was frequented by royalty, and housed a garrison of soldiers to protect the king. The town's population was at one time comparably large, but its importance and power have dwindled as other more accessible towns have overtaken it in size.
Cranborne was for many centuries the centre of the hundred of the same name.
Church
The church of St Mary and St Bartholomew is of 12th-century origin but most of the building is now of the 13th and 15th centuries. There is a massive 15th-century tower and the chancel was rebuilt in the 19th century. There are 14th-century wall paintings and a 15th-century pulpit.[6]
Ancient Technology Centre
In the 1980s, a reproduction of an Iron Age dwelling, a roundhouse, was built at the back of Cranborne Middle School, as an exercise in experimental archaeology. It was later expanded into a living museum as the Cranborne Ancient Technology Centre, operated by Dorset County Council. There are several reconstructed buildings and demonstrations, and educational courses on Iron Age craftworking.
See, The Saxon Origins of Bristol, <www.buildinghistory.org/bristol/origins.sdoc> Jean Manco in discussion with Mick Aston, Joseph Bettey, Robert Jones, & Roger Leech
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