About Us

The Church in the Winterborne Valley and Milton Abbas patch is made up of a group of followers, explorers and searchers, trying to live out their faith in Jesus. </strong>We try to serve God and our communities in our everyday lives. This works out through our desire to enhance and bless our communities through caring, praying and through spreading a bit of fun around as well. We will make mistakes from time to time but that is because there is so much going on – oh, and we are not perfect! We are ordinary people and we hope that you will find a warm welcome in any of our churches. 

A bit about Turnworth Church

In 1086 in the Domesday Book Turnworth was recorded as Torneworde. It had 19 households, was in Pimperne Hundred and the lord and tenant-in-chief was Alfred of ‘Spain’.

The church, with the exception of the tower, was rebuilt in the 19th century with assistance from Thomas Hardy, who designed the capitals and possibly also the corbels. Hardy described Turnworth’s position as being “stood in a hole, but the hole is full of beauty”, and he used Turnworth House as the inspiration for Hintock House in his novel The Woodlanders.
The carved stone foliage for the church’s pillars were designed by Thomas Hardy (although the work was done later).

The west tower is c. 1500, of greensand and flint, but the rest was rebuilt in 1868-69 by G. R. Crickmay to a design of John Hicks, after his death. The ornately carved capitals were reputedly designed by Thomas Hardy, who worked for both Hicks and Crickmay before he became a well-known poet and novelist. The ‘capitals’ represent various kinds of foliage inhabited by song birds (including a very striking owl) and sand lizards.
In later life, Hardy was well aquainted with the Rector (Thomas Perkins, a regular contributor of guidebooks to Bell’s Cathedral Series) and apparently used to cycle over from Dorchester to read the lesson at evensong.