The village of Corsecombe sits on the North slope about 400feet below  the parish church dedicated to St Michael was built c1675 and somewhere between 1842 and 1865 it was rededicated to St Mary and in 1876 was restored an rebuilt to reflect a Tudor style with a Gothic tower.

A day school was also here and there were two fairs in June and September at Toller Down along b the Beaminster road, on the opposite side of the road there used to be a telegraph station and was one of many that would relay messages from Plymouth to Whitehall in London.

The hamlets of Benville and Toller Whelme or Pinney's Toller the latter of which has a chapelry that is dedicated to St John and consecrated in 1871.

But blood and death are not far away for after the Battle of Sedgemoor in 1685 the Bloody Assizes were held in Dorchester with the ill famed Judge Jeffery's presiding and it is recorded that 74 people were executed, nine were flogged and 175 were transported. One of those was Robert Fawn of Corsecombe who fought for Monmouth and was hanged with a dozen other men and their bodies were dismembered and boiled in pitch then put on display as a warning to others. George Penne who at the time owned Weston Manor as well as Oak farm was given 100 prisoners as part payment for quelling a rebellion and he sold them on as indentured servants to wealthy planters in both of the American and the West Indies.

One of Dorsets oddest characters came from here. Many of the fields and farms around Corscombe and Halstock have American sounding names. they all were coined or adopted by gentleman scholar and book editor Thomas Hollis (1720-1774)  who had a wealthy uncle that had been the principal benefactor of Harvard University .

Thomas Hollis inherited his uncles 700 acres of land and continued to endow Harvard's famous library and stories go that there was hardly a ship that sailed form London without some gift or other to Harvard from the Hollis family. The gifts included some priceless books.

When his home was on fire Hollis who was described as a True Whig, calmly and quietly walked out clutching only his portrait of John Milton.

He would not take alcohol, milk, sugar or butter and he was scared of dying through a lingering illness though he need not have worried for in 1774 he dropped dead in a field while giving his farmhands orders. a he had not religious beliefs they carried out his request to be buried in his own fields, ten feet deep and the land ploughed back over so that not trace of him would be left.

He lived at Urless Farm Corsecombe and it is not known where he is buried either there or at Harvard Farm. Local folklore say that his horse was shot and buried with him.

The field names have suffered through both the annals of time and the Dorset dialect a good example of which is Massachusetts which not many Englishmen cans spell now let alone back in those days and this is now called Massy Field.

Archbishop Secker has a field in his honour but this has been proved impossible to cultivate.

Hollis also had property in Lyme Regis and its decline he helped reverse by persuading the Earl of Chatham to come to the town with his son who was ill to partake of the sea air. This son was William Pitt the Younger, the future prime minister of England.