Melbury Hill Shaftesbury the boundary of the highland of Cranborne Chase		Spread-eagle Hill and Melbury Abbas from Shaftesbury
kindly submitted by Jane Shepherd

Melbury Abbas
This is where the most famous pioneer of photographer William Fox Talbot was born and he published the very first book with photographs for illustrations.

Melbury Bubb
When I first hear of Melbury Bubb, which lies not far from Chetnole, I thought it was maybe a specialty pudding from Dorset as it has such an unusual name, but in fact it is a hamlet of a small group of cottages, a manor house and probably one of the finest churches in the county.  It is dedicated to St Mary and has a 15th century tower  with decorative shafts. The rest of the church was rebuilt in 1851 and it still has oi lamps and a coke stove to heat it. Inside are monuments to the Strangeways family and also to the Brunnings,

The font is believed to have once been a 10th century cross and is carved with upside down animals and an inscription which reads "All cruelty shall cease through the influence of Christ".The Manor House is built of stone and is next door to the church.

Melbury Osmond lies a mile away and is a lovely village of stone cottages with thatched roofs that date as far back as the 17th century and are at the entrance to Melbury Sampford which is a large estate.

Melbury Sampford
This was the home to the Strangeways family who are said to be one of the most respected families in the county, and it was they who built the handsome Tudor House (see Melbury Bubb above). It is the Sampford family to whom the village gets its name, they were the earlier Lords of the Manor, which was sold to Henry Strangeways   in the time of Henry VIII. They were a Lancashire family originally and were loyal to the King.

The present house was constructed in the 16th century by Sir Giles Strangeways and further additions were made during the 17th century. There is an embattled hexagonal tower with a room on the top that is glazed with full width windows on five sides and sixth side has a hexagonal turret that rises even higher and is for the stairs.

There is a marble reredos depicting the Last Supper in the church which is 500 years old and the tower is decorated with wild animals such as wolves and lions. The tombs inside have canopies and knights in armour and Eqidius Strangeways and his wife Dorothy are buried here. Denzil Fox-Strangeways who died at the start of the 10th century is remember by a table tomb that has a terrier sitting at his feet and on the wall is the sword that belonged to General Strangeways who died in the Crimea at the Battle of Inkerman.