It is our intention to include articles here relating to East Stour village. At present we are researching the WW1 soldiers who gave their lives and appear on local memorials. In May 2021 we completed the stories of WW1 soldiers featured on Gillingham and Milton-on-Stour memorials. Please contact the Museum if you have any story to tell about East Stour life.
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.
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Kelly's Directory of 1895 described East Stour as follows:
EAST STOWER OR (STOUR), is a parish and village, through which the river Stour flows, on the high road from Shaftesbury to Sherborne and Yeovil, 3 miles south from Gillingham station, on the London and South Western railway, 4 miles west of Shaftesbury, in the Northern division of the country, hundred of Redlane, Shaftesbury petty sessional division, union and country court district, rural deanery of Shaftesbury (Shaftesbury portion,), archdeaconry of Dorset and diocese of Salisbury.
Christ Church was built in the Norman style, and consists of chancel, nave and transepts, north porch, with large square embattled tower rising from the centre, containing 3 bells, and has three galleries and contains an organ, a stained east window and sic other smaller stained windows; there are 300 sittings. The register dates from the year 1584. The living is a chapelry, annexed with West Stower to the vicarage of Gillingham; average tithe rent-chard, £1,146; joint gross yearly value, £1,152; £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 resides at Gillingham. Here are a small chapel for Baptists a Wesleyan chapel and a Temperance hall.
The Right Hon. Lord Stalbridge, P.C. and Lord Wolverton, who is lord of the manor, are the principal landowners. The soil is clay; subsoil, marl and stone. The land is chiefly in pasture. The area is 1,678 acres; rateable value, £2,900; the population in 1891 was 444. Parish Clerk, Fred Kiddle
Post Office.- William Kiddle, sub-postmaster, Letters though Gillingham, which is the nearest money order & telegraph office. Letters arrive at 8.5 a.m.; dispatched at 5.45 p.m. week days only. Postal orders are issued here, but not paid
Wall Letter Box, cleared at 5.50 p.m. on week days only
National School (mixed), with furnished rooms for mistress, built in 1872, for 90 children; average attendance 70; Miss Annie Elizabeth Wingrove, mistress.
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