Dorset's Best Churches

by

Brendan Lehane

DORSET’S BEST CHURCHES by Brendan Lehane, published at £14.95 (paperback) by Dovecote Press of Wimborne, is a sort of Jenkins for our County alone. It’s a stunning book, written with superb style, not a solecism in it from start to finish, and beautifully illustrated with clear and artistic photographs by David Bailey.  It doesn’t supplant our own publication, Dorset Churches, which at £3 remains invaluable as a gazetteer, but everyone should have a copy – it’s crammed with delightful information far beyond mere architectural detail, though that is in it too, and if read from cover to cover (quite an easy task) gives a pretty good series of snapshots of Dorset history, including some really enchanting byways – the story of the families of Frampton whose tombs adorn that strange church, and the turbulent history of St Peter’s in Dorchester.  My ancestor Henry Moule, Vicar of Fordington, gets a favourable look in and I was delighted that Mr Lehane approved of my handwritten note in Yetminster instructing the leaving on of the sanctuary light to make the church welcoming on a dark day.  Every reviewer must have a quibble, however, and mine is that Bournemouth has not been in Dorset since 1997 so the two Victorian beauties mentioned there are not eligible.  In a future edition perhaps they will make way for the amazing and massive Ecclesiological church at Monkton Wyld, Richard Cromwell Carpenter of 1847 in the purest Decorated style, everything perfect.  Anyone who knows the County well will say ‘why did he put that one in and leave that one out?’ but that is part of the fun of such things.  Beauty, fun and knowledge, knowledge, knowledge – cheap at five times the price!

Patrick Moule