Durweston is a village in north Dorset

Dorset

Dorset , is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town is Dorchester which is situated in the south. The Hampshire towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch joined the county with the reorganisation of local government in 1974...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, situated on the River Stour

River Stour, Dorset

The River Stour is a 60.5 mile long river which flows through Wiltshire and Dorset in southern England, and drains into the English Channel. It is sometimes called the Dorset Stour to distinguish it from rivers of the same name...

 where it flows out of the Blackmore Vale

Blackmore Vale

The Blackmore Vale is a vale, or wide valley, in north Dorset, and to a lesser extent south Somerset and southwest Wiltshire in southern England. The vale is part of the Stour valley...

 through a steep, narrow gap between the Dorset Downs

Dorset Downs

The Dorset Downs are an area of Chalk downland in the centre of the county Dorset in south west England. The downs are the most western part of a larger Chalk Formation which also includes Cranborne Chase, Salisbury Plain, Hampshire Downs, Chiltern Hills, North Downs and South Downs.The Dorset...

 and Cranborne Chase

Cranborne Chase

Cranborne Chase is a Chalk plateau in central southern England, straddling the counties Dorset, Hampshire and Wiltshire. The plateau is part of the English Chalk Formation and is adjacent to Salisbury Plain and the West Wiltshire Downs in the north, the Dorset Downs to the south west and the...

 hills, two miles west of Blandford Forum. The village has a population

Population

A population is all the organisms that both belong to the same group or species and live in the same geographical area. The area that is used to define a sexual population is such that inter-breeding is possible between any pair within the area and more probable than cross-breeding with individuals...

 of 429. It was named in the Domesday Book

Domesday Book

Domesday Book , now held at The National Archives, Kew, Richmond upon Thames in South West London, is the record of the great survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086...

 of 1086, with a place-name of Derwinestone or Dervinestone, with references to a mill and vines. Its place name is unique, since there is no other settlement anywhere in the world named Durweston. There was once a coastal minesweeper called "HMS Durweston". She was launched at the Dorset Yacht Company’s Hamworthy yard on 18 August 1955.

The village has its own monthly village magazine "Durweston News", as well as a bi-monthly Christian "Benefice Magazine" shared with the neighbouring parishes of Stourpaine, Pimperne and Bryanston (all within the Anglican diocese of Salisbury).

Durweston Primary School has an annual tradition of "Shroving" every Shrove Tuesday, when the schoolchildren process around the village during the morning, calling on local people, singing songs, giving flowers, and bringing good cheer. Those who are visited may also give the children bread or other tidbits to eat. This is a very old tradition, which has largely died out in England, and Durweston is thought to be one of the very few villages in England that has maintained the tradition. In September 2008, the school completed a major building expansion to cope with increasing numbers and popularity.

It is home to Knighton House School for girls, a prep school home to around 100 girls in red dungarees and Durweston CE VA Primary School. Knighton House School is one of only eight independent girls' prep boarding schools in England. Girls can bring ponies and pets to board with them. Tetrathlons and triathlons are popular in the prep and senior circuits, and girls practise shooting in the shooting alley. Further up the hillside from the school is the old reservoir which used to supply the village with their fresh water. This was later converted to the school swimming pool in late 1950s and recently refurbished. Girls can learn Latin and Greek with the headmistress, Mrs Claire Renton Bourne. A 36 strong Chapel Choir sings regularly in the school's Saturday service in the Durweston village church of St Nicholas. In 2008 the Chapel Choir got through to the second round of the BBC Radio 3 Choir of the Year competition.

Village halls are an integral part of rural life and the addition of one more may not seem a particularly noteworthy event but in Durweston, in 1998, a local voluntary initiative has had a major impact on the community. At that time with a population of under 400, the village had a statistically typical mixture of young and old, commuters and those working locally. With no village hall or pub and the closure of the village shop, the only social focuses were the Church, the primary school and groups meeting in private houses.

In 1998 two local residents, John and Diane O’Keefe, took on a challenge that most viewed with tolerant scepticism, a laudable aspiration but with little prospect of success. Five years and £425K later, in April 2003, the new village hall was opened. The process was fraught with difficulties and expert advice from the Dorset Village Hall Advisor was essential. Fundraising was a major and time-consuming task, as it had to draw on many sources and balance requests for contributions, while convincing sponsors that the momentum of the project was being maintained. The Community Fund was critical but not a panacea as it was predicated on lesser but equally important individual contributions from local government, agencies and trusts. (including DEFRA and the Countryside Agency) Over £100 per head of population was raised within the village, generating the first bonds of community involvement through fundraising projects including the establishment of an annual Country Fair in the adjoining Parish Council Playing Fields.

The size and facilities of the hall were subject to thorough management planning which has been borne out in the first years of operation. There are three broad objectives:- a) To benefit the Durweston community, b) To provide an additional facility within North Dorset and c) To produce income to sustain the operation of the village hall. All have been met, with the new experience and confidence gained, points the way to further opportunities in the future.

Village groups now have a regular meeting place and an open morning every Friday. It has proved to be a focus for many events of entertainment, social gatherings and also a business conference centre for the wider community of North Dorset.

Durweston is home to Adrian and Marie Fisher and their maze company Adrian Fisher Design Ltd. Over the past 20 years, their business has designed and created half the world's mirror mazes. Adrian Fisher

Adrian Fisher

Adrian Fisher is internationally recognised as one of the world's leading maze designers. His mazes can be found in all corners of the globe....

is growing a yew hedge maze in the village, one of 43 hedge mazes he has designed since 1975. He has also designed hundreds of cornfield maize mazes.

There are no fewer than 3 film producers living in the village, one for every 143 villagers, and thus perhaps one of the highest densities in the world.

The village is also home to a thriving football team, set up in 1999 by Gary and Sandra Sutherland. At the time of writing, over 40 young boys (and occasionally girls) play every Saturday morning over three age groups. There is also a men's football team, although they do not play in the village.

The village also has a vibrant Choral Society. For the celebrations to mark the installation of two new sculptures in the tower of Durweston Parish Church in February 1992, a performance of Benjamin Britten's cantata Saint Nicholas was organized. As a direct result of that musical experience several of those who took part expressed a desire to form a choral society within the community. A few months later the Durweston Choral Society was formed as an independent body whose aim was to develop choral singing in the community of Durweston and its environs.
Within the first few weeks of rehearsals a membership of almost 40 singers had been formed, with many people travelling some way to attend. The enthusiasm of all the singers plus the generous support of the Society's sponsors made such a wonderful beginning possible.
After a successful first programme in 1993 the Durweston Choral Society has performed once every year. In July 1997 the Society was awarded a Lottery Grant by the Arts Council, through the Arts 4 Everyone Express scheme. The grant, together with support from the local community and other fundraising efforts, enabled it to commission and perform The Passions - on Ode for Music by S.K.Twiselton, the present Musical Director.

The village also has three further groups of singers and musicians who perform at regular concerts in the Village Hall and at the Parish Church. These are:- The Durweston Village Singers and are an amateur choir of local residents who perform regularly at village events.
The Durweston Village band, made up mostly of family members, and is a mixed group of wind and strings. The Durweston Old Codgers have are repertoire of traditional West Country folk songs which they perform at the Harvest Supper and other village events.

For many generations the people who live in Durweston have sung a collection of carols unique to their village, now known as the Durweston Carols. In December 2009 singers and instrumentalists got together in the parish church to make the first ever recording of a remarkable musical heritage and a CD was produced.

No one knows exactly where the Durweston Carols originated or how old they are. Probably they were composed between 1750–1850 and form part of an enormous forgotten repertory from English Parish Churches. These came to be known as 'gallery carols' because they were often performed by groups of voices and instruments in the west gallery of country parish churches and, until 1877, there was a gallery in Durweston Church. There is also related repertory from the Nonconformist churches so these may have been sung at the old Methodist Church in Durweston. Certainly the words in some are reminiscent of evangelical Methodist hymns which would have been appropriate at the time of John and Charles Wesley. The production was co-ordinated by Rachel Cook, a resident music teacher and was directed by Trevor Lloyd Jones. Proceeds from the sale of CD copies goes towards the upkeep of the Church.

The ancient stone Durweston Bridge on the A357 Trunk Road (part of Britain's strategic road network) is also one of the most frequently damaged road bridges in the south of England. Increasingly large trucks and lorries have to negotiate a tight turn over the narrow single-lane bridge. Torn between "A Tune or Tears", in the spring of 2006 villagers sang their Durweston Bridge Song on British Television:

The Durweston Bridge Song {(c) 2006, Adrian Fisher}

to the tune of Onward Christian Soldiers

• 1
• Onward English Lorry Drivers
• Driving as to war!
• With the badge of Volvo
• Mounted on before!
• Bridges hold no perils
• If they’re made of stone
• Bash their little parapets
• And hear those splashes go…..!
• Onward English Lorry Drivers
• Driving as to war!
• With the badge of Volvo
• Mounted on before!
• 2
• Like a mighty convoy
• Move these trucks of goods;
• Sometimes through the Blackmore Vale,
• Sometimes Blandford woods.
• Dur-Weston’s bridge is favourite, though,
• On its roadway bend,
• Especially so tight, that
• We cannot fail to send…..
• Onward stones from- the- par-a-pet
• Crashing into the Stour!
• With the cost for Durweston Bridge
• Continuing to soar!
• 3
• Viscount Portman built that bridge
• In Seventeen ninety five
• Across the river at Dur-wes-ton
• To get to the other side.
• If you dared to touch a stone
• The penalty was exact:
• Transportation to Australia
• Just for one stupid act!
• Don’t push stones from the par-a-pet
• Crashing into the Stour!
• Don’t dare mess with Durweston Bridge
• Now or evermore!

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