Place:Dinton, Wiltshire, England

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source: Family History Library Catalog

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Dinton is a village, civil parish and former manor in Wiltshire, England, in the Nadder valley on the B3089 road about 8 miles (13 km) west of Salisbury. The population was 696 at the 2011 census.

After the Dissolution in 1540, much of Dinton's land was acquired by the Earls of Pembroke; later other land was purchased by the Wyndham family, who created Dinton Park. All Pembroke and Wyndham land was sold in the 20th century.

The Salisbury and Yeovil Railway was built across the parish in 1859, passing to the south of Dinton and Baverstock. Dinton station was southwest of the village, on the lane towards Fovant; the station closed in 1966. A branch called the Fovant Military Railway, 2 1⁄2 miles (4.0 km) in length, ran south from near the station to the military camps around Fovant; it was opened in 1915 and closed in 1920. During the First World War, temporary camps were built in the Fovant area to handle training and medical treatment of soldiers, and later their demobilisation.

The civil parish now encompasses the small village of Baverstock, about 1 mile (1.6 km) east of Dinton village. Baverstock was absorbed into Dinton in 1934.

The Church of England parish church of St Mary the Virgin, which was begun in the late 12th century, is a Grade I listed building. The north doorway survives from the earliest work, while the rest of the church is largely from the 13th and 14th centuries. Restoration by William Butterfield in 1873–75 included the addition of the south vestry and north porch. The tower has six bells; one is from the 14th century and two from the 16th.

Until the Dissolution, Dinton was a prebend of Shaftesbury Abbey. St Edward's at Teffont Magna was a chapelry of Dinton until 1922.

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