Place:Donhead St. Andrew, Wiltshire, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Donhead St. Andrew is a village and civil parish in Wiltshire, England, on the River Nadder. It lies 4 miles (6.4 km) east of the Dorset market town of Shaftesbury. The parish includes the hamlets of West End (Donhead St. Andrew), Milkwell and (on the A30) Brook Waters. (The parish of Ebbesbourne Wake also has a hamlet named "West End".)

Ferne House, on the site of a former manor house, is within the parish.

Population of the parish peaked around the time of the 1841 census when 900 were recorded, then fell steadily until stabilising at around half that number in the mid-20th century.

Donhead St. Andrew and its neighbour Donhead St. Mary were once part of a single Donhead estate. By c. 1200 Donhead St Andrew had a church, and the 'St. Andrew' suffix was in use in 1240.

The Wardour estate occupies the northeast of the parish. Wardour Castle, built in the 1390s and now known as Old Wardour Castle, straddles the boundary with Tisbury parish. South of the castle stands Old Wardour House, built for the Arundells in the 17th century after the partial destruction of the castle in the Civil War. New Wardour Castle, a large country house begun in 1769, is nearby in Tisbury parish.

The ridgeway which enters the parish from the east at White Sheet Hill (not to be confused with Whitesheet Hill north of [[Place:Mere, Wiltshire, England|Mere) became part of the Salisbury-Exeter road, following the route of the present A30 towards Shaftesbury. By 1788 the present lower-level route was in use instead of the ridgeway.

Research Tips

• Victoria County History - Wiltshire - Vol 13, pp126-138 - Parish: Donhead St. Andrew. British History Online. University of London.
• From this Ancestry page you can browse the Wiltshire parishes which have parish register transcripts online, quite often from very early dates. However, reading the early ones requires skill and patience. Transcriptions should also be in FamilySearch.
• A further collection of online source references will be found on the county page for Wiltshire.