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MSA Community	About Milborne St. Andrew    Milborne St Andrew is situated almost in the centre of Dorset, midway between the towns of Dorchester and Blandford Forum on the A354.  The 2011 census recorded around 450 households and a population of just over 1000 persons.   The village is a thriving community with a Playgroup, Primary School, Pub (The Royal Oak), Church, Doctors' Surgery and a Shop (general stores).  A bus service along the A354 provides links with Dorchester and Blandford Forum and beyond to Weymouth and Salisbury.    The Village Hall, along with the Sports and Social Club, is the venue for entertainment and a whole host of well-supported clubs and societies.  The Milborne Players present a Christmas Panto and other entertainments,  Dorset Artsreach presentations are held for adults and for children throughout the year and Milborne Movies hosts a feature film most months.    Our village magazine - The Reporter - is distributed free of charge to every household each month and provides up to date news, views and information about local events, businesses, clubs and societies.    The Business Park, on the edge of the village, provides accommodation for a variety of local, regional and national enterprises.   A brief history of Milborne St. Andrew*    The history of Milborne St Andrew must include early settlers who lived at the top of Blandford Hill and in Weatherby Castle, an Iron Age fort. It developed from a number of settlements around the Milborne Brook from which these settlements took their name. The Milborne settlements went by various names but the most common were Milborne St Andrew, which bounded the parish of Milton; Milborne Deverel, on the far side of the brook, which is now Deverel Farm; Milborne Stileham which borders the parish of Bere Regis and the area round the church known as Milborne Churchston.    Alfred the Great bequeathed his son Ethelward several Dorset Manors which included ‘Mylenburn’. There was a record of Milborne St Andrew in the Doomsday Book complied around 1086. The Manor was given to Cerne Abbey in 1402 but when the abbey was confiscated during the Dissolution of Monasteries in 1539 and passed to a supporter of Henry VIII. This family lost out during the Civil War when all their assets were sequestered by the Roundheads.    Over the following centuries it was bought or inherited by different families. The Morton family built and then continued to improve the Manor House throughout the generations, intermarrying with other major landed families until the beginning of the twentieth Century when the lands were sold off following the death of Edmund Morton Playdell.    The manor of Milborne Stileham was owned by John Morton, Bishop of Ely. He was born in 1410 and became a Cardinal and Chancellor to Henry VII. He left the manor to the Morton family of Bere Regis. Milborne Stileham was on the opposite side of the road to Milborne St Andrew and in 1890 following the ‘Separation of tithings, chapels, hamlets from their mother church’ it was incorporated in the parish of St Andrew.    The establishment of the Blandford and Dorchester turnpike (A354) in the mid18th Century greatly enhanced the importance of the villages through which it passed and Milborne became a well-known posting stage with six main line coaches running daily each way. The village then boasted three inns.    In the middle of the twentieth century farm land was bought to build homes which included the estates of Hopsfield and Homefield. More ‘estates’ were built over the next decades including Bladen View, Stilheham Bank, Wetherby Close, Huntley Down, Coles Lane, St Andrew’s View, Orchard Drive and other smaller sites. The population has increased from 538 population in 1891 to 1062 in 2011. *Written by Pam Shults on behalf of the Village History group.
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