Sydling St Nicholas

Sydling St Nicholas is a village and civil parish in Dorset within southwest England. The parish is northwest of the county town Dorchester and covers most of the valley of the small Sydling Water in the chalk hills of the Dorset Downs. The parish has an area of and includes the hamlet of Up Sydling in the north. Sydling St Nicholas village was recorded in the 11th-century Domesday Book, though evidence of much earlier human occupation has been found in the surrounding area. Over the last thousand years the village has been owned by Milton Abbey, Sir Francis Walsingham and Winchester College. The whole of Sydling St Nicholas parish lies within the Dorset Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. In addition, parts of the parish lie within the Hog Cliff National Nature Reserve and the Cerne and Sydling Downs Special Area of Conservation. In the 2011 census the parish had a population of 414. 'Sydling' derives from the Old English sīd and hlinc, which mean 'broad ridge' and refer to the hills around the village. In the 10th century the village was recorded as Sidelyng and in the Domesday Book of 1086 it was Sidelince. The second part of the name comes from the dedicated saint of the parish church. People have lived in the area for nearly 5,000 years, though in pre-Roman times human habitation was confined to the hilltops. Early artefacts found in the vicinity include Neolithic hand-axes and Bronze and Iron Age pottery. Evidence of an early village settlement exists at Shearplace Hill, about 0.75 miles (1.25 km) to the south-east of the current village. Remains of Celtic field systems have been found in the north and west of the parish. Saxon settlers arrived in the valley in the 7th or 8th century; evidence of their strip lynchets can still be seen on the surrounding hillsides. In 933 AD land was given to the monks at Milton Abbey, who provided the village with a priest. The abbey was the lord of the village at the time of the Domesday Book in 1086, which recorded 54 households with a value to the abbey of £25.