The church contains the tombs of several members of the Napier family, who were Lords of the Manor from c.1600 to 1765.
Minterne House
Minterne House is the ancestral home of the Digby family and earlier the Churchill family.[2]
The estate was once owned by the Abbey of Cerne from around the year 987[3] and after the dissolution of the monasteries around 1539 it was passed to Winchester College[4] who in 1642 leased it to the John Churchill father of the first Sir Winston Churchill (1620-88), then it was inherited by his son Charles who died without an heir so the house went to his wife's family the Goulds who sold it to Admiral Robert Digby in 1768.
Robert Digby's brother was Henry the 7th Lord Digby who owned Sherborne Castle. When Robert died in 1815 the house passed to his nephew Sir Henry Digby who later purchased the freehold from Winchester College in 1856. Sir Henry was a senior British naval officer, who served in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars in the Royal Navy and it was his wealth that established the original manor house, the bulk of which came from prize money. In 1799 he had been given command of the frigate HMS Alcmene, during which time he captured dozens of small merchant ships and had a hand in seizing the Spanish treasure frigates Santa Brigada and Thetis. The resulting prize fund was one of the richest ever recorded, the sterling value of the cargo was calculated as not less than £618,040 in 1799 (equivalent to £76,690,000 in 2023)
Minterne House has a large woodland garden with many Rhododendron species, which runs in an elongated 'u' shape around the slopes of a small spur of land that stretches into the valley floor. Providing shade for the rhododendrons are many mature trees, including more unusual specimens such as Davidia involucrata ('handkerchief tree').