St Stephen's Church, Pamphill

John de Lacy was one of twenty-five barons charged with overseeing the observance of Magna Carta (1215). In 1230, he was given the manor of Kingston Lacy. He paid for a new church for one of the villages in his domain and in 1236 a church dedicated to St Stephen was constructed after seven years in the building process. It survived until the sixteenth century but by 1573 had been allowed to decay to such an extent that it was beyond repair and abandoned. The current church was built with a financial bequest of £5,000 from Walter Ralph Bankes and lies in the grounds of Kingston Lacy House, now a National Trust property, near Pamphill. It was eventually completed in 1907 as a memorial to…

The church is a good example of Arts and Crafts Gothic architecture. There is a forty-foot tower. The walls are constructed from a mixture of Studland sandstone and Purbeck Stone. Attached to the tower and above the left side of the porch, with its Arts and Crafts leaf surround, is a niche containing a statue by Palmer of St Stephen with his hand on the head of a small boy. The boy was modelled in the likeness of Ralph, Mrs Henrietta Bankes' son. There is an alabaster font, supported by four angels. When it arrived in the church, it had a crack. It was returned to the makers, who replaced it with the one currently in use. A notable feature inside the building is the quality of the woodwork,…