Church of St Thomas is a Grade II* listed building in the Dorset local planning authority area, England. First listed on 16 August 1960. Church.
Church of St Thomas
- WRENN ID
- shifting-plaster-oak
- Grade
- II*
- Local Planning Authority
- Dorset
- Constituency
- North Dorset MP: Simon Hoare (Con)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 16 August 1960
- Type
- Church
- Address
- Church of St Thomas, Quarry Lane, Melbury Abbas
- OS grid reference
- ST 882 200
- Coordinates
- 50.97996, -2.16931
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
The Church of St Thomas is a parish church dating to 1852, designed by George Evans of Wimborne. It is constructed of ashlar with tiled roofs and stone gable copings featuring finials. The church is laid out with a nave, chancel, south aisle running continuously with a tower and south transept, a north transept, a north vestry, and a south porch. It is built in the Decorated style, characterised by flowing tracery.
The three-stage tower is embattled with diagonal buttresses and an octagonal vice turret projecting above the roof line, topped with a short spire. It features a 2-centred west window with head-stops to the label and paired lancets with pierced stone panels in the belfry. The south aisle has two square-headed, two-light windows with flowing tracery. The north nave windows are 2-centred with two lights and flowing tracery. The transept windows are 2-centred with reticulated tracery. The south chancel wall has a lancet with flowing tracery to the west and a two-light, 2-centred window with flowing tracery to the east; the north chancel wall has a similar lancet. The east chancel window comprises three lights with flowing tracery under a 2-centred head. The east vestry window is of two lights with flowing tracery. The south porch has a 2-centred, moulded arch with shafted jambs and a label with head stops. The south doorway features a 2-centred, moulded head with continuous jambs and a label with carved foliage stops, and a 2-centred vice door.
Inside, the chancel arch is 2-centred and moulded with shafted jambs and an elaborate label with head-stops. A three-bay arcade, with a smaller supplementary bay to the west, features 2-centred arches of two chamfered orders on octagonal piers. The vestry arch is 2-centred and moulded with shafted jambs. Other arches are of two or three straight chamfered orders. The nave and transept roofs are hammer beam with arch-braced collars springing from elaborately carved angel corbels. The chancel has a boarded, ribbed, waggon roof, while the aisle has a flat, ribbed, boarded roof. A wooden pulpit with ogee-headed panels sits on a stone base, and there is an octagonal pulpit with ogee-headed panels in the baptistry under the tower. The chancel has pews with poppy heads. The church also contains various 19th-century encaustic tiles and glass.
Local climate
Church of St Thomas receives an average of 830 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 53% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 58% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 35 freeze-thaw cycles a year, more than 59% of listed buildings. Of these, 15 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
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- No EPC on record for this property
- No sale records on file
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- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
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