Six miles west of Wimborne on the road to Dorchester is the parish of Almer with the small hamlet of Mapperton (not to be confused with the parish of that name in the west of the county.) The landscape here is flat, exposed and uncluttered, except for a rich-man’s folly towering into view from the adjacent Charborough Park with its seven mile wall enclosing the estate and connecting its prestigious gates.
Named after what was in earlier times an eel pond found to the south east of the village on the River Winterbourne, this place was known in Saxon Times as Aelmere and at the beginning of the 13th century it was recorded as Almere. There is no reference to Almere in the Domesday Book; Hutchins surmises that it might have been surveyed as Winterbourne, its ancient name.
Standing near the Charborough wall and signposted by a row of trees through which the Elizabethan Almer Manor can be viewed, is the small parish church dedicated to St. Mary. In the churchyard is the stump of an ancient preaching cross.
The embattled tower of the church dates from the 14th century and you enter the building through a heavy Norman doorway. The north aisle dates from the same period. The nave is early 18th century; Pevsner says probably by the Bastard Brothers of Blandford. The chancel was rebuilt in the 19th century.
The font of Purbeck marble dates from the 13th century. Some of the stained glass is of the early 17th century and by European craftsmen; there are memorial windows to Revd V.R. Carter and C. Torkington.
