The parish of Owermoigne amounts to a little over four thousand acres in a strip of land stretching from the sea at Ringstead Bay, where the cliffs tower up to 200ft. To the north of the coast the land rises to over 400ft above sea level and then drops into the valley of the Upton Brook, before rising again on Moigne Down and then slopes down to areas of heathland. Originally the area comprised a number of small settlements but the greater part of the parish north of Moigne Down was divided between Owermoigne and Galton, both at the edge of the heathland and today north of the main Dorchester to Wareham road.
Early in the 20th century Sir Frederick Treves in his book Highways and Byways in Dorset described Owermoigne as a “shy, old fashioned hamlet” and goes on to say it is “one of those hamlets that has no apparent object in life.” The hamlet that Treves saw is still here, hidden behind a camouflage of modern local authority housing. In earlier times the village was on the smugglers route and many a keg of the finest brandy would have been hidden away here. In the 18th century William Wake sold the manor of Owermoigne to Sir Theodore Janssen. His son Sir Stephen Janssen was a Member of Parliament and Lord Mayor of London in 1755. Possibly drawing on his local knowledge of the Dorset coast Sir Stephen published a pamphlet entitled Smuggling Laid Open.
The Rectory is mostly from the 16th century and it is thought the beams in the drawing room came from a Spanish galleon which was lured to the coast and wrecked. In the front wall of the older wing is a trap door through which brandy casks were pushed (reputedly the Rector was one of the smuggler’s best customers!). When the Enclosure Act became law in 1829 the Rector was granted the right to cut fifteen hundred furze faggots a year and as many turfs as a man could cut in a day with three spades! He was allowed to keep two cows in a field known as Cowleaze and two horses in a field called Skidmore. The Rectory passed into private ownership during the early part of the 20th century.
A short distance from the Church heading towards Crossways is Castle Lane, which leads to the ancient Manor House of Moignes Court, built in the 13th century and which had its own chapel before the present church was built.
Standing in the middle of the village is the church dedicated to St. Michael. Built from local rubble its 15th century west tower houses three bells that date from the reign of Queen Elizabeth I; the rest was rebuilt in 1883 to the designs of S. Jackson of Weymouth.
The Parish Registers record events from 1569, but the most interesting entries are to be found between 1624 and 1800 when events in the lives of many of Thomas Hardy’s ancestors are recorded.
