The Shipton Gorge ANNUAL PARISH MEETING is Thursday 10th April starting at  7pm in Shipton Gorge Village Hall.

There will be a presentation from Nigel Osbourne of the Dorset Council Emergency Planning and Resilience Team on the topic of Community Emergency Response Planning. 

Updates will be received from village groups and societies, including the New Inn, Village Society, St Martin's Church, Shipton Gorge Heritage and the Village Hall.

NEXT PARISH COUNCIL MEETING is Thursday 13th March 2025 19:30 in the Village Hall  

Contact the Parish Council if you need any help with anything at all, we will do our best to find a way to help if we can!

Are you passionate about your community? Do you want to help make a long-lasting change? Do you have innovative ideas for the council? Do you have concerns about a specific issue?

If this is you, then we need you. We need people from all backgrounds and experiences to put themselves forward to become a parish councillor.

Contact the clerk for more information or to have a chat about becoming a councillor. 

 The Bride Valley News (BVN) is the magazine of the Bride Valley Churches but contains a wide variety of information on news & events in villages around the valley, including of course Shipton Gorge! 

 We also have an online village diary where you can find out more about the events happening in and near the village. Click here to access the diary.

Shipton Gorge is three miles east of Bridport, twelve miles west of Dorchester and two miles from the Jurassic coast at Burton Bradstock.

The village of Shipton Gorge has its first reference in the Domesday Book of 1086 and is very much a working village with seven working farms still in the parish.

There are some 210 dwellings with over 400 inhabitants, many of whom have moved to the area to retire, but the village still has a fairly high proportion of working families and children. The houses are a mixture of old houses built of local stone, modern houses and bungalows.

Where is the Gorge?

There is no "gorge" in Shipton Gorge but it is an interesting and pretty village with high banked lanes, lovely houses and a community spirit. There are a number of thatched properties as well as listed buildings, one site of special scientific interest, two small woods and a network of public footpaths and bridleways to be explored.

One of the dominant features of the village is the church of St Martin which sits on a hill overlooking the main street with glorious views across the countryside. It has an early 15th century tower, a 13th century font and the exterior is floodlit for much of the year making it an important feature of the village both day and night.

You can find out more about our village, its residents, its history

and its amenities on this web site and we hope that you will come and visit us - we are a typical West Dorset village and very proud to be so!

 We have an active community Facebook page