Stoborough is a great base for exploring the local nature reserves at Arne and Stoborough Heath, as well as the famous ‘Blue Pool’ natural beauty spot.

Stoborough is another ancient Dorset settlement: perhaps even older than Wareham according to some sources. For example, the King’s Barrow, which is on a low ridge on the northern edge of Stoborough Heath, dates back about 4000 years to the Late Neolithic / Late Bronze age. This funerary monument is known to have contained a rare example of a tree trunk coffin with a headless skeleton wrapped in deerskin in it!

For thousands of years the main business has been farming and – just like elsewhere in Purbeck – the clay industry. In fact there have been potsherds found in Stoborough dating back to the 1st century. However, although Stoborough was described as a place “once so great as to boast a mayor and corporation”, over the centuries Wareham eclipsed its neighbour and was relegated to just being a part of Wareham’s borough. To this day it falls within the Wareham Council boundary.

Amazingly, during the English Civil War in 1643, the citizens of Stoborough willingly permitted their houses to be burned down in order to preserve the Parliamentary garrison in Wareham. According to a petition that the village presented to Parliament in 1655, a hundred local families were made homeless because of this.