Steeple, Dorset

Steeple is a hamlet and former civil parish, now in the civil parish of Steeple with Tyneham, in the Purbeck district of the English county of Dorset. It is situated 8 miles (13 km) west of the coastal resort town of Swanage at the foot of Ridgeway Hill. In 2013 the estimated population of the civil parish was 60.[1] The civil parish was abolished on 1 April 2014 and merged with Tyneham to form Steeple with Tyneham.[2]

Steeple
Steeple parish church
Steeple Location within Dorset
Population	60 (2013 estimate)
OS grid reference	SY910812
Civil parish	Steeple with Tyneham
District	Purbeck
Shire county	Dorset
Region	South West
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	WAREHAM
Postcode district	BH20
Dialling code	01929
Police	Dorset
Fire	Dorset and Wiltshire
Ambulance	South Western
UK Parliament	South Dorset

The Gerrard family of Longhide were the principal landowners here from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century; the lands then passed by inheritance to the Napier family.

The ancient Norman church of Steeple, dedicated to St Michael and All Angels, lacks a steeple. It has a coat of arms engraved in stone in the porch and another painted in scarlet of the roof interior that is precisely the same as George Washington's coat of arms, showing stars and stripes.

The Washington arms is quartered with those of the squires of Steeple village, the Lawrence family, who are allied with the Washingtons by the marriage of one of its sons, Edmund Lawrence, to Agnes de Wessington in 1390.

The flag of the US capital hangs inside the church, presented on 25 July 1977 by Walter E Washington, Mayor of Washington DC from 2 January 1975 - 2 January 1979

On the highest local point of the nearby Purbeck Ridge is an 18th-century folly built by the former owner of Creech Grange and known as Grange Arch. Today it is a Grade II listed building owned by the National Trust.[3][4]