Bishop Caundle is the home of the Dorset Poet William Barnes who wrote in the the Dorset dialect and is in the northern part of the county and where he penned Bishops Caundle, a long poem but a section is below

'At Peace day, who but we should goo
To Caundle for an hour or two:
As gay a day as ever broke
Above the heads of Caundle vo'k,
Vor Peace, acome for all, did come
To them wi' two new friends at hwome.
The wold dun tow'r avore our feace
The air at last, begun to come
Wi' drubbens of a beaten drum;
An' then we heard the horns loud drouts
Play of a tuen's upper notes;
An' then agean a risen chearm
Vrom tongues of people in a zwarm;
An' zoo at last, we stood among
The merry feaces o' the drong.''
In Caundle, vor a day at least,
You woudden vind a scowlen feace,
Or dumpy heart in all the pleace.'

Bishops Caundle church seems to tower above the rest of the village and the name goes back to the days of King Arthur as the name Caundle  was Celtic and was given to the hills overlooking the county of Somerset. In the Domesday Survey it was written as Candel but this was changed to Caundel Episcopi during the 13th century.

Caundle Marsh is situated about four miles south east of Sherborne with its church dedicated to St Peter and St Paul was built in 1857 but its records go back to 1667. Here there was a charity of £1 which had to distributed evenly to five poor men so each received 4 shillings each.

Purse Caundle Here can be found a manor house and a church the latter comes from the 15th century and both stand in the centre of the village. In 1241 the village was known as Purscaundel and Purse was derived from the Old English word for priest.

Peter Mews  was an undergraduate and soldier of King Charles during the Civil War and it was here that he lived. He was taken prisoner by the parliamentarians and escaped and also suffered many wounds in the battles and he later became a Royalist agent in Holland and at one time he was nearly hung. But he survived all this and was ordained into the church where later in 1684  he became the Bishop of Winchester. It was when Monmouth began his revolt that Mews decided to return to the conflict and the old bishop eventually died at the age of 91.

Stourton Caundle in a field there is a castle named Hithe Paradise and the name comes from the village stream that meanders past mainly thatched cottages and the village gets its name from the Stourton family that lived in the castle which now has only its chapel remaining and this has now become a farm.