Talk:Melcombe Horsey

Bingham name

Is everyone with the sirname 'Bingham' likely to be a descendant of this village?

Merge proposal

Melcombe Horsey is the name of the parish. It contains the existing settlement of Higher Melcombe, the deserted settlement of Higher Melcombe (or Melcombe Horsey), the deserted settlement of Bingham's Melcombe, and at least some of the existing settlement of Melcombe Bingham (which also might include the existing settlement shown on OS maps as Bingham's Melcombe). It's all a bit confusing and I'm undecided what would be the best article title, but I think all the information - confusing as it may be - should be on one page. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 21:25, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Hmmm, it is confusing! I wonder if we should research this a little further before re-organizing the articles, just in case research reveals a more appropriate structure. In the meantime, though, they should at least link to one another. And if we can provide suitable, in-article text, that would also be good. --Bermicourt (talk) 11:59, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

In Portrait of Dorset, Ralph Wightman refers to the church and manor house (shown as Bingham's Melcombe on OS maps) as Melcombe Bingham, and the dead-end settlement to the west (shown as Higher Melcombe on OS maps) he calls Melcombe Horsey. He also adds that "it is slightly surprising to find another village straggling along through a very narrow gap between the ridges and yet not a parish. Dorset has got over this difficulty by referring to this settlement as Hartfoot Lane. Actually part of it is in Melcombe Bingham and part in the even more distant parish of Hilton. To make things even more complicated the names Higher and Lower Ansty come into it." I think that this straggling settlement is what the OS label as "Melcombe Bingham". It not only straddles parishes, it lies in 2 different districts (North Dorset and West Dorset), making deciding on an appropriate structure for the article(s) perhaps more difficult.
In Dorset Villages, Roland Gant also acknowledges the confusion of it all: "On the east side of Henning or Hanging Hill and Giant's Grave, at the junction of the Devil's Brook and the stream called 'Mash Water' is Bingham's Melcombe or Melcombe Bingham (whichever form I use, I always find that the person to whom I am speaking uses the other), a house in the Bingham family for six hundred years until the end of the nineteenth century. But the parish is called 'Melcombe Horsey', taking its name from the owners of the other medieval manor close by. Yet the parish church of St Andrew, fourteenth- and fifteenth-century, of flint with a chunky stone tower, lies in Bingham grounds close to the manor."
I think there could be quite a lot to say about these settlements, with perhaps a DYK about the confusion over the name? - particularly if a source can be found referring to an Ordnance Survey magazine advert which I remember from the mid 1980s, which if I remember rightly consisted of a picture of the church, a section of the relevant OS map, and the strapline "Melcombe Bingham or Bingham's Melcombe?" (or a variant thereof). PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 22:19, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Another user very experienced in genealogy feels they should definitely remain separate to avoid confusion, which is one of the aims of genealogical sourcing. DenJones (talk) 19:13, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[DenJones]

You don't give a reason why keeping them separate avoids confusion. It could be argued that putting them together avoids confusion, as all the information would be in one place and not missed by readers. Please give a reason why you think having information on separate pages avoids confusion. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 19:05, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Keeping them separate avoid confusion for the same reason that combining them would create confusion, as stated: "It's all a bit confusing and I'm undecided what would be the best article title, but I think all the information - confusing as it may be - should be on one page," stated above by the first person to write. Every time places are combined, historical facts are lost regarding the place that no longer has a wiki page describing it and giving its history. Genealogist will look for the place under the name it was known by on old records. DenJones (talk) 19:13, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[DenJones]

Facts on Wikipedia are not lost just because articles are merged. Even if articles are merged incompetently, all information is preserved in article history. Also Wikipedia has redirects, which means that if articles are merged under one title and someone then searches for the name which no longer is an article title, the software automatically takes that reader to the merged page, where the information they seek will now reside. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 19:20, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't feel strongly about this and can see pros and cons to both. Certainly if the amount of information grows it may makes sense for Melcombe Horsey to have short sections on its individual settlements with main article links to separate articles for them. At the moment, though, either course is workable because the articles are short.

This site offers some semi-official clarification and it may be worth emailing the Online Parish Clerk for his/her take. They may well be willing to help develop the article(s). --Bermicourt (talk) 18:18, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

I think I'll make a start on expanding the articles—including the whole area regarding the confusion over names—and as a result it might at some point become obvious which is the best way to structure everything. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 23:50, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

That seems sensible - well done. --Bermicourt (talk) 07:37, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

Having done a bit of expansion of Melcombe Bingham, it seems clearer to me that the articles should be merged. It's difficult to write about Melcombe Bingham without also writing about Melcombe Horsey, and if expansion of both articles were to continue, I think we'd end up with two very similar articles with different titles. I also think that, should the articles be merged, Melcombe Horsey would be the preferable title, for 2 reasons: first, its name and spatial definition isn't disputed, and second, using the parish as title is a more natural basis for describing all the areas of interest within it. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 08:29, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

It seems detrimental to researchers using Wiki to have the centuries-long existence of Bingham's Melcombe, the family seat of my ancestors, Melcombe Bingham extant, further muddled by modern merging of this very distinct locale, since this separate entry, regardless of some redundancy, clarifies historical records, family seats, exists clearly on the OS maps, and is intimately tied to family history research records of hundreds of years' existence. In this age of digital records, space for a small, linked article that may contain references to another closely associated locale, is within reason. Would an article on The Tower of London be merged with "London" because there was redundancy? There is always overlapping data when dealing with ancient sites, making it all the more important to clarify specifics by delineating differences, rather than attempting to erase those differences by merging data. After all, the parish used to exist. It was a fact. Clarity is critical in research. Countrygirl2of6 (talk) 16:26, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
(Note: the comment above was originally made at Talk:Melcombe Bingham, with the contributor presumably not having read the discussion above. It was copied here by me. PaleCloudedWhite (talk) 16:41, 19 August 2015 (UTC))