A picturesque village set on a little ridge in the band of the Wealden beds which runs through the middle of Purbeck. The medieval village was much larger as the lumps and bumps of the deserted medieval settlement around the church demonstrates.

The houses and cottages are all of local limestone and most have limestone roofs as well. In the porch of the church are the carved coat of arms of the Lawrence family, whose ancestors were allied to those of George Washington. The stars and stripes of the Lawrence arms are said to have inspired the American flag.

Referred to in Domesday as “Stiple”, part of the manor of “Glole, Stiple and Criz” (Church Knowle, Steeple and Creech), the name of this village refers to the steepness of the hills around it. Located in the Purbecks 8 miles west of Swanage and 1 mile south of Wareham, Steeple had a population of 94 in 2001. Tiny it may be, but in the past it has found itself at the heart of controversy, from the imprisonment of its rector, Samuel Bolde, in 1682 by James II after a spirited defence of the rights of dissenters to their own beliefs, to the mass sighting of a phantom army in 1678, the “Purbeck apparition”, leading to the panicked mobilisation of Dorset’s defences on a false alarm.