died in 1754 and her estates passed to Sir Hugh Smithson, husband of her only daughter Elizabeth, and subsequently Duke of Northumberland. His family sold the manor to Anthony Chapman, who built an elegant small mansion at Long Burton, which was later owned by Mark Davis. Chapman's widow sold the manor to J.S.W. Sawbridge in 1826. Sawbridge married Sarah Frances Erle-Drax, the heiress of Charborough, and assumed her surname. With the coming of the railway to Sherborne in the mid nineteenth century the village developed rapidly as a dormitory and most of the present housing stock was built as part of the railway boom. The village housing is mostly either seventeenth-century, late nineteenth-century or late twentieth-century. The present parish is a tithing of the larger medieval parish of Long Burton. The name derives from burg, a fortified manor, and tun, a homestead or village. It was distinguished as Long Burton (presumably to distinguish it from the other four Burtons in Dorset) because of the length of its main street. The present form of the name as a single word seems to have arisen in the late nineteenth century. However, writing in 1980, author and Dorset resident Roland Gant insisted on using Long Burton, and commented that the village was "irritatingly often now spelled 'Longburton' on road signs, which to me changes its pronunciation in line with Warburton". The village is still recorded as Long Burton on the 1889 Ordnance Survey map of the area. Governance Longburton and the surrounding area is a major part of Cam Vale electoral ward which also covers the villages of Alweston, Holwell and Leigh. The population of this ward at the 2011 census was 2,000. This ward is one of 32 that comprise the West Dorset parliamentary constituency, which is currently represented in the UK national parliament by the Conservative Chris Loder. Geography Longburton village is a ribbon development along the A352 road, which was the turnpike between Dorchester and Sherborne. A set of traffic lights controls the passage of vehicles between stone cottages sited close to the road. Longburton parish covers approximately , measuring approximately 3 km long north to south and about half that west to east. The neighbouring parishes are Castleton, Folke, Holnest, Leweston, and North Wootton. The surrounding landscape is typical Dorset pasture with small fields divided by hedgerows and small patches of woodland. Away from the narrow strip of Cornbrash