Charlton Marshall
Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Use British English Template:Infobox UK place Charlton Marshall is a village and civil parish in the English county of Dorset. It lies within the Dorset administrative district, on the A350 road Template:Convert south of the market town of Blandford Forum. It is sited on a river terrace above the floodplain of the River Stour, with most of the land in the parish stretching south-west over chalk hills.<ref name=inventory>Template:Cite web</ref> In the 2011 census the number of dwellings recorded within the parish was 513<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and the population was 1,156.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Within the parish boundary is evidence of the sites of Anglo-Saxon burial mounds, and human habitation in the parish can be dated back at least a thousand years.<ref name=dorsetforyou>Template:Cite web</ref> Next to the river were three earlier settlements, which influenced the elongated layout of the current village.<ref name=inventory/> The parish church was rebuilt in 1713 and restored in 1895,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> although the tower dates from the 15th century.<ref>North Dorset District Council, District Official Guide, Home Publishing Co. Ltd., c.1983, p31</ref> Charlton Marshall Halt railway station was once a halt on the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway.
Within the last half century Charlton Marshall has grown considerably, and there are now more than five times as many homes in the village as there were in the middle of the 19th century.<ref name=dorsetforyou/> A proposal to jointly bypass Charlton Marshall and neighbouring Spetisbury has never been realised.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Governance
Charlton Marshall civil parish was in Riversdale electoral ward, which also includes Spetisbury civil parish to the south. The total ward population in the 2011 census was 1,711.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
After 2019 structural changes to local government in England, Charlton Marshall is part of the Winterborne North ward which elects 1 member to Dorset Council.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>