In the sixteenth century two of the Ashleys, father and son, were knighted. The second Sir Anthony, who was briefly Elizabeth I’s Secretary for War, is worthy of a culinary footnote in that he is thought to have introduced the first cabbage into England from Holland. He also built the lovely range of brick almhouses adjoining Wimborne St Giles church. He died in 1628, and at the foot of his canopied tomb inside the church is the kneeling figure of his only daughter Anne, who married Sir John Cooper of Rockborne and was the mother of Sir Anthony Ashley-Cooper, later the first Earl of Shaftesbury. St Giles house lies in Wimborne St Giles on the southern edge of Cranborne Chase. The River Allen rises nearby, and in old documents the village was known as Upwimborne, along with Upwimborne Malmayne and Up Plecy. The earliest record of a family dates to the thirteenth century, when a Malmayne daughter married Robert de Plecy, who died in 1301. Click here for more