Between 2015 and 2018 Dorset History Centre undertook the ‘Unlocking the Bankes archive‘ project. During the life of this project, staff and volunteers contributed well over 100 blogs to the project website. By 2024, this project website was no longer functional in the way it originally was, and we made the decision to close the… Read more The American Army Hospital at Kingston Lacy
Last year we published a blog about two large photo albums that we digitised that were made by Crispin Redshaw, who was engineer and station manager for the Dorchester Beam Radio Station. See our previous blog here: World Radio Day: Photographing Dorchester’s Radio Past – Dorset History Centre blog Today we are revisiting these albums… Read more Photo Nerds!
The 18th century and the first half of the 19th century are often viewed as the ‘golden age’ of smuggling in Britain. During this period, Britain was involved in three major wars: the War of Jenkins’ Ear with Spain (1739-1748), the American War of Independence (1775-1783), and the Napoleonic Wars (1793-1815). To help fund these… Read more Smuggling in Lyme Regis
One of the more unusual recent acquisitions by the Dorset History Centre is a slim 20 page booklet entitled ‘The Shapwick Monster’. At a price reflecting its rarity, it fell to the auctioneer’s hammer earlier in the year for £440 with help from the Dorset Archives Trust, the charity whose members support the work of… Read more The Shapwick Monster
Hello readers, and welcome to a new online blog series created by one of the Dorset History Centre’s newest volunteer research teams. Our names are Andrew and Adrian, and we have been scouring many of the local books and records concerning the history of the Dorset Regiment, with particular attention paid to the evolution of… Read more The Dorset Regiment: An Abridged Retelling of Regimental and Uniform History
Whist looking in the archives for Christmas Pudding recipes last year we came across this recipe for Bible Cake. The recipe was loose in an envelope marked ‘How to make a Bible Cake’, in the Sadborow Cookery Book, a late seventeenth, early eighteenth-century cookery book. Bible Cake, also known as Scripture Cake or Old Testament… Read more Bible Cake
At Dorset History Centre, we were delighted to have the opportunity to archive the records of Wessex Water and its predecessor companies. With the contract running until April 2027, this has now been a work in progress for us since Spring 2025 and is overseen by our archivist, Emma Blowers, assisted by Collections Assistant, Chris… Read more The Wessex Water Project
This is the first in a series of three blogs about document D1-PH/1, a fascinating book that has been filled with notes by a family from Wareham. We came across this intriguing document whilst researching Thomas Chaplyn for a previous blog. It is a copy of the book “Merlini Anglici Ephermis or Astrological Judgments for… Read more The Chaplyn Family of Wareham and the Merlini Anglici Ephermis
It’s been several months since our last postcard blog. So far, we’ve covered the tourist hotspots of Weymouth and Bournemouth. This month, we’re focusing on some of the older postcards from one of Dorset’s smaller settlements: West Lulworth. As the gateway to the famous geological sites of Lulworth Cove, Stair Hole and Durdle Door, it’s… Read more The Dorset Postcard Collection – Lulworth
Over the past few weeks, Alastair Nisbet has explained how the Children of World War II project was born, researched, and marketed. In the final part of this small series, today he explains what the legacy of the project has been… — In her stories Jean talks about dancing the Palais Glide along the promenade… Read more Children of World War II – Dancing the Palais Glide
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