Ask any foreigner and they’ll say the British are obsessed with the weather. Nowadays we can access an up-to-date, worldwide forecast at any time and, being British, we love to talk or moan about it.
However this is not a new phenomenon. Details of the weather over the last couple of centuries can be found in various sources at Dorset History Centre such as Newspapers, Farmers/Game Keepers/Hunting Records, Police Beat Books, Letters, Diaries, Journals, Parish Records and School Log Books and date back to the 17th Century. These records can vary from just being a one word description, e.g. sunny, to detailed accounts of the weather for that day.
They are also not limited to Dorset with details of weather whilst on holidays or traveling abroad recorded in some of the records.
Sometimes weather can also be found in relation to other events. Such is the case of Thomas Abbot’s burial on 18th August 1871 in Halstock who “drowned in the Great Flood of 14th August 1871”.
