One of the largest but least used collections at the Dorset History Centre is the records of the Dorset Quarter Sessions. The Quarter Sessions were local government and local justice rolled into one until the County Councils were established in 1888 and Magistrates and Crown Courts took over local court cases in 1971. Every English… Read more Quarter Sessions: What are they?
A Milton Abbas Local History Group member has discovered that in 1803 six men from Milton Abbas were charged under the Combination Act of 1800, for conspiring with others to increase wages. Their names and sentences of two months hard labour are given in the Dorchester Gaol Prisoners in Custody registers for March 1803. Described… Read more The Milton Abbas Martyrs
We are sharing a monthly look at the farm diary of John Foss, written from his dairy farm in Kingston Russell in 1851. November 1851 The penultimate month of the year, November is frosty and clear, although there are some stormy nights throughout. The railroad continues to be a topic in the village, and it… Read more The Diary of John Foss: November 1851
Newspapers have been around for hundreds of years reporting on both national and local news stories relevant to the time. We read them and then (hopefully) put them out to be recycled. However, no matter their age they can hold information relevant to the local historian or genealogist. Dorset History holds a collection of local… Read more Newspapers: More uses than wrapping your fish and chips!
It’s Explore Your Archive launch week! This is a national campaign highlighting the work of archives and all the wonderful things we hold in the collections. Each day this week has a theme – from communication to celebration to light. You can follow along with the hashtags daily on Twitter. Here we will look in slightly more detail at Sunday’s theme of home. Home Home will mean different… Read more Explore Your Archive!
Recently, we received an email from a member of the public enquiring about an ancestor of theirs who was a non-conformist Reverend in Dorchester for some years, James McClune Uffen. We found some papers and a photograph within the Dorchester Congregational Church collection (NP.5), which included a fascinating journal detailing a journey he took from… Read more Reverend Uffen’s Leaving Dorset!
Weymouth, for obvious reasons has a close and varied relationship with the sea, whether that be through trade, fishing, naval activity or the attractiveness of the town and its beaches to tourists. Whilst the sea appeals to us for the aforementioned reasons, it also presents very real dangers. The Dorset coastline either side of Weymouth become the final resting place of hundreds of vessels, many of which resulted… Read more Weymouth lifeboat – stories of heroism at sea
With the new lockdown now in place, we asked our Reprographics Officer Jo to give us a bit of an insight into the work she does to help customers get hold of records remotely, a service which is ongoing despite the new restrictions. — The Reprographics department at Dorset History Centre has been slightly reduced… Read more Reprographics at DHC during Covid-19
In the local studies library at the Dorset History Centre you can find a large collection of journals. These journals are packed with fascinating articles and are often an underused resource. In this new series of blogs we will be highlighting some of the interesting articles within them! This is the third in our series… Read more The Journals of DHC: 1920s
Working on digitally preserving photographs in the Cyril Diver Collection has uncovered some interesting insights into Cyril Diver’s early conservation work. Diver’s fascination with nature began as a young soldier during the First World War; he studied snails in the trenches as a distraction from the horrors that unfolded around him. Forerunner During the 1930s,… Read more Revisiting the Cyril Diver Collection
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