Thanks to the generosity of donors including the V&A purchase fund and the Friends of the National Libraries , DHC was fortunate enough to acquire a substantial new collection of material created by or relating to Dorset’s literary titan Thomas Hardy. We thought that it would be good to share a little more information about the purchase and to explain a little more about why… Read more Thomas Hardy – exploring a new collection (part 1)
Making New Year’s resolutions is a tradition that reportedly goes back around 4,000 years to the time of the ancient Babylonians. Despite humans practicing making resolutions for millennia we seem to be quick to abandon them! This is the month that New Year’s resolutions most commonly fail, with 80% of resolutions being cast aside in February. So we’re diving… Read more How’s that new year’s resolution going?
Public enquiries often draw our attention to collections we haven’t focused on before. Last year, we received a request to copy a selection of letters to the Blandford Overseers of the Poor, asking for parish relief. This is a fascinating record of those in a difficult position in the past, which we’ll take a closer… Read more Poor relief and charity
In the Dorset History Centre Frampton of Moreton collection there is an 1854 letter from Henry Frampton seeking advice on how to deal with a local farm labourer, John House, who had been charged with vagrancy. To understand the context of the letter we need first to back-track to find out who John House was.… Read more The ‘removal’ of John House from Affpuddle
Due to the changing world in 2020, Dorset History Centre took the decision to increase the volume and frequency of our blog content so as our readers have something interesting to read on a regular basis. We currently produce two blogs a week, on a variety of content highlighting the work we are still doing,… Read more Dorset History Centre Needs You!
At DHC our trained volunteers are usually collecting oral history interviews and we are usually working with several community projects which are planning a project or recording. However, with the advent of Covid these activities ceased. We have followed advice from the Oral History Society and The British Library and have thrown the efforts of remote volunteers into transcription and analysis. The volunteers have done… Read more To Record or Not to Record…
The sewing structure of a book is mostly invisible and, unlike a decorative cover or marble endpaper, is rarely noticed or admired. However, it is the keystone upon which the rest of the binding is made. Choose an inappropriate style, materials or tension and the lifespan of the book will be greatly shortened. This blog… Read more The techniques that bind us!
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 fifth in our series… Read more The Journals of DHC: 1940s
This is the second instalment in our blog series about the non-conformist reverend James McClune Uffen and the diary he kept of his Journey from Dorchester to New Zealand in 1911. You can read the first part here. This blog will look at the ship’s first stop, animal sightings and how they celebrated Coronation day.… Read more Reverend Uffen’s Leaving Dorset! (Part 2)
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