House history research is one of the most common reasons for people visiting the History Centre. Tracing the history of buildings can be very difficult and the documents available to researchers vary greatly from building to building. Over the course of this series of blogs, we will show you what it is possible to learn about a house and its occupiers through the course of history.
Full addresses were rarely used until the 1900s and even when names or numbers are given, names could be changed or streets could be renumbered. Many old documents refer to parcels of land in a parish with few clues that tell you exactly where the land is and the census returns often only record the parish or street name.
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We have chosen Icen Cottage as the subject of these blogs because it is named in all the censuses and also in documents in our collection.
Icen Cottage is situated on Icen Way in the parish and manor of Fordington.
Fordington Parish covers a large area, wrapping almost all the way around the three Dorchester parishes and including the former barracks where the History Centre now stands.
The Manor of Fordington was part of the Duchy of Cornwall. As a Royal Manor many of the court documents for Fordington are held at the National Archives, but the History Centre holds over 2000 documents connected to the Parish.
The earliest mention of the cottage that we have found is in a demise dated 1789. In this document the cottage is referred to as ‘Dolls Hole’, a name also found in the 1844 Tithe map apportionment. Helpfully there are also documents that refer to ‘Icen cottage, formerly known as Doll’s Hole’ so we can be sure that this is the same plot of land!
In A.D. Mills’ book ‘The Place Names of Dorset’ he suggests that the name Doll’s Hole may have originally been ‘Dowle’s Hill’. There are many entries for the Dowle family in the parish registers of Fordington St George, the earliest being the baptism of Annie, daughter of Richard Dowle in 1627.
In its history, we have found out that the cottage was a carpenters workshop, twice a school, and saw the birth of triplets. To find out more about this property keep an eye out for the next blogs in this series!