Welcome to our latest blog, The Frog Blog, where we are celebrating all things relating to our amphibian friends in Dorset! The idea for this blog actually began with the discovery of a ‘Toad Fair’ that was held in Lydlinch in the mid-19th century, but ‘The Toad Blog’ didn’t have quite the same ring to… Read more The Frog Blog
This week marks the end of the Dorset Authors Conservation Project as the final items were placed in bespoke boxes and the written report completed. Generously funded by the National Manuscripts Conservation Trust (NMCT) the Dorset Authors Project aimed to conserve items from three major literary collections: Thomas Hardy, William Barnes and Sylvia Townsend-Warner. These… Read more Dorset Authors Conservation Project
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. As we reach 2024, this project website is no longer functional in the way it originally was, and we have made the decision… Read more “The Hide of a Hippo”
It could be said that most people take their surnames for granted. Perhaps those of us who spend time looking at our family history are more familiar with them than others, as we are often to be found scouring through records for particular names, paying close attention to spelling and cursing incorrect transcriptions! But how… Read more What’s in a name?
In January 2024 we undertook Collections Fortnight, a two-week period where we closed to the public and worked on many behind-the-scenes tasks. These weeks were a fantastic time for us to focus on the documents and make a start on auditing our archives. This also gave us a chance to uncover some weird, beautiful, and… Read more Weirdness from Collections Weeks
Thanks to funding from Dorset Archives Trust, DHC acquired an interesting if rather battered item at auction in November 2023. This was The Old Kings Arms Hotel, Dorchester, a short historical sketch (D-3353). Written in 1914 by notable antiquarian Harry Pouncy in large format paper typescript, it provides a fascinating account of one of the… Read more Hotel History – The Kings Arms, Dorchester
We bet you think the next line would be ‘walks into a bar’, but this is actually the current landscape of statues displayed across Dorchester. Looking at the Southwest, including Cornwall, Devon and Dorset, there are only three full-size statues celebrating named women in a whopping 13,000 square kilometres of the UK. In addition, over… Read more Six men, one dog, a Queen, and a horse!
Welcome to the tenth part of our series exploring the history of Icen Cottage, Fordington. In previous blogs, we have introduced you to the cottage, shown you some of the earliest documents relating to the cottage, discussed some of the problems when trying to identify the people who lived in the cottage, introduced George Cull as one of… Read more Icen Cottage – The Porter Family
Happy Apprenticeship Week! We’re excited to have three fantastic apprentices working across Dorset History Centre and the Records Management department. Anna, Kate, and Lillian are undertaking the Archives and Records Management course, Level 7. Level 7 apprenticeships are equivalent to a master’s degree or Postgraduate Certificate. It will run for three years alongside their current… Read more Apprentices at the Archives
In January 2024, for the first time ever, Dorset History Centre has held a two-week closure period. Closure periods are not uncommon in the archive world, and provide an opportunity for staff and volunteers to spend some dedicated time working on collections, trying to solve known problems, or simply cataloguing newly acquired archives. For ourselves… Read more Collections Fortnight 2024
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