Since time out of mind in England all land originally derives from the King or Queen. It is therefore not surprising that some of the earliest surviving records in this country are charters recording grants of land by Anglo-Saxon monarchs. Only about two hundred original, authentic Anglo-Saxon charters are believed to survive, although about a… Read more A Rare Glimpse of Anglo-Saxon England at Dorset History Centre
Last year we introduced you to Emma, who has been working alongside our Thomas Hardy Project Archivist. Since last August, Emma’s project has developed, and we wanted to give you an update… — For the last fourteen months I have been working as an intern on the Empty Rooms Project, a collaborative initiative between the… Read more Hardy and the Empty Rooms Project
We recently discovered this letter of reference, praising the cook at Crag Head, Bournemouth. It was written by the chamberlain for the Queen of Sweden and Norway, who resided at the property in 1881. The letter reads: I have much pleasure in testifying to the thorough efficiency & excellent caracter [sic] of Sarah Hutchings, who… Read more Cooking for Royalty
On Saturday 20th June 1936 between 8,000 and 10,000 people gathered at Maumbury Rings in Dorchester for a peace rally organised by a committee chaired by Mr W. Clarke and supported by peace societies and organisations from across the Southwest of England. The Peace Rally had been advertised as far afield as Salisbury, Newport, Southampton… Read more The Dorchester Peace Rally of 1936
Alice Bleathman is a 29 year-old Australian girl who lives just a few yards from the beach on the sun-kissed New South Wales Surf Coast. Despite being a ‘proper Aussie’, Alice has deep family roots and strong heritage links with Dorset. She is a direct descendant of the Dorset transported convict Richard Bleathman. It was… Read more From Dorset Gallows to Van Diemen’s Land
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. By 2024, this project website was no longer functional in the way it originally was, and we made the decision to close the… Read more Ralph Bankes and the ‘Pirates’
May is Local History Month, and we wanted to open our blog up to some of the many local institutions which are around Dorset during the month, so that they can tell you more about themselves. We start with Blandford Fashion Museum… — Did you know that Blandford Fashion Museum is currently one of the… Read more Blandford Fashion Museum
Returning to our exploration of a nineteenth-century diary, readers can find themselves back again navigating Berry and Helen’s experience of Victorian Winterbourne St. Martins. If you missed the introduction to our new series on this illustrated and handwritten Victorian journal, you can find it here. After an eventful entry into Winterbourn St. Martins as their… Read more “Our Journal at Winterbourn St. Martins”: Introducing ‘Chota’ the Dog
On Wednesday 30 April 2025 we will be hosting the first of an ongoing series of short talks about some of the fascinating records within the archives at Dorset History Centre. So what’s going on? Once a month Dorset History Centre will be hosting a short talk about some of our records led by one… Read more Join us for “From the Stacks”
Dorset Council has become one of the first local authorities to formally extend the retention period (i.e. the timeframe that documents are kept prior to review and potential destructions) for the records of adopted and care-experienced people. Until recently, adoption records have had a 100-year retention period after which they may be retained, or equally… Read more The records of Adoption and Care-experienced people – preserving life stories at risk of destruction
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