Having looked at taxes last month, this month we will shift our attention to look at the other half of that famous expression… deaths! Dorset History Centre holds parish burial registers for 300 different parishes around Dorset, but what if your ancestor met an unnatural death that had to be investigated? Whilst we hold recent… Read more Death of a Sailor-man (and other tales from the Coroners of Poole)
Portland, Wimborne and Shaftesbury are the largest places covered by the eighth edition of Hutchin’s Extra Illustrated. The additions for Wimborne include a newspaper article detailing the celebrations held in the town when King George III recovered from his madness. There are also many drawings of the inside of the minster, including one of the… Read more Graves, Grangerising and a man who wore Green
This is a guest blog from Dr Carol Beardmore, of The University of Leicester. Dr Beardmore’s research centres around the role of the land agent and the exploration of rural general practice through the letters and diaries of late nineteenth century practitioners. In this blog, she explores the papers of the Marquis of Anglesey… —… Read more Managing the Marquis of Anglesey’s Dorset and Somerset Estate 1812 -1854
In this blog Colin Divall describes how sometimes the railway plans can help crack open age-old puzzles. Timber was often used for bridges on the early railways, especially when they were cheaply built like the Southampton and Dorchester; Dorset’s first main line. At Wimborne, the River Stour was crossed by a timber viaduct that was… Read more Troubled Bridges over Dorset Water
“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes” – Benjamin Franklin Throughout Dorset’s history the certainty and importance of tax collecting has lead to some meticulous record keeping. Auditors and future collectors might refer to the records of a tax collection that had been produced decades earlier. For local… Read more Death and Taxes
Two influential Dorset families dominate the additions to the seventh edition of Hutchin’s Extra Illustrated. The first is the Fox-Strangways family, who are the Earls of Ilchester. Among the many portraits of family members there is a picture of a young Charles James Fox, a politician who was the arch rival of Pitt the Younger,… Read more Physicians, fires and false allegations
This is the fourth blog in our series on the railway plans. In the last part we explored how the plans are graded, which informs how our Conservator approaches the work. Due to the large number of plans a volunteer, Clare, was taken on to help conserve those plans graded two. These plans mostly require… Read more The work of a Conservation Volunteer
In our series on Hutchin’s Extra Illustrated, some stories are so interesting that deserve more attention. In the first of our ‘spin-off’ blogs, we look at philanthropist Thomas Coram… — Thomas Coram is best known for his role in establishing the Foundling Hospital in London. By itself, this was a great achievement but it was… Read more Thomas Coram: “Unmistakable honesty and sterling goodness of heart”
In April, Dorset History Centre appointed Sophie Smith as the Archivist to catalogue the Herrison Hospital collection. In this blog she gives us her thoughts on her first three months… — When this Wellcome Trust funded project at Dorset History Centre began we were tasked with structuring the catalogue of the Herrison Hospital collection. The… Read more Herrison Hospital Project Update
The work of an Archive Conservator is diverse. One day could be spent looking through a microscope, consolidating flaking pigment with a 000 brush, the next we could be using a backing hammer to shape the spine of a book. A Conservator’s toolkit needs a plethora of tools to ensure we have the right instrument… Read more Tools of the Conservation Trade
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