Whilst looking for information in the index for the Somerset and Dorset Notes and Queries about Shaftesbury, the eyes of staff here at Dorset History Centre were taken by an entry just above those for the town, which intriguingly read, in all-caps ‘”SHACKLE-EGG” DAY’. With our interest piqued, we had to know more and headed… Read more Shackle-Egg Day!
No one can resist doodling in the margins while sat in a dull meeting, and it seems this has been true for time immemorial. Here are some examples of sketches in parish records – some functional, but most are just for fun! Sticker Book The fantastically morbid doodles in this parish register are in fact… Read more Doodles Through Time
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 Smallpox and the Bankes Family
It’s that season where we start to think about whether we will get snow for Christmas. We thought we’d look back through the archives at snow in Dorset over the years. Weymouth bay saw ice in 1963, cars being dug out, picturesque Dorset cottages and fields covered in a gentle white sprinkling like icing sugar… Read more Dreaming of a White Christmas…
Brownsea Island was acquired by the National Trust in 1962 and opened to the public in 1963. Since then it has served as a valuable nature reserve and a popular scenic retreat for holiday makers. Its success as a significant Dorset landmark is owed in no small part to the efforts of the volunteers that… Read more The Early Days of the Brownsea Island Volunteer Wardens
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Barbary corsairs – pirates from the Barbary Coast of North Africa – regularly attacked the ships and coastlines of European countries. Not only that, but they took thousands of men, women and children as captives, holding them to ransom or forcing them into slavery. While the existence of… Read more The Barbary Pirates in Dorset
This week we thought we would lean into the spirit of Halloween by looking at evidence of witches and witchcraft in Dorset from a selection of records held here at DHC. Witchcraft and Superstition The superstitious belief in witchcraft was a widespread phenomenon throughout Britain, particularly during the height of the witch trails in the… Read more Witchcraft and Witches in Dorset
This past summer Bridport Arts Centre held a season of events titled “Queer in The Countryside”, for which BAC’s Director, Claire Tudge, set out ‘to demonstrate and acknowledge their unique position as a multidisciplinary arts centre to use storytelling to highlight issues and contribute towards importance societal discourse.’ In this blog, artist Paul Sammut talks… Read more Lisome Rum
Everybody loves the fair and we here at Dorset History Centre are no exception so, on an unusually quiet day, Chris decided to have a perusal of our public catalogue and a poke about in our repositories to see if he could find out anything of interest about the many fairs to have graced our… Read more All the Fun of the Fair
A few months ago, we kicked off our postcard blog series with a selection of postcards from Bournemouth. This month, we’re focusing on another of Dorset’s tourist hotspots: Weymouth. Weymouth’s rise as a fashionable seaside resort began in the second half of the eighteenth century, helped by the endorsement of King George III, who visited… Read more The Dorset Postcard Collection – Weymouth
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