World postcard day is coming up on the 1st October and here at Dorset History Centre, we continue to be intrigued by our growing collection. A deltiologist’s dream, it incorporates virtually the entire history of this most fascinating medium. Although the post office first introduced their own pre-stamped cards for short messages in 1870, it… Read more World Postcard Day
Dorset is unsurprisingly rich in maritime heritage given its multiple bays, harbours and coastline that stretches for close to 100 miles. However, that heritage is comprised of a mixed bag of fortunes and we have a newly catalogued box of images of shipwrecks that have occurred along our coast (D-DPA/2/WY/2/9). These are heavily concentrated around… Read more The Avalanche and the Forest
Crispin Redshaw managed the Marconi Beam Radio Station that used to be situated along the Bridport/Dorchester Road, and boasted 25 transmitters, with the first service having been to New York. If you came along to From the Stacks (our free, monthly, public talk) last month, you would have heard Archivist Emma talking a little more… Read more The Photo Albums of Crispin Redshaw
This is the second blog in a short series about our research into a copy of a book by William Lilly from 1666 that had been used as a notebook and doctors accounts book. In our first blog we explored the book’s connection with the Chaplyn family and how we established that the doctor who… Read more Nathaniel Bartlett: A Doctor of Wareham
Now you might already know that Cromwell banned Christmas festivities, but did you know that he also changed the way marriages were registered? Less exciting, we know, but bear with us, because if you’ve been diligently putting together your family tree, and you’ve been able to get back to the mid-17th century, the ‘Act touching… Read more Oliver Cromwell and the Parish Registers
The archive collection of Major Bell, a water bailiff working for the Avon and Dorset River Board was purchased last year with the help of Dorset Archives Trust. The archive is a small collection of diaries, correspondence, and photographs of Major C J Bell, covering the period between the late 1940s to early 1960s. The… Read more The Archive Collection of Major Bell: Records from a local water bailiff
Hello again readers. This is the second of our blogs about the history of the Dorset regiments, with special emphasis on how uniforms changed over the years. If you missed it, the first part, covering the 18th Century is here. This time we are going to concentrate on the nineteenth century. At the end of… Read more The Dorset Regiment: An Abridged Retelling of Regimental and Uniform History (Part 2: The 19th Century)
In a previous blog, we introduced you to the Baker family, and some of their wonderful nature notebooks, filled with plant and flower cuttings, and observations about the countryside around them. This time we wanted to tell the stories of the creators of these notebooks… — Mildred Baker Mildred’s notebooks are mostly focussed on the… Read more The Baker Nature Notebooks – part 2
During our annual Collections Fortnight each year we appraise and audit boxes held in our repository. Last year, as part of this auditing process, we came across a large volume of letters. Typed-up, it was quickly clear that these were not original letters, but nonetheless they were intriguing, and became even more-so as we read… Read more ‘War Letters of an Ordinary Gentleman 1914-1918’: Part 1 – An Introduction
The information in this blog was recently presented as a free talk at Dorset History Centre as part of From the Stacks, our free lunchtime talks programme. These occur monthly and let staff showcase one or two interesting documents from our collections. If you are in Dorchester on the last Wednesday of the month, why… Read more The Baker Nature Notebooks – part 1
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