Making New Year’s resolutions is a tradition that reportedly goes back around 4,000 years to the time of the ancient Babylonians. Despite humans practicing making resolutions for millennia we seem to be quick to abandon them! This is the month that New Year’s resolutions most commonly fail, with 80% of resolutions being cast aside in February. So we’re diving… Read more How’s that new year’s resolution going?
Public enquiries often draw our attention to collections we haven’t focused on before. Last year, we received a request to copy a selection of letters to the Blandford Overseers of the Poor, asking for parish relief. This is a fascinating record of those in a difficult position in the past, which we’ll take a closer… Read more Poor relief and charity
In the Dorset History Centre Frampton of Moreton collection there is an 1854 letter from Henry Frampton seeking advice on how to deal with a local farm labourer, John House, who had been charged with vagrancy. To understand the context of the letter we need first to back-track to find out who John House was.… Read more The ‘removal’ of John House from Affpuddle
This is the second instalment in our blog series about the non-conformist reverend James McClune Uffen and the diary he kept of his Journey from Dorchester to New Zealand in 1911. You can read the first part here. This blog will look at the ship’s first stop, animal sightings and how they celebrated Coronation day.… Read more Reverend Uffen’s Leaving Dorset! (Part 2)
Chichester “Indeed Repentance oft I swore”! groaned the Elephant, as he struggled to raise a very pink bald head from the pillow. Geoffrey had no one to talk to. – so on the whole was lucky! We bade each other a somewhat bleak au revoir and wished each other a Happy and Sober New Year!… Read more “In Search of Christmas in England”: 28th December
And the day after! It was not so hard after all to lift the head from the pillow, – for in the words of the wise Elephant “If the wine is good – there is no evil aftermath”! and the wine was certainly good. I had been promised a day seeing as much as possible… Read more “In Search of Christmas in England”: 27th December
Boxing Day was misty and inclined to a fine drizzle. We pottered round Corfe Castle for a short time and then decided we would seek pastures new at all costs. “I can’t stand another damp meal” said Jumbo, “and “Bridget” nearly wept all over me again early this morning when she brought tea”! So we… Read more “In Search of Christmas in England”: 26th December
The Main Street We walked around the old town and peered into the small country shop windows and bought – at least Mouse bought some more Christmas Cards, – feeling they were a sheer necessity at this eleventh hour, if only to put inside her own woolly boots! I shall never know why we didn’t… Read more “In Search of Christmas in England”: 25th December
On the following morning we bought snow boots. – for said the mouse, – ‘If I’m to freeze for three hours on the road again, – at least I’ll have warm feet.’ — Mr Lillywhite of Piccadilly produced the finest pair of woolly lined boots you ever saw and we started once more on our… Read more “In Search of Christmas in England”: 24th December
December 23rd 1935. All the Christmas parcels were in the post, so what was there to stop us from making merry in the really old fashioned way in England – at the expense of some one else’s labour! Nice to think we could get up Christmas morning in leisurely mood, pry into “stockings” and eat… Read more “In Search of Christmas in England”: 23rd December
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