Amongst the records of non-conformist churches held by Dorset History Centre you will find a collection of correspondence called the Carpenter Letters. In this collection you will find letters from many of the prominent social reformers, educators and abolitionists from the nineteenth century. The Reverend Russell Lant Carpenter was the minister of Bridport Unitarian Church from 1865-1887. He was the… Read more The Carpenter Letters
This February we’d like to think beyond the exclusivity of romantic love and open our hearts to all the affection and emotion which can be conveyed by a handwritten letter. Until the mid-twentieth century letters were the primary means of contact for people living more than a few miles apart and the pleasure of receiving a letter or note was often enormous – indeed the wish to correspond… Read more Posts from the Past
With Valentine’s Day fast approaching we wanted to look at declarations of love in our collections, in particular love letters and poems. There are some lovely pieces celebrating love, and the angst that goes along with it! — Firstly, from the Dorset County Museum King Collection archive is this very fragile 19th century example of… Read more Poems for Your Love
“…the oddness of the world and the surprisingness of mankind…” – Sylvia Townsend Warner Although not born in Dorset, the author and poet Sylvia Townsend Warner, fell in love with the county when she visited Chaldon Herring and the surrounding area in the 1920s. A prolific writer of short stories she contributed to the New… Read more Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893-1978) & Valentine Ackland (1906-1969)
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
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