Wednesday 24th June 2020 is Midsummer’s Day and the Feast of St John the Baptist. It is a celebration that has links to the old summer solstice festivities, although it occurs a few days after the longest day, which usually falls on the 20th or 21st of June. Traditional celebrations for Midsummer began at sunset… Read more A Dorset Midsummer
A quick search of the catalogue reveals that we hold over 4,000 records relating to Kings or Queens, which is a rather large figure given Dorset’s relative removal from Royal life! As with everything though, you can scratch away at the surface and find that this figure is swollen by the ‘other’ records, ones which… Read more Archives A-Z: K is for Kings and Queens
At Dorset History Centre we have lots of collections of varying sizes, and in previous blogs have explored some of the bigger collections. Now, in the first of a new series of blogs, we want to shine a light on some of the smaller, less well known collections that we hold to demonstrate that every… Read more Collection Spotlight: Audrey Mary Walder
In a recent blog we looked at what sort of information title deeds can tell you. In this blog, one of our volunteers, Louise Haywood, has explored this theme in more detail, looking at a recent purchase made by Dorset Archives Trust… — Nowadays we have a conveyance to transfer property or land between a seller… Read more Marriage and Property in 16th Century Kimmeridge
‘Royal Weymouth’ is a four-volume book that we hold within our collection. Like ‘The Extra Illustrated Edition of Hutchins’, it has been put together by A.M. Broadley, but instead of grangerising one book, these volumes are based around several accounts of the Royal visits to Weymouth by King George III and his family. — The… Read more Royal Weymouth Volume 3: A Pardon and a Petite Princess
We are sharing a monthly look at the farm diary of John Foss, written from his dairy farm in Kingston Russell in 1851. May 1851 May of 1851 starts cold with a snowstorm on Monday the 5th, but soon improves. John describing many of the days in a similar manner: “Fine morning, continued so all… Read more The Diary of John Foss: May 1851
With the 75th anniversary of VE Day upon us, we asked The Keep Military Museum to write a short piece about how Dorset celebrated the end of the war in 1945… — When post-war generations think of V.E. Day, images of street parties, celebrations in London, and the famous story of Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret… Read more VE Day in Dorset
Gerardus Mercator (1512 – 1594) never travelled very far. Apparently, he was a bit of an armchair traveller, which is most relevant today as, due to the lockdown, none of us can go very far. However, in 1569 he designed the map of the world that we all still recognise today. His principle known as… Read more Armchair Travellers – Maps in a time of lockdown
It’s fair to say I didn’t expect my first three months at Dorset History Centre to turn out quite like this… I’m Owen and I’m the new Collections Archivist at Dorset History Centre. I joined the team at the end of January, having previously worked as a Records Manager at the European Central Bank in… Read more Welcome to DHC!
‘…I have scrawled with my pencil a sort of view…’ D-BKL/H/J/1/1357 — In recent times, and particularly during this period, our means of communication has become largely ephemeral and digital; including text messaging, video and audio. But for centuries it was not so. Until the advent of the telephone in the latter part of the… Read more Archival Types – Letters and Correspondence
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