The purchase in December 2020 of a collection of important documents and printed books relating to Thomas Hardy was one of the highlights of last year – a year in which it was at times difficult to feel optimistic. In an earlier blog, parts of the collection were described and we will now examine other items which cast… Read more Thomas Hardy – exploring a new collection (part 2)
Wills are basically a statement of how you wish your property to be disposed of following your death. The 1540 Statue of Wills laid down that a will should deal with real estate (i.e. land and buildings) and personal property (e.g. goods, money). The main change was that through a written Will a landowner could… Read more A Guide to Wills, Admons and Inventories
Following the huge success of my previous attempt at making a recipe from one of the old recipe books held here at the archives, I thought it best to give it another go. As most people are still home schooling, here’s an easy recipe with a dash of history added for flavour (although you might… Read more Cooking the Books (part 2)
In January, and despite all that is currently happening in the world, we welcomed a new member of staff to our team… — Hi everyone! My name’s Eimear and I am one of eight trainees in the third and final cohort of The National Archives Bridging the Digital Gap scheme. The eight of us have… Read more Meet our new Bridging The Digital Gap Trainee!
At DHC our trained volunteers are usually collecting oral history interviews and we are usually working with several community projects which are planning a project or recording. However, with the advent of Covid these activities ceased. We have followed advice from the Oral History Society and The British Library and have thrown the efforts of remote volunteers into transcription and analysis. The volunteers have done… Read more To Record or Not to Record…
In the local studies library at the Dorset History Centre you can find a large collection of journals. These journals are packed with fascinating articles and are often an underused resource. In this new series of blogs we will be highlighting some of the interesting articles within them! This is the fifth in our series… Read more The Journals of DHC: 1940s
One of the largest but least used collections at the Dorset History Centre is the records of the Dorset Quarter Sessions. The Quarter Sessions were local government and local justice rolled into one until the County Councils were established in 1888 and Magistrates and Crown Courts took over local court cases in 1971. Every English… Read more Quarter Sessions: What are they?
Newspapers have been around for hundreds of years reporting on both national and local news stories relevant to the time. We read them and then (hopefully) put them out to be recycled. However, no matter their age they can hold information relevant to the local historian or genealogist. Dorset History holds a collection of local… Read more Newspapers: More uses than wrapping your fish and chips!
With the new lockdown now in place, we asked our Reprographics Officer Jo to give us a bit of an insight into the work she does to help customers get hold of records remotely, a service which is ongoing despite the new restrictions. — The Reprographics department at Dorset History Centre has been slightly reduced… Read more Reprographics at DHC during Covid-19
With the launch of our new online catalogue, we hope that many of you have now taken the opportunity to have a browse through our collections. If you’re not familiar with how archive catalogues work, they may seem rather strange at first glance so let us explain how through arrangement and description archivists create a… Read more How We Catalogue Archive Records
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