Having looked at taxes last month, this month we will shift our attention to look at the other half of that famous expression… deaths! Dorset History Centre holds parish burial registers for 300 different parishes around Dorset, but what if your ancestor met an unnatural death that had to be investigated? Whilst we hold recent… Read more Death of a Sailor-man (and other tales from the Coroners of Poole)
In this blog Colin Divall describes how sometimes the railway plans can help crack open age-old puzzles. Timber was often used for bridges on the early railways, especially when they were cheaply built like the Southampton and Dorchester; Dorset’s first main line. At Wimborne, the River Stour was crossed by a timber viaduct that was… Read more Troubled Bridges over Dorset Water
“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes” – Benjamin Franklin Throughout Dorset’s history the certainty and importance of tax collecting has lead to some meticulous record keeping. Auditors and future collectors might refer to the records of a tax collection that had been produced decades earlier. For local… Read more Death and Taxes
This is the fourth blog in our series on the railway plans. In the last part we explored how the plans are graded, which informs how our Conservator approaches the work. Due to the large number of plans a volunteer, Clare, was taken on to help conserve those plans graded two. These plans mostly require… Read more The work of a Conservation Volunteer
The work of an Archive Conservator is diverse. One day could be spent looking through a microscope, consolidating flaking pigment with a 000 brush, the next we could be using a backing hammer to shape the spine of a book. A Conservator’s toolkit needs a plethora of tools to ensure we have the right instrument… Read more Tools of the Conservation Trade
Volume 6 of Hutchin’s Extra Illustrated covers Weymouth and Dorchester. The Dorchester section is dominated by documents relating to Judge Jeffreys and the Bloody Assize. There is even a 48-page biography of Jeffreys bound into the volume. There are several documents connected with Dorchester Gaol, including plans of the new gaol, pictures of the old one and an image of King George visiting the Prison. The new Gaol was… Read more A Gaol, a Guide and a Man of Great Girth
In the third of a series on the railway plans we hold at Dorset History Centre, Jenny Barnard, the Conservator here at Dorset History Centre details the problem of conserving the large railway plans we hold. — The railway plans present a complex conservation challenge due to three main aspects: their size, the material from… Read more The challenges of the railway plans…
The fifth volume of Hutchins Extra Illustrated contains some very old documents and has a focus on the towns and villages around Beaminster. Perhaps the most notable are a set of three documents giving grants of land at Marshwood to the Cary family. These date from the 1300’s, the earliest being from 1312. There is… Read more Antiquities, Adventurers and an Actress
In the second of a series on the railway plans we hold at Dorset History Centre, Colin Divall, emeritus professor of Railway Studies at the University of York, describes why the railway plans are such an important source of information. — Building railways meant land, and land meant property. By the 1830s, when mainline railways… Read more The Importance of the Railway Plans and Sections
Within the strong rooms of the Dorset History Centre are a collection of extremely popular and highly used documents. It may come as a surprise to some that these documents are plans of railway undertakings. Whilst they don’t have the immediate visual appeal of an illuminated manuscript or estate map, the information they provide can… Read more Getting the records back on track!
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