Now you might already know that Cromwell banned Christmas festivities, but did you know that he also changed the way marriages were registered? Less exciting, we know, but bear with us, because if you’ve been diligently putting together your family tree, and you’ve been able to get back to the mid-17th century, the ‘Act touching… Read more Oliver Cromwell and the Parish Registers
The archive collection of Major Bell, a water bailiff working for the Avon and Dorset River Board was purchased last year with the help of Dorset Archives Trust. The archive is a small collection of diaries, correspondence, and photographs of Major C J Bell, covering the period between the late 1940s to early 1960s. The… Read more The Archive Collection of Major Bell: Records from a local water bailiff
Hello again readers. This is the second of our blogs about the history of the Dorset regiments, with special emphasis on how uniforms changed over the years. If you missed it, the first part, covering the 18th Century is here. This time we are going to concentrate on the nineteenth century. At the end of… Read more The Dorset Regiment: An Abridged Retelling of Regimental and Uniform History (Part 2: The 19th Century)
Back in April we shared an overview of the Wessex Water project, led by our archivist Emma Blowers with support from Collections Assistant Chris Scriven. This time, we’re taking you deeper into the conservation side of the project and catching up with our Conservator as she begins treating some of the most fragile items in… Read more Conservation in Action: Behind the Scenes of the Wessex Water Project
In a previous blog, we introduced you to the Baker family, and some of their wonderful nature notebooks, filled with plant and flower cuttings, and observations about the countryside around them. This time we wanted to tell the stories of the creators of these notebooks… — Mildred Baker Mildred’s notebooks are mostly focussed on the… Read more The Baker Nature Notebooks – part 2
During our annual Collections Fortnight each year we appraise and audit boxes held in our repository. Last year, as part of this auditing process, we came across a large volume of letters. Typed-up, it was quickly clear that these were not original letters, but nonetheless they were intriguing, and became even more-so as we read… Read more ‘War Letters of an Ordinary Gentleman 1914-1918’: Part 1 – An Introduction
The first Saturday of June, as well as being an open day for the public, saw the Dorset History Centre raise its portcullis and host a celebration of Dorset’s people during the Civil War and the records that tell their stories. Proceedings were opened by Tim Goodwin, the county’s leading authority on this period, who… Read more From Culture Wars to Conflict – Dorset in the Civil War
The information in this blog was recently presented as a free talk at Dorset History Centre as part of From the Stacks, our free lunchtime talks programme. These occur monthly and let staff showcase one or two interesting documents from our collections. If you are in Dorchester on the last Wednesday of the month, why… Read more The Baker Nature Notebooks – part 1
In May our Reprographics Officer Tara left Dorset History Centre for pastures new up in Scotland. Tara had been part of the DHC since the autumn of 2023, working behind-the-scenes digitising records for customers, or creating surrogate copies of fragile or at-risk records. On the blog today, she reflects on her time at DHC… —… Read more Farewell from Tara!
Between 2015 and 2018 Dorset History Centre undertook the ‘Unlocking the Bankes archive‘ project. During the life of this project, staff and volunteers contributed well over 100 blogs to the project website. By 2024, this project website was no longer functional in the way it originally was, and we made the decision to close the… Read more The American Army Hospital at Kingston Lacy
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