In recent weeks the Black Lives Matter movement has shone a spotlight on the importance of making sure that history reflects the lives of all people and we have found stories of black people in the records from our archive that may surprise you. It is easy to think that in a predominantly white rural county such as Dorset there are few stories to discover, but we were able to… Read more Black Voices Matter
Business records are those records that are created by a business that have a long-term value to the business itself, its stakeholders and future generations. They can include paper records, electronic records, audio recordings, videos and photographs. Most of the material produced by any organisation is ephemeral and of little use after the function that created it is ended.… Read more Archival Types – Business Records
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
Wednesday 24th June 2020 is Midsummer’s Day, and we will be posting a blog about the historical significance of this on the day itself. Today, we wanted to look at the historical meaning of the summer solstice, which happened on the 20th June 2020. — Since Neolithic times, when our Dorset predecessors were clearing trees… Read more Dorset’s Summer Solstice
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
In this blog, Jenny Oliver and David Watkins from Poole Museum explore a recent purchase made by Dorset Archives Trust and what it can tell us about the history of Poole… — Dorset History Centre with funding from Dorset Archives Trust has recently acquired a letter, undated but probably late 17th century, making a number of apparently unrelated points… Read more Disaffected and Unruly People – Poole in the 1680s
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
Sometimes an item comes into the Conservation Room that has pretty much everything going wrong for it and as a Conservator your heart sinks (but then you get a bit excited because it’s good to have a challenge!) This volume was one of those. The paper was acidic and brittle, 141 of the 430 leaves… Read more Rebinding the Rental: conserving the Rental of the Estate of The Marquis of Donegall, 1864
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
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