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Category: Local History

The Dorset surgeon who changed the worlds of art and science

Hogarth paintings are undergoing restoration in London, but what do they have to do with a surgeon from North Dorset? Rachael Rowe reports St Bartholomew’s,...

Tales of a Blandford blizzard | Then & Now

Roger Guttridge recalls a Victorian snowstorm that cut the town off – and the local newspaper publisher who abhorred the evils of drink A light...

Postcards from a Dorset Collection

The BV first featured Barry Cuff’s collection in The Gardener with 10,000 postcards in April 2022. In the first of a new series, the...

Granddad George’s Gillingham hotels

A trip to Gillingham for this month’s Then And Now, where Roger Guttridge discovers an Olympic champion’s unlikely connection with North Dorset hostelries Sports fans...

Britain’s most haunted house? Possibly not

In this month’s Looking Back column, Roger Guttridge questions the spooky stories that have long been associated with Sandford Orcas Manor As Dorset manor houses...

All buttoned up

Rupert Hardy, chairman of the North Dorset CPRE, has been exploring the long history of the Dorset button It all goes back to Abraham Case,...

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Grassroots to Gold Cups

In our new column, Chris Wald, assistant trainer to Joe Tizzard, tells us how Venn Farm went from dairy farm to racing dynasty Venn Farm...

Rockbourne Fair returns this October

The Rockbourne Early Christmas Fair is back at Salisbury Racecourse from Wednesday 15th to Friday 17th October, bringing three days of boutique shopping and...