Category: Local History

Dorset roads – a century of complaint

This month Barry has selected a postcard of Moreton School, sent in 1911 (right). The letter that follows was written by Hermann Lea, one...

Name that village …

Last month’s mystery postcard caused quite the kerfuffle on Facebook: it was of course Chettle! We’re thinking Barry Cuff’s pick this month looks rather...

Brixmis, the beret, the cow pat and the bomb

Among the artefacts in the Royal Signals Museum’s new Cold War exhibition is an object that looks entirely ordinary: a British Army beret. Yet...

Family forger who faced the noose found in the ‘R’ box

It was a cardboard archive box in a London library that stopped Rachael Rowe in her tracks.‘I pulled out this packet of papers labelled...

Yetminster’s forgotten pioneer

In a Yetminster farmhouse, Benjamin Jesty pioneered vaccination decades before Edward Jenner claimed the breakthrough Stand in Yetminster today and it is hard to imagine...

Meeting Mr Hardy:Thomas Hardy and music, part 2

Collections of old carols and songs found in Dorset’s churches have inspired a thriving revival of the West Gallery tradition THE recent resurgence of West...

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Heroic horsewoman runs the London marathon (aged 77) for the charities that saved her life

This month, Shena Kozuba-Kozubska will be running her second London Marathon. It’s likely to be even tougher than the one she did 30 years...

Planning Your Trip to the Gillingham and Shaftesbury Show: Where to Stay and What to See

There is something uniquely British about voluntarily spending a significant portion of your August weekend standing in a field in Motcombe, surrounded by pristine...