Roger Guttridge recalls North Dorset’s most notorious smuggling gang As many readers will know, I only need half an excuse to talk about my smuggling ancestors, and an email from Mike Coker has provided just that. ‘I’ve enjoyed reading your articles in the new Blackmore Vale and have been the owner of your Dorset Smugglers […]

Roger Guttridge recalls a fire that ripped through terraced cottages at Shaftesbury What a difference 63 years makes! The above picture shows some of the devastation after fire swept through six terraced cottages at St James’s Street, Shaftesbury, on June 17, 1955. The modern picture features the same terrace in 2018 complete with the tiled […]

Roger Guttridge recalls a colourful character from old Dorset Thomas Hardy fans will remember a character in The Return of the Native called Diggory Venn, the Reddleman. This Victorian travelling salesman made his living by selling reddle or raddle, a red powder widely used by shepherds. Long before Hardy’s death in 1928, Dorset’s Reddleman had […]

As one door closes and another opens, Roger Guttridge looks back on the Blackmore Vale Magazine’s early years Sipping a pint in his local one evening, session singer Alan Chalcraft had no idea he was about to make a life-changing decision. As they chatted in a Stalbridge pub, a fellow customer threw out a random […]

It’s been home to a pump, a horse trough, market stalls and parked cars, but now the roadside spot at Sturminster Newton’s Market Cross has begun a new incarnation. It’s latest life as a street café began in June in response to the government’s lockdown call to encourage the takeaway food and drink trade. It […]