http://dorset-ancestors.com Helping you discover your Dorset Ancestors Thu, 02 Sep 2010 11:14:52 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en [caption id="attachment_1144" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Canford Magna Parish Church. Photograph by Chris Downer a contributor to the http://www.geograph.org.uk/search.php?i=15093031 site."][/caption] http://dorset-ancestors.com/?p=1143 [caption id="attachment_1141" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Canford Magna Parish Church. Photograph by Chris Downer a contributor to the http://www.geograph.org.uk/search.php?i=15093031 site."][/caption] http://dorset-ancestors.com/?p=1140 Between Bournemouth and Poole lies the heathland parish of Canford, today an area of intense development pressure. However, for most of the earlier 19th century it was an estate of thirteen thousand acres about to be transformed through the intervention of a businessman and his remarkable wife. The wife in question ... http://dorset-ancestors.com/?p=1136 From almost the earliest antiquity, the parish of Rempstone in Purbeck has been an area of unresolved enigma and dark secrets. Possibly over four thousand years ago Neolithic farmers or traders created a track, possibly a trade route, along the north flank of the Chalk ridge called Nine Barrow Down, ... http://dorset-ancestors.com/?p=1134 For the townsfolk of Bridport January 4th, 1911 was an occasion of dreary solemnity and from something more than just the depressing effect of wintry weather. People at home drew the blinds of their windows down; businesses put up their shutters. A cortege bearing a plain oak coffin passed through ... http://dorset-ancestors.com/?p=1132 A prison sentence today has been cynically likened by some people to being at Butlins when compared with the austere conditions of penal servitude in the 19th century. Assuredly, conditions were a lot harsher then, and nobody living at the time would likely have doubted that one stretch in prison ... http://dorset-ancestors.com/?p=1125 Before we can delve into some of its secrets, even the name Purbeck is of obscure and uncertain origin. The earliest reference is in 948 AD, where it appears as Purbicinga, later as Purbic in many medieval documents. But other place name authorities variously suggest the Old English pur (a ... http://dorset-ancestors.com/?p=1123 He was probably the last in a long line of rural craftsmen in roofing, following a family trade that extended back for eight generations. Simon Garrett, the master Thatcher of Thornford in Dorset, certainly saw many changes during the course of his long life: new housing estates, modern machinery and ... http://dorset-ancestors.com/?p=1119 St. Michael’s at Stinsford is often spoken of as “Hardy’s church,” a reference to Dorset’s most famous son; the novelist, poet and architect Thomas Hardy, who said, “I shall sleep quite calmly at Stinsford, whatever happens.” The writer had discussed his funeral with Stinsford’s vicar the Rev. H.G.B. Cowley but when ... http://dorset-ancestors.com/?p=1116 [caption id="attachment_1114" align="alignnone" width="475" caption="Nowadays home to a small business this building housed Boyles School"][/caption] http://dorset-ancestors.com/?p=1113