Dorset Ancestors Rotating Header Image

January, 2011:

William & Hannah Part 3 – Separate Paths

When their eldest son William met with his fatal accident in May 1881 it is almost certain that William and Hannah Cheeseman (by then Chisman) were again living at Winfrith.  They were not however to resettle there immediately and within at most eighteen months they had again moved. 

William was once more hired as a shepherd, this time at Church Knowle on the Purbeck Hills, some eight miles to the west of Winfrith. Two years after the death of young William, Hannah bore her last child, a son, who was born at Church Knowle in 1883.  Hannah was by then aged thirty-five, while William was fifty-five.

It is known that at least one of his sons did not consider William to be a good father.  Indeed there is a suggestion that William was in fact a drunkard. When the Chismans were living at Blacknoll it is very possible that James Hibbs and William’s mother Amelia had been a restraining influence.  However, with their deaths that influence had ended and perhaps the material situation of William and Hannah had simultaneously deteriorated.  The move to Milton Abbas, the return to Winfrith and the further move to Church Knowle indicate a less settled state and family tensions could have been heightened by the death of the eldest son.

After the birth of their last child in 1883 matters clearly worsened.  Did an ageing William resent his younger wife’s energy?  Did a deeper resentment and memory of the circumstances of their marriage irritate him? Was he naturally a drunkard, or was he provoked by circumstances? Was he angered by some element in Hannah’s behaviour?  The questions readily present themselves, but the situation in the Chisman household remains hidden.  There is, however, one certainty:  William and Hannah were to part.
 
The date and circumstances of their separation are not known.  Perhaps it was after a return from Church Knowle to Blacknoll that Hannah left William, taking the children with her. Perhaps the family had moved to Portway at Winfrith and William had then deserted them.  All that is certain is that at some point before the end of 1890 Hannah found herself installed at Portway Farm with some of her children.  Hannah had become the head of the household and of William there was no sign.

Subsequent events sadly afford no reason for believing that Hannah’s separation from William was without animosity.  If the situation had been such that William had been forced out of the family home it would have been a very difficult episode.  In Victorian England the husband was (and was expected to be) the master of the household.   It is most probable that it was Hannah that had departed.  If so this would reflect her resolve and perhaps William’s condition.  It is possible that Hannah received help from her own brothers, one of whom is believed to have owned land in the vicinity.  (If any help had come from her brother John it would indeed have been an extreme irony.)

Even had she received support, Hannah nonetheless found herself with the responsibilities of a mother, married only in name and without the help of a husband.  Yet the relative positions of Hannah and William had changed and would continue to do so.  Since a disgraced Hannah had returned to Blacknoll some twenty years earlier the wheel had almost turned full circle.  Whatever William’s feelings had been towards Hannah at the time of their marriage, he must at least have seen that marriage as assuring himself of support and comfort in old age.  That was now a hope or expectation shattered.

Portway lies close to Winfrith village as it is approached from Blacknoll.  The beginning of 1891 saw Hannah at Portway Farm, with her eldest daughter Annie, then aged twenty-one, and her three remaining sons, aged fourteen, eleven and seven years.  Her other two daughters had left home, but one was working as a domestic servant at nearby Fossil Farm House.  It is clear that despite the adverse circumstances Hannah was coping.  It is even possible that without William she enjoyed a relative prosperity.  Perhaps at Portway Farm she was indeed a small tenant farmer.

William Chisman’s condition, however, was very different. Now in his sixties, he was probably living at Blacknoll, alone, and possibly finding it increasingly difficult to work to keep himself.  His final years were truly a period of decline. For a person alone, with no means and no family support, employment was imperative.  If through ill-health, unreliability or simply lack of employment William had been unable to work, then his situation was precarious.  It would seem that this was the path that William trod and eventually, unable to support himself, he entered his last haven before the grave.  By at latest the end of 1900 William was a pauper and an inmate of the Union Workhouse, Wareham, the very place where over thirty-five years earlier the seventeen-year-old Hannah Hibbs had given birth to her illegitimate son.

If William’s wife or children knew where he was, it appears there was no contact between them.  If he had not abandoned his family, they had certainly abandoned him.  William died on 23 January 1903.  He was aged seventy-six.  His body was not brought ‘home’ by his family, but was buried in a churchyard near the workhouse.  He had bequeathed his children only his name, Chisman.
 
Some years earlier Hannah had moved the short distance from Portway Farm to Fossil Farm Cottage.  There in 1901, as head of the household, she and her two youngest sons occupied four rooms.  Her sons were then young adults aged twenty and seventeen.  The elder worked as a ‘farm carter’; the younger as a farm labourer.  At least one of the two youngest Chisman daughters had already married.  Although Annie remained a spinster, she was no longer in the household.

In the next few years Hannah’s two youngest sons married and it seems likely that Hannah went again to live with her daughter, Annie, somewhere in Portway.   Certainly mother and daughter were both resident in Portway at the time of Hannah’s death.  Hannah, born ten years after Queen Victoria had come to the throne, lived on through the Edwardian years, dying just a month before the death of Edward VII.

Hannah died on the 29 March 1910. She was aged sixty-three.  Her death certificate records that she was the ‘widow of William Chisman, Shepherd’. 

Hannah had grown up at Blacknoll and spent much of her married life there.  Then after the brief periods at Milton Abbas and Church Knowle she had returned to Winfrith to settle finally at Portway, at the edge of Winfrith Newburgh village.  At the other end of the village stands the church where Hannah had been christened and married and which had witnessed the christening of all but one of her children.  Fittingly Winfrith churchyard became her final resting place.

Hannah’s grave lies inconspicuous, close by the lych-gate.  It is marked by a modest, but dignified headstone: a silent witness made poignant by knowledge of the life it commemorates.  The stone bears no reference to her husband William.

Princess Victoria’s Tour of Dorset

July 1833. Fourteen years before the first railway tracks are to be laid in Dorset, travel is by horsepower or by sea and at Weymouth the population is in festive mood, excited at the prospect of greeting a 14-year-old Princess who will one day be Queen. It was the start of a royal tour to acquaint the people of Dorset and Devon with the woman who one day would rule over the greatest empire the world had ever seen.

Guns were fired as her yacht appeared off St. Alban’s Point and as the ship dropped anchor off the Esplanade buildings and the royal party came ashore in the royal barge, Royal Salutes were fired

Princess Victoria’s home was Kensington Palace, but Norris Castle on the Isle of Wight was her summer base. Accompanied by her mother, the Duchess of Kent, the yacht “Emerald” was towed by a naval steam packet from Portsmouth. With the Princess was her adored King Charles spaniel “Dashy”. The Duchess was “dreadfully” sea-sick on the journey along the south coast, according to Victoria’s diary, which she kept assiduously throughout and which is today preserved at Windsor Castle.

The townspeople of Weymouth turned out and greeted their royal highnesses as illustrious visitors.  It seemed the whole population was proceeding from the King George III statue to the Quay. God Save the King was played as the royal party mounted the King’s Stairs used by King George III on his frequent holidays in the resort; they were then driven in carriages to the Royal Hotel facing the beach.

The following day after an official reception the princess and duchess travelled in a carriage to Melbury House in north Dorset to be entertained there by the Earl of Ilchester.  They were accompanied out of town by many of the inhabitants and a detachment of Lt.Col. Frampton’s Troop of Dorsetshire Yeomanry. Every prominent building in Dorchester was decorated with flowers, and there were flags waving and the sound of bells and cannons as horses were changed en route to Maiden Newton and Melbury, where according to Victoria’s diary they arrived at about 5 p.m.

A visit to Sherborne Castle had been suggested but did not take place. While at Melbury their royal highnesses ascended a tower and had the shapes of their feet cut on the leads. They enjoyed the park, the lake, the great house, and the church.

After a two-night stay the party was on the road again at 9.15 a.m. on August 1 to be “enthusiastically received” at Beaminster, where there were arches of flowers across the road. The carriage passed through the recently opened Russell Tunnel. The Dorset County Chronicle told of “spontaneous outbursts of enthusiasm” being received everywhere the royal party went.  This was at a time when there was pressure for a republic; it was the period of the Reform Act and agricultural disputes, which in a few months would become illuminated as several agricultural labourers from a small Dorset parish would emerge to become those Dorset heroes forever remembered as the Tolpuddle Martyrs.

At Bridport the ‘royals’ were given a hearty reception by the inhabitants but, according to Hine’s History of Beaminster, were angry that they were “not received by the Mayor and Corporation”.  Then onto Charmouth and Lyme Regis, where there were triumphal arches – and where the “Emerald” was waiting. Every boat in port was filled with paying spectators. Here, in 1685, the Duke of Monmouth landed to lead a revolt against King James II. Mayor John Hussey, in his public address, noted that the princess’s visit was taking place on the anniversary of the Protestant Succession to the throne.

Here, as she boarded the yacht, Princes Victoria was reunited with Dashy her dog. Sailing to Torquay, she remarked on the beautiful coastline and cliffs but both she and her mother were sick on approaching Torquay. From there, after an overnight hotel stay it was off by sea to Plymouth for several days in Devon.

On August 7 an informal return trip was made by coach, changing horses at six places including Bridport and Dorchester, with a military escort from Winfrith to Wareham and Swanage. Passing Corfe Castle, the princess noted in her diary some of the climactic events in history that had taken place there. The reception at Swanage was unforgettable for the young princess, and she must have been sorry to leave Dorset as she embarked with her mother on the “Emerald” for “dear Norris.”

It had been close on six weeks of strenuous activity since they left London. The ‘Royal Progress’ was one of a number leading up to the crowning of Queen Victoria. When that happened, exactly five years after her tour of Dorset, the county must have been proud to have been part of the grand design.. In Sturminster Newton, Gillingham, Cerne Abbas, Sydling, and Evershot, there were demonstrations of loyalty on the occasion of the “beloved Queen’s” coronation, but most of all perhaps in those communities the Queen had visited as a girl. Celebratory dinners were held in Ilchester and Lyme Regis, and at Dorchester there was a ball and much merriment at the King’s Arms and a gathering at the Antelope Hotel and a band wound its way around the streets.

Residents of an almshouse in South Street were regaled with roast beef, plum pudding and beer. At Weymouth, meanwhile, all the shipping in the Bay and Portland Roads was gaily attired and there was a procession along the Esplanade. Along the coast at Poole no less than 2,000 Sunday school children gathered for a “substantial dinner”, while vessels at Bridport Harbour were dressed overall.

Victoria, who first learned of her destiny at the age of 10, moved into Buckingham Palace. Her marriage to Albert was to come. She served as queen until 1901, becoming Empress of India in 1876, creating a new ceremonial style of monarchy, with social rather than political emphasis, and thus preserving it, and giving her name to a whole new age of modernism and expansion.

Notes: Extract from Dorchester’s Municipal Records relating to this story:

1833: Aug 2nd. Locket, for ringing on occasion of the Duchess of Kent and the Princess Victoria passing thro’ Dorchester (Per order of the Mayor) £1.0s.0d.

Paid Oliver, Churchwarden of The Holy Trinity (Per order of the Mayor) expenses incurred on the above occasion £1.17s.0d.

William and Hannah Part 2 – Marriages of Circumstance

On 13 December 1864, Hannah Hibbs gave birth to a son. The child was named Frank Edwin Hibbs.  The birth took place in the Union Workhouse at Wareham.  The child’s father, Hannah’s own brother, John, had also left the family home, but his circumstances were very different from Hannah’s.  Five months earlier, in July 1864, John had married.

The workhouse had provided a refuge for Hannah, but she could not remain there indefinitely. What was to be become of her and her child and in what manner did Hannah’s situation exercise the mind of her father?  He had lost the benefit of her services in the cottage, but did he want her to return and could he let her do so?   Her absence from home would have been evident to neighbours and the reason apparent.  Moreover, any attempt to conceal the paternity of Hannah’s child would not have prevented speculation among the Blacknoll community.  Yet Hannah was to return to Blacknoll.

The sequence of events that unfolded over the next three years is unclear. However, early in 1867, just two years after the birth of Hannah’s child, the Hibbs’ neighbour Jonathan Cheeseman died, aged seventy-four. Perhaps James Hibbs and the newly-widowed Amelia Cheeseman were already on friendly terms.  Possibly James had confided in Amelia and sought her advice about Hannah.  Whatever the nature of their previous acquaintance, following the death of Jonathan a closer relationship developed between them.  It would not have been unreasonable for James and Amelia, widower and widow, to have sought mutual solace and support.

It is not known whether Hannah had by then returned to Blacknoll, with her child.   However there can be little doubt that she was the subject of discussion between James and Amelia and it is not unlikely that it was Amelia who proposed a remedy to Hannah’s predicament.  Whether Amelia took the initiative or whether the proposal arose in another manner, Hannah’s situation was to be resolved.  She would marry Amelia’s son, William Cheeseman, a bachelor twenty years Hannah’s senior. William had first encountered Hannah as a young girl or at latest when she was just adolescent.  He would have seen her grow into a young woman.

For William the prospect of entering his later years alone, without help or companionship, must have been unwelcome.  Perhaps his nature had prevented his marrying previously; perhaps a lack of opportunity. Yet even had he felt strongly the wish to marry, could he in normal circumstances have contemplated marriage with Hannah or, importantly, she with him?  But circumstances were not normal and Hannah’s feelings towards William and marriage were probably of little account.  Practical considerations would have prevailed.  . 

William and Hannah were married at Winfrith on 6 August 1868.  Hannah was aged twenty and William was forty (though on the marriage certificate claimed to be only thirty-seven).

Their marriage was not the only one to take place in Winfrith church in that summer of 1868.  Exactly one month later, on September 6, Hannah’s father, James, and William’s mother, Amelia, became man and wife.  James was sixty-seven years of age and Amelia was seventy.  The witnesses at the marriage ceremony were their newly-married children, William and Hannah.

William and Hannah set up home at Blacknoll.  Hannah, long used to domestic chores and living in a male household, was perhaps better prepared than William.  The latter now found himself in an entirely new situation as head of a household and with a young wife.  He also found himself with a stepson.  More than that, it was the child of his wife’s brother, a younger man well-known to William and a man whom he would continue to encounter.  Some sense of resentment on William’s part would be understandable.  It is not impossible that this might have reinforced any feeling he harboured that Hannah was indebted to him for having rescued her from her plight.

William Cheeseman began his married life in a less uncertain world than that into which he had been born.  In 1837 the young Victoria had come to the throne and by the second half of the nineteenth century Britain was a confident and prosperous nation.  Not every citizen, however, shared in that prosperity. Life for agricultural workers remained far from idyllic.  Employed as a farm labourer, William would have led a relatively hard working life for poor wages and would have been fortunate if he enjoyed security of employment.  It is possible that the Cheeseman’s situation had been eased if, as seems probable, William’s elderly father-in-law, James Hibbs, owned or rented a little land, which through subletting or exploitation, would have augmented meagre incomes.

In July 1869, within a year of their marriage, William and Hannah had their first child, a daughter, Amelia Annie, known as Annie.   A year later Hannah gave birth to a son.  He took his father’s name, William.  By 1878 a further two daughters and a son were born to the couple.   Surprisingly perhaps the Cheesemans’ younger son was given the name John.  If William had felt antagonism towards Hannah’s brother, would he have allowed his own son’s name to remind him of John Hibbs?   Meanwhile, however, Frank, the child of Hannah and John, had left the Cheeseman home to live with his own father and his stepmother.

Interestingly, in this period the surname of the family was evolving. In the church records the children remained Cheeseman, while in the civil records the family name had become Chisman.

This period also saw the passing of the older generation.   In December 1875 Hannah’s father, James Hibbs, had died and was buried at Winfrith. He was aged seventy-five.  He and Amelia had enjoyed seven years of marriage.  Widowed for a second time, Amelia lived only a further eighteenth months and died in June 1877, aged seventy-eight.  She too was buried at Winfrith.

Then, sometime between the latter part of 1878 and early 1880, William and Hannah moved with their children from Blacknoll to Higher Hewish, in the parish of Milton Abbas. It is possible that the deaths of James and Amelia changed the circumstances of William and Hannah; possibly releasing them from an obligation of care, possibly removing from them the use of land.  At Higher Hewish William took employment as a shepherd and probably received better wages than he was getting at Winfrith.   The family had earlier connections with Milton Abbas, where Jonathan Cheeseman had once worked, and the choice of Higher Hewish was probably determined by the fact that William’s half brother also worked there in that period.

At Milton Abbas in December 1880 Hannah bore another son, George. Any joy at the birth of a further son was to be short lived.  A few months later, in May 1881, the Chisman’s eldest son, William, was killed in an accident in which he was run over by the wheel of a coach.  He was just ten years old.

At that time child mortality through illness or accident was high, but that fact would have been of little comfort to the family.  The children had lost a brother; and Hannah, having just brought a son into the world, saw another taken from her.  William too could not have been indifferent to the death of his eldest son and namesake.
 
Young William’s fatal accident took place at Winfrith, suggesting that the family had returned there; a suggestion reinforced by the fact that William was once more working as a farm labourer.  It is possible that the Chismans had never intended to stay long at Higher Hewish.  It is equally possible that William had been hired there for a fixed period and that for some reason was not re-engaged.

Whatever circumstance prompted the return to Winfrith, events of the ensuing years would suggest that all was not well in the Chisman household.

To be continued……..

Stalbridge Cross

Stalbridge, in the Blackmore Vale near to the county boundary with Somerset, is a largish rather ordinary town but it does boast a very fine market cross. The date of which is open to question with some over romantic legends placing it as early as 1309 but the stories don’t fit with historical fact; we prefer to go with the establishment view that is it of the late 15th century. Unlike many similar monuments Stalbridge’s Cross survived the Civil War intact but in the end old-age did for it. During a storm in the winter of 1949-1950 bits of the cross head crumbled away and fell off.The cross head we see today is a restoration.

Carved out of limestone from Marnhull or Todber it stands 30 feet tall. The octagonal base has three steps above a chamfered plinth, the top step supports a square pedestal with moulding capping, the corners having been partially chamfered to give it an octagonal appearance. The tapering shaft is octagonal with pinnacles: each pinnacle has a finial at the top. A corbel from the west face of the shaft supports a carved figure but the weather of centuries makes it unrecognisable today. The shaft is crowned by a capital in the form of four winged figures grasping shields. The modern replica cross head has a canopied recess containing a representation of the crucifixion. Pevsner observes “it must in its day have been a splendidly rich piece.”

The market place was the centre of all town life and the market cross the centre of the market place. John Wesley says in his journal from the 18th century that he preached at Stalbridge Cross and tells us his followers were pelted with mud and filth, though Wesley was unharmed.

From here the Bailiff of the lord of the manor would collect tolls for the live and dead stock, butter, eggs, blue veined cheese and poultry sold at the weekly Tuesday market. The market was held by permission granted to the town in the 12th century by the Abbot of Sherborne. The town used to have two fairs: on April 16th and August 24th and these would have been announced from the market cross, as would news of major national events. The fairs died away and the market struggled on into the 20th century before transferring to Sturminster Newton.

In 1918 Lord Stalbridge sold-off all his interests in the area. The market cross was transferred to the parish council for one-shilling after some minor repairs had been carried out by a local craftsman, Mr Jeans.

The market cross at Stalbridge is one of the finest examples of its type in the country.

We have placed a photograph in the gallery section.

William and Hannah Part One – A Family Affair

Jonathan Cheeseman was an agricultural labourer, sometimes shepherd; a man of little substance. He was born in 1794 in the Dorset village of Litton Cheney, but even before his marriage in 1817 he had embarked on a series of moves from parish to parish in a small area to the east of Dorchester.   It was there, at Tincleton, in the summer of 1821 that Jonathan’s wife died.  His feelings on the loss of his wife after just four years of marriage were threaded with concern.  How could he both work and care for his two young sons left motherless?

Whatever the immediate solution, Jonathan’s situation was relieved when two years later he remarried.  His second wife was Amelia Vincent, some four years younger than Jonathan and aged about twenty-five at the time of their marriage in May 1823.  Within a year Amelia bore Jonathan a daughter.  Four years later, in 1828, Amelia gave birth to a son, William.  Unsurprisingly William would in due course become an agricultural labourer like his father.  He too at times would work as a shepherd.

As the previous century had approached its end many rural communities had begun to lose their stability. Changes in agricultural practices and mechanisation meant that Jonathan had grown up at a time when rural labour was becoming a commodity and agricultural employment increasingly insecure.  This insecurity combined with falling wages, brought social unrest and discontent to the countryside.  Jonathan’s periodic changes of home and employer possibly owed something to his temperament, but almost certainly owed as much to the conditions of his time.

At William’s birth the Cheesemans were living at Piddletown, but shortly afterwards they moved to Tolpuddle, where in 1830 Amelia had a second daughter.   It is not improbable that the family was still in Tolpuddle during the historic events there in 1834 and possibly was acquainted with one or more of the “martyrs” or their families.   Where the Cheesemans lived in the years that immediately followed is not known, only that they were included in the Athelhampton 1851 census, but finally they settled at Blacknoll at Winfrith Newburgh.

Blacknoll lies to the north of Winfrith village, at the edge of what was then a tract of wild heath.   As the land rises towards the modest height of Blacknoll Hill, there is a scattering of cottages, a few forming a row. They housed a close-knit community; several families representing a large proportion of its number.  It was for the most part a community of rural labourers and their families, largely uneducated and poor.  Many of the cottages were small, one-up-one-down dwellings that sometimes housed a family with perhaps half a dozen children.  A few of the Blacknoll families owned or leased small parcels of land, but if the inhabitants of Blacknoll were not in the desperate plight suffered by many people, this was a place untouched by prosperity.  Poverty in the countryside was acute and the produce from a garden or the benefit of additional occasional work could make a critical difference to the household economy.  

Already established at Blacknoll was the family of James and Hannah Hibbs, both of whom had their roots in Winfrith. Like Jonathan Cheeseman, who was his senior by seven years, James Hibbs, was an unschooled agricultural labourer and for the Hibbs, as for the Cheesemans, daily existence was simple and rude.
 
It was in May 1823 (just forty-eight hours before the marriage of Jonathan and Amelia Cheeseman) that James Hibbs had married Hannah Cox.  Their first child arrived within months of their marriage, but probably died in infancy.  Almost seven years elapsed before the birth of their next known child.  While it is not impossible that James Hibbs had been absent from home for a significant period, it is more probable that in the intervening years there were other children, untraced, who also had died as infants.  However, even if seven years of the marriage had been barren, Hannah then gave birth with a remarkable regularity.  In the years 1830 to 1844, she bore three daughters followed by five sons (one of whom died in 1845 at the age of four).

Then, after over twenty-four years of marriage, Hannah gave birth to her last child.  It was a daughter, who was baptised at Winfrith on 3 October 1847.  The child was given her mother’s name, Hannah.  Sadly the mother did not live to see her new daughter grow out of infancy. At the end of 1849, at the age of forty-three, Hannah, James’ wife, died.  The young Hannah was just two years old.

If initially the task of running the household and of caring for Hannah and the youngest of her brothers fell to one of the elder Hibbs daughters, it was not for long.  By 1851, before Hannah was yet four, her sisters had left home, leaving James Hibbs inhabiting the cottage with his four surviving sons, aged between six and sixteen, and the three-year-old Hannah.  It is difficult to speculate on the situation that prevailed in the Hibbs household and on the conditions under which Hannah spent her childhood.  She received at most a perfunctory education and she remained illiterate (in contrast to her mother, who could at least write her own name).  In these circumstances the freedom of childhood was short for Hannah and she was soon introduced to household chores.

In the next decade two of Hannah’s brothers left home and in 1860 her second-eldest brother died at the age of twenty-two and so by the end of 1860 there were just three persons in the Hibbs cottage, as there were in the Cheeseman household.

Jonathan and Amelia Cheeseman, aged sixty-six and sixty-two respectively, were living with their son William, aged thirty-three, but unmarried.  William was then working as an agricultural labourer.  Nearby the fifty-nine-year-old widower James Hibbs was living with his son, John, aged nineteen and his daughter, Hannah.  Although only fourteen, Hannah had long become accustomed to looking after the house and the two men.  A little over three years later the Hibbs household was to be the setting for an event that would shape not only Hannah’s life, but also that of William Cheeseman.
 
In the early part of 1864 Hannah, sixteen years old, became pregnant.  For a young woman in Hannah’s social situation her condition would have been as much a matter of practical concern as of shame.  For families living near subsistence level a pregnant daughter and then young mother would not have been welcomed and the child represented an extra burden, another mouth to feed.  The parish too would take an interest.  An unmarried mother and her child could become a drain on the meagre parish chest and an attempt would be made to discover the identity of the father and to ensure that he took responsibility for maintenance.  In many cases, of course, the imminent arrival of a child provoked a marriage (usually with the father if he were in a position to marry).  This solution, however, was not available to young Hannah.  The father of her child was her own brother, John.  At the time he was twenty-one years of age.

What was the relationship that led to Hannah’s pregnancy?  While it is not impossible that the young woman encouraged her brother, or at least did not object to his attentions, it is more likely that John simply forced himself upon her.   It is possible that this was a situation that Hannah had endured or accepted for some years.  However, such speculations are of little value. What was important was the situation and its repercussions.

Hannah was sent to the Union Workhouse at Lady St. Mary, Wareham.  In that institution, isolated from her family and community and among strangers, mostly paupers, some insane, Hannah, then just seventeen years old, awaited the birth of her first child.  Her immediate apprehension was compounded by thoughts of the bleak prospect that lay before her. She had slipped even from her lowly place in society and she would have been aware that many young women in her position would face a future of misery and abuse, always at the mercy of others.  In addition the child she carried was her own brother’s.

What were Hannah’s feelings towards her brother and father?  Did she feel resentment?  Did she feel abandoned?  Whatever her thoughts and feelings, they were at that moment all she possessed.

To be continued…….

Lyme and Christchurch – A Comparative Study of Dorset’s Bookends

One interesting aspect of studying towns is how the local geology can so often influence their development. This can be expressed either in topographical terms or in economic terms (such as earth resources providing the raw materials for certain industries.) Dorset furnishes us with a quite unique example in the pair of towns marking the extreme western and eastern ends of the county along the south coast. Lyme Regis and Christchurch could be regarded as the county’s bookends, though they are very different in character. And this distinction can be explained as a reflection of the stark contrasts in the nature of their terrains, or geology of their environments.

Lyme’s position in the west of the county has always meant that its growth has been subject to some restraint because of the hilly nature of that part of Dorset. The precipitous relief is mainly due to the presence of the hard Liassic limestone of the Jurassic period, which underlies and encompasses the town. Indeed, the road running north-west in and out of Lyme has a mean gradient of about 1 in 3 and takes several sharp turns to avoid even steeper slopes.

On the other hand, Christchurch has grown up within the much more open and gentler terrain of east Dorset, underlain by much younger and softer sands and clays of the Tertiary era. This area if not one of steep hills, valleys and coombes, but of a flatter landscape giving rise to marsh, water meadows and the infertile acid heathland extending behind Bournemouth and Poole and into the Isle of Purbeck. Settlement here therefore has never experienced the topographical restraints of the west and so easy communications and access have given free reign to the growth of Christchurch as a populous resort.

Lyme Regis and Christchurch have of course a seaside situation in common and both are, for that reason, unable to expand southwards. But whereas there are no obvious or insurmountable barriers to the growth of Christchurch in the other three directions, this is not so for Lyme. Today this town is a Mecca for tourism of a predominantly thematic nature, a specialisation which has more to do with what the local rocks contain than with any difficulty of access their topographical expression may present.

The Liassic strata which outcrops in the west Dorset cliffs literally teems with thousands of fossils, principally the remains of ammonites and marine reptiles. These vestiges of Dorset’s remotest antiquity have made Lyme a honeypot for scientists and fossil collectors for over 300 years, and today the damage and erosion arising from this intensity of casual collecting is greater than ever. Because of this immensely important resource for scientific enquiry, the cliffs at Black Ven and Charmouth near Lyme form the western extremity of the internationally important Heritage (or Jurassic) Coast SSSI. This makes the town effectively Britain’s, if not the world’s capital of ‘fossil tourism.’

Yet it is these same cliffs which are impacting on Lyme’s prospects for growth in other ways. The hard limestone bands throughout the Lias deposit which are responsible for enclosing the town with steep slopes are interspersed with soft unconsolidated clays which, when waterlogged, can easily propagate landslides. Landslips, particularly the major Downlands slip of 1839 are clearly in evidence along the urban shoreline and such is their instability that they cannot be built upon, so constricting any development eastwards and westwards, as well as to the north. In addition, sea quarrying of the Lias Ledges in the early 19th century contributed yet more to the damage of the coastal sections.

As might be expected in a hill-rimmed coastal situation, evidence of Lyme’s prehistoric past is scanty. Some New Stone Age artefacts from around 3,500 BC have been found locally, and the Romans built a villa at nearby Holcombe to be closely associated with their road (now part of the A35.) The first documented reference to Lyme is from 744, referring to a manor and salt rights. Following an initial prosperity as a medieval market and trading port, it suffered a near catastrophic recession, contraction, and de-population from the mid 17th to the early 19th century, when it recovered, through the Victorian fashion for bathing and drinking seawater. Today the town is a fashionable retirement centre, where visitors and incomers regularly outnumber the long-established population by four or five to one.

One peculiarity of the old town – seen in Coombe Street – does owe its origin directly to the serious shortage of land and cramped site conditions in the borough. This is a drangway or narrow public passage giving access to courts or cottages behind, and has encouraged much of the haphazard planning favoured by modern landscape architects. It is also significant that Lyme was inaccessible to wheeled traffic until the opening of the turnpike road in 1759.

By contrast, Christchurch is in a very different league. Here there are no high cliffs or hills sheltering the town from inland. The soft underlying tertiary strata is poorly exposed and lacks the spectacular fossils of the kind that would arrest the interest of the casual collector. Instead, the town has grown up in the midst of extensive marsh and water meadows created by confluence of the Stour and Avon, which form a natural, though not inexceedable, boundary to the borough.

Not surprisingly, evidence of prehistoric settlement at this site is far richer than at Lyme and includes Old, Middle and New Stone Age implements extending back at least 12,000 years. There are also indications that the harbour was already in use as a port facility in prehistoric times. On the south side of the harbour is the promontory of Hengistbury Head, a further very significant site of early prehistoric activity. Here on this headland of grasses and bushes growing in orange-yellow sands prehistoric people constructed a double dyke across the neck of the promontory and appear to have operated a crude flint-tool industry, leaving their wasters for today’s archaeologists to find.

Just as Christchurch is richer in archaeology, so accordingly is it in the raw resources for home grown industries. For instance, on the eastern slopes of Hengistbury Head the sands contain a formation of ironstone in the form of ‘doggers’ formerly quarried and sent to Beaulieu to be smelted into iron fittings for naval ships. Removal of many of the Hengistbury doggers and boulders from the foreshore however, encouraged a problem of coastal erosion until quarrying ceased once it became unprofitable. The now abandoned ironstone pit has been flooded to create a scenic wildlife lake.

The configuration of its coastline and the presence of a long harbour also made Christchurch as favourable to 18th and 19th century smugglers as Lyme, and fishing was still important in the 19th century, as was working on the land, brewing, glove-making, hosiery and making watch chains.

The two rivers of the Frome and Avon have provided water-power for driving mill wheels, and are also noted for their salmon catches and farms. The absence of prominent hills makes the district favourable for aviation, as at nearby Hurn airport.

Robert White (1775-1807)

On the night of the 18th of November 1806, five men assembled in a house at Corfe Castle where they blackened-up their faces and hands, disguised their clothes and armed themselves with bludgeons and a gun. At about one o’clock in the morning they broke into the home of 79 year-old Robert Nineham, a yeoman farmer and his son, and burst into their bedrooms and also the maid’s room, threatening them all with “instant death” if they did not lie still. They then proceeded to break open a bureau and several boxes and stole one hundred guineas in gold, bank notes to a value of seventeen pounds, a watch and a gun.

The house where they met was the home of Robert White and his wife Sarah and their children. Three of the other men lodged with White and were strangers to Purbeck. All the men worked on the railway being laid on a route from the clay pits to the sea.

The men were quickly apprehended and much of what was stolen was found still in their possession. Later they were brought before Sir T.M. Sutton a Judge sitting at Dorchester. The charge against them: “burglariously breaking and entering the dwelling house of Robert Nineham, of Hurpson in the Isle of Purbeck.” After a trial lasting five hours all five were convicted of the crime.

Robert White was the first son of William and Grace (nee Hinton) White who married at Corfe Castle on the 15th of February 1774. Robert was baptised on 17th of December 1775 and his siblings were: George (1777 who died in 1779); Martha (1779); George (1782); Mary (1784 who survived for only four months); Sarah (1785); Betty (1788); Mary (1790); John (1793) and Charles (1796). William White was buried on 13th of July 1820 at Corfe Castle aged 67 years surviving his wife; Grace, by three years; she was buried on 3rd of June 1817 and was also aged 67 years.

Robert married Sarah Keats on the 28th of August 1798 and their first child, a daughter (Jane), arrived four months later and was baptised on 23rd of December 1798. Their second child, another daughter named Mary Ann, was baptised on the 17th of August 1800, her short life ended in 1811. The first son, John, was baptised on 30th of September 1801 and another daughter, Harriet, was baptised on the 5th of August1802 but she died fifteen months later. Their younger boy, George, was baptised 26th of October 1804.

From this distance it is impossible to tell who the ring-leader was and if our Dorset son was led astray by visitors from other parts. It seems inconceivable though that his wife would not have known the errand he was on that night; but did she encourage him or attempt to dissuade him. He was bringing in a wage supplemented by whatever the three strangers paid him for lodging so it is unlikely the family was on the bread-line. If greed was the motivation he and his family paid a high price for his involvement in this venture.

According to reports at the time the Judge, in passing sentence of death on the men, did so “in the most impressive manner”. He pointed out to the men the great enormity of their crime and that it was all the more serious because of the aggravated circumstances they used.

Judge Sutton said “that in the interests of public justice and the security of private property he could not give them the least hope of mercy” and he entreated them to “employ the short time allotted them in this world by the most sincere penitence, in endeavouring to obtain pardon from that Almighty Being, in whose unfathomable wisdom mercy can be reconciled with justice”.  At the time it was noted that the behaviour of the prisoners “during the time of their condemnation” was very penitent and it was said they acknowledged the justice of their sentence. As it happened two of the men, George Walker and Thomas Wright were “respited a few days before the execution”, which we take to mean they were granted a “stay of execution”.

Robert White, John Alexander (30) “of a good family and is unmarried” as also was Thomas Gibbons (27) were taken from their cells at about one o’clock to the place of execution being the New Drop, on the ledge of the castle at Dorchester, where on Saturday, March 28th, 1807 they were “launched into eternity”. They were the last men to be hanged in Dorset for house-breaking.

This story ends on a poignant note. Sometime in November of 1806 Robert White and his wife Sarah conceived another child who was born about five months after her father’s execution. She was named Caroline and baptised on the 23rd of August 1807.  Her life was short, as she died in March 1820.

Maiden Newton

Is it a very large village or a very small town? There does not seem to be universal agreement on this point. Even today Maiden Newton remains something of a backwater. In the Dorset edition of Pevsner it is condescendingly described as “…a townlet with nothing to show for itself except the weathered remains of a once fine late medieval market cross.” However, based on the criterion that a settlement must possess at least one cinema to qualify as a town, then Maiden Newton probably does not, though it had – and still has – home-grown industries of its own.

Maiden Newton was founded at the confluence of the Hooke and Frome rivers, when what was then the main road north-west from Dorchester passed near the point. The discovery of a Roman tessellated pavement appears to have been the earliest evidence of settlement in the area until the early medieval royal charters established the rights to hold fairs. The unearthed Roman floor portrayed Neptune slaying a sea monster.

One of the earliest documents relating to Maiden Newton was a grant issued by Henry III to Geoffrey de Insula, conferring the right to hold a fair at the ‘Manor of Neweton’ until the King came of age. Another charter of Henry III dated 12th of December 1242 was issued to William de Insula as “a mandate to the Shire of Dorset to proclaim a fair and desire it to be held.” A further document states that Bartholemew de Insula, deceased, had held the manor of Maiden Newton, while Elizabeth, widow of John Lisle, was holding Maiden Newton in 1431.

In the 16th and 17th centuries the pasture around the village was converted to water meadows to cultivate an early crop of grass for sheep and cattle by preventing freezing in winter. The meadows occupied about 4.2 acres and are now about 200 years-old, being bounded on three sides by rivers and a railway on the fourth side. The nationally rare moth Blair’s Wainscott is locally abundant, and the water meadows are a haven for other wildlife.

The Church of St. Mary stands at the end of the parish and is built of stone in the Perpendicular style. The square, central, embattled and pinnacled Norman tower with six bells survives, one bell bearing a 17th century inscription. A Norman door with zig-zag décor also survives, but much of the rest of the church is 15th century. A decayed door in the blocked Norman doorway is said to date from 1450, making it one of the oldest in England still hanging on its original hinges.

The living includes 122 acres of glebe (church) land and residence. Registers began in 1555. There are also Wesleyan and Congregational chapels in the village. It is noted that following the outbreak of the Civil War, Charles I made a brief stay at the Rectory, and it was at this time that St. Mary’s acquired the unusual distinction of sustaining the first of what would be two sets of bullet holes from two wars 300 years apart.

Other early buildings in Newton were the Mill, and the White Hart Inn. This 17th century hostelry was a magnet for travellers and tourists, but the people of the village were unable to save it from demolition. In its day it had two storeys with dormers in the thatched roof, windows with stone mullions, and a gateway leading under the house to the stable yard. The medieval market cross, put up to mark the market area, with its square base, squarish stem and carved, weathered figures on the west face has since been moved a few yards from the middle of the road.

However, it was during the 19th century that Maiden Newton really took off in growth in size and importance. By this time it was a sprawling, not particularly pretty place with rambling streets and a somnolent air, but still one having known excitement. Its importance may have declined when the new road from Dorchester along the ridge to the east opened, had not the railway movement layed a branch of the Bristol to Dorchester line through Newton, en route to connecting Bridport.

In 1841 a National School was opened, eventually enlarged to take 200 children in 1865 and 1870. By the end of the century Maiden Newton had a railway station, police station, congregational chapel, iron foundry, cattle market and three branch banks. The old Mill was converted into a carpet factory, which was closed in 1970. Apart from pasture, Newton’s gravely soil has supported crops of wheat, barley and oats.

The impact of the railway on the demographics of this 2,854-acre parish is reflected clearly in the century’s census returns as follows: 1851: 345; 1861: 844; 1871: 856; 1891: 694. After falling to 557 in 1931, the population reached its maximum of 940 in 2000.

But Maiden Newton has one other claim to fame – as a place where, in 1952, a Royal train bearing the as yet uncrowned Queen Elizabeth II made a night stop-over on her first tour of the west country. Although the stop was not intended to be a public visit, but secret, the Parish Council obtained permission to present the Queen with an address of welcome. Today, all that remains of the line that train ran on is the track-bed, which can still be followed as a country walk south-west from the station.

Oh, those other bullet holes in the church? They were put there during the last war when a German fighter fired upon the Church, penetrating the altar window.