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February, 2010:

Fire at Evershot

Feb 23rd, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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18 Houses Destroyed – Over 100 Homeless

On Tuesday 26th September 1865 at Evershot a fire destroyed eighteen houses, the property of the Earl of Ilchester, making more than one hundred people homeless. The houses were in Summers Lane and the main street: the residents living in Summers Lane lost nearly all their possessions the people on the main street were more fortunate having time to salvage some of the contents of their homes before the fire took them. The wind carried the flames and sparks across the narrow road on to a barn and slaughterhouse occupied by Mr. Trenchard a butcher.

Reporters from ‘The Western Gazette’ and ‘The Western Flying Post’ ascertained from enquiries on the spot that the fire was started by hot ashes being placed in a back house connected to the premises occupied by Mr. English, a carpenter. The flames were discovered about one o’clock in the afternoon “the whole house being almost instantly enveloped in flames.” The neighbouring houses with their thatched roofs as dry as tinder, the result of a long drought, it was clear that the whole of the lower end of the town was in danger of being engulfed in the fire.

Police Constable Hare was on the scene almost immediately and despatched messengers for the two fire engines kept at Melbury House. Telegraphic messages were sent to Yeovil for more fire engines and to Dorchester for police officers. ‘The Western Gazette’ reported “ The request for the engines reached Mr. Bradley, the Captain of the Yeovil Volunteer Fire Brigade, at a quarter past two, and his engine started in fifteen minutes after its receipt, and reached Evershot in 45 minutes” drawn by four of Mrs. Bulleu’s best horses. Before its arrival a change in wind direction had driven the flames across the main street and “house after house fell victim to the flames” making both the main street and Summers Lane impassable.

The heat was so great that it was impossible to approach any of the burning premises. ‘The Western Gazette’ reporting “It seemed probable that the fire would sweep up both sides of the street, and wipe Evershot out altogether. It was only by dint of the most strenuous and well-directed exertions of those in charge of one of the Melbury House engines, and of the Yeovil Brigade engine, that this catastrophe was averted, and the fire confined to the lower end of the village.”

It being agreed that attempting to extinguish the fire in the houses where it was already raging was useless all the efforts of the firemen were directed to cutting off the flames and preventing the fire spreading down the street. Fortunately there was an abundant supply of water in a stream only a hundred yards or so away. By keeping the houses next to those which were burning completely saturated with water, the firemen finally got control and saved the rest of the village.

The names of the families of those persons made homeless: Charles White, labourer; George Brett, tailor; E. Rutley, labourer; T. Frampton, labourer; A English, carpenter; S. Christopher, butcher; W. Groves, labourer; J. Groves, shepherd; J. Childs, labourer; J. English, labourer; J. Tompkins, labourer; J. Groves, gamekeeper; A Sartin, widow; J. Perrett, cooper; S.Chubb, shopkeeper; J. Edwards, bootmaker; E Knell, tailor; S. Jessop, labourer and Mr Trenchard, butcher, lost his barn and slaughterhouse.

The buildings were uninsured presenting the Earl of Ilchester with a substantial loss. Mr Chubb’s stock and furniture were insured but his loss still amounted to £100. The local newspapers reported “A body of police soon arrived from Dorchester; and under Supt. Brown, who happened to be in the village, and Sergeant Vickery, they rendered valuable assistance.” No life was lost nor was anyone injured. 

Those reporting the event were quick to comment on the way the community all pulled together regardless “to class or station.” Singled out by the Press for particular praise were the following individuals:Mr. Baskett, solicitor; Mr.Martin; Mr Baring, the Earl of Ilchester’s steward; the Rev.Greenhill, Mr Clapcott and Mr.Forward; and the Rev. Collins, the clergyman of the parish, and his wife and daughters, were seen handing to each other the buckets of water for the engines. Mr. Clapcott, Mr.Collins Mr.Martin and others, opened their houses and provided refreshments for all that needed them.

The following week the local press was still following the story but by now it was the darker side of human nature they had to write about. “Blankets and bedroom carpets, which had been saved from the fire disappeared most mysteriously, and the contents of a butt of cider, the property of Mr. S. Christopher, which had been removed to Mr Knell’s garden for safety, were likewise stolen”  ‘The Western Gazette’ continued “ We trust that the heartless wretches who took advantage of this great calamity to rob their neighbours may be speedily brought to justice.”

By early morning on the Sunday following the disaster it was reported that from 600 to 1,000 people, the inhabitants of the neighbouring towns and villages, had come to see the scene of the fire. In the evening the church was crowded and many strangers were present. The Rev. E. Collins selected his text from the first verse of Proverbs chapter 27.“For thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.”

The Parish Church of St. Mary’s – Glanville’s Wootton

Feb 22nd, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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Elsewhere we have looked at the history of Glanville’s Wootton, a parish in “the Vale of the Little Dairies” as Hardy called the Blackmore Vale. Today the tradition of dairy farming continues in the parish, carried on at Round Chimneys Farm by Mr Rich. I went to see the Church, which is to the east of the village and approached by the narrow Church Farm Lane. You can park opposite the church in an area provided; I was greeted from an adjacent paddock by a friendly and inquisitive mare and her foal.

St. Mary’s is surrounded by a well kept churchyard in an attractive setting bounded by stone walls. Built from course rubble with ashlar dressings and roofed with stone slates, the south chapel, the oldest part of this house of God, has walls of knapped flint with Ham Hill ashlar dressings and bonded courses.

Entered through the 15th century south porch St. Mary’s comprises a west tower, nave, chancel and south chapel. The short west tower is 14th century and embattled having two stages outside and three storeys inside with a lancet window in each side of the upper storey. The belfry is home to six bells. The nave is 15th century; subsidence of the north wall due to it having been built over a line of ancient coffins resulted in it being re-built under the supervision of G. R. Crickmay in 1875-1876. The Norman font is of Purbeck marble.

It seems the only part of the chancel not re-built during the restoration by Crickmay is the very large hagioscope or squint. There are two modern clergy stalls by Robert Thompson of Kilbury, York, known as the “Mouseman,” because all the work produced by this firm of craftsmen is decorated with a carved mouse.

The gem of this place is the Chantry south chapel of 1344, separated from the nave by a wide spanning arch. It is a well preserved example of 14th century architecture about which the experts say “it has not greatly altered from its original form.” This was endowed by Sybil de Glanvyll so a priest would say Mass for the departed every day for ever. The beautiful stained glass east window is pointed with three lights with tracery. The chapel has two bays and two windows in the south wall, each are of three lights with tracery. All the chapel windows are 14th century. In the south east corner of the chapel is a piscina (there is another in the chancel) and directly under the windows in the south wall are two tomb recesses; the one to the east with an effigy of a man clad in a military style cloak. The chapel is furnished with high Victorian benches.

Inside St. Mary’s are monuments to Rev. Humphrey Evans (1813); Thomas Mew (1672) rector; members of the Williams and Henley families; John Every (1679) and his mother Anne (Williams) Hurding (1670; James Dale (1833); John and Elizabeth Leigh (1752 and 1783). There are floor slabs in the chancel of Margaret Allen (1662) and Nicholas Rickard, rector, (1707.) In the tower of John Pine (1643) and Ursula Pine (1639).

The church registers date from 1546. Available at the Dorset History Centre in Dorchester are the registers of baptisms 1549-1886; marriages 1546-1997; banns 1754-1908 and burials 1578-2000.

You will find a selection of photographs of St. Mary’s in the photo gallery.

John Mowlem

Feb 21st, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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Many people will have noticed the name Mowlem on the side of heavy construction machinery without giving a thought to the story behind the name. But this business of international renown had, as had so many others, very lowly beginnings: with a man born in an ancient cottage at Carrants Court, Swanage on October 12th, 1788. John Mowlem was one of six children; four of who were boys, born to a general store keeper whose name was also John.

By the early 1800’s when he would have been in his early teens, young John joined his three other brothers at work in the Tilly Whim Purbeck stone quarry. These were the days when child labour for farms and industries was universal because it was cheap. But by 1812 the effect of the recession caused by the long naval war with France had hit the Purbeck quarries, and Tilly Whim closed.

During these years it is believed that Mowlem came under the tutelage of Dr. Andrew Bell, Rector of Swanage from 1801 to 1809 and a learned schoolmaster, though the younger John’s education came mainly through the experience of his working life. Another milestone for Mowlem came in 1804, when Henry Manwell, a son of a friend of John Mowlem senior, left Swanage to go to work as a stone cutter in Portsmouth, but not before suggesting that his son John could find employment in the same industry in the Isle of Wight.

Accordingly and soon after, Mowlem threw up his job in the Purbeck Quarry with the original intention of finding a job in London. About this move there is a romantic story of how, with little more than his sack of tools, John persuaded a local captain to grant him a free berth on his vessel. But Mowlem’s nephew George Burt later noted that John did not go directly to London but stopped off at the Isle of Wight. Here, at the Norris Castle Quarry, he found his first job outside of Dorset.

After he had been at work in the Norris Castle Quarry for some while Mowlem was spotted by James Wyatt, an architect who recommended him to Henry Westmancott, one of two brothers in charge of running a masonry and sculpture workshop for the Government Masons Department in London. Following up this recommendation Mowlem left the Isle of Wight and moved into lodgings adjacent to the Westmancott’s in Mount Street, near to the site of the shared workshop in Pimlico.

It was during these earliest years in London, sometime in the first decade of the 19th century, that Henry Manwell’s sister Susannah visited her brother, by then living in London and working as the rate collector for St. Marylebone. Inevitably this brought her into contact with John Mowlem, to whom she soon found herself attracted, and in 1812 he and Susannah were married. That year Robert Burt, long a friend of John’s married Susannah’s sister Letty in Swanage Church.

At this time the Government masons works had contracts for work at Greenwich and Kensington Palaces, the Royal Mews and Somerset House. For all these contracts in the capital Mowlem was made foreman over all the workers in 1816. He was later to record that he was put over men “..old enough to be my father.” But despite the promotion, Mowlem did not hold his boss in any high esteem. Indeed, he said of Westmancott that he was a hard niggardly taskmaster who paid him only punitive wages. He further wrote that the only virtues he (Westmancott) possessed, which he made a point of emulating were punctuality and cleanliness.

Mowlem left the Westmancott’s works in 1822 to found his own company with only about £100 capital, though he was much helped by several friends including MacAdam, who pioneered pitched road surfacing. Initially the company had much to do with the paving of roads, but as soon as he was solvent Mowlem took out a lease on a wharf in Pimlico basin, on the site later occupied by Victoria Station. It was to these works that the contractor imported Purbeck Limestone, York Sandstone, and Aberdeen Granite for many of the London landmarks we know today. With the help of his brother-in-law Henry, Mowlem next moved his office and yard to Paddington Wharf, then known as Little Venice.

Two of John’s brothers James and Joseph also went into business of their own in London, leaving Robert the only one of the brothers never to leave Swanage. Then in 1853 George Burt, who had mastered the craft of masonry in the Swanage Quarry, went into partnership with Mowlem in the capital. A third, a Yorkshireman called Joseph Freeman then joined the two men to form a company, which then operated under the name Mowlem, Burt and Freeman. Freeman married Elizabeth Burt, George’s sister in 1839.

Shortly before 1840 the company began work on its first major contract: re-paving Blackfriars Bridge with a Telford pavement of Granite setts. This was the first such pavement of its kind, and the contract specified that a delay in completion would incur a heavy penalty with no stage payments. But a shortfall in the supply of the granite led Mowlem to purchase another quarry on Guernsey. It was therefore Burt and Freeman who were left to manage the business during the time that Mowlem was overseeing the shipping of the rock from the Channel Island. Following the success of the undertaking Mowlem went on to re-pave London Bridge and the Strand.

But Mowlem was considering retirement before 1838, when he would have been 50. He is often regarded, together with Burt and William Morton Pitt, as one of the three gentlemen of Swanage. Morton Pitt was a wealthy entrepreneur and Dorset MP who had built Belvedere, a seven-room house in Swanage for which Mowlem made a failed purchase bid of £260. A Chancery sale took place at the Royal Victoria Hotel in 1838 and included the hotel itself, the Quay, Seymer Place, Sentry Field, the Watch and Preventative Station, Durlston Quarries and Whitecliff Farm. Mowlem moved into 2, Victoria Terrace, a road named after the future Queen who, when a Princess, made a brief stay at the hotel Pitt had developed and which was itself re-named after her.

Between 1858 and 1860 Mowlem bought the estate now occupied by most of Swanage north of the brook and extending to Ulwell. During these years he played a part in the construction of the town’s first pier (now gone) and the granite memorial on the seafront to King Alfred. In 1862 he added a memorial to Prince Albert and founded the Mowlem Institute, now the Mowlem Theatre.

Mowlem passed his retirement by watching the coast from an observatory on the roof of the house and by starting a famous diary, which he kept for the rest of his life. Burt meanwhile took full charge of Mowlem’s company in 1844 and undertook an ambitious landscaping project in what is today Durlston Park. This included the estate’s castle and The Great Globe, a massive 40-ton stone ball made in the Mowlem works and shipped to Durlston in 15 segments. Here the monument was set up on a platform just below the castle.

John Mowlen died in 1868, ten years before his company would become involved in electrifying the tramways, including the work of building the Northumberland Avenue Tramway, so beginning the long association of the name Mowlem with today’s transport infrastructure. In recent times Mowlem’s company also built the Dorchester by-pass, the new London Bridge, the Vickers Tower on Milbank, London Airport, and roads and docks, sewers and tunnels.

St. Edwold’s, Stockwood – Dorset’s Smallest Church

Feb 19th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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Tucked away below the northwest slopes of Bubb Down between Chetnole and Melbury Osmond is the tiny hamlet of Stockwood, home to the smallest church in Dorset.

The church, unseen from the road, is not difficult to miss. First you must find the farm track that leads without announcement to Church Farm. The church is huddled together with the farmhouse and easily mistaken for an outbuilding, even from the track. A footpath thankfully sign posted leads across a field to a brick footbridge and once over that you may have the uncomfortable feeling that you are trespassing in the farmer’s front garden. Directly ahead of you is the church and to your left, just four gravestones.

These lonely memorials to past inhabitants reinforce the feeling that life and time has passed this place by. Even Pevsner when he visited tarried only long enough to scribble half a dozen lines about the place.

As well as being the smallest of Dorset’s churches it is alone in being dedicated to St. Edwold. According to the Salisbury Cathedral calendar St. Edwold is remembered on August 12th a fact that will probably pass un-remarked in Stockwood.

Edwold was the younger brother of Edmund; the East Anglian king who in 870 during the late Saxon period was brutally murdered by or on the orders of the Dane Ivarr the Boneless. Edwold, perhaps wisely in the circumstances, declined the throne choosing instead the hermit life. He spent the last year of his life in Dorset.

Edwold, according to legend, was told in a vision to go to Silver Well. When he arrived in Cerne he paid a shepherd for bread and water with silver pennies and in thanks the man showed Edwold the well and he established a hermitage nearby. It is assumed he also had a cell at Stockwood, because this place was earlier known as Stoke St. Edwold. The holyman was ‘a heremite of high perfection’ and in 987 when the monastery at Cerne was rebuilt Edwold’s remains were reburied in the Abbey.

The present building dates from the early 15th century although its dedication to St. Edwold suggests it was built on an earlier Saxon foundation. The single cell construction, in which the Chancel and Nave are structurally undivided, measures just 30ft by 12ft. The early to mid 15th century east window is of three trefoiled lights with tracery in a two- centred head with a label and returned stops. In the north wall is a window with two trefoiled lights; while on the south wall are two windows, the eastern of early 15th century date and of two trefoiled lights in a square head. The western window is of 16th century date and of three four-centred lights in a square head with a label. The west porch was added towards the middle of the 17th century around the same time as the delightfully pillared and domed bell turret, which is topped off with ball terminal and pinnacles. The present bell was purchased in 1877 and was re-hung in a new framework in 1988.

“Neatly pewed” is how the church was described in 1870 so it seems that during some later restoration probably carried out towards the end of the 19th century much of the original church furniture was removed. The remaining altar rails and pews date from the later part of the 19th century, as does the font.

The four headstones beside the church mark the graves of 10 people. The small upright stone commemorates the short life of a beloved daughter, Mabel Christopher; she died in March 1884 aged just 6 years and 9months. A large upright stone is a memorial to John Bird (1812-1867). Another large upright stone tells us that Jonathan Wilton is buried here, he died three days before Christmas 1873 aged 72 years. The fourth monument, an upright stone with a cross on top, remembers the Wilton family: William (1770-1840), his wife Elizabeth (1775-1805), William Jeans (1790-1825), three children who died in infancy, and Samuel Wilton Jeans (1820-1826) are all buried here.

For hundreds of years this was a separate living, with its own parish priest but in 1888 it was united with the rectories of Melbury Sampford and Melbury Osmond. St. Edwold’s Church is now in the care of The Churches Conservation Trust.

Services are rarely held here now but the church remains consecrated and through its simplicity and tranquillity continues to minister to anyone persistent enough to find it.

The Church of St. Nicholas – Nether Compton

Feb 16th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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Approached by turning off the Sherborne toYeovil road Nether Compton is a picture postcard village sitting on the county border with Somerset. A narrow lane, edged by thick hedgerows that shield large houses from prying eyes, leads to the centre of the village widening, as it becomes the main thoroughfare bordered by houses in a variety of designs. Some of these homes are not quite as old as they appear, and many built from the local stone, which on a sunny day glows golden, as does the church.

The Saturday afternoon I visited the village was the day of the fete: blue skies and a minor heat wave blessed the event and the older gentlemen, seen making their way to the fete, had used this opportunity to don shorts and straw hats. Not many women about but I think they were all occupied putting the final touches to the arrangements for the fete.

I had come to see the church, dedicated to St. Nicholas it has stood here for seven-hundred-years. Approaching the 13th century south porch you can see dials cut into the stone on each side of the entrance; add a peg and you have a basic sundial, used in times past to tell the time for services. As you enter the church you will see on your right (east) the stoup.

Entering the 15th century nave through the south porch before you on the opposite wall is a cross in sunken relief enclosed by a circle, it is one of several about the place; “They are the crosses cut where the stone was splashed with holy water during the church’s consecration,” I am told. The seating consists of some twenty pews dating from the 17th century. There is an oak pulpit moulded and carved probably 16th century.

The stone screen is of the 15th century and a feature of the church. Including the doorway to the chancel, it has five bays; the wide bay to the south allows priest and congregation to see each other. The chancel’s east window is 15th century and I am told the stained glass is modern.

The west end of the north chapel is 15th century but the rest is later. In the chapel is a beautifully carved statue of St. Nicholas date unknown but probably 15th century.

The 14th century font is at the base of the west tower and has an octagonal bowl, moulded under edge with an octagonal to square stem and chamfered base. The bell chamber above is home to five bells; one from the 15th century, one-dated 1585, two dated 1658 and one modern. The tower houses the mechanism of a clock erected in 1770 about which the church guide tells us “It works well except for its tendency to lose five minutes a week” – the guide was written some years ago so that has probably been put right by now.

Hutchins tells us that in the 18th century a third of the inhabitants of Nether Compton were employed making coarse linen cloth from flax grown locally. A century later according to the 1851 census, no one in the village was employed in this trade but some of the women were glovers; probably out-workers for factories in Yeovil and Sherborne, which we have discussed elsewhere on Dorset Ancestors. The 2001 census counted a population of 303 of whom about 170 were of working-age: most of them would commute to Sherborne or Yeovil.

It occurred to me as I was leaving that Nether Compton could be the backdrop for many of my favourite television dramas – Jane Marple would have been very much at home here.

Dr. Andrew Bell

Feb 12th, 2010
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In 1801 a young Episcopalian minister from Scotland was appointed Rector of Swanage on a stipend of £240 a year. He was the Reverend Andrew Bell, and his incumbency at this popular resort of the future was one of unprecedented philanthropy and innovation. As Rector of Swanage Bell energetically set up benefit societies, social clubs and even a small cottage industry for plaiting straw. He arranged for every child in his parish to be inoculated against smallpox, a great contagious scourge of the 19th century. And this minister had a considerable influence on the young John Mowlem, the master mason of Swanage and founder of the international construction company of that name.

But Andrew Bell will probably be remembered for one thing above all others: as the inventor of the method of elementary education known as the Madras System, after the state in India where it was conceived. The Madras System was a legacy of a past period of colonial servitude in Bell’s life, but by the time of his death it would be adopted across much of Britain. Several educationalists even sought Bell’s advice about how they could implement the system themselves, including Joseph Lancaster, an opportunist businessman and rival. Lancaster, however, infuriated Bell when the latter discovered that he was passing off the Madras System as his own conception. At one point Bell took two years leave of absence from the church to concentrate on disseminating his educational method more widely. Eventually he had 13 day schools and three Sunday schools using the system in Dorset, but would by no means neglect to further the provision of education in his Scottish home town.

Dr Bell would devote only about a decade of his life to the spiritual and material wants and needs of the Swanage people, yet he had no leanings towards an ecclesiastical career until he was 32. Before then he was something of a maverick, a speculator in New World cash-cropping, and while his life in holy orders was a resounding success the same would not be said for his business interests or his marriage, which ended acrimoniously in divorce after only six years.

But the single-mindedness so indicative of his character throughout his life doubtless showed itself early. Born in St. Andrews, Fife, on 27th of March 1753, Andrew Bell was the son of a barber/wigmaker-cum-horologist who in the latter capacity was responsible for regulating the clock of St. Andrews University and making scientific instruments for the physics (then National Philosophy) faculty. Andrew was first educated at the grammar school where mathematics was his greatest strength and languages his greatest weakness. However, during these early schooldays he was the subject of bullying from older boys, an experience that would instil in this future educationalist a lifelong abhorrence of corporal punishment. Bell’s proficiency in maths led him, at 16, to matriculation at the United College of St Salvatore & St Leonard’s in St. Andrews University. Here he studied for four years, but there is no evidence that he graduated at the end of this time. However, it was common in those days for graduates not to undertake a formal graduation ceremony.

So with his sound academic background Bell sailed from Glasgow in 1774 to take up a post as a tutor to tobacco plantation owners in Virginia, though not without “moonlighting” as a tobacco trader with a good sense of business. In 1779 Bell was engaged as tutor to the sons of a Virginia planter Carter Braxton, but with the colony in a politically unsettled state in the aftermath of the War of Independence Bell returned to Britain two years later with the Braxton Boys, so that their education could be finished. During the voyage however, their ship was grounded on an island near Nova Scotia by a storm for a time before they could be rescued, whereupon they eventually reached London in June. But Bell’s charges were not inclined to stay on the right side of the law, and after two years he returned to St Andrews to eke out a meagre living by running a small private school.

It was at this point that Bell considered studying for the priesthood, but with the Church of England, since he was an Episcopalian. His first living following ordination was at Leith Episcopalian Chapel under a one-year contract. The St Andrews MP, George Dempster, approached Bell with the proposition of a lecture tour to Calcutta teaching science. The newly-appointed minister duly accepted the offer and sailed for Calcutta in 1787, but stopped off on route at Madras. Here Bell decided to stay and give a brief course of lectures, but when appointed as Chaplain to four regiments, he decided to abandon going on to Calcutta.

In 1789 Bell was asked to take over running the Madras Male Orphan Asylum, an orphanage-school for the bastard sons of soldiers and native women. Struck by the great inadequacy of the teaching methods at the asylum, Bell was instead impressed by an open-air school where the pupils were being taught their letters by inscribing them in sand. But his employees, embittered by his forthright manner, were obstructive in Bell’s plans to improve the methods of education. Bell then introduced sand-trays into his school instead of books, but the move was not approved by the master and ushers either. In desperation Bell then instructed a boy called Jonnie Frisken in his lessons, teaching the eight year-old to teach even younger children. This led to the school being segregated into classes where boys could be masters, pupils and sometimes both, and Bell found that this way the children had no learning difficulties. But the school master and two ushers were so disgusted with the method that they left Bell to continue running a school going from strength to strength.

The Madras climate however, proved so indifferent to Bell’s health that in 1796, though much praised for his work, he returned to England. Here he immediately prepared a report on the asylum, then another report in the summer of the following year setting out the operation of the Madras System, i.e. in which all but the youngest children could hold pupil-teacher status. All lessons were taught and learnt by rote. A boy “master” teaching young children a lesson after learning it himself. The 1797 report was circulated to all important figures in the Church and Government. Child education would now be Bell’s consuming passion for the rest of his days.

Funded from his own pocket and with some outside support, Bell opened a few charity schools putting his system into use. It was then in 1801 he came to Swanage and as Rector involved himself in the parish and Sunday school (soon converted to the MS.) Soon Mrs Sarah Trimmer, a religious pamphlet writer, was writing to Bell desiring his opinion of Joseph Lancaster and at the same time extolling Bell’s system above that of his rival. She was convinced Lancaster had merely improved Bell’s system, while basically plagiarising it. Bell, after persistent entreaties from Sarah to come to London to organise a campaign against Lancaster and his method, eventually did so in 1807, staying there a month.

Once in the capital, Bell set up a charity school in Whitechapel with the assistance of two or those who had been involved in running the Swanage Sunday school. Realising it had become impossible to undertake his parochial duties at Swanage, Bell obtained a special licence from his Bishop in May1807 for two years leave of absence. As new schools were opened Lewis Warren, a teenage boy who had been assisting at the Swanage Sunday school, undertook their organisation in the West Midlands. On the expiry of the first two years Bell realised he would have to relinquish the Swanage living entirely.

In 1811 Bell was appointed advisor and sponsor for the newly formed Society for the Education of the Children of the Poor, and the Church versus non-denominational education schism came to public attention. Raised to a pitch of ire, Lancaster came out into the open and even declared in an article that he alone invented the Madras System, that all other claimants (presumably including Bell) were counterfeiters and impostors! The feud wasn’t to be defused until 1818, when Quaker friends sent Lancaster to America to disseminate the blunders of his system there. The organisers of his society then gave Bell the authority to travel the country as an inspector of his schools. He also travelled and lectured on the continent for some years, before ill-health forced his return to England.

On his return Bell retired to Cheltenham, where he revived his aim of furthering education in St Andrews. He acquired two properties in South Street for a school, and in 1831 established a fund of £120,000 to finance the building of a Grammar and English School. Under the terms of Bell’s will his estate at Egmore was left in the hands of Trustees who were supposed to set up another Madras School at Cupor, in Fife.

But the trustees, in defiance of his wishes, instead spent the money on projects to build an observatory, provide a dispensary and improve public water supply. Nor would the educationalist-cleric live to see his school finished. Dr Andrew Bell died on 27th of January 1832, just ten weeks before the foundation stone was laid, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Benjamin Jesty

Feb 11th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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In 1805 Benjamin Jesty travelled from Dorset to London where he was the guest of Dr. Pearson of the Vaccine Pock Institute, who recognised Benjamin as the first person to vaccinate against smallpox – some 20 years before Edward Jenner.

The society had arranged for the artist Mr. Sharp to paint a portrait of Benjamin while he was in London, something he found very irksome; being a farmer he was not at all used to sitting still for hours on end. Before leaving for London he had turned a deaf ear to his wife Elizabeth when she suggested he invest in a new suit of modern clothes. He was viewed by some in London with a mild curiosity a situation not helped by his rich Dorset accent. He was glad to return to Dorset bringing with him a pair of gold mounted lancets and a testimonial to recognise his services to the cause of vaccination. He is reported to have said the best thing about the trip was being able to get a shave each day instead of having to wait until market day.

The portrait, the original of which is believed to be with descendants now living and farming in South Africa, tells us, as it should, quite a lot about the man. He had a friendly open face displaying a hint of amusement at all the attention he was receiving. He was probably a straightforward person who would speak his mind. We know he was an honest man because he was an assessor and collector of land taxes. His portly build confirmed his comfortable life style and the portrait belied his 69 years.

This medical pioneer was in fact a yeoman farmer born in Dorset. He was baptised on the 19th of August 1736 at St.Andrew’s church, Yetminster and was given his father’s name. His grandfather John Jesty of Leigh, which is close to Yetminster, appears, from the inventory of goods made when he died, to have been a farmer of some substance. We may assume Benjamin had a good start in life and was probably educated at Boyles School, Yetminster.

In 1770 he married at St. Andrew’s church a girl from the village, Elizabeth. Three children arrived in quick succession: Robert in 1771, Benjamin in 1772 and Elizabeth in 1773. They lived at the farmhouse named Upbury. This was the family of Benjamin Jesty when smallpox hit the village of Yetminster in 1774.

Benjamin was confident he was safe from the disease, having had smallpox when he was a young child, but he was concerned about the wellbeing of Elizabeth and their children. Two dairymaids were employed on his farm and he knew both of these girls had earlier had cowpox and both had nursed members of their family suffering from smallpox without catching the disease. It was well known that dairymaids rarely caught smallpox. He reasoned that if dairymaids who caught cowpox accidentally were immune then it followed that someone who caught the disease deliberately would be similarly immune from the more serious smallpox.

It came to his ear that a Mr Elford who farmed at Chetnole had an outbreak of cowpox amongst his herd. It was this timely news that almost certainly decided Benjamin on the course of action he was to take and he hurried to Chetnole, only about four miles away, with Elizabeth and the boys.

How much Benjamin had told his wife in advance about his intentions we will never know but she would certainly have been frightened when she realised the full implication of what he had in mind. This was a hugely risky undertaking, a matter of life over death for the people he loved most. If he were wrong the consequences for his wife and children would almost certainly be fatal.

He proceeded to move amongst farmer Elford’s cows looking for a mature pox that would be certain to ‘take.’ When he had found what he was looking for he took out a needle and with it he scratched his wife’s arm just below the elbow and inserted the matter from the pox. It was the boys’ turn next: first Robert and then Benjamin. The first authenticated vaccinations had taken place in a field in the Dorset countryside amongst a herd of cows. The next few days were to be crucial.

When word of what he had done reached his neighbours he was ridiculed but when it was learnt that Elizabeth was very ill sentiment turned to anger and indignation. Benjamin found that his friends and neighbours had taken against him for being so foolhardy and reckless with the lives of his family. However he remained undaunted and continued about his business stoically putting up with being “hooted at, reviled and pelted whenever he attended markets in his neighbourhood.”

In the boys the cowpox ran its normal course and they were soon out of danger. Elizabeth became very ill, her arm became inflamed and she had a high fever. This was a testing time for Benjamin and he called in a doctor who when told of the cause of the illness is recorded to have said “You have done a bold thing, Mr. Jesty, but I will get you through if I can.” And he did. After a while Elizabeth improved and before long the Jesty family was able to return to their usual routine. The family increased and in all the couple had four sons and three daughters.

Benjamin Jesty died on the 16th of April 1816, aged 79, and is buried in the churchyard at Worth Matravers. Elizabeth survived a further eight years and passed away on the 8th of January 1824 aged 84 years and is buried beside her husband.

Benjamin and his family had moved from Yetminster to Downshay manor, in the parish of Worth Matravers in the Isle of Purbeck. It was here that Benjamin Jesty met Dr. Bell who became vicar of Swanage in 1801 and is well known as the founder of Free Schools. He was an enthusiastic supporter of vaccination. Dr. Bell came to hear of Benjamin and how he had vaccinated his family 22 years before Jenner. He wrote to his friends in London and as a result of this correspondence Benjamin received his invitation to London and acknowledgement of his work but it was Jenner who received all the acclaim for the procedure and some £30,000 from the government to develop and encourage vaccination.

Bridport Family – Education Pioneers in Australia

Feb 9th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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The Greene family from Bridport is well known on the other side of the globe – as educators in Australia as it was emerging to nationhood. To have five sisters involved in the foundation and running of a school far from their native land must be a unique situation.

So it is that a girls’ college in Australia which dates from 1901 had its origin in Bridport. In that year Alice Greene and her sister Anne founded Moreton Bay Girls’ High School in Brisbane. At the age of 38, Alice was at the helm. But the family connection had not started there, for the school had actually been designed and built by their father.

On the school’s first roll there were 20-day scholars and six boarders: today, over 1,000 families are associated with the college, which is considered among the best independent girls’ schools in Australia.

But it has been a struggle. In 1944 the school was handed over by the Greene family to the Methodist church. In 1959 there were 167 pupils and the number increased to 180 in the early 1960’s. However, the roll later dropped to 125 and it was decided to close the college, although this decision was soon rescinded. The Uniting Church assumed responsibility and set up a new board with the local population strongly represented.

In 1980 the boarding section was closed down and the following year the enterprise moved to a new site. Things were changing for the better, and the year 2000 was a remarkable one, seeing notable successes in competitive athletics and in public speaking and debating. The college choir sang at the prestigious Choralfest in Melbourne.

Then in 2001 came the centenary of the college. The enrolment that year for pre-school to Year 12 was 1170 girls. In 2002 the college won a prestigious 70-year-old swimming championship. Early in 2003 the Moreton Bay Boys’ College opened its doors. The number of staff is now approximately 200.

In 2003 one of the college’s ‘Old Girls’, Quentin Bryce, was inducted as Governor of Queensland a post she held until 2008 when she was appointed Governor General of Australia.

Alice Jane Greene, the central figure of the story, was a native of Bridport, Dorset, born on July 26 1863. She was the daughter of John and Ellen (Webber-Greenham) Greene. Her father was a cabinetmaker and Grandfather Greene was a mariner. She went into teaching specialising in science and after the family moved to Cardiff in Wales she was senior mistress at Cardiff Higher School for five years. In the early 1890’s she and her sister Anne went out to Australia to join their father.

Anne and her sister Helah established a school and studio in Tenterfield in northern New South Wales where she taught general subjects, art and music. The school opened in February 1895. Their sister Alice who had been teaching at Rockhampton Girls’ Grammar School joined Anne and Helah there.

In 1900 John Greene built a school in Wynnum, Queensland which was officially opened in 1901 as Moreton Bay Girls’ High School, Alice was the Principal, and remained in this post for an amazing 42 years. Her other sisters, Hilda and Elsie also taught there.

At some point, the name changed to Moreton Bay College, the name by which it is known today.

It seems that John Greene and Mary Ellen Greenham had 11 children. Ada, (who married James Diamond, of Cardiff, Wales and who remained in that country); Alice; Emily (who married Harold Wearn, a dentist and lived in Sydney, Australia), Mary (who married Herbert Kay, had two children and lived in Brisbane), Anne (also known as Ella, who did not marry, taught cello and violin and was the school housekeeper);Samuel, who was Mayor of Wynnum before it became part of Brisbane and married Ruth Hargreaves; John William (known as Will) who became Lord Mayor of Brisbane; Elsie (who did not marry and went to London University, became a bachelor of arts and then returned to teach general subjects at the school); Hilda (who did not marry but studied and taught music, returning to England to continue her studies and went back to teach at Moreton Bay in 1910); and Harold who worked in shipping, went to India and has descendants still living there.

Every great project has its pioneer, and it was Alice (known as Alice J. Alison Greene) who is actually credited with founding Moreton Bay College. She did not marry.

A special ‘In Memoriam’ edition of the school newsletter was published in 1967 but, frustratingly, there is no mention of Alice’s date of death so we must assume it was in that year. In Queensland public records of deaths go only back to 1954.

Alice’s first teaching position in Australia was at Rockhampton Girls’ Grammar School in 1893-4; she resigned to go to Tenterfield in northern New South Wales to join her sisters Anne and Helah at a school there which was set up by Anne in 1895.

Anne Greene was an interesting person. Born in 1878 she was the fifth child of John Iley Greene and Mary Ellen Greenham. Anne had studied Art before leaving Britain for Australia. After she arrived in Australia she and her sister Helah established a school and studio in Tenterfield in northern New South Wales where she taught general subjects, art and music. The school opened in February 1895.

In 1911 Anne returned to Britain to further her studies and to work as an artist. She studied at the South Kensington Art School in London and had success as a still-life artist. She also spent time in Paris and later established a studio in Southampton.

While Anne was in Paris she became interested in eurhythmics, or the harmony of proportions, and later introduced it at Moreton Bay College on return to Australia.

With the outbreak of World War Two she was unable to return to France or go to Australia so she did not actually return to Queensland until after the war. After an accident her health became poor and she lived in a nursing home. She died in 1954.

This is the story of Dorset people who saw a land of need and opportunity 12,000 miles away. The Green sisters introduced a vastly improved and enlightened system of education to the girls of Queensland, with a curriculum including music, art, English, science and physical education. Throughout, the enterprise has been Christian-based. The family must have been very much faith-oriented.

Here we have a story of courage – of people leaving their home surroundings in the late 19th century to work on the other side of the world for the good of mankind and to become “First Australians”. They did not go there initially to improve themselves and their situations, but to improve those of others.

The Prisoner a Padre Befriended

Feb 9th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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In the autumn of 1862 a 21-year-old man went to the rope in Dorchester jail, a final enactment of 19th century justice for the crime of murder. The condemned man was Edwin Preedy, but perhaps it cannot be said that he was entirely in control of the depressive and violent nature that had driven him to vow he would stab a warder at the prison where he was being held for an earlier offence. For it was the fate of Preedy to suffer an unloved and cruelly deprived childhood.

Born in Leamington, Warwickshire around 1841 Edwin Alfred Preedy was the illegitimate son of a man who never knew how to bring up a child with due care and affection. His mother too, seems to have been a rather detached person who had no influence over her son. As a result of the cruelties and abuse inflicted upon him by his stepfather, seeds of anti-social rebellion and resentment were sown in Edwin’s maturing mind. Until he was eleven he attended a national school where, although he was quite clever he was also a proud, passionate and idle boy. When he was thirteen however, his mother and an aunt conspired to have the boy institutionalised in a reformatory but Edwin decamped from the school after just ten months.

There then followed a string of incarcerations for petty offences. Upon release from the last of these sentences Preedy ran away to join the Army’s 85th Regiment, even rising to the rank of corporal, but then in the company of three others deserted after stealing some clothes. When caught, Preedy was sentenced to penal servitude for three years. From his first prison he was moved, first to Millbank then to Portland. It was while serving his sentence here that Preedy, in a fit of murderous ire, vowed to a fellow inmate that he would take a knife to a warder who removed his soiled dinner plate.

So in September 1862 Preedy was transferred to Dorchester jail to await trial for murder. Personally he saw no hope of a pardon, and in his despair he frequently became violent, such that on two occasions he had to be restrained in irons respectively for 14 and 28 days.

Yet fate it seemed had not entirely given up granting Edwin Preedy an opportunity to repent and receive absolution. He told the prison chaplain that he could only foresee his “dread end.” But at this point a remarkable Anglican minister entered his life, as if sent by a redeeming angel of mercy from on high. The cleric was the then vicar of nearby Fordington, The Reverend Henry Moule BA, and his visits to the cell-bound Preedy throughout the last weeks of his life made history as perhaps the most protracted, challenging and tragic case of a priest’s attempt to save a condemned man’s soul ever recorded.

Henry Moule was a luminary among 19th century Anglicans. Early in his priestly career he boldly tackled moral laxity, ecclesiastical rectitude and the injustices of squalor and the powers that be. He was chaplain to Dorset Barracks and Vicar of Fordington and is best known for his invention of the earth-closet. But his dealings with Preedy introduced him to an altogether new dimension in human nature and pastoral experience.

Moule’s strategy was to entice Preedy into making a confession or admission of guilt, expressing remorse for what he had done. He implored the prisoner to repent of the murder and all his earlier sins. At times the vicar found the prisoner in a conciliatory and receptive mood, but at other times Moule had to endure a barrage of insolence and even physical assault. When his temper was aroused Preedy no longer wanted to be visited. One day, in Moule’s presence, he broke down: “here I am with one foot in the grave; I cannot break down this temper” he sobbed. On another occasion he alluded to other inmates in his position who said they had found peace. It is recorded that, when free in the prison yard he caught and tamed sparrows, but would then vindictively kill them.

Two weeks before his trial Preedy received a letter from his mother, in which she offered to raise money for his counsel. He told Moule he had decided to plead guilty. Surprisingly, at his trial his mother and aunt appeared as witnesses for the defence, but Preedy became abusive to all except the judge, jury and Sydney Osborne. Moule however, could not induce Preedy to see his mother and aunt after being found guilty and sentenced to death; Fordington’s vicar was even warned that the prisoner was too dangerous and unpredictable to approach! It seemed at first that Moule’s consolation of religion had fallen short of extracting from his client full and lasting contrition for his wrongdoing.

Yet Edwin Purdy went to his death with the most admirable courage and calm resignation. On his last afternoon he even took communion in the presence of three or four other warders who were glad to join him. Out of gratitude he presented five men with five bibles given to him by Sydney Osborne. And then…he felt the noose and blindfold about his head, the drop beneath his feet…

What appears to be the only source for this story is Henry Moule’s own account, written some time after the prison assignment it describes and entitled Hope Against Hope. A rare copy of this book is in the County Museum collection, available for study only by special arrangement and a handling fee of £10.

Footnote added 7th Sept,2012. In the school log book for Bradford Peverell dated 27th March 1863 there is the following entry. “Some of the children went to Dorchester to see Mr Fooks and Mr Preedy hung.” Underneath that entry is a note apparently dated 28th July 1873, which reads: ” They should not have gone had I known it and been able to prevent them. H.B.W.”

Of Gloves and Silk

Feb 6th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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There is a record of glove-making in Dorset as early as the 14th century and the industry was certainly an established trade in Bridport in the 15th and 16th centuries. Glovers were also working in Beaminster, Cerne Abbas, Bere Regis and Sturminster. The industry seems to have had its heartland in the north-west sector of the county near the Somerset border, especially in and around Sherborne. This is probably related to the proximity of Yeovil, where the leather from which the gloves were made was tanned and prepared, ready for distribution to the Dorset cutters and stitchers.Before the time of surfaced roads, minimising transport distances and costs would have been especially important.

Until the industrial revolution however, glove making was wholly a cottage or home-based occupation carried on by ‘outworkers’. This made economic sense, since the demand for their product was seasonal. By the early 19th century the leatherworks in Yeovil were dispatching leather to women glovers in Sherborne for sewing. It is likely that this town also may have acted as a distribution and co-ordination centre, apportioning leather to an outworker class living in the hinterland villages. At Cerne during the same period skins were being prepared for parchment and leather goods including gloves. In Sherborne and elsewhere in Dorset and Somerset the Sugg family and its branches had a particularly strong representation in the gloving trade.

In 1820 the glove-making business of Jefferies was established. A descendant, Chester Jefferies, in partnership with Gilbert Pearce, founded a factory at Slough in 1937, but then devolved business to outworkers in Dorset and elsewhere in Wessex. CJ made gloves from South American hogskin over the next 25 years, establishing their main works at Gillingham, Dorset in 1962. The business has supplied dealers such as Dents; Fownes; Morley and Brettles, and today has markets worldwide.

By the time of the 1851 census, 1,686 people in Dorset were describing their occupation as glovers. The 1881 census returns from Bridport Union Workhouse lists one Mary Reed as being a pauper glove-maker, while the 1891 census notes that an unmarried woman named Emily Elliot was making gloves at Marnhull near Sturminster. Interestingly, by that year the number of glovers recorded in the county had fallen to 422, of which only 31 were men, with 144 married women.

There was still a thriving glove-making industry in Sherborne in the 1930’s, where H Blake & Sons; Seager Bros and Stewart Adams & Sons were the foremost manufacturers. Besides Chester Jefferies, Fownes Bros were at Gillingham in the 1930’s and George Baker was gloving in Beaminster in 1922. Dent, Allcroft and the Goldcroft Glove Company were operating in Sturminster. On the Hants border, cottagers were making “Ringwood Gloves” knitted from soft string.

Sherborne also became a centre for the silk industry, and it has been noted that the making of silk fabrics had become an established trade in Dorset by 1585 using raw silk from Italy, China, Spain and Bengal. The next reference to the industry appears to come from John Hutchins who noted that “…about 1740 a silk throwster settled here” (i.e. at Sherborne). By 1756, silk stockings were being made at Poole.

But it was principally John Sharer of Whitechapel who introduced silk-throwing when he took over a grist mill at Westbury. As the trade progressed the mill was re-built and enlarged on three occasions and Sharer went before a Parliamentary committee in 1765 to testify that he was employing 400 people. Most of his workers however, were women and young girls, child labour being common in those days. Subsidiary works were established at Cerne and Stalbridge, and silk houses, each connected by feeders, were in operation at Dorchester and Bradford Abbas.

In 1799 Thomas Bartlett, in a letter to Thomas Wilmott, expressed his desire to establish a silk works in Evershot. This led to outworker women and children silk-winders becoming established in the village (silk-winding was probably the devolved home-based part of the process, whereby raw silk was wound from the cocoons produced by the silkworms, in preparation for the spinning or weaving into fabrics at the mills). The Kings Head Inn at Wimborne once advertised for girls aged about ten to do silk winding.

By 1800 two-thirds of those employed in silk were home-based outworkers, while the other third were in the mills. Most of these workers were young women paid five shillings per week and children paid one shilling per week. It is recorded that in 1802 women were knitting silk stockings at Corfe. In 1809 Sharer’s successors acquired the Castle (or East) Mill and, five years later, the Oke Mill, both at Sherborne.

Kellys Directory for 1920 notes that A R Wright & Sons Ltd were manufacturing silk in Sherborne by this time.

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