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April, 2010:

Isaac Gulliver – Dorset’s Smuggler King

Apr 24th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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He was a smuggler, as was his father before him. He flouted the law of his day, yet always managed to present a façade of respectability. Isaac Gulliver, it has been said, was “the gentle smuggler” the Raffles of the Hanoverian duty-free culture; an audacious genius of an illicit occupation.

In the 18th century the Napoleonic wars forced the price of continental wheat and liquor to a prohibitive level for the poor. As journeymen’s wages were also very low there was a great incentive for many men and some women to smuggle as a means to supplement a meagre income. Since agricultural wages were typically only 3s to 6s a week the prospect of making 10s a night by smuggling proved irresistible. Venturers were often in league with captains and were regularly running the risk from or confrontation with excise officers or “Preventive Men”, as they were sometimes known.

But Gulliver was in a league of his own regarding his resourcefulness in the lengths he could – and did – go to give customs the slip on at least three occasions. He is said to have had himself carried through the streets of Poole in a barrel. On another occasion he even feigned death by whiting his face with chalk and lying in an open coffin while excise officers were raiding the house he was in.

Little however is known about Gulliver’s early life in the Wiltshire border village of Seamington near Melksham where he was born on September 5th 1745, the son of a man himself actively involved in smuggling in the Poole area. At this time Bournemouth as a developed resort did not exist, and the narrow wooded valleys (chines) which ran down to the shore were ideal for concealing un-shipped contraband. Coy Pond at Westbourne was a popular rendezvous for smugglers, and Gulliver’s father. And later Isaac himself regularly used this and Branksome Chine for concealing their offloaded cargoes.

When Isaac was 19 in 1765, his father made a will. By this time his son possessed a strong physique and constitution, and had begun to follow in his father’s footsteps. 1765 saw him in collaboration with Robert Trotman, another smuggler who was shot dead in mysterious circumstances on the Poole shore, causing suspicion to be cast upon Gulliver as the possible murderer on the night in question. But as with so many of the other accusations which were to follow in the years to come, Gulliver’s possible complicity in the killing could not be proved. He was also said to have been implicated in a confrontation between 40 smugglers and 6 dragoons at about this time, which resulted in the outlaws’ horses being stolen. Trotman was buried in Kinson Churchyard.

By the time his daughters had arrived Isaac was in league with William Beale and Roger Ridout. Running much contraband on the shore between Poole and Christchurch. As his wealth from smuggling accrued, Gulliver was in a position to enter into property speculation and investment on a grand scale, as well as being a moneylender for mortgaging.

In 1775 for instance, Gulliver bought Pitts Farm and other properties and lands in the Kinson area. Prior to this he also held land at Cudsell and Ensbury and had styled himself as a wine merchant and innkeeper at Thorney Down. Between 1775 and 1783 he bought Eggardon farm from the Revd. William Chafin and had sub-let 75 acres of land at Kinson while living at the King’s Arms for a while as a tenant. In 1783 he sub-let the shop he ran as a winery at Kinson.

The same period also witnessed notable incidents arising from the smuggling operations on the coast. In 1777 a man called Levi Payne stole Gulliver’s 10 year-old grey horse and £21.16s collected on his behalf. In response Gulliver, who was living at Thorney Down at the time, advertised a handsome reward for the return of his property. But in 1778 he offered 10 guineas as a bounty and 5 guineas “to drink the King’s health” to any young men who were prepared to serve in the Navy or Army. December 1779 found Gulliver boarding at the White Hart in Longham while he was selling off some horses.

A few months later customs officers raided a granary thought to have been near the Dolphin Inn at Kinson. 541 gallons of brandy and rum, with 1,871 lbs. of raw coffee were seized from J. Singer, one of Gulliver’s servants. Then in 1782 Gulliver’s name appeared on a customs list for un-shipping 4 pipes (480 gallons) of wine without payment of duty. About four years earlier the King’s Commissioners for Customs in London asked their counterparts in Poole for a report on Gulliver’s activities, but for neither of these indictments were the authorities able to make any charge stick.

But there were few who did not benefit from Gulliver’s activities. The gentry were directly or indirectly the recipients of his imports. And by 1780 Gulliver had established a network of distribution points as far west as Lyme Regis. He also had a force of about 10 men in his service, called “Whitewigs” after the distinctive uniforms of white coiffures and smocks, which they wore.

The broad, solid redbrick and cobble tower of Kinson Church has a band of dripstones around it which today are worn and chipped, but the damage is not due solely to time and the elements. It was caused by knocks from kegs of liquor being winched up the tower, probably under cover of darkness by Gulliver’s men during the heyday of Dorset smuggling.

Gulliver even planted trees on the ancient Eggardon Hillfort to act as a landmark for the luggers making for the coast with their cargoes. Then the contraband would be landed at West Bay, Swyre or Bexington. The Preventive Men were well aware of the activities of Gulliver and his cahorts, but virtually no action was ever taken to curb them. Possibly a certain amount of bribery went on to account for this, but the smugglers had to be caught in the act to be arrested and charged.

In 1784 customs raided a barn at Kinson, generally believed to have been at Pitt Farm, which Gulliver had ought from Mary Barnes. Another tenant of Mary’s was John Potter, whose wife Hannah was questioned by the officers at the Dolphin Inn.

In 1788 Gulliver put his Kinson home up to let and by the following year he was living at West Moors. Three years later he was at West Parley, where he is noted for bringing an injunction against the unlawful removal of the Hampreston/Parley parish boundary marker. But in the 1790’s he moves to Long Crichel to lead a quieter life.

In 1796 Gulliver’s second daughter Ann married Edmund Wagge of Burton House, but found herself a widow after only three years. Gulliver himself was to experience a family tragedy when in November 1798 at the age of only 24 his son Isaac died and was buried at Wimborne. Gulliver officially retired in 1800 but an 1867 edition of the local paper The Poole Pilot carried a story that at the turn of the century Gulliver had landed a record amount of contraband from three luggers anchored near Bournemouth Pier.

The year 1815 saw the Gullivers settled at Kinson House (now superseded by modern flats) and the retired smuggler entering into a legal agreement for a cottage in Kinson to which was attached an ancient enclosure called Le Cocqs, situated behind the Kinson Baths. Gulliver’s daughter Elizabeth, who had married a respectable Wimborne banker, called William Fryer, made her marital home at Pelham House. In 1822 Gulliver was awarded a deed of land at Bourne Farm, Canford, but could scarcely have lived to enjoy it. Ominously, on Friday, 13th of September that year, he died and was interred in Wimborne Minster. The Canford Award revealed that he owned or leased over 390 acres in the Kinson area. His 12,000-word will revealed that he also held extensive property in Wiltshire, Hampshire and Somerset.

(See our story Sixpenny Handley, published 26th November 2012 in Sixpenny Handley category.)

Dorset – Smugglers Coast

Apr 24th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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The south coast of England in particular has had a long tradition of smuggling, especially where there are many coves or inlets ideal for concealing contraband. Devon and Cornwall are particularly well endowed in this regard, but Dorset has hardly been less important as a focus for the trade. The life of Isaac Gulliver, the ‘smuggler’s king’ of Dorset, has been covered in a biographic feature on the site, here I am considering the more general look at smuggling and what motivated people to become involved in its illegal operations.

Usually thought of as a male preserve, what may at first surprise many people is the extent to which women were also involved. Some of these would have been smugglers wives, though this is not invariably the case. Dorset, in the heyday of smuggling, was of course a very rural and sparsely populated county, with much agrarian poverty. The business of importing goods, usually liquor, from cross-channel boats under the cover of darkness in order to flout excise regulations was a lucrative sideline that impoverished families living within a few miles of the coast would find too great a temptation to overlook.

The register for Dorchester Gaol 1782-1853 lists the names and occupations of no fewer than 64 women convicted of various smuggling related offences. Twenty one of these (32%) were from Portland alone, while just six resided in Weymouth, five in Bridport, three in Bere Regis and two in Lyme Regis. The parishes of another nine are not recorded. Wool and Woolbridge, Preston, Pulham, Sutton Poyntz, Langton Matravers, Marnhull, Morecombelake, Beaminster, Bradpole, Broadwindsor, Buckland Ripers, Charmouth, Chetnole, Chickerell, Corfe, Dorchester and Kington Magna account for the remaining sixteen.

Three notable examples are Charlotte Drake of Bridport and Ann Maidment, a Bridport buttoner, who both assaulted and obstructed excise officers, and Mary Applin of Langton, who committed an excise offence. Martha Lumb of Weymouth was sentenced to three months hard labour in 1822 for smuggling, while Catherine Winter, a Weymouth seamstress, served an 18-day sentence in 1844 for smuggling at the age of 70!

But regardless of the sex of the offender, for the populace as a whole, smuggling was generally considered an honourable trade. The customs officers or the “King’s Men” were responsible for ensuring that contraband was impounded and fines levied. At Poole the problem of smuggling was so rampant and the customs men so understaffed and overworked that Dragoons had to be deployed to assist them as early as 1723. Typically the customs officers were brave and resourceful with a strict code of conduct; so that names were never banded about and nothing ever put in writing.

Poole was especially ideal for smuggling operations because of the exceptional size and highly indented nature of its harbour, the second largest natural harbour in the world. Goods were disembarked into inlet hideaways at Hamworthy and then transported by waggoners to Bristol via Blandford. Furthermore, goods could be offloaded on the south Purbeck coast and hauled overland to be temporarily laid up in the deep inlets such as those at Arne or the Goathorn Peninsula for later distribution to Poole markets without the smugglers having to risk detection by passing through the harbour mouth. Longfleet and Parkstone farmers constructed secret tunnels down to the water’s edge for bringing goods ashore.

After 1759 the volume of smuggled goods passing through Poole significantly increased, though raised vigilance on the part of the Preventatives gradually brought this down. The Commissioners of Customs based in London frequently requested reports on the amount of smuggling going on in the Poole area.

Although landings and disembarkation operations took place from Lyme Regis to Christchurch, the coast from Portland westwards to Lyme attracted special attention. This was because most of the coast is occupied by the Chesil Bank, a shingle spit enclosing a lagoon (the Fleet) which was a convenient storage-sink to hold casks (“tubs”) for collection at a more appropriate time. One memorable incident took place in 1762 when a Cornish vessel was broken up on the Chesil in a winter storm and its cargo washed into the sea. There then followed a desperate attempt by Weymouth citizens to salvage what tubs of liquor they could before the customs house officers could reach them! In the end the citizens claimed 26 tubs to the revenue’s 10; another ten were cast out to sea but recovered the next day.

Probably the greatest hideout and smugglers haunt along this coast was Lulworth Castle, the seat of the Weld family, but which had a connection with smuggling throughout the 18th century from 1719 onwards. In 1719 revenue officers from Weymouth raided the castle and the entire Lulworth area. It has been said that maids working at the castle would routinely warn smugglers when the customs men were in the vicinity by showing a light at a window to indicate when it was safe to come in, but also act as a bearing. The gangs at Lulworth could comprise as many as 100 disguised and heavily armed men, who used Mupe Rocks as the disembarkation point, but the deep ravines and inlets along the coast west of Kimmeridge were also ideal for concealing kegs. A gap in the cliffs at Worbarrow Bay was a special favourite and tubs were raised to the top of Gad Cliff, and brought ashore at Arish Mell and for storage at Tyneham Church.

On a knoll near the coast between West Bexington and Puncknowle there still stands an unusual monument. This is The Lookout, a square building constructed as a signal-station for the Fensibles, but which may also have been used by Isaac Gulliver, who used the Bexingtons, Swyre and Burton Bradstock as landing sites after 1776.

Lyme Regis has had an especially long smuggling history extending back at least as far as the 16th century, when certain merchants were suspected of smuggling bullion out of the country by sea. In 1576 a revenue man called Ralph Lane was sent to Lyme with a deputy bearing a warrant to search ships alleged to be involved in the operations. His arrival however, provoked a riot during which the warrant was seized and Lane’s deputy was thrown into the sea. From Lyme contraband was traditionally floated up the Buddle River, often under the noses of the Preventives, who were frequently understaffed and restrained by bureaucratic regulations. Booty offloaded onto the Cobb could not be inspected until it had been carried half a mile to the Cobb Gate. Lyme is believed to be the birthplace of Warren Lisle, a customs officer who at 17 was appointed Patent Searcher at Poole and who made his first seizure of a cargo from a small vessel in Portland Harbour in 1724.

Weymouth was central to excise operations for the sea, but the town’s revenue officials had a long and shameful history of ineptitude and corruption. Enter George Whelplay, who in the 16th century failed to make any headway in countering popular local support for smuggling. Originally a London haberdasher, Whelplay came to Dorset to try his fortune as a public informer, and as such could claim a fifty per cent commission on each fine he imposed upon those he caught, but in 1538 he incurred the wrath of smugglers and fellow customs officers alike when he exceeded his remit. Whelplay twice stumbled on a cargo of horses being illegally shipped to France, but instead of coming to his assistance in rounding up the French boats the officials joined a gang of merchants and attacked him.

Around 1830 smuggling reached a climax in the Weymouth area, where, it is said; tunnels were constructed from the harbour to merchant’s houses and even to the residence of King George III. The leading figure in smuggling to be connected with Weymouth was Pierre Latour, otherwise known as French Peter, who functioned as a prominent gang-leader in the town. In Wyke Regis churchyard there is a grave of one William Lewis, a smuggler shot dead by a revenue officer on board the schooner Pigmy.

In conclusion, anyone who has anything to do with Dorset will know of Thomas Hardy, the well-known novelist-poet. Less well known is that Hardy was an authority on smuggling – and not without good reason. His birthplace cottage at Highter Bockhampton was actually a capacious safehouse for smuggled contraband that could accommodate up to 80 casks of brandy. “But this isn’tall.” When a child, Hardy was regaled with smuggling stories from his grandfather and his own father had a manservant who was actually involved in the trade. The Bockhampton cottage lay on the smugglers route between Osmington Mills and their markets in Sherborne and Yeovil.

Dorset’s Clocks and Clockmakers

Apr 24th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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The history of clock-making or horology is one of a constant battle to improve the means of timekeeping. Craftsmen in Dorset no less reflected that in their work from the earliest beginnings in the 11th and 12th centuries to the decline of hand-made clocks in the 19th century.

The earliest clocks ever made in Dorset (as probably elsewhere) were those made for churches. During medieval times smaller versions of church clocks were being hand-made for the home elsewhere in the country, but this type was unknown in Dorset. However these clocks would have been very poor timekeepers until technical advances such as the pendulum in the 17th century enabled timepieces to become reliable enough for use in the home.

By the end of the 18th century and from then until the mid-19th century technical refinement and reliability in hand-made clocks reached as far as it would ever go. Henceforth a steady decline in standards set in with the arrival of the Industrial Revolution and mass production.

Dorset exactly reflected this pattern. Its earliest known clock is that residing in Wimborne Minster, dating from 1409, though it is quite possible that this clock or another was in use well before this date. But the earliest sources of our knowledge of clocks in the county come from Churchwarden’s records. These list the names of the clockmakers and repairers – or blacksmiths or whitesmiths – who maintained church turret clocks for over 100 years.

As to when horology became clearly defined as an industry in Dorset, this is difficult to place. For example, when the borough of Dorchester organised its trades into guilds some clock-makers, though included, elected to be registered as braziers or ironmongers as late as the 19th century.

One place where the clock-maker/blacksmith connection can most clearly be seen is in Stourton Caundle parish church. A funerary hatchment of John Biddlecombe bearing the arms of the Worshipful Company of blacksmiths hangs in this church and states “With hammer in hand all artes do stand.” The blacksmith and clock-maker records were lost in World War II but an earlier John Biddlecombe left his blacksmith and clock-working tools to his son upon his death in 1741. The hatchment therefore probably commemorates John junior, who in fact made the church clock still in use today. Indeed, Biddlecombe was just the first in a long succession of smiths to style themselves as clock-makers as well.

One interesting instance of wounded pride has survived showing how clock-makers would consider themselves a cut above other trades. In a letter written in 1772 James Norman, a Poole-clock maker, replies to a complaining minister or churchwarden about his charge for installing a church clock that includes this line: “You may get bunglers or white or blacksmiths to work at a cheaper rate!” Early turret clocks needed constant attention and repair, and as public clocks the cost of their purchase and maintenance was accountable.

A little later than the earliest Wimborne record, accounts of churchwardens in Bridport record a clock in 1425 and in Corfe Castle one is recorded in 1570. It is further noted that Weymouth and Melcombe Regis bought a new clock for St. Mary’s church in 1619. In this instance the maker kept the old clock’s movements in part exchange, indicating that the church’s first clock went back at least 70 years before the replacement. It is not known whether or not these clocks were made in Dorset.

By the 18th century church clocks were being signed and dated. The earliest known signed and dated clock is that set into the tower of Sydling St. Nicholas Church and is inscribed “1593 E.T.C.”

There is no record of a domestic clock in Dorset until the 16th century, but by 1620 records show that the county clearly had clock-makers, and from then a comprehensive list of makers can begin. The earliest records are in the Dorchester Domesday Book at the time of Henry V till Elizabeth I, and the first mention of a clock-maker in the borough records minute of 15th September 1625. As expected the principle-line of clock-makers was centred on Dorchester, though Poole and Weymouth were also centres of some importance by the late 18th century.  Bridport, Shaftesbury, Sherborne, Blandford and Wimborne had a less significant, but strong and continuous tradition of clock-making, while Stalbridge, Puddletown and Bere Regis were home to minor cottage horologists. Shaftesbury and Sherborne were the earliest producers of 17th century lantern clocks.

Most domestic clocks made in Dorset were 30-hour long-case clocks fashioned to suit the lifestyle of the county, and these were the cheapest. By the 1760’s clocks powered by falling weights had appeared and the most common type after LCC’s were the so-called “classroom” or wall clocks which could indicate the time for a large number of people at once without the disadvantage of the long-case clock. Early wall clocks of the late 18th century generally had large dials, well-cast brass bezels and factory movements mass-produced in Birmingham, Germany or the US.

An Act of Parliament in 1797 taxing the possession of all clocks (and watches) – though repealed after just one year – effectively halved the number of makers as public clocks became more important. These were the “Act of Parliament Clocks” which James Kenway of Bridport and Thomas Wood of Dorchester specialised in making.

In Dorchester the earliest recorded clock-maker seems to have been Richard How, who had relations and apprentices with connections to many other makers. Also of importance in the 19th century was James Bunn, who’s clocks retained typical features of the late 17th or very early 18th centuries. However, James Wood of Dorchester (1741-1803) relied on quality of engraving for effect and specialised in making clocks of exceptionally high quality. These were probably the last of an era of true hand-made clocks before the custom of buying in more finished parts made clock-making less exacting.

But probably the county’s most innovative clock maker was Henry Ward of Blandford, who even has timepieces exhibited at the British Museum and in Rockford, Illinois. Another horologist in Blandford was Sam Pegler, who was predominantly a maker of bracket clocks that superceded long-case clocks in popularity during the 19th century, and the town’s Charles Baker made three noteworthy long-case clocks with fine marquetry casings. Members of the Bastard family were also involved in horology.

In Bridport a little-known horologist called Lovelace made a particularly unusual long-case clock in a “black-japanned” case about 1700 that was eventually sold at Sotheby’s. Also in Bridport, a maker called Daniel Freke made a clock equipped with a primitive “half-lantern” pinion drive to the count-wheel.

Weymouth’s John Harvey produced the first fine wall clock between 1790 and 1800. In the 18th century Lawrence Boyce of Puddletown was a quite prolific maker of long-case clocks, while Ralph Norman, an apprentice of Richard How, left Dorchester in the 1720’s to make timepieces in Poole of very grand styles and equal in quality to those being made in London.

There is a record of one William Clark, then clock-making in Stalbridge, but originally from Cerne Abbas or Frome, producing some 28-day clocks, while Simon Aish (1690-1735) made some clocks in Sherborne.

Finally, I can note that much more recently Geoffrey Booth of Bere Regis produced a clock for which the case was made by master carpenter and craftsman John Makepeace of Parnham House near Beaminster.

Thomas Hine and His Fine Brandy

Apr 21st, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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For those living in Beaminster the name of Hine would have a familiar ring, especially if they live in Hogshill Street. The White Hart brewery, almost half way up the street on the right, was formerly the premises of the Hine family – specifically Thomas Hine, founder of the Cognac-distilling business that bears his name.

Thomas the distiller was born in 1775, one of seven sons of another Thomas Hine and his wife Elizabeth, who also had four daughters (the baptisms of five of these eleven children were recorded in the Congregational Chapel register.) The father, Thomas senior, was descended from the senior of two lines or branches of the family that can be traced back to one Thomas Hine, then landlord of the Three Horseshoes inn in Powerstock, and his first wife Edith. The family line, in which the last Thomas (the Cognac maker) belonged, began with the marriage of the landlord’s son, Thomas Jr, to Elizabeth Daniel in 1762. Elizabeth was the great-granddaughter of the Royalist rebel James Daniel who fought on the side of Monmouth at Sedgemoor.

Thomas Jr became a cloth maker in Beaminster, dealing in products that included drab cloth, sheeting, blanketing, serge, flannel, hankies, thread and buttons. His premises were at what is today No 21 Market Square. Aside from his trade, Thomas was also a leading light of the town’s Congregational Chapel for 50 years. In 1767 his name appeared on a list as a subscriber, collecting funds for repairs to the meeting house. He was admitted as a communicant in 1777 and made a deacon in 1796.

The following year Jeremiah Newman, a surgeon of Beaminster, sold 19 Hogshill Street (later known as Devonia) to Thomas. This building was raised on the site of three former timber houses that had burnt down in the Beaminster fire of 1781. Elizabeth Hine died in 1814, and when Thomas died in 1817 Devonia came into the possession of his eldest son James, who in turn would pass it down to his brother Richard within a year.

Cognac maker Thomas Jr became the best known of the sons of Thomas and Elizabeth. As a young man he may have worked for some time as a cloth maker in his family’s tradition, though unlike some of his brothers he did not remain at home to pursue his father’s occupation. Instead he evidently cultivated an abiding fascination for all things Gallic, notwithstanding the intense animosity prevailing between England and Napoleon’s ascendant Frankish Empire at the time.

Out of a desire to learn the French language and culture, Thomas crossed the Channel in 1793 when the revolution was already underway, and proceeded to Jarnac, soon after which, war with England broke out. Consequently, expatriate Britons or visitors found themselves being promptly incarcerated as prisoners of war, and in September 1793 Hine was himself arrested and imprisoned in nearby Cognac.

As it happened this town, in the French Department of Charente, had been a centre for the distilling of high-quality brandy since the 17th century (the names Cognac or Armagnac incidentally, have also since become applied to the casks or barrels in which brandy is matured.) However, Hine had friends at the town hall and through their good offices and intervention Thomas was released in May 1794.

Once freed, Hine found employment with the local business of Ranson, Delamain & Co., brandy producers of Jarnac. This brought him into romantic contact with Delamain’s daughter Francoise Elizabeth and three years later in 1797 they were married. Not long before or after, Thomas became a partner in the business, and Ranson, Delamain & Co became Thomas Hine & Co., from where the couple’s descendants spread the name of Cognac throughout the world. Thomas had found his vocation for life, and came to serve as an honorary citizen on Jarnac’s Municipal Council for many years until his death in 1822.

Thomas’s eldest son by Francoise became the first first-generation descendant of an English immigrant ever to be elected mayor of a French town. Today the sixth generation of Thomas Hine’s descendants maintain the distilling business at the Jarnac headquarters, from where they distribute their product to 150 countries.

The two lines of the family remaining in Beaminster however, finally ceased in 1939 with the death of Richard Hine, the town’s chemist, but also a photographer, Congregationalist and popular local citizen. He also wrote a history of Beaminster that was published in 1914. When the chapel was closed and converted to use as the museum, memorabilia of this Hine was put on display in the ground floor gallery. Richard was not a descendant of Powerstock innkeeper Thomas by his first wife Edith as the Cognac-making Thomas had been, but by his second wife Lydia.

Bridport News – 1857

Apr 17th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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This letter published in the 17th January 1857 edition of The Bridport News, caught our eye.

Sir, – Are you disposed to take the part of one that has been most unmercifully abused? If you are, please to insert this letter.

People have been saying hard things about me for the last three months; and not only so, but have fathered the railings of their own tongues and pens upon me, and in more cases than one, forged my name. Can people believe for a moment that I could so forget my own exalted dignity as to condescend to abuse, not only my faithful attendants, but myself into the bargain? May my heart cease to beat and my hands to move if ever I do. I don’t profess to be perfect; none of my species are, anymore than the species of my revilers.  What, in my transition state, I did occasionally go to rest for the night without putting out my light? Was it not a new duty I had to discharge, and are not all liable to perform new duties somewhat irregularly for a time? Hitherto, I had been allowed no light in the evening, however much I might have wanted it, and I cannot sufficiently thank the Congress of Paris for bringing about an event, in commemoration of which my internal darkness is illuminated.

Then again, some said I was two-faced, and told East Street one thing, and West Street another, while the information which I gave the north and that which I gave the south differed from both, as well as from each other. This would seem to prove that I am four-faced, which I admit. It is probable that I may have said different things to different parties, but then it must be remembered that my stomach was in a disordered state, and everybody knows that a disordered stomach will produce a disordered head, and thus lead to confusion. But, whatever I may have said, I say the same to all parties now; and I am glad to be able to state that it is now a considerable length of time since I left my light burning all night. I flatter myself that I have been very punctual of late in extinguishing it.

It has been said that there is great difficulty in seeing my face and my hands at a distance. Now I beg leave to say that my duty is to give information to the people of Bridport within the three bridges, and not to be stared at through telescopes from Bradpole, the Harbour, and other foreign parts.

My light is complained of. Now I have never been to London, but I have heard that there are some of my own species there illuminated, whose light is not as good as mine.

On the whole, I think the public have good reason to be satisfied both with me and my patrons. I will mark the hours as they pass, let the public improve them.

THE TOWN CLOCK

P.S. Please excuse bad writing. My hands are shivering in the cold wind and rain.

William Holloway – the forgotten poet

Apr 12th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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Ask any Dorset native to name their two most pre-eminent literary figures and most likely they would reply: “Thomas Hardy and William Barnes.” Less well known however is another William who seems to have slipped into the position of becoming the County’s forgotten third poet: William Holloway.

Holloway was born at Whatcombe, a manor in the parish of Winterborne Whitchurch about four miles from Blandford, presumably early in 1761 as there is a record of his baptism at Whitchurch on June 23rd of that year. William was the last child of Lawrence and Frances Kains Holloway, whose other children were another son, Thomas and a daughter, Elizabeth. His great-uncle, also called William, was serving as Whitchurch’s Churchwarden at the time of the poet’s birth.

Few details of William Holloway’s earliest years were recorded, other than that he was orphaned in early childhood, his father dying before William was two years old. Following the death of his mother not many years after, William was adopted by his grandmother. His years at school however, were happy ones, during which time he acquired some grounding in Greek and French, and came to admire and inwardly digest the works of Milton, Gray, Shakespeare and James Thompson.

While still a young man, William Holloway left his grandmother’s home and care to settle in Weymouth. He took up an apprenticeship with a local printer, eventually being put in charge of the printing shop attached to Weymouth’s Circulating and Musical Library owned by the obese larger-than-life public figure of John Love. It is thought that from an early age William had already begun to write verse, though his first published work, a eulogy on the local Halsewell shipwreck disaster, did not appear until 1788, when he would have been about 37. A small book of verse under the title of The Cottager appeared the following year, these early works being published by his employer John Love.

On November 1st in the year before his poem about the Halsewell was published, Holloway married a spinster of Melcombe Regis, Christian Jackson, at St. Mary’s Church in that parish. They had four children, all girls: Elizabeth, Lucy, Mary and Hannah, of which only Elizabeth appears never to have married. By this time Holloway had matured into a tall, dark quite handsome man. A contemporary print shows him as having a long swarthy face, dark eyes and a pronounced aquiline nose.

In 1798 George III and his entourage paid their first visit to Weymouth, an occasion which spurred Holloway and several local amateur poets to contribute odes on the event to the Salisbury-based Western Country Magazine. During 1790 and 1791 Holloway contributed five of the descriptive verses for twelve Weymouth views, originally published by Love in collaboration with the engraver James Fittler but subsequently collected together and re-issued as a single volume.

By 1792 The Halsewell and The Cottager had been sufficiently well received by the public to cover Holloway’s expenses, such that Love could proceed with publishing The Fate of Glencoe, a historical ballad. In his preface to this work Holloway exemplified much of the half-veiled modesty that characterised this unprepossessing bard throughout his life. He made it plain that the work was penned amid “the hurry of business” and “interruptions of active life.” Though essentially a studious and serious thinker, Holloway also relished the dramatic arts and theatrical life, once composing a short epilogue for a play staged at Weymouth’s Theatre Royal as well as the lyrics for a song to open a new theatre at Dartmouth.

But in October 1793 Love suddenly died, pitching his respectable partner Holloway into one of those dramatic life-course shifts that so many people experience. Under probate Love’s business stock went up for sale and in his will Holloway inherited his printing equipment and materials for a fee of ten guineas a year, in effect inheriting his employer’s works and library. But for various reasons Holloway was not able to avail himself of this opportunity for proprietorship. Instead he then entered upon a phase of his life which he was later to recall as a time “when fortune frowned.”

In an attempt to break free of what he felt had become a professional blind alley Holloway threw up his Weymouth associations and moved with his wife and daughters to Leadenhall Street in London. In June 1798 he landed a job as a clerk at the office of the East India Company in the same street. His position was well-paid and to all accounts not burdensome, since the clerks had privileges such as free breakfasts and postage as well as enough spare time to read papers. But it is likely that Holloway owed his position to Weymouth’s Steward family, who had close associations with the EIC, and Holloway did dedicate two poems to Francis Steward, a former mayor of the town.

Over the 33 years Holloway was in the service of the EIC the greater part and culmination of his poetry was written. Thematically he was soon reverting to nostalgic elegies on his native county such as The Rustic Farewell: a Fragment in the Dorset Dialect; The Peasants Fate (reprinted four times) and Scenes of Youth. Years later he entered into partnership with another poet, John Branch, to produce a small four-volume work on natural history.

Holloway honourably retired from the EIC at the age of 60 in 1821, though it was another ten years before the company would grant him a pension. The poet did not, as might have been expected, retire to Dorset, but to Hackney, then just a village about three miles from Leadenhall Street. Personally and domestically he was cared for by his eldest daughter Elizabeth, his wife Christian having died some years before. Holloway’s other three daughters all married London men and settled in the capital. Rock Place, his home on Tottenham Road in the Hackney hamlet of Kingsland was even then becoming enclosed by the town-house developments that would eventually absorb the village into the greater metropolis. But when he moved in, Holloway could still look back towards the fringes of London across fields of waving corn.

In 1852 Holloway had to undergo the intense emotional pain of watching his beloved Elizabeth descending into an early grave, even as he himself had begun inevitable decline. After his own end came on July 21st 1854, Holloway was buried in Stoke Newington Cemetery beneath a memorial stone mistakenly inscribed with his age as 96 instead of 93, though today almost illegible from erosion. In his will Holloway left £100 to be shared out between his surviving daughters and grandchildren. Although his obituary in The Times acknowledged his work at East India House, it did not commend, or even name a single one of his volumes of verse.

And perhaps it is this, added to the fact of his early departure from his home county that explains why William Holloway was fated to become a forgotten poet. It has been Holloway the print-shop manager and mercantile clerk the press and public had remembered – not Holloway the author of a considerable literary output. But through his poems he has kept alive such poignant vignettes of rural life in Regency and Victorian Dorset: its hay-making, dairying, crafts, maypole dancing, village weddings; the schoolboys fishing a stream or truanting to watch the village blacksmith.

Besides the aforementioned, Holloway’s other anthologies are Poems on Various Occasions (1798); The Baron of Lauderbrook (1800); The Chimney Sweepers Complaint (1806); The Minor Minstrel (1808) and the Country Pastor (1812).

The Redundant Church at Whitcombe

Apr 11th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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The word of God is not preached here anymore. Whitcombe Church is redundant: stripped of its furniture including the pews, although it retains the pulpit from which William Barnes preached his first and his last sermons, it is unlikely ever again to hear voices raised in songs of praise.

Humbled by the nearby magnificent 17th century barn and a farmhouse largely rebuilt in the early 19th century, the Grade I listed church sits in a quiet hollow and has settled on its ancient foundations. Memorials surround it to persons from past congregations who regularly came here to worship. A church has stood on this site since King Athelstan (circa 934) made Whitcombe part of the endowment of Milton Abbey. Seen from the busy road the visitor, after climbing over the stile, will be pleased to find this Norman church open.

Whitcombe is a parish of about 750 acres of largely agricultural land to the south-east of Dorchester and stretching for just two and a half miles along the Dorchester to Wareham road. It is the advance of mechanisation in farming that has been responsible for the declining population. In 1851 there were 61 inhabitants and by the end of the 19th century that number had declined by a third. It is easy to see why the church is redundant: the first census of the 21st century revealed just 10 people living in the parish.

Its fate could also have something to do with the shaky foundations, a problem commented upon in a description of the church written by Mr C.E. Ponting F.S.A., in 1892. He tells us “The building has suffered much from insufficient foundations, there can be no doubt that the rebuilding of parts of the walls were necessitated by this” and he noted that even some of the rebuilt parts were surrendering to the same cause.

Built in squared Portland rubble with dressing of Portland ashlar and some Ham Hill stone, the church consists of a nave and chancel, a west tower and south porch. The nave is 12th century and there are traces of pre Conquest masonry at the west-end. The chancel and south porch were added in the late 15th century and a start was made at the same time on the west tower with the upper stage completed later, about 1596. The roof is modern and covered with tiles and stone slates.

The church retains fragments of two pre Conquest cross-shafts and on the north wall of the nave is a wall painting of St. Christopher carrying Christ, thought to be 15th century and the other is early 14th century arcading. The early 13th century font is of Purbeck marble. Two bells both by John Wallis remain in the church but are no longer hung, both are dated 1610 one inscribed HOPE WELL IW and the other LOVE GOD IW,

The churchyard is partly surrounded by an 18th century brick boundary wall inside of which are 32 monuments the oldest to Melchisadeck Gillet and dated 1680 and there are 18th century memorials to several members of the Spratt family. The most recent burial was in July 1983 and after the church had been declared redundant when 91 year-old Elsie Barnes was laid to rest with her husband James who had died in December 1957.

The church at Whitcombe retired since 1971 is nowadays in the care of The Churches Conservation Trust.

Wordsworth at Racedown

Apr 7th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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For most people, it may come as a surprise to learn that William Wordsworth passed two years of his life in a Dorset manor, for he is inexorably associated with the Lake District. Indeed, the poet was a native, having been born in Cockermouth, Cumbria in 1770, the son of a solicitor. However, between September 1795 and June 1797 Wordsworth tenanted Racedown, a country house standing at the foot of Pilsdon Pen, an Iron Age hill fort in the extreme west of Dorset.

The circumstances leading to William’s occupation of Racedown owe much to the poet’s embrace of and involvement in radicalism. Through earlier sympathies he fell in with Francis Wrangham a Yorkshire-born curate of Cobham, Surrey and Basil Montagu, said to have been the illegitimate son of the 4th Earl of Sandwich. These men were engaged as tutors to John and Azariah Pinney, sons of John Praetor Pinney, an affluent Bristol Merchant member of the Bristol West Indies Trading Company.

Some years before, John P Pinney had built Racedown for his elder son John, either to occupy himself or to rent out. John Jr opted for the latter alternative and offered the home to Wordsworth fully furnished, yet rent-free. At this time the poet’s fortunes in London were severely depressed, but tenancy of Racedown seemed to hold the prospect of a literally creative diversion for himself, in company with his sister Dorothy. William had also recently inherited a legacy of £900, so in the autumn of 1795 the Wordsworths moved in with Montagu’s son – also called Basil – who they had to raise and educate for a fee of £50 per annum. The three had to make the 50-mile journey from Pinney’s Bristol home, where they had been staying, through Somerset and Dorset – a journey that at that time took almost all day.

However, the Wordsworths were not taken with the country house, which they considered an affront to their aesthetic senses. Pinney had built Racedown as an austere edifice of dark red brick with an “ugly and forbidding exterior.” A grey slate roof pitched at an unusually high angle tops its three storeys, and the squat, solid appearance is further accentuated by a large chimney block at each end. Nor is there enough area of window to relieve or break up the continuity of the brickwork. Yet there are, or were, two outside privies, a brew-house, a washhouse, a coach-house and a four-horse stable. The interior of the house however, better met the Wordsworth’s expectations, having an Axminster-carpeted dining room, a breakfast room and library, and four bedrooms on the first and second floors.

The residence was built just off a bend in a narrow lane under the lee of a steep hill rising above the valley of the river Synderford, with a view towards Taunton Deane. The nearest villages were Blackdown, where unsociable cousins of the Pinneys lived, and Birdsmoorgate, neither of which at the time consisted of more than two or three flint cottages.

Two weeks after moving in, William and Dorothy secured the services of a servant called Peggy Marsh, who Dorothy described as “one of the nicest girls I ever saw.” She was joined by Joseph Gill, a cousin of the Pinneys who served as both house and estate manager and gardener, and an unknown washerwoman who came just once a month for a wage of nine pence. This staff of three, apart from the occasional encounter with peasantry in the lane, were the only other people the Wordsworths had contact with. William could not afford a London paper, the only paper he was able to obtain being the provincial Weekly Entertainer. The isolation the 25-year-old poet felt deeply affected him and compounded his chronic insolvency. Nor could he take part in the radical events then unfolding upon the world stage or even read about them.

But Wordsworth could find solace in his well-known passion for hill walking. It was not long before he was striding up Pilsdon Pen behind the house, where he found the summit – the prehistoric enclose, at 980 feet the highest point in Dorset – commanded breathtaking views into Somerset and around Lyme Bay from Lyme to as far west as Torbay. But Wordsworth also loved the sea, and would sometimes walk from Racedown to Lyme, saying that he could hear the sea from three miles away. One memorable occasion for William was seeing the great West Indies fleet sailing by “in all its glory” only to be dashed to pieces on the Chesil during a storm. Coincidentally, though he couldn’t have known it at the time, his sea captain brother John was to perish when, as master of the Earl of Abergavenny, that ship was wrecked not far to the east in 1805.

But these ramblings were pleasant interludes during a stay at a home that was otherwise a miserable affair. Some alleviation from the gloom was provided when John and Azariah came to stay throughout February 1796 and joined William in hare coursing. But once they had left the poet suffered virtual writer’s block, only penning his Argument for Suicide. He broke off for a stay in London from June 1st to July 9th 1796 where his spirits were revived in the company of fellow radicals. Back at Racedown, Wordsworth threw himself into work on the theme of guilt, crime and punishment in his verse drama The Borderers.

Then that November Mary Hutchinson, whom William had first met at Penrith some years earlier, came for a six-month stay at Racedown. While undertaking the work of transcribing her friend’s poems a bond of love blossomed; the couple would eventually marry in 1802.

For Wordworth the Dorset peasantry now came to embody all or most of the virtues he had noticed long ago in their Cumbrian counterparts: courage, endurance, faith, compassion and love. Then it seemed that the country around Racedown burst into beauty.

Mary’s stay ended on June 5th 1797; on the 30th, William and Dorothy were picked up by William’s friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge for the 40-mile journey to Coleridge’s cottage at Nether Stowey. As they drew away from the house brother and sister may have glanced back, but they would never see Racedown or cross its threshold again. Soon after, Wordsworth left to spend several years with radicals on the continent. On his return to England he made a new home with Mary and Dorothy in a cottage at Grasmere by Derwent Water. In 1843 Wordsworth succeeded Robert Southey as Poet Laureate, dying aged 80 in 1850. Dorothy died in 1855; Mary in 1859.

The Mystery of Candida

Apr 7th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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Sometimes referred to as the capital of the Marshwood Vale, the village of Whitchurch Canonicorum in West Dorset has a parish church with an appropriately grandiose exterior like a mini cathedral. The church dates from before the 13th century and is dedicated to a most unusual and obscure patron in a county in which so many churches are dedicated simply to Mary or John.

This account is not however concerned with a general history of the church, but specifically on an enigmatic patron saint and a unique monument within its walls. The ecclesiastical figure in question is St. Wyte – (or Wite, Witta, Blance, Albinus, Candida or Candidus,) a saint of several alternative names and almost as many theories about her identity.

One of these is that she was a Saxon princess or recluse, possibly companion of Boniface, who was martyred by invading Danes coming ashore at Charmouth. It is known that St. Boniface was born in the Marshwood district, but it is uncertain whether Witta was a local figure or not. Here arises the possibility that the dedication became confused or altered to Candida under foreign influence, for Candida is said to have been a Roman or Spanish virgin martyr. A second myth maintains that she was actually a Welsh saint called Gwen, while yet another holds that “she” is to be identified as Albinus, Bishop of Buraburg. Fourthly, Blanche is the native French name for a Norman saint who has been put forward as another claimant on her identity.

As these various appellations mean ‘white’ it is thought that this adjective also lies behind the origin of the parochial name “Whitchurch.” Several small manors comprise the parish, but none of these has given its name to the whole. Therefore it has been suggested that it was the church itself, possibly known by the Latin name of Ecclesia Candida, which later became Angliased to Whitchurch. Whatever the truth however, there is no doubt that a burial or inhumation took place above the monument in the parish church of St. Candida & Holy Cross at Whitchurch, today known as the Shrine of St. Candida.

The shrine is a 13th century roughly cast stone monument showing clear indications of having been added to at various stages or being a composite from various sources. It stands on a base in an alcove against the north wall of the church’s north transept. The west end of this base can be seen to be contiguous with the transept wall, but projecting some three inches beyond at the east end, so that the structure is not entirely parallel to the wall. Furthermore, there is a disparity of about three inches in the height of the shrine at each end of the church as there is a slight gradient in the pavement of the transept from west to east.

The lower part of the monument gives the appearance of having been a 13th century altar tomb reset into its present position at an unknown date. This repositioning was crudely carried out, so that it interferes with the engaged pilasters at each end. Three evenly-spaced elliptical apertures are set into the monument from front to back, their purpose apparently being the cavities into which people placed their diseased limbs while they prayed for the saint to restore them to health. Above, the structure is surmounted by an unadorned 14th century stone reliquary resting upon an earlier slab and sealed with a hollow-chamfered slab of partially eroded Purbeck marble. The coffin was found to contain the bones of a small woman when, it is said, it was opened around 1850 by the incumbent of Whitchurch at the time, the Revd. William Palmer.

The outer coffin bears no inscription, but when it was later opened again during repairs to the church wall in 1900, the reliquary was found to bear the inscription ‘Hic. Requesct. See Wite’ (here lie the remains of St. Wite.) No one quite knows the whereabouts of these remains today. Presumably the bones and the small casket containing them were returned to the coffin. However, during the original disturbance by Reverend Palmer in the 19th century the side of the coffin was fractured, leaving a crack in the side that can still be seen today. Nevertheless, it remains a fact that St. Candida & Holy Cross is the only church in England to traditionally contain the tomb of its own patron saint.

Not far from Whitchurch there is a well also dedicated to St. Candida, but before describing this there are two other notables connected with the church that deserve a mention.

Sir George Somers was a contemporary and fellow mariner of Sir Walter Raleigh, a sometime mayor of his birthplace Lyme Regis and an MP largely responsible for the colonisation of Virginia. During a storm a fleet of nine of his ships carrying settlers was grounded on one of Bermuda’s coral islands, which Somers took possession of. The settlers later completed the voyage to Virginia by building new boats, but after word of the castaways reached England, the venture inspired Shakespeare to write ‘The Tempest.’
Somers died in 1610 on a voyage back to Bermuda. His heart was buried there, but his body was brought home and buried in St. Candida & Holy Cross.

In the churchyard there is a memorial stone marking a grave, inscribed in English on one side and in Bulgarian on the other. The Bulgarian inscription is there because this is the grave of the dissident BBC World Service broadcaster and journalist Georgi Markov, who died after being injected with a lethal ricin pellet by a regime-hired Communist assassin on Waterloo Bridge in London during September 1978.

The well of Candida, known under the name of St. Wyte’s Well, is to be found at nearby Morcombelake on the further side of the Chardown Hill. It is situated at the extreme western end of the village, near to where the A35 takes a double bend southwards over the hills and leads to a narrow lane between farm buildings. Here a painted sign will direct you to the well about 300 yards up a muddy track (OS Sheet 193; GR398937.) Here, fenced off in its own enclosure is the well, which takes the form of a square stone-lined basin measuring about 1 foot by 1 foot five inches. The water level is about 8 inches below the kerb, and the water is typically well-colonised by algae. A modern plaque explains that this water has been blessed with the ability to cure eye diseases since the 16th century, but it is not above being able to cure other maladies.

Milton Abbas

Apr 2nd, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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The Milton Abbas Street Fair is a huge event that takes place every two years along the famous and much photographed village street and the next fair will be held on July 27th 2013. Always well attended the event is as authentic an eighteenth century fair as the organisers can make it. Bunting is hung up and down and across the street; residents and stall holders dress in period costume and visitors are encouraged to join in.

But there is a lot more to see and learn about the parish of Milton Abbas to provide even the most experienced tourist with an interest-packed day: the Abbey Church and St Catherine’s Chapel, not to mention the village street with its uniform housing, almshouses and St. James’ Church all in a beautiful setting.

The original church was founded by King Athelstan of Wessex in 933 AD, to commemorate the death of his brother Edwin who died at sea. In 964 King Edgar turned-out the priests and replaced them with Benedictine monks from Glastonbury. Around the monastery a thriving town grew to over 100 houses and several taverns but it was demolished and replaced by the model village we see today.

Middleton as it was known until 1753 was a prosperous market town sitting in the valley between the present day Milton Abbas and the Abbey. What became of Middleton? Joseph Damer, later to become Lord Milton, the first Earl of Dorchester, tore down the old abbey buildings and built himself a mansion in the Gothic style next to the Abbey Church calling on the services of Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown the leading landscape designer and gardener of the day to improve his view.

Brown had a reputation for not letting anything stand in the way of the successful execution of his plans and elsewhere had moved whole communities to ensure that his grand designs were fully realised. Middleton was no exception; it was in the way so it had to go.

In 1780 Joseph Damer built Milton Abbas to house the residents of Middleton. The new village was built over the hill where it would not spoil his view. When the last resident at Middleton, a lawyer, refused to be evicted Damer opened the sluice gates to the new dam and flooded him out. That last man later had his day in court with Damer – and won.

Milton Abbas is considered to be the first planned town or village in Britain. After visiting the village in 1791 Frances “Fanny” Burney (1752-1840) a leading woman author and contemporary of Mary Wollstonecraft noted in her diary that she admired the new village “built by his Lordship, very regularly of white plaster, cut stone fashion and thatched” but she thought the houses too good for “the Poor.”

The village is about half-a-mile south east of the original town and comprises two rows of cottages all set out on either side of a broad and gently winding road. The cottages are two-storied and have cob walls and thatched roofs. Originally each cottage would have comprised two homes but most are now single dwellings and all benefit from a generous area of lawn at the front. On one side and mid way down the street are the almshouses and the parish church of St. James.

After the dissolution of the monastery in 1539 it was sold the following year to Sir John Tregonwell for £1,000. He made the abbey church into the parish church and used the abbots lodging as his own private residence. The estate was bought by Joseph Damer in 1752 and he employed John Vardy to build a new mansion next to the Abbey Church.  Following Vardy’s death in 1765 Sir William Chambers was commissioned but he resigned in 1774 after frequent arguments with “this unmannerly imperious lord.”  The project was taken over by James Wyatt.

The Abbey Church of St. Mary, St. Sampson and St. Branwalader is the largest mediaeval building in central Dorset and commands a spectacular landscape in a deep valley surrounded by wooded hills. Comprising a chancel, tower and transepts; the nave was never built and the chapels have been demolished. If completed as originally intended it would be a huge structure. What we see here is of the 14th and 15th centuries and much of the work was undertaken by Abbot William Middleton; the original buildings were destroyed by fire in 1309 after lightning struck the spire.

Joseph Damer married Caroline Sackville, daughter of the first Duke of Dorset. After her death the Italian sculptor, Carlini, was commissioned to make a monument to her and this stands in the north transept of the Abbey.

The Chapel of St. Catherine is set on a hill overlooking the Abbey Church, about 300 yards from it, and stands on the lowest of a series of artificial terraces inside its own enclosure. It comprises a nave and chancel both of the late 12th century and benefits from restoration work carried out in the late 15th or early 16th century when some of the windows were enlarged. Further works were carried out in the 18th century. The chapel was converted to secular use during the 19th century but restored as a place of worship in 1901.

There is a story concerning the son of Sir John Tregonwell who at the age of 5 is said to have fallen 60 feet from the top of the church tower. Apparently he was dressed in the style of the day and his petticoats acted like a parachute and he touched down none the worse for the fall and went on to live for another 77 years. An unlikely tale and one that is repeated in some impeccable sources.

Milton Abbas is about eight miles to the south west of Blandford, between the villages of Milbourne St. Andrew and Hilton, in the heart of Dorset.