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December, 2010:

Pamela Digby

Dec 30th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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It is interesting to note how widely those of Dorset origin destined to be famous will eventually travel in the course of their lives. But who would have thought that a girl from a Dorset family, born 90 years ago, would have risen to such a high position in society as to become our most famous prime minister’s daughter-in-law and, ultimately, nearly the most influential non-American ever in US politics? But this indeed was the remarkable destiny of Pamela Digby.

Pamela Beryl Digby was born on March 20th, 1920 into the aristocratic Digby family of Minterne House, Minterne Magna, above the Cerne valley in rural mid-Dorset, a manor which the family had held over many generations from about the mid-16th century onwards. Pamela was the eldest of the four children of Edward Kenelm Digby (the 11th Lord Digby, Earl of Minterne) and Lady Pamela Bruce, being therefore baptized in the name of her mother.  Later, Minterne House would become the seat of her elder brother, who became the 12th Earl.

Pamela was educated through private tuition, and then at the instigation of her mother gained a qualification in domestic science. Following a year at a continental finishing school to round off her education, she settled in London for The Season of 1938, was presented at court, then landed a job as a translator (she spoke fluent French) with the Foreign Office. Her Dorset roots, however, may have lain behind the remark she is reported to have made to the high-society women of her inner circle in those early years: “I felt a real country bumpkin”.

But then in September 1939 on the outbreak of war, a phone call became the lynch-pin ratcheting Pamela up the society ladder several rungs at a time and changing her life forever. The caller was Winston Churchill’s son Randolph, then a 28-year-old army officer. Churchill had in fact intended to invite an absent friend of Pamela’s out to dinner, but Pamela instead took up Randolph’s invitation and went in her place. Mutual attraction must then have gone into overdrive that night, for just two weeks later the pair announced their engagement. Churchill Jr married Pamela on October 4th that year.

But from early on the marriage of the younger Churchills was in trouble. In the spring of 1940 Pamela’s father-in-law became Prime Minister and invited her to live in at 10 Downing Street, though it could be said that the reason was not entirely familial. By this time Pamela was pregnant and with the Blitz about to break upon London the move was probably more out of concern for the expectant mother’s safety. And it was here, taking refuge in the cellars of the PM’s London home that Pamela saw out the worst of the bombing in relative security. Her son Winston Jr, the future Conservative MP, was born at Chequers that October.

With the help of Lord Beaverbrook Pamela later secured a position at the Ministry of Supply. She was then 21 years old, but was already about to be swept up by the second of several romantic liaisons in her life. The man in question was Averill Harriman, a 49-year-old Special Liaison Officer to President Franklin Roosevelt, who had connections with the Ministry. Pamela’s affair with Harriman was a diversion from her unhappy marriage, though she did not divorce Randolph until 1947. This second affair initially lasted until December 1941, when Pearl Harbour propelled the US into the war and Harriman was recalled.

Once more becoming available, Pamela embarked upon another romantic tryst, this time with American broadcaster Ed Morrow, well known for his live roof-top reports from London when the Blitz was at its height. The Prime Minister, possibly keen to promote cordiality with the thousands of billeted American troops, is thought to have encouraged Pamela to conduct salons aimed principally at GI’s. At these salons Pamela entertained Generals Marshall and Eisenhower, as well as Anthony Eden, Hugh Gaitskell, and Edith Sitwell.

The war over, the divorced Mrs Digby Churchill and Winston Jr moved to Paris, where the salons became famous with anybody who was anybody in wealth, politics or letters. Pamela’s admirers included the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, the Rothchilds, Duff-Coopers, Cecil Beaton, Nancy Mitford, Frank Sinatra, Porfirio Rubirosa, Ali Khan, Stavros Niarchos, and Aristotle Onassis. Another client was Gianni Agnelli, heir to the Fiat fortune, with whom Pamela embarked upon an affair lasting five years. During this affair she converted to Catholicism, even adopting an Italian accent. After Agnelli, she took up with antiques connoisseur Elie de Rothchild, a romance that endowed her with expertise in antiques.

From 1955 onwards Pamela spent ever more time in the States. This led in 1960 to her second marriage, this time to theatre producer Leyland Hayward, a union that made her an authority on Broadway matters. She also took up her salons again, though this time mainly for a clientele in the arts. As Mrs Hayward, Pamela enjoyed ten years of considerably more wedded bliss than she had experienced with Randolph Churchill.

But in 1970 Hayward died. Four months later his widow was re-united with Averill Harriman, who by this time was 78 and now an available widower. With no war or upheaval to confound their marital plans the former wartime suitors were married in 1971. By this time the statesman had been in the service of every Democrat President since Roosevelt, had been Governor of New York, and had even stood as a presidential candidate himself. With Averill, Pamela travelled widely, visiting Andropov and Gorbachev in Moscow, and had acquired a great depth of knowledge about European affairs.

Harriman introduced Pamela to all the great Democrat stalwarts including Truman, Johnson and the Kennedys. Following personal involvement in the unsuccessful campaign for Muskie in 1972, Pamela then helped with Carter’s successful campaign in 1976. When Harriman’s health was failing in 1980 he is believed to have encouraged his wife to take on his political mantle, but by the time of his death in 1986 the Democrats were losing to Reagan and Bush.

With Harriman gone, Pamela established PAMPAC, a Political Action Committee to organize meetings and raise funds to elect a Democrat president. Pamela is also credited with introducing Bill Clinton to the Democratic establishment and supporting him in his campaign, just as she had backed Dukakis and Gore in 1988. It was even said that Pamela had become the most powerful woman in America after Hilary Clinton. Rumoured to have turned down an offer to be Ambassador to Britain, her knowledge of the country and its language made her the obvious choice for France’s Ambassador instead. So looking at least 20 years younger than her age, Pamela began her new consular career at the US embassy in Paris – still keeping up with her hosting!

Yet despite her youthful lust for life, Pamela Beryl Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman died in Paris on February 5th, 1997 aged 76. On the 13th she was flown back to America for burial in the National Cathedral, Washington. In her will she left her son Winston £6.2 million even though she did not approve of him leaving his own wife.

Today Minterne House is the centrepiece of extensive gardens with streams, lakes & waterfalls; parkland and 20 acres of woodland open to groups by appointment, a far cry from their quiet privacy when a girl called Pamela passed her childhood here 80 years ago.

The End of the Sydenham Dynasty

Dec 20th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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In 1661 at the age of 21 William Sydenham inherited from his grandfather the Manor House and estate at Wynford Eagle, which had been the family home since the middle of the 16th century when Thomas Sydenham came from Somerset; it proved to be a poisoned chalice and led to William ending his days in Dorchester prison.

In 1662, a year after inheriting the family home, William Sydenham married Martha Michel from nearby Kingston Russell and the couple had two sons and two daughters, though both boys died at quite a young age. In 1699 a distant relation, Ann, came to live at the Manor House and was employed as a companion to Martha Sydenham and at some time she married Martha’s brother.

For a time William’s father enjoyed positions under Cromwell earning a salary of £1,000 a year. William himself achieved high office as Squire of the Body to William III, but this may not have been enough to compensate for money spent by the family advancing parliament’s cause during the Civil War. For whatever reason, it is clear that by the middle of the eighth decade of the 17th century William Sydenham’s finances were in a parlous state and he needed to find a remedy. By 1690 he had mortgaged the Manor House and most of the estate.

It is likely William discussed his plight with family members and they would certainly have included male members of his wife’s family: one of her sisters was married to Henry Bromfield who was the major mortgagee of the estate and two other mortgagees were named Michel.

In 1700 William decided the answer was a public lottery with the Manor House being the main prize. It seems William had concluded he would not be able to hold-on to the house and estate and was looking for a way to secure his old age.

The lottery appears to have been properly organised and supervised and was held at Mercer’s Hall in London. Interestingly, one of the Trustees was Robert Michel. Two hundred thousand five shilling tickets were available for purchase and if all were sold £50,000 would have been raised. After overheads of about £4,000 and over 13,000 prizes with a total value of about £20,000 William Sydenham would be left with about £26,000.

But everything was not as it should be. On a strictly administrative level William Sydenham should have deposited the deeds of the property and land with the Trustees prior to the sale of the lottery tickets. It appears he didn’t do this, which raises the question: why didn’t the Trustees insist on having the deeds? Furthermore it seems he failed to disclose that the property was heavily mortgaged but as a member of the Michel family was one of the Trustees surely they would have known the property was mortgaged.

All this could be put down to slack administration but when we learn that Martha Sydenham’s companion, Ann, won the main prize – the Manor House – at odds of 200,000 to 1 we have to wonder if there was more than a little dishonesty on the part of someone else as well as Sydenham.

Reports at the time suggest that William Sydenham had arranged for Ann to win the Manor House and then return it to him for a cash reward. But how would William have been able to ensure who the winner would be without some help from those administering and overseeing the lottery? Evidently it seems Ann refused to hand the property back to him. Ann, at sometime, married a member of the Michel family but it isn’t clear if the marriage happened before or after the lottery (we are still searching for the marriage record).

Sydenham set out to defraud the public in an attempt to save himself from financial ruin and his family’s name; that much is clear but it is difficult to see how he could have done this on his own. At every turn in this sorry saga the name Michel crops up and one has to wonder if while William Sydenham was busy defrauding the public some members of the Michel family were equally busy plotting his downfall.

Five years after the lottery he still hadn’t handed over the deeds to the Manor House and it was for this that he was sent to prison where he died in 1709. As the apparent beneficiaries of his actions his two daughters were also locked-up.

Dr. Thomas Sydenham MA, MB – the English Hippocrates

Dec 20th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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Thomas Sydenham was one of the three foremost Dorset men of medicine (the others were Francis Glisson and Frederick Treves,) but of the 17th century, when scientific and medical knowledge was in its infancy and riddled with superstition. Of his earliest years next to nothing is known, other than that he was born at Wynford Eagle in 1624, the eighth in a family of ten children.

While still in his teens he entered Magdalen Hall in Oxford where at 18 he matriculated as a Fellow Commoner. When Magdalen later merged with Hertford College, Sydenham underwent another two years of uninterrupted studies. But the Principal was a leader of the Puritan Party at Oxford and through his indoctrination Thomas joined the movement.

As the Sydenhams were a military family, Thomas left Oxford in 1642 to fight on the Parliamentary side in the Civil War, in the ranks of which two of his brothers also served, but who were killed in action. Thomas himself was once wounded, while on another occasion he was falsely given up for dead.

He was able to return to Oxford in 1647, where he had the good fortune of an introduction to Dr Thomas Coxe, then treating his brother, and it was as a consequence of this chance meeting that Sydenham was persuaded to take up medicine. He became a Fellow Commoner at Wadham College and in 1648 was created Bachelor of Medicine. However, this BM was granted by the then Chancellor, the Earl of Pembroke, without a degree in the arts first having been taken. Sydenham then later took his MA, but when hostilities broke out again in 1648 he returned to army service for a time as a Captain.

Home again after the war, Thomas married Mary Gee at Wynford Eagle and following his resignation from an All Souls Fellowship, was free to pursue a double career in medicine and politics. After an unsuccessful attempt to enter Richard Cromwell’s Parliament as MP for Weymouth he made his home and set up his practice at Westminster. Sydenham attended lectures at Montpelier, the chief seat of Hippocratism and there learnt the cooling method for fevers, but met difficulties in 1653 when he attempted to enter the Royal College of Physicians, due to an absence of degree documentation. However upon the intervention of Robert Boyle over the admission enpasse, he passed three exams and was then registered MA and MB at Oxford.

Early in his practice Sydenham became pre-occupied with research into finding a cure for gout, a condition in which he had personal as well as professional interest since he was himself a sufferer. When the Plaque struck London in 1665 he moved his family to the country, an action which drew down upon him the approbation of the medical establishment, though he soon returned alone to fight the pestilence. Thus Sydenham showed his more typical humanitarianism and benevolence to his poor patients. He was a physician of noble sincerity. He once allowed one patient the use of one of his own horses when he believed the man would benefit from some riding exercise.

About this time Sydenham published his first book, a Latin treatise on fevers. He was noted for specialising in contagions, but also worked on the applications of quinine and a cooling method for treating smallpox. He was in no small measure responsible for exorcising from contemporary medical practice much of the superstition and quackery, which then encumbered it and was sceptical about the common practice of bleeding for most ailments.

Furthermore, Sydenham insisted that disease symptoms should be observed with great care if a correct diagnosis was to be made. It was this professionalism which gained him a great reputation at home and abroad. He would never prescribe generally accepted medicines or treatments unless they were tried and trusted remedies proved to be effective. With calm logic he advocated the study of symptoms, working with, not against, the natural order, rest, patience, courage, fresh air in the sick room and the use of common sense in applying medical knowledge.

Sydenham’s success caused his rivals to belittle his methods, when it was really theirs, not his, which were inferior. As, ironically, the Sydenham approach was readily sought after by medical men abroad, he was not unduly fazed by criticism. Hi logic furthermore won him the admiration of the Dorset surgeon Frederick Treves, who in support wrote “..he threw aside the jargon and ridiculous traditions with which medicine was then hampered and applied it to common sense.”

It was not until 1676 that Thomas Sydenham became Doctor of Medicine at Cambridge – 28 years after his BA was obtained, and it is thought that the delay was due to his pre-occupation with his practice. But the doctor had little regard for academic honours. His early abortive attempt to gain admission to the CoP as a Fellow was probably due to some internal wrangling, though this is disputed. Sydenham, nevertheless, continued to be held in high esteem.

Thomas Sydenham published five works, all of them a priceless contribution to medicine. He died at his Pall Mall home in 1689, the consequence of a severe attack of gout.

The Sydenham Family at Wynford Eagle

Dec 20th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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Around 1550 Thomas Sydenham uprooted his family from the small Somerset village of Stogumber tucked away in a valley between the Quantock and Brendon Hills in the west of that county and came to Wynford Eagle, where he took up residence in the Manor House. There is evidence that members of the Sydenham family were already in the area. Nowadays known as Manor Farm this charming old house with its interesting old chimneys, gables and mullions, not to mention the large stone eagle that adorns the impressive west façade, the emblem of the Norman, Lord Gilbert de Aquila, was rebuilt in 1630 by William Sydenham and has been weathered by the sun and winds of centuries.

On January 8th 1569/60 Thomas married his second wife Jane Ryves at Wynford Eagle. For a century and a half Thomas’s descendants prospered here holding firm when Civil War shattered the peace and tranquillity of this small parish; the war saw the loss of a mother and a son but the family survived to see quieter times again.

William Sydenham was born in 1593 and inherited from his grandfather, his own father having died when he was only one year-old. William was a rich man who married well. On the 4th of November 1611 at Wynford Eagle he was joined together in holy matrimony with Mary, the daughter of Sir John Jeffrey, Knight of Catheston Manor. Sir John’s tomb with his effigy is in the north wall of the chancel in the church of St. Candida and Holy Cross at Whitchurch Canconicorum.

Here at Wynford Eagle the couple’s early years together would have been a happy time. William and Mary had ten children; two sons were destined to become famous in their individual fields. Even to this quiet backwater tragedy and sorrow dared to come when father and sons William, Thomas, Francis and John took up arms for Parliament in the Civil War.

Their father was taken prisoner at Exeter when that town fell to the Royalists on 4 September 1643 and in August of the following year their mother Mary was murdered on the doorstep of the Manor House by Royalist troops.

Church records for the period are incomplete and some have deteriorated to a point where it is difficult to read them, nevertheless it is possible to gather information about some of the events in the lives of members of the family.

The eldest boy William was baptised at Wynford Eagle on the 8th of April 1615 and he married Grace Trenchard of Warmwell in 1637. He was a parliamentarian army officer and by April 1644 had achieved the rank of Colonel. On 17th of June 1644 the Earl of Essex appointed him Governor of Weymouth. He was appointed Lord Sydenham under the protectorate and on the restoration of the Long Parliament he became a member of the committee of safety and the council of state. He died in July 1661 and was buried at Wynford Eagle; his widow died a few days later.

On the 30th November 1644 at Poole Major Francis Sydenham spotted the man thought responsible for killing his mother, a Major Williams. Determined to revenge his mother’s slaying he with sixty of his soldiers charged at the Royalists and beat them back all the way to Dorchester where he singled out Williams, shot him and trampled him under his horse. Francis Sydenham died in February 1645 defending Weymouth. It is thought his brother Thomas may have been wounded during the skirmishes that followed the Royalist take over of the town.

Thomas was baptised at Wynford Eagle on the 10th of September 1624 and in the little parish church of St.Lawrence  in 1655 he married Mary Gee. Thomas had been at Magdalen Hall in Oxford and returned there in1647 following the end of the first Civil War. In 1651 military service again required him to leave Oxford. He became famous in the field of medicine. He died on the 29th of December 1689 at his home in Pall Mall, London. (We will shortly be publishing a biographical piece about his life and career.)

John was a Lieutenant in the Parliamentary Army but we have found little more about him other than documents suggesting he may have pursued a career in medicine and travelled abroad.

After the Royalist stronghold at Sherborne was taken by Cromwell and Fairfax there was less fighting in Dorset. The first Civil War ended in June 1646.

Elizabeth Sydenham, a daughter of William Sydenham Senior, married Roger Sydenham of Skillgate, Somerset in 1642 and her sister, Martha married William Lawrence Snr of Wraxall, Somerset in 1649.

Another sister, Marey, married Richard Lee of Winsdale in Hampshire. They had a daughter Mary who was well known as an intellectual feminist and poet. She was born in 1656 and she married Sir George Chudleigh of Ashton, Devon. Her five year-old brother died when she was eleven and a baby sister died when she, Mary, was sixteen. Her younger brother by twenty years died when he was twenty five in 1701.

The Manor House at Wynford Eagle was inherited by Colonel William Sydenham’s son William and in 1662 he married Martha Michel of Kingston Russell and they had two sons and two daughters. The financial cost of fighting the Civil War had taken a toll on the family fortunes and by the mid 1680’s William was borrowing against the family home and estates and the reputation of a great family was on the verge of being ruined. William devised a plan, perhaps better described as a fiddle or what today we would call a scam, involving a lottery where the Manor House and estate was the prize.

The story of this prominent family ended in more than tears: the family name disgraced, the house and estate lost, and William Sydenham in Dorchester prison where he remained until his death in 1709.
 

We will tell the full story of the “Sydenham fraud” in a separate article.

Wynford Eagle

Dec 20th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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You might think this quiet backwater close to Maiden Newton hardly cries out for our attention; after all its population amounts to just sixty souls (2001 census). Yet we have four articles featuring the parish and the cause of all the interest is one family who came here from Somerset in the middle of the 16th century.

The Sydenham family moved into the Manor House, a charming residence with interesting old chimneys, gables and mullions topped off by a large stone eagle, the emblem of the Norman Lord, Gilbert de Aquila, that adorns its impressive west façade.

Before their arrival though, there is evidence here of early settlement with Round Barrows and some remains from the Roman era. Of particular interest a tessellated pavement was discovered near the old Manor house and in 1935 half of this pavement was uncovered again when it was noted it had guilloche borders, foliage, and a dolphin.

Recorded as Wenfrot in Domesday Book and down through the centuries as Winfrot Gileberti de Aquila, Wynford Aquile and, in 1288, as Wynfrod Egle. Wynford is from a Celtic name for a tributary of the River Frome translating to white or bright stream. Eagle is a reference to the medieval family of Gilbert del Egla; he came from L’Aigle in France.

The parish church dedicated to St. Lawrence stands alone near the site of an earlier church. Built in 1842 by G & H Osborn its plain minimalist style is saved by the 15th century chancel arch from the earlier building. By the west porch is a late 15th century tympanum displaying an eagle (or wyverns) with inscriptions: Mahald de l’egele’ a reference to Mathilda Eagle and Alvi me feci a reference to the sculptor Alvi who produced it. The church was formerly a chapelry of Toller Fratrum and was later annexed to it as a perpetual curacy.

In the churchyard most of the memorials are to recent inhabitants of the parish and surprisingly there is no mention of the Sydenham family whose relatively brief sojourn here makes for compelling reading. A father and sons fought for Cromwell, revenged their mother’s murder by a Royalist officer and in quieter times provided the father of British medicine; but at the turn of the 17th to 18th century a scandalous lottery scam brought the family only ruin and disgrace.

The estate was later purchased by another Somerset family, the Bests, for whom the baronetcy of Wynford was established in 1829.

Note: Elsewhere in this category you will find the story of this prominent family, a biographical piece about the most famous son, and an article about the scandalous events leading to the family’s demise.

Christmas 1890 – Railway Disaster

Dec 13th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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Standing at the controls of his Somerset & Dorset train’s engine, driver Frank Cribb was tired. A Bournemouth man with sixteen years work experience on the railway, Cribb had been on duty since 5.10 a.m. that morning of Tuesday, 23rd December 1890, driving the engine of a regular Bournemouth to Bath service. Now he was approaching Broadstone station at 5.20 p.m., nearing the end of yet another return run from Bath and a gruelling shift of over twelve hours. The train’s engine, which was fitted with Westinghouse vacuum brakes, accordingly maintained a steady speed, and although noted for pulling into stations fast, had always stopped in time – at least, it always had up to then.

In the front carriage behind the engine’s tender, sisters Sarah and Elizabeth Worthington were sitting in a spirit of buoyant anticipation, looking forward to the days ahead. The two women were on their way to spend the festive season at the home of Edith Lowe, with whom they had become friends when Miss Lowe was teaching at a school in Birmingham; now she was living in Poole and in post as Principal of the town’s British Girl’s School.

The Worthingtons were nearing their destination after a journey in which they had travelled down from Birmingham to join the SWR line at Mangotsfield near Bristol; from here another engine took the Bournemouth carriages to Bath, where the sisters caught the S&D connecting service for Bournemouth. They were pleasantly tired, but in their excitement Sarah and Elizabeth were blissfully unaware that within minutes they would be keeping an appointment with destiny.

Frank Cribb was approaching Broadstone station on the single track from Baillie Gate (or Western Curve,) a safety improvement for the line opened just five years earlier in 1885 to eliminate a hazardous reversing manoeuvre for Bath trains joining the L&SWR line to Bournemouth at Wimborne. Standing beside Cribb fireman Edward White suddenly cried out “Whoa mate – there’s something in front!” Dead ahead on the down line stood another engine with tender in the way of their train, but it was too late to avoid a collision.

The Worthington sisters and the other passengers in the forward carriage were then jolted out of their seats by the tremendous recoil force of over 140 tons of train ramming the stationary Wimborne engine. The rear wheels of its tender were knocked off as the tender was compressed concertina-fashion, sending the engine hurtling back down the gradient towards Poole, ripping up the track as it went. The engine with Cribb and White inside came to a halt 55 yards on at Broadstone station with the tender’s four foot diameter wheels wedged beneath it and skewed across the track from platform to platform. The collision’s magnitude was such that the tender’s buffer was later found 40 yards away in a garden! The engine’s boiler was displaced 11 inches backwards; the sound of the crash could be heard two miles away.

Thrown back by the shock of the impact the Worthington sisters and their fellow passengers had sustained horrific injuries. Sarah sustained facial contusions and abrasions, a broken leg and was in shock – but at least she would live; her 33-year-old younger sister Elizabeth however, was not so fortunate. She too suffered head injuries, but also with whiplash injury that had broken her neck, killing her instantly.

Outside the shattered front carriage it was dark, cold and snow lay on the ground. The conditions made rescue difficult and it took some time for emergency service teams to tear frantically through the wreckage. Victims had to be carried to safety on broken doors pressed into use as stretchers. Two other ladies in the first compartment were taken to the nearby Railway Hotel suffering fractures, cuts, concussions, bruising and severe shock. The hotel’s owners did all they could to help the doctors staying the night to tend the wounded. A breakdown train from Dorchester and a steam crane from Northam were sent to the accident site. An emergency team of 200 men had to work through the night to relay 200 yards of damaged track and restore normal service by 8 a.m. the following morning for the seventy-five trains that used the line daily.

Finding the cause of the collision and derailment at Broadstone then fell to the ensuing inquest, which opened at the Railway Hotel on Boxing Day. William Squires, the driver of the light engine, had been stopped at a signal before Broadstone station, but after a two or three minute wait had moved on when he saw the red signal change to green. As he passed the signal box, signalman Walter Gosney yelled out to him to stop. Squire’s fireman applied the brakes as soon as he realised that Cribbs’ Bath train was approaching from behind; Squires closed the regulator, but was then thrown back when the passenger train struck his tender. The fireman then jumped from the cab, leaving the driver to be pushed in his engine 300 more yards along the track before stopping.

Squires, the inquest heard, had been a railwayman for 15 years, yet had only 18months driving experience. On the day of the crash he had clocked-on at 6.25 a.m. for a tiring day of shunting, and hauling the Wimborne to Bournemouth afternoon passenger service. He would not return to Bournemouth West to clock-off until 7.20 p.m., by which time he would have worked a 13-hour day. But not all the culpability for the tragedy rested upon Squires’ shoulders. The competence of Walter Gosney was also brought into question when it emerged that at the time of the accident a railway carpenter was visiting him in the signal box, prompting the implication that the signalman may have been distracted, though it was certain that he had not been drinking.

The Wimborne engine was later than usual in arriving and when it stopped Gosney set the signals for the Bath train to come through. When Squires’ engine began moving forward however, Gosney then called out after him to stop and then had to re-set all the signals to danger, though this came too late to prevent a collision.

It took the inquest jury just ten minutes to reach a verdict of culpable negligence on the part of Squires and his fireman and a sentence of manslaughter for the death of Elizabeth Worthington. The two men were then sent up to appear before Wimborne magistrates, who then acquitted the fireman on the grounds that he was not responsible for driving the engine. This acquittal was confirmed at Dorchester assizes in February.

The majority of the evidence then rested upon the driver and his response to the signals. But the presiding judge, Mr Justice Coleridge, started the proceedings by questioning and then rejecting the testimony of the police officer who witnessed, at the inquest, the reported identification of the dead passenger as Miss Worthington. The judge had found no formal proof as offered by the treasury and did not know the deceased was Miss Worthington. Accordingly, Coleridge directed the jury to find Squires not guilty, as if proof was wanting. William Squires then left a court in uproar as a free man.

A week later a report on the accident was issued by the Board of Trade. It stated that it was impossible to avoid the conclusion that the down-line signal was passed at danger by the light engine, and that Squires probably only looked at the junction signal and, seeing it wasn’t on, neglected to check the nearby line signal. Gosney had done his duty in stopping the light engine; as it transpired it would have been better had he not done so! The overall conclusion was that the driver, and to a lesser degree the fireman, was responsible for the county’s worst railway accident after being on duty for 11 hours without a break.

The enquiry passed the signal operations as generally satisfactory, though human error apart, it was thought undesirable and unsafe that the Bath and Wimborne lines to Poole then had to share just one home signal. In future they would each have their own signal.

One can only imagine how Edith Lowe must have felt upon hearing of the disaster and its aftermath, after expectantly waiting up at home in Poole for two friends that fate had determined would never arrive. Of course, it was meant to be a joyous time of merriment. Instead, in the days following that dark and awful snow-bound night over a century ago the school headmistress fell ill with post-traumatic stress, her nerves shattered by an event that left so many maimed and two over-worked railwaymen bearing the stigma of professional misconduct for the rest of their lives.

The Dorset Shepherd

Dec 6th, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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Perhaps it could almost be said that Dorset was made for sheep and shepherding. Indeed, a flock of these animals in a pasture appears at the top of the county council’s website homepage and four hundred years ago there would certainly have been more sheep than people in the county. Of course, from the time of the shepherds watching over their flocks on the night of Jesus’ birth to the updated methods of the present day, sheep have always needed a labourer class to manage them; to pen, breed, feed and shear them. In short, the shepherds job.

Of course, sheep and shepherds are not exclusive to Dorset, though “hill farmer” is the term generally applied to the shepherd up north. For the Dorset shepherd the bedrock for his animals and livelihood has always meant the Dorset Heights, the great tract of Chalk downland spreading through the west and north of the county that has given rise to a native breed of sheep. Today though, the sheep population is but a shadow of what it would have been 400 to 500 years ago, when the implosion of the human population caused by the Black Death created such a shortage of labour for arable farming that it was more economic for landlords to enclose their land for pasture and keep sheep instead. So was laid the foundation of the great woollen industry that lasted until the 19th century.

The earliest reference to shepherds in the county may be attributed to Augustine who, tradition has it, once visited Dorset perhaps early in the 7th century and asked some shepherds tending their flocks in a field whether they preferred drinking beer or water. When the abstemious shepherds replied “water” Augustine is supposed to have struck the ground with his staff crying out “Cerne El” whereupon water gushed forth. The historian William of Malmsbury records that after St Aldhelm had died “Dorset shepherds, from neighbouring pastures” used to use a timber church or oratory the Bishop had built, as a shelter from rainstorms.

Hardy, in his extensive essay ‘The Dorset Labourer’ described the shepherd as “a lonely man of which the battle of life had always been sharp with him.” He is also described as being small frame, bowed over by hard work and who would stand at a hiring fair. His wages would not have exceeded eleven shillings a week. Hardy’s best-known fictional shepherd is probably Gabriel Oak, the ultimate beneficiary of the plot of ‘Far From the Madding Crowd.’ He is hired at a hiring-fair by the heroine Bathsheba Everdene and spends long hours out in the pasture tending her flock day and night. One night Oak shoots his sheepdog dead for stampeding the flock over a cliff while he is asleep, and in another instance cures the flock of “the blasting” after they stray into a field of clover. It is not certain whether the inspiration for these scenarios came from incidents in real life that the author may have witnessed or heard about.

Typically the 18th and 19th century shepherds would have worn smock-frocks and gaiters, though those young or of middle age sometimes wore smocks of a blue material. Only occasionally would they have worn cord trousers. Then there is the standard tool for the job: the crook. These are still made today, lightweight and durable accessories usually with hooks of buffalo horn fitted to shanks made from hazel or blackthorn.

Shepherds have also traditionally lived in purpose-built huts – almost windowless wooden caravan-like cabins on wheels measuring about 8 by 10 feet that could be towed onto the pasture where they would be working in the lambing season. They would have, as Hardy put it “sheltered the shepherd in his enforced nightly attendance.” Shepherd hut-making is a specialist craft that happily has been kept alive mainly through the excellent work of Richard Lee and Jane Dennison, two former students of John Makepeace at Hooke Collage, the school of woodcrafts at Parnham Manor near Beaminster.

At their Plankbridge workshop Richard and Jane use high quality materials locally sourced. Douglas fir is used for the frame and chassis, and the huts are fully insulated with versatile additional space; they can be used for the garden, orchard or filed. Features such as desks, cupboards, beds, heating and wiring may further be added. Te huts are finished off with an exterior coat of green paint and a set of steps for the door at the end are also provided.

One example of a modern Dorset shepherd of the 20th century is Larry Skeats. During a lifetime of shepherding extending across 45 years he folded the flocks in his care over the chalk downland using only dogs and wattle hurdles. At work his home became a shepherd’s hut. His autobiography ‘A Shepherds Delight: Memories of a Downland Shepherd,’ is a celebration of a bygone way of life by one of the last of the traditional shepherds.

Similarly, Ted Riglar began work aged twelve in 1901 as a shepherd at East Farm, Bincombe. Just two years later he sheared his first sheep, then went on to win a first prize of £4 at a shearing competition during a Bath & West Show in Dorchester in 1908. He then went on to acquire his Instructor’s Certificate in 1918. Born in 1891 Ernest Lovell was another ‘shep’ who started at age thirteen and by the mid 20th century was tending a four-hundred strong Dorset Horn flock at South Farm, Spetisbury. Lovell also bred sheep specialising in breeding rams and for this work won ten prizes at agricultural shows.

On occasion shepherds formerly may have delegated the responsibility of tending a flock to a hireling. Many shepherds would have smoked clay pipes and piped out folk tunes on a long-blown flute to keep themselves occupied throughout their long uneventful hours in the pasture. Early in the 20th century sheep used to be sheared at Upwey, where shearers at work were photographed in 1909. The prevalence of pastureland in Dorset is attested to in place-names such as Shepherd’s Bottom on the Ashmore Estate, and the shepherd is immortalised in a statue now standing in Dorchester.

Roman Heritage at Tarrant Hinton

Dec 1st, 2010
by Dorset Ancestors.
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One look at the growing crop suggested to William Shipp that something of great significance lay beneath the field. The Blandford Forum man had been called in by the farmer to investigate why the turnips he was growing as fodder for his livestock were withering or yellowing along curiously straight alignments. It was a coarser version of a physical phenomenon more usually seen in hay or cereal crops, but well known to archaeologists as a crop mark, caused when vegetation growing over deeper soil such as that in ditches grows taller and greener than that growing in shallower soil, due to the greater retention of water in the former. The failure of the crop in this way likely meant only one thing: that a large and important building or buildings had once stood where a farmer’s turnip field was now situated.

The field then used to grow turnips was Barton Field, situated in the parish of Tarrant Hinton, one of the Tarrant River Valley group settlements on the southern slope of the chalk ridge overlooking the Tarrant on the western side of the parish. But it is just one of several places in Dorset and southern England much favoured by the Romans for locating their villas (farm estates) or other settlements. The Tarrant valley in particular seems to have been a corridor attracting intense colonisation and farming during the boom periods of Roman Britain in the 2nd and 4th centuries. For example, excavation of another important villa site at Hinton St. Mary, a few miles south east of Tarrant Hinton, revealed a mosaic floor pavement in which was set a motif featuring the two Greek letters Chi & Ro (standing for Christos) behind a representation of Jesus. This depiction, now in the County Museum, furnished evidence of conversion to Christianity among these early Romano-British settlers by the 4th century – over two centuries before St. Augustine’s mission in 597 AD.

What Mr Shipp was looking at that day in 1845 were concealed foundations of one of Dorset’s major Romano-British settlements, agriculturally etched into the failure of the turnip crop. He was later to remark that remains of Roman origin were to be found in every part of this field and it was evident that for many years numerous finds of Roman pottery and coins had been turning up for antiquarians to collect. Early in the 20th century a Mr A, Giles from Tarrant Hinton uncovered an extensive tesserae (mosaic) floor in the field, but apart from this no further serious exploration of the site would be undertaken until the 1960’s.

Fast-forward to 1968, when the then landowners, Messrs E & D Hooper, suspecting that a major archaeological site of the 1st to 4th century once occupied their property, called in two officials on the staff of Dorset County Museum in Dorchester to assess whether a trial exploration should be undertaken. After determining that the mosaic flooring was being ploughed out, the archaeological consultants recommended that a full systematic excavation should be carried out during the field’s fallow periods, for which the Hoopers duly granted permission to proceed.

The subsequent trial excavation commenced in October 1968 and concluded in March 1969. A grid system of trenches spaced at 10-foot intervals was set out in the centre of the field. This revealed a large building later thought to have possibly been the headquarters of a large estate of farms, lying at 45 degrees across the grid square.

Then in August 1969 the Department of the Environment  authorised the start of a full-scale long-term excavation. During this dig a complex of about six distinct buildings was exposed, irregularly grouped around a wide open courtyard. It was determined that these buildings extended into the 3rd and 4th centuries. Two of these buildings had a hypocaust (under-floor heating system); though curiously, an absence of soot residue in one of these systems showed that it had never been used. The second of these buildings with a hypocaust was excavated in a fallow area of the north-eastern side of the field while a crop was being grown elsewhere and turned out to be a bath house dating from the 1st century. Unlike the earlier-discovered building however, it was soon evident that this bath house had been in constant use over a long period, as the under-floor space was full of soot. A coin of the 1st century was recovered from the debris near the heating-duct’s entrance. The excavations as a whole did indeed bear out W. Ship’s findings of 1845, for a large amount of coins, pottery sherds and painted wall plaster fragments were recovered from the site.

Nor was it only Romano-British settlement evidence that the Barton field contained. Immediately beyond and adjacent to the two main buildings long the south-west side of the courtyard a small cluster of Bronze Age graves was found. And furthermore, the complex of buildings on the western side had been built over an Iron-Age ditch running west-east through the site.

Documentary research indicated that the Roman settlement was granted to a freedman of Nero called Pompeius Anicetus. Two reference works indicate that this estate was said to have been situated just off the Roman road linking Durnovaria (Dorchester) and Sarum (Salisbury), and north of Vindocladia (Badbury Rings) but approximately half-way between the two town’s population centres. Furthermore, it is known that Pompeius dedicated an altar to the Roman deity Sulis at the Roman baths of Aquae Sulis (the town of Bath). The Barton field settlement also lies adjacent to the Roman road connecting Badbury Rings and Bath near the intersection of the Sarum-Durnovaria road. From a map it can be seen that Tarrant Hinton lies roughly midway between Salisbury and Dorchester, and north of Badbury Rings. Indeed, on a clear day anyone standing on the Anicetus site can clearly see the ancient Badbury earthworks when looking south.

Note: William Shipp was a bookseller trading from Market Place, Blandford Forum. He was baptised on the 28th of March 1807 at Blandford and was the son of John Shipp and Ann Simmonds who were married at Blandford on the 8th of May 1797.

In the first half of 1839 William Shipp married Emily Spooner. Their children were: Amelia (1842); Mary (1844); William (1845); Henry (1847). William died late in 1873, his widow moved to East Street, Blandford Forum.

The 1830 edition of Pigots trade directory has a John Shipp trading as a bookseller from premises in Market Place, Blandford Forum, so it would appear William continued his father’s business.