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May, 2011:

The Great Fire of Dorchester

May 28th, 2011
by Dorset Ancestors.
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On the 6th of August 1613 townsfolk gathering in the harvest from fields at Fordington near Dorchester were amazed and shocked to see flames and smoke rising to a great height above their county town. Church bells were also being tolled, but it seems these were barely audible above the roar of the fire and the population’s general panic.

Only a short while before, a candle-maker named Baker had accidentally spilt some boiling tallow at his workshop-home in the town, causing the hot liquid to set light to the timbers of his house. The summer of 1613 had been an exceptionally hot and dry one in England, and as most of the town houses and shops in Dorchester were constructed of wood and thatch the tinder-dry materials readily combusted. It therefore took no time at all for the conflagration at Chandler Baker’s to spread along and across the street. The rapid spread of the fire was further fanned by a strong easterly wind.

These two events or vignettes of town and country life were to presage what has been called the Great Fire of Dorchester, which preceded that of London by 53 years but which, when taking account of the relative sizes of the two population centres, was proportionately the more devastating. But the earlier of the two fires was not just a local catastrophe, estimated by the Dorset cleric and historian John Hutchins to have wiped out two-thirds of Dorchester, razing three hundred homes to the ground at a cost of £200,000. It was also to have repercussions for the political and spiritual state of the realm, for religious persecution, emigration, even for setting the course of subsequent trans-Atlantic history in the three decades up to the Civil War.

It is possible however, that Hutchins was over-zealous in his estimate of the number of buildings burnt down, but when the fire was finally extinguished only one of Dorchester’s three churches remained useable. What we do know about this disaster comes mainly from a Hampshire clergyman, John Hilliard, who left an account in a book entitled: “Fire From Heaven (or a Trumpet Sounding to Judgement”) In his first few lines Hilliard describes how “…on the 6th of August this town flourished in its greatest state, but before three o’clock in the afternoon it was covered in a garment of red flaming fire and all jollities were turned to lamentation”. Hilliard’s use of the phrase ‘Fire from Heaven’ and the apocryphal overtones of the language in which his account is couched is picturesque speech, though very typical for the time. In 17th century England the people were much more God-fearing and scripture-observant than they are today, and disasters involving loss of life, whether natural or man-made, were commonly put down to instances of divine retribution or Acts of God as a matter of course.

By the time most of the homes had been set alight each family was pitched into a dangerous bid to salvage its own possessions. Margaret Toomes, a tenant of the George Inn publican William Smith, is on record as saving her own possessions but without helping to save the inn, though she did loose some linen and other goods. Far nobler was the quick-thinking and courageous act of Nicholas Vawter and John Spicer, the Town Bailiffs who together rolled 40 barrels of gunpowder stored in the Shire Hall to safety away from the flames after wrapping them first in wet sacking. When it was the turn of the county jail to catch alight, all of the prisoners were issued with buckets of water and ordered to help in dowsing the flames. After the jail was saved, five of the inmates were duly pardoned as a reward for their efforts.

Alerted by the flames the harvesters at Fordington, together with the other townsfolk and villagers were soon bringing water from the Frome to quench the fire, forming human chains to carry the bucketfuls. Despite their best efforts most of the county town was in ruins by nightfall. Most of the damage occurred in the eastern part of Dorchester, the parish of All Saints being the worst affected. There was of course no organised fire-fighting service or equipment in the 17th century and another 30 years would elapse before the town council was able to provide a ‘brazen engine’ paid for by the imposition of a corporation tax. But the allocation of compensation to professional people was wildly unfair and disproportionate. For instance, the town’s famous Puritan Rector John White received only £4 in compensation for the minimal damage to Holy Trinity, yet a wealthy town merchant was awarded £350 to re-build his gutted home – nevertheless complaining that this was insufficient to cover his ‘great loss’.

Yet despite the extent of the destruction there was only one loss of life: Cecily Bingham, who was trying to save her shoemaker husband’s stock. But in the aftermath of the tragedy everyone realised that what was needed was a total reformation of the town. In this regard John White’s sermons were to have an evangelically galvanising effect on the governors of Dorchester in their crackdown on ‘drunkards, fornicators and Sabbath breakers’. Ever after, the town fathers would consider it their duty to promote sobriety and godliness in the population. There was to be poor relief, hospitals, and institutions for education. The underlying conviction that the Great Fire was an enactment of God’s judgement led to successive Sundays for several years after being marked by church sermons dominated by the theme of divine admonition and repentance. The physical and financial repercussions of the fire were of lesser significance than the emotional and spiritual effects.

But the Great Fire of Dorchester was to have one other effect, and one reaching far beyond its borders. By the early 17th century the town had become the most Puritanical in England, and was a bastion of the most fervent support for Parliament when in 1641 it raised up arms against the Crown – and the curtain on the Civil War.

Through its influence on John White the blaze was the critical fulcrum for the Puritan Revolution, putting the county town at the forefront of the religious and political schism that was to divide England and much of Europe. For some years there had been a trading settlement in New England, but White’s ambition was to establish a permanent colony in the New World, to be populated by a new stock of the religiously oppressed in his own country. And it was White, in association with Sir Walter Erle and a consortium of Dorchester merchants, who founded the Dorchester Company (later absorbed by the Massachusetts Company) to oversee the re-settlement of new emigrants across the Atlantic in Massachusetts’ twin settlement of Dorchester. Indeed, a high proportion of the emigrants who were to sail from the Dorset coast in the decades before the Civil War broke out were those Dorchester citizens homeless and dispossessed by the fire. Of 130 emigrants to Massachusetts between 1620 and 1650, about 33% went to live in Dorchester. Today the original new Dorchester only survives in the name of a naval base and bay on the Boston waterfront.

A further aim of the Dorchester Company was the propagation of the gospel to native redskin Americans in the New World. In 1620 the colony of Jamestown was founded to the south, leading eventually to the 13 colonies of the embryonic United States of America. Still, one legacy of the fire, and the colonisation of New England by many Dorsetian settlers has been that in the suburbs and outskirts of Boston other transposed Dorset place-names such as Wareham, Milton and Weymouth can be found. Thus the mishap of a lowly candle-maker in an English county town set in train the sequence of events making the USA what it is today.

John White – Minister of the Great Migration

May 20th, 2011
by Dorset Ancestors.
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For England the first half of the 17th century was a time of economic slump and religious dissension culminating in seven years of internecine warfare. Dorchester was one of the larger towns and situated at one of the busiest intersections in Dorset. Conversion from arable to pasture by enclosure was commonplace, forcing displaced agricultural workers to seek new employment in the towns. It was this bulge in the population of Dorchester that prompted some civic leaders of the day to call for overseas colonisation.

Against this background enter John White – The Reverend John White in fact, appointed Rector of the parish of Holy Trinity, Dorchester in 1606. He was mostly a moderate Puritan who conformed closely to the Anglican ceremonial and seems to all accounts to have been a charitable and civic-minded minister, attentive to the social conditions of his parishioners. But John White would earn for himself another claim to fame: as the cleric who led the organisation that would play a seminal role in the pilgrim settlement of New England during the first three decades of the 17th century.

John White was born in 1575 at Stanton St. John near Oxford, in the manor house opposite its 13th century church, nephew of Thomas White, Warden of New College, Oxford. Thomas also owned the manor, and it is believed he used his influence to lease the Manor Farm to his brother, John’s father. At first John White was educated at Winchester, he entered New College Oxford, where he resided for the next eleven years as a fellow.

At 31 White became Rector of Holy Trinity and was soon preoccupied in philanthropic activities aimed at improving the lot of the people of Dorchester. For example he persuaded civic officials to establish a free primary school. And following the serious fire that consumed much of the town in August 1613 merchants and councillors rallied around White in his campaign to raise subscriptions for its reconstruction. The fire had levelled his church, along with most public buildings, warehouses and about 170 homes. White’s fund received a £1,000 advance from King James towards the rebuilding work and job re-creation for the homeless and poor. Another free school, almshouses and workhouses were added in the following years.

Wrote Thomas Fuller: “All able poor were set to work and the important maintained by the profit of the public brew house, thus knowledge causes piety, piety breeding industry, procuring plenty into it. A beggar was not to be seen in the town.”

At that time there had been for a number of years a loosely organised band of fishermen carrying out fishing expeditions to the offshore waters of the New England seaboard. In 1623 however, a band of about 120 Dorset men founded Dorset Adventures (or Dorchester Company,) a joint-stock commercial angling organisation with John White as its pioneering leader. Many of the members were relatives of White; yet others were friends or ministerial associates.

Under White, members conceived a plan to set up year-round preparation and salting stations to process cod for English and overseas markets. In 1623 a group of Dorchester Company men sailed in The Fellowship to settle Cape Ann in Massachusetts, being supplemented by more men and supplies in 1624/25, after which the Dorchester Company was disbanded. Its property was then transferred to a new company, later to be known as the Massachusetts Bay Company, set up by John White in the former company’s place. The Dorchester Company had left White personally insolvent.

Two small ships bearing cargoes of provisions were dispatched to the new colony. The patent for the new company was obtained from the Council for New England on March 19th, 1628. On the 20th ships berthed at Weymouth were loaded with provisions ready to set sail for Salem, fulfilling White’s promise to Roger Contant, leader of the Salem settlers, that he would send more supplies.

By the end of 1630 White had become concerned about developments in the colony. The governor of the patent, a former Devon soldier called John Endicott, had sequestrated planter-settler’s gardens and homes for his own use and in the name of the Massachusetts Patentees. The earlier Dorchester planters were not happy with this; their rights as the first settlers had been assured through the influence and help of John White and special grants had been made to them. In 1629 White, with the help of John Humfry, had secured his title with the granting of a royal charter. By this time too, news of the plantation’s success had spread beyond the West Country to attract new settlers from among the London merchant class, clerics, and north and east countrymen.

Although his moderate Puritanism differed from that of the new company members, White was still a respected and intensely engaged member of the reformed company. In August 1629 he attended a meeting at which the company patent and government were transferred from London to New England. But the spiritual winds in New England were changing. White’s hope for a moderate Puritan plantation in Salem was denied by more radical elements in the company, chiefly represented by Endicott and separatist ministers. About this time John White composed “The Planters Plea.”

Then in March 1630 what would become known as the Winthrop Fleet, after the future Governor of Massachusetts John Winthrop, set sail for the colony. Meanwhile, White prepared his own ship, the Mary & Jane to sail with more planter-settlers from the West Country, many of whom were known or personally recruited by him. But frustration over the colony’s growing separatism compelled White to compose a tract called (by its shortened name) “The Humble Request.” The leaders of the Winthrop Fleet were asked to sign this tract in the hope – unrealised as it happened – that it would discourage them from adopting separatist policies once in the New World.

For some reason John White himself never joined the Great Migration. He maintained a watch over the colony’s affairs and lent assistance when needed, energetically mustering provisions for Massachusetts. This led, in 1631, to some people in Dorchester suspecting White of misappropriating parish funds towards the cause. In 1636 and 1637 he was moved to write to Governor Winthrop, taking him to task for not being more tolerant towards those with differing religious dispositions, and for allowing the merchants to over-profiteer. Then in 1633 White refused to comply with an edict from the Archbishop of England to have The Book of Sports read from the pulpit; instead he delivered an outspoken sermon that brought upon him suspicion of non-conformity. White even had his study searched for incriminating evidence. (Note: Book of Sports formally Declaration of Sports an order issued by King James I of England to resolve a conflict about Sunday amusements, between the Puritans and the gentry, many of whom were Roman Catholics.)

John White became a prominent member of the Westminster Assembly of Divines where, according to Anthony Wood, he was “one of the most learned and moderate among them … a person of great gravity and presence, and had always influence in the Puritanical Party near to and remote from him, who bore him more respect than they did to their diocesan.” Callendar, in his historical discourse about Rhode Island, called White “the father of the Massachusetts colony.”

When the Civil War broke out White sided with the Parliamentary cause, during which time his home and study were sacked by a detachment of Prince Rupert’s cavalry under the command of Prince Maurice.

The war over, he went into retirement at his rectory in Dorchester, where he wrote a tract called “The Way to the Tree of Life.” He died on 21st July 1648 aged 63 and was buried beneath the south porch of St. Peters Church in Dorchester.

Bridport’s Shipping History

May 16th, 2011
by Dorset Ancestors.
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The Church took a great interest in Bridport Harbour from its earliest days. Considering that Bridport rope making had royal support, this may not be surprising. The harbour, which was to receive ships from as far as Russia, was in existence in the 13th century and in 1444 the Bishop of Sarum ‘granted an indulgence’ for its repair.

Sixteen ships were built here in the Napoleonic wars alone. In 1856 a vessel of over 1,000 tons was launched in the present harbour at West Bay, and defeating the notorious silting-up of the harbour entrance was able to put to sea. To give some indication of her size, although built for the open sea she could probably just have navigated the Gloucester to Sharpness canal, which was then the widest canal in the country.

Twenty years later saw the end of wooden shipbuilding of any size. The last wooden vessel, the ‘Lilian,’ took the water in 1879. Today, fishing, including trawling, is carried on and there is much pleasure boating, the harbour being filled with small craft, but the import and export trade has been lost.

A large number of ships were registered in Bridport, many of them being built there.
Ships once sailed the mile up the river Brit to the town but it became silted up. On the river near Bridport is the significantly named Port Mill, where flax was boiled, or softened by blows of heavy timber.

West Bay Harbour was improved in 1744 and in 1830, as many as 528 ships were recorded as using it, sailing in and out of the long narrow entrance as they do today. Hemp and flax were imported on a large scale at the height of the rope making industry. But by 1881, only two-tenths of the harbour dues of 50 years before were collected.

West Bay, where the present harbour is, was separated from the town by a flood plain, over which for hundreds of years ran rough tracks. The first road was laid down in 1819 and in 1884 the Great Western railway line was extended to the port.

All through its history the harbour has had a struggle with the elements: mainly south westerlies from which there was no shelter, and high tides. Yet coastal and foreign vessels continued to trade: from Russia came hemp and flax and from Scandinavia timber.

The flax and hemp were vital to the town. In 1793, a total of 1,800 Bridport people and 7,000 from the areas around were employed in the rope and net trade. Most of Bridport’s buildings today date from the second half of the 18th century when the trade prospered.

At the harbour in West Bay large sailing ships were built in a yard where Heron Court stands. West Bay at one time had six slipways, which could be used for launching and repairing vessels or for just beaching them.

So which was the great ship of over 1,000 tons, which was launched here? It was the ‘Speedy,’ which sailed out of the Dorset harbour on her trials soon after taking the water in 1856. Shifting sands and shingle at the mouth of the Brit made it a hazardous task to take out or bring in such large craft.

Massive harbour works at the mouth of the river have taken place over the years.

Going back to the beginnings of the port, in the late 13th century the Abbot of Cerne held land on the east and west cliffs at West Bay. And the Prior of Frampton was making the most of any wrecks coming on to the shore. At that period vessels were coming up to the town up the river, and remains of moorings have been found and are visible at low water there.

In 1326, with invasion imminent, a survey was carried out around the coasts of all ships of 50 tons and upwards but Bridport was omitted from the list, indicating that only very small vessels were able to come up the Brit. By 1395, a Customs officer was on duty at Bridport, about the time that the river-mouth was converted into a better harbour.

In 1446 work took place on the maintenance of the harbour, but for the next 300 years the entrance was continually choked with shingle.

Piers, sluices and wharves were constructed in a four-year programme in the mid-1700. But the harbour was again choked with sand in 1818. In 1823 to 1825 further improvements were made, using 200 men. As a result, Bridport became a full bond port in 1832 and trade flourished until the railway came to West Bay in the late 19th century.

The work done in the port in the 18th century meant there was a depth of at least 11 feet of water between the piers at all spring tides, allowing vessels of 100 tons to enter or leave. Later, of course, the entrance had to be deepened for ships up to 10 times that size.

Already, back in 1751 the new harbour was considered to be “a safe port where may ride about 40 sail.” Nicholas Bools (or Bowles) established a shipyard. And the first vessel built was the ‘North Star,’ of 52 tons, in 1769.

It has been calculated that some 400 ships were launched between then and 1879, including smacks, schooners, luggers, cutters and even barques, brigs and brigantines.

A privateer, the ‘Resolution’ was built in 1779 during the American War of Independence. A privateer was an armed vessel and officered by private individuals holding a government commission, and authorised for war service.

So we see that the intensive shipping activity was inseparably linked with the prosperity of Bridport. Without the harbour the rope making could not have flourished, and without the trade that developed there might still be just a shingle river-mouth opening on to the sea. Few boats and a popular yet quiet seaside resort for those living in Dorset and beyond to enjoy.

This is the heritage of Bridport’s great industry of times past. And for those with maritime interests, these are among the proud ships that took the water in its harbour, when it was in its heyday:

‘Abby’ (schooner, 1837,159 tons); ‘Aberdeen Packet’ (sloop, 125 tons); ‘Britannia’ (301 tons); ‘Lord Donoughmore’ (cutter, 80tons); ‘Portia’ (barque, 1861, 298 tons); ‘Rutland’ (cutter, 1797, 82 tons); and ‘Good Intent’ (sloop. 1788, 36 tons). Each must have had a tale to tell.

Irene Stockley of Corfe Castle

May 11th, 2011
by Dorset Ancestors.
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What’s My Line?

Many of us remember the television show ‘What’s My Line.’ Imported from America, it aired in the UK from 1951 to 1964 and over the years it was hosted by several show biz personalities and who can forget some of the regular panellists on the show: Gilbert Harding; Isobel Barnett; Barbara Kelly and Bob Monkhouse. For much of the time the chairman was Eamon Andrews. The panellists had to guess the contestants occupation but only questions that could be answered with a yes or a no were allowed.

On the 30th of May 1954 a lady from Corfe Castle, Mrs Irene Stockley, appeared on the show and beat the panellists, who were stumped by her occupation: she delivered coal!  She came away with a certificate signed by all the celebrities on the show. It seems her name was put forward by one of her customers. Family members including her husband were in the audience to witness her triumph and to hear the then chairman Canadian Ron Rendell, admit to not knowing what Corfe meant but he did promise to visit the town.

Mrs. Stockley’s husband had been in poor health for several years and showing true Dorset spirit she took over the task of weighing up the bags of coal and helping load the lorries.
 
The Stockley family has been in Corfe Castle for centuries and we have often been asked to find information about them and we thought this little snippet would be of interest. There is a photo in the gallery of Mrs. Stockley at work.

Hinton Martell

May 6th, 2011
by Dorset Ancestors.
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The village of Hinton Martell lies in the foothills of Cranborne Chase, between Cranborne and Wimborne, where mixed loamy soils indicate a transition from clay to chalk. The woodlands between the heath and the downs are noted for their game. A chase is a Royal forest.

However, “Martell” is only one of three names this Chase community has acquired throughout its long history. The second name derives from the Norman Lords of the Manor, but later acquired the Latinised version of “Magna” meaning great. This fell out of general use in favour of “Great Hinton” in order to end confusion with nearby Hinton Parva. “Great Hinton” in turn has now been abandoned, so that on modern maps the village is marked H Martell. Confusion with other names was compounded when the Revd. William Barnard and his parishioners campaigned for the restoration of the medieval spelling of Martel (without the second ‘L’.) The Martells were followed by John of Gaunt, a son of Edward lll, who for a time owned a hunting lodge nearby. Another Lord of the Manor was the Earl of Shaftesbury.

Today the village retains something of its old core, but has a disproportionately high number of modern council houses. Despite appearances to the contrary, more ancient buildings are scarce. Brick, timber and thatched cottages occupy the centre including some with timber framing dating from the 18th century. Single-track roads and lanes are common, but around the periphery Hinton is blighted by several power transmission lines and sub-stations.

The singularly most unique and outstanding feature of the village’s centre however, is an ornamental fountain in a circular basin which lends itself well to the layout and perspective of the surrounding buildings. In the earlier days of Hinton as a sheep-rearing centre this had been the village pond, though the present formality is due to an imaginative restoration undertaken to mark the Coronation in 1953, followed by a more recent re-construction in 1965. The Parish Church is dedicated to St. John the Evangelist, but little of the medieval fabric remained after a fire destroyed the building in 1868.

In 1847 the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church built the National School in the village. This was provided with an adjoining house for two mistresses and intended for 80 children from a population of 290 (by 1881 attendance had declined to just 21, even though the population of Hinton rose to 381 in the same period.) The Schoolmistress was then Ann Reekes, who was succeeded by Elizabeth Sims, then Catherine Douglas.

The Lady Who Wouldn’t Drown

May 2nd, 2011
by Dorset Ancestors.
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At the beginning of the 19th century Wareham and Poole were linked by a ferry route across Poole Harbour. One source of information about this run could be said to be the annals of its disasters. One such tragedy can be read about in a broadsheet printed in Poole by J. Moore after word reached the paper of the sinking of the Wareham ferry in the harbour on Thursday, 2nd of October 1806, in which 13 people including two under twenty years of age were drowned.

The 2nd of October 1806 was a stormy day of high wind, fog and rain. The ferry had departed from Wareham between five and six o’clock deeply laden with ten women and two men as passengers; the ferry’s owner Mr. Gillingham; and two boatmen, William Turner and Charles White, making 15 aboard in all. Between six and seven o’clock, after it was already dark, a fog had descended and a strong wind ahead blew hard upon the starboard side, causing the ferry to run aground across the channel just as the vessel entered the Wareham River at first and last boom.

The passengers then crowded towards the mast and rigging, while the men got aloft, but the boat sunk within a few minutes. The current, running against the sails, drove all under water, forcing those who had climbed the mast for safety to plunge into the harbour.

But only Mr. Everett was able to escape. However, he noticed that Mrs White was floundering in the water beside him. Clutching the young woman, he attempted to swim to the nearest shore with her – 100 yards from the Purbeck side – but the heavy coat she was wearing forced him to let go of her. Just then an oar floated nearby. Everett caught it and lay Mrs White upon it, using it as a kind of crude life raft. After battling the waves for one-and-a-half hours the two were washed ashore.

Following a rest, Everett made for the nearest house to summon assistance, only to be snubbed by uncooperative occupants. He then walked the two-and-a-half miles into Wareham, where he was able to get help. At Wareham a Captain Bartlett “immediately hastened with everything necessary” and brought Mrs White to his own home. Mrs White soon made a full recovery from her ordeal and was re-united with her joyous husband and children at Church Knowle.

The original broadsheet reporting this accident was in the possession of the Barnes Family of Poole, as Jane Barnes, 33 at the time and presumably a relation, was one of those who lost their lives when the ferry sunk. Charles White, the boatman who also drowned, is buried at Wareham in a grave in which his wife Elizabeth and daughter Mary were later interred.

The thirteen who were drowned were:
William Gillingham (52); William Oxford (37); William Turner (52); Charles White Jr. (33); Elizabeth Pindar (27); Betty Brown (39); Amelia Randall (19); Edith Randall (24); Elizabeth Mintern (38); Elizabeth Forster (27); Mary New (33); Jane Barnes (33), and Sophia Dorey (19).