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December, 2011:

Dorchester – The Visit of the Prince of Wales 1887

Dec 24th, 2011
by Dorset Ancestors.
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On the 2nd of June 1887 the residents of Dorchester turned out and lined the gaily decorated streets to welcome the Prince of Wales. He was met on his arrival by the Mayor, Mr Alfred Pope, the Lord Lieutenant Lord Ilchester, and Mr Brymer, the High Sheriff. The Prince drove through the town in an open carriage and was accompanied by Lord Alington and the Hon. Humphrey Sturt and attended by General Teesdale.

The visit was on the occasion of the Bath and West of England Show. At a luncheon at the Corn Exchange the Aldermen and Councillors were presented to the prince. Afterwards he was taken to the Show-yard where he was shown around by Lord Ilchester.  Reports made at the time say he was “heartily cheered on his return drive through the town.” He departed by train late in the afternoon.

We have placed in the photo section a copy of an etching taken from a photograph of the event shot by Walter Pouncy the  Dorchester photographer.

The Long History of Sydling St. Nicholas

Dec 22nd, 2011
by Dorset Ancestors.
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One of Dorset’s many and most interesting parochial histories concerns that of Sydling St. Nicholas, situated on Sydling Water a tributary of the Frome about 8 miles north-west of Dorchester. There has been settlement in and around this valley for almost 5,000 years, though the present shape of the village owes its origins to Saxon settlers of the 6th or 7th centuries AD.

In 1936 two Neolithic hand-axes were found at Magston Farm in the village. On the summits of the hills there are round barrows, the graves of tribal elders cut into the chalk soil when embalmed high-born Egyptians were being laid in great stone tombs. Bronze and Iron Age pottery has been recovered in the area and in 1958 a Celtic roundhouse was excavated on Shearplace Hill; a prehistoric village has also been discovered on Buckland Down. A valley-stream, lush water meadows and downland heights were and are the geographical elements for the setting of the story of Sydling St. Nicholas, and the farming tradition so typical of Dorset.

The first mention of Sydling in documented history dates from 933AD when the Winchester Archives record that King Athelstan built a Benedictine abbey at Milton, which endowed thirty hides of land at Sydling. The Domesday Book survey of 1086 found the village to be part of the Hundred of Modbury. Traces of Saxon Strip farming were found at Sherrins Farm in the 1950’s, and this practise may have left its mark in some long narrow rear garden plots to be found in the village.

The valley floor setting has largely determined the linear shape of the settlement, though not just along the single street, as in many other villages of this type. Today the parish extends 4.5 miles from north to south and two miles from east to west and incorporates the hamlets of Hillfield, Magiston, Up Sydling and Huish, but the High Street and East Street form the nucleus of the village. The residential development has traditionally been of high density, but with some dispersal. Homes are typically of thatched stone cottages or brick houses, commonly terraced, with slate roofs and built abutting the main road and stream. Most of the surviving buildings date from before 1800, outstanding examples of which are the Vicarage, East House and Court House.

Court House is a Tudor mansion with later additions. This building has been the administrative centre for the Manor and Rectory from very early in Sydling’s history, and Winchester College records mention tenancies of the Abbot of Milton up until the monastic dissolution under Henry VIII in 1538. In 1544 Henry, through his agent, entered into an arrangement with Winchester College which established leasehold status at the Court, with one Sir Giles Strangewyshe as the first tenant. In 1554 Mary Tudor “desiring favour for her physician Thomas Hughes” arranged with Winchester College for his tenancy at the Court after Sir Gile’s death. Interestingly, the tenancy fell into the hands of Edmund, John and Francis Hardye in 1599 who are mentioned in ‘Concerning Thomas Hardy, a Composite Portrait from Memory’ (ed. D.F.Barber;published by Charles Skilton,1968.) But the first of the great names associated with the Manor is that of Sir Phillip Sydney, who took the lease in 1582. Between 1582 and 1590 it passed to Dame Ursula Walsingham, the widow of Sir Phillip’s Father in law Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth’s secretary of State.

Another archive in Winchester College records that in 1655 Cromwell demanded the surrender of the Sydling Manor Court Rolls. Following the time of Dame Ursula, the Smith family dominated the Manor for 150 years from 1700. A descendent, John Smith Marriott, introduced fox hunting between 1865-6.

The Old Vicarage had improvements made in 1640 by the then Vicar, Ralph Taylor and there was further major restoration in 1778. In 1795 a local man, John Barber, bequeathed money to the Vicar for establishing a school in the village, with provision for a schoolmaster. The building was converted from the former Dissenter’s Meeting House and had 120 places for children aged five upward to be taught arithmetic and needlework. It is recorded that in 1836 there were 116 pupils on the register, with an average daily attendance of 70. The local authority closed the school in 1966.

There were water mills at Ham Farm and Huish Farm powered by water which once flowed in an open course down the High Street. This, when in speight, caused severe flooding on more than one occasion. Indeed, a local man, Tom Churchill, was carried away and drowned during a great storm on June 6th 1889. The school also had once to close because of flooding. But the waterways and meadows have also given the village the traditional activities of cress growing and trout fishing.

Other buildings of architectural or historical interest are the Bakery (1733) and East House (1780). The family of Samuel Newman, the village’s clock and organ maker, who died in 1840, owned the Brewery. With the 1939 Village Hall and Rock’s Farm, these
buildings are grouped around the junction of Dorchester Road, Church Lane, High Street and East Street. There is also a Congregational Chapel of 1834, now a private home and an inn, The Greyhound.

Sydling has held a Fair to St. Nicholas every December 6th and possessed a blacksmith until quite recently. Other interesting facts that Sydling can lay claim to is the curious one that it once possessed the only petrol pump between Dorchester and Yeovil and that during the Second World War many servicemen were billeted in every home that had room for one. The village was well known to Thomas Hardy, whose short story ‘The Grave at the Handcross’ was inspired by it. Furthermore, the church wedding scene in John Schlesinger’s film version of ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’ was shot on location at St. Nicholas Church. Any person named Caddy may also find some significance in the story of a certain Mrs Caddy who, upon leaving the service of Thomas Hardy as his cook, took up that position for the Hawkins family at Sydling Farm in the 1930’s. Also, given the geographical proximity, it would be surprising if there were not an ancestral link between Hardy the writer and the Hardye family occupying the Manor in the 16th century.

In 1819 the village was enclosed, which ended farming arrangements by the Court Baron. Since then farming has declined, and holdings have diminished since Winchester College sold off land and houses in the 1960’s. Sydling saw many social and other changes during the 20th century. Today the college retains two houses and twenty acres of land in the village, which is now in the diocese of Salisbury. Since the 1960’s two new estates have been built, and the influx of new commuter dwellers has imparted a more diverse socio-economic function for Sydling. The 1971 Census revealed that the population at that time was only 321 for the parish. Yet in 1859 the population stood at 675 and included 11 farmers and three carpenters, 2 bakers, 2 grocers, 2 cobblers, 2 thatchers and 1 blacksmith, a bricklayer, tailor, brewer, mason and miller. Since 1973 however, the number of inhabitants had recovered to 425 and more have been added since.

Sydling’s colourful history and rich architectural legacy have made its preservation a high priority and with the new estates the village now comes under the umbrella of Conservation Area status. There are for instance now about fifty listed buildings in the village, of which 14 are in the High Street alone. It is therefore a policy of the planning authority to restrain development so as to keep the village at its present size.

Blandford Forum Parish Church

Dec 15th, 2011
by Dorset Ancestors.
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Like Dorchester, the county town, Blandford Forum, to give it its full name, recovered within a few years from a disastrous fire that swept through the community three centuries ago. The event is marked in the town with a memorial and fountain protected by Georgian-style stone columns near the parish church of St. Peter and St. Paul. Erected by the Corporation in 1899 the fountain replaced the old pump but the monument still bears the notice that accompanied the original monument erected in 1760:

“In remembrance of God’s dreadful visitation by fire which broke out on the 4th of June 1731 and in a few hours only, reduced the church and almost the whole town to ashes. Fourteen inhabitants perished and two adjacent villages were burned. Blandford has arisen like a phoenix from the ashes, to its present beautiful and flourishing estate.

“This is to prevent by a timely spot of water, with God’s blessing, the fatal consequences of fire hereafter. This monument of that dire disaster and provision against recurral erected 1760.”

After the fire it was a local family of builder-architects, the Bastards, who set about rebuilding the town and its church in a picturesque fashion and in the style of the time, which was Georgian. The church was replaced between 1731 and 1739 and was the work of John Bastard. It was to the church that people brought any belongings they could salvage as their properties were swallowed up by the flames and when the flaming tongues of fire licked at the roof of the church and raced down the nave then it was thought all was lost. Miraculously, the galleries, font, pulpit, some box-pews and the mayoral seat were salvaged from the destruction to be incorporated into the new church.

The original church at Blandford was Norman and succeeded by a 15th century building, but long before that, at the time of the earliest church, Henry the son of William the Conqueror became King Henry l of England and he gave to those Norman barons who supported him, huge estates and manors throughout the country.

Earlier, this area had been held by William de Mortaigne, Count of Mortain, who died around 1140. He was the son of Robert, the half-brother of William I of England, better known as William the Conqueror. William, Count of Mortain did not support his cousin, who became Henry l of England, and he demanded to be given his father’s earldoms of Mortain and Cornwall. In 1103 he returned to Normandy where he openly revolted against Henry I and in 1104 he was captured and imprisoned for many years and stripped of his estates.
 
Robert de Beaumont, who had fought with William at Hastings in 1066 and whose wife was Isabel, a niece of King Phillip I of France, was given most of Blandford. The Domesday Book reveals his father Roger was the holder of large estates throughout Dorset, including: Stour Provost, Sturminster Marshall, Creech, Steeple, and Church Knowle. His titles included Lord of Brionne. Shaftesbury is twinned with Brionne and Blandford is twinned with Mortain in France.

It is thought the Beaumonts built the first church in Blandford. In 1307 Henry de Lacey, Earl of Lincoln, who had succeeded to the Blandford estates as Lord of the Manor, was given the right to present clergy to the living and the church was acknowledged to have a parish in its own right. Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Lancaster and at the time Lord of the Manor, became King Henry IV in 1399.

The Rogers family of Bryanston Manor are thought to have contributed to the 15th century church. They owned much of Blandford and were Stewards there for hundreds of years. They had a private chapel in the south aisle of the church and a vault. The north aisle chapel was used by the Ryves family, who were later large landowners.

In 1644, during the Civil War, King Charles I visited Blandford before taking position at the head of his army and marching up Black Lane and over the downs to Cranborne. In the previous century, in 1577 Sir Richard Rogers of Bryanstone is known to have been actively involved in smuggling and piracy off the Dorset coast. It is even suggested that contraband and smugglers were concealed in a vault in Blandford parish church, which was discovered by workmen in 1970.
The Rev. William Alleine resigned his living in 1660 and formed a congregation of Protestant dissenters, but the Established Church was doing well.  Blandford Free Grammar school produced five bishops around this time.

How did Blandford get its name? It is suggested from ‘Blaen-y-ford,’ or “the place in front of the ford” as it had a ford on the River Stour (there is no explanation for the Welsh sounding name). Blandford originated because it was at the junction of several trackways and the crossing of the river. These may have been used in prehistoric times.

Bronze and Iron Age finds can be seen at Blandford Museum but there does not seem to have been a Romano-British settlement. The town was given a charter of incorporation in 1605, just a few days after the Guy Fawkes Gunpowder Plot.
 
In the early 1880’s the church was restored, the organ enlarged, the vestry built, and the peal of eight bells recast. The north wall has memorials to many local families.

Since the earliest times, the Church of Saints Peter and Paul has had over 60 incumbents and still  welcomes all who will worship God in His designated house.

Book Review – Tig’s Boys

Dec 8th, 2011
by Dorset Ancestors.
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NEW BOOKS REVIEW

Tig’s Boys
Letters to Sir from the Trenches

January 1901, the first full year of the 20th century, could rightly be called a milestone year in human history. That month, Queen Victoria and the great Italian composer Verdi died, leaving their respective countries in mourning. But that January also, a grammar school was opened in Bournemouth, then just beginning to expand its borders as a popular resort with a population that had then reached 60,000. The fifty-four boys who were the first pupils of the new grammar, besides their inspiring but severely disciplinarian headmaster, Dr Edward Fenwick, could hardly have imagined that, fourteen years later, those pupils would be pitched, out of a voluntary and patriotic sense of duty, into the bloodiest war the world had then yet seen.

The outbreak of the First World War on August 4th, 1914, inspired many young men to take up arms in what they believed was a just cause on behalf of the empire; but they were largely men already in employment or unemployed, with their schooldays behind them. However, senior boys close to leaving public schools old enough to join up were also inspired to do so, and the boys at Bournemouth grammar were no exception.

But these students did something more. During those terrible four years at the front, Fenwick’s boys, both those who would die and those who would return, maintained a constant correspondence with their beloved master. The re-discovery of these remarkable letters has lead David Hilliam to collate them into a 192-page paperback compilation.

Tig’s Boys is the product of that compilation. It charts in five main chapters reports from the boys on many aspects of day to day life – and death – in the trenches, in the Flying Corps and abroad in the Middle East theatre of war. Chapter five is a moving eulogy by Dr Fenwick on the 98 young Dorsetians from his school killed in action during the conflict. The letters themselves give, sometimes humorous but more often tragic, testimonies of service life, from billeting and blighty to trench-foot, lice, rats and “doing fatigues”; not to mention the outright terror of combat: the shells, machine-guns, snipers and heroic rescues under fire. Take for example the derring-do of Lieutenant H G Head, who describes in his letter on page 34 how he knocked out a German machine-gun post that was badly mauling his company, earning him the Military Cross. Or Private A C Stagg, who lay wounded and without food for 15 days in no-man’s-land before being rescued and treated (p83). The letters display great candour and devotion for the Headmaster who’s stern authority and dynamic energy earned him the pet name of Tig (short for Tiger).

Tig’s Boys opens with the traditional introduction, followed by a two-page timeline tabulating the major battles and other strategic developments throughout the war, then a prologue (Tig and his School) featuring an account of the development of the Grammar School from foundation to the outbreak of war. Centrally placed are 30 black-and-white plates of the headmaster, his former pupils, and war scenes. On the back pages are 1919 and 21st century epilogues, a short bibliography, index and two appendices, one being a month-by-month roll of honour for the dead, the second, a roll for those decorated for valour.

Tig’s Boys was published first by Spellmount, then in the present paperback format by The History Press (2011). It is £12.99.

We have posted a photo of the book cover in the photo section.

Treachery at Corfe Castle AD 978

Dec 7th, 2011
by Dorset Ancestors.
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Against the wishes of King Edgar’s widow, his eldest son Edward was crowned king after his death. Queen Elfrida had petitioned for her own six-year-old son, Ethelred, to be crowned king but in this she failed. Elfrida inherited Corfe Castle where she lived with her young son and spent her time scheming and plotting the downfall of her step-son.

On March the 18th AD 978 King Edward died – killed by one of his step-mother’s servants, as she offered him a kiss and a goblet of wine.

Edward was fifteen when he became king, but for all his youth he was popular and respected by his subjects. He was eighteen when he came to the Isle of Purbeck to hunt in the royal chase; when he became separated from his party he decided to drop-in on his half-brother at Corfe Castle.  While he waited at the castle gate to be admitted a message was sent up to Elfrida who, we must assume, immediately seized the opportunity to rid herself of the obstruction to her son becoming king.

Elfrida came down the steep slope from the Keep to what is now known as Martyr’s Gate to greet Edward and invite him into the castle. Sensing he was in danger Edward declined her invitation saying he only wished to greet his brother and then be on his way. A servant arrived at the gate with a goblet of wine and as Edward raised it to his lips with his right hand the servant grabbed his left arm, twisted it behind him and stabbed him in the back.  Some versions of the story suggest that Elfrida herself stabbed Edward but it seems more likely that she distracted him with the offer of a kiss as he was raising the goblet to drink, giving the servant every opportunity to stab the king.

Edward immediately pressed his spurs to his horse, cleared the gate and galloped-off; he had been severely wounded. He fainted from loss of blood, fell from his horse and was dragged by the stirrup down the steep hill to the brook at the bottom, where the horse came to a halt.

Running after him, Elfrida’s servants found his lifeless body badly mutilated as a result of being dragged over the rough stony ground. On Elfrida’s instruction the king’s body was concealed in a well; it wasn’t found until the following year when it was buried at the church of St. Mary in Wareham. Three years later the king’s body was removed to Shaftesbury and with great pomp and ceremony was buried in the Abbey.

The young king was canonised by the Pope as Edward the Martyr. The Church at Corfe Castle, which was founded by St. Aldhelm, was later dedicated to Edward and the days of his murder and the two internments: February 18th and June 20th were ordained to be kept sacred to his memory. According to some accounts Queen Elfrida went to a nunnery in Bere Regis where she became Abbess. Elfrida’s son did become king but King Ethelred the Unready ruled over a period of conflict with the Danes, who repeatedly overran the country. He was the father of two later kings: Edmund Ironside and Edward the Confessor.

The story of the events at Corfe Castle on March 18th AD 978 is confirmed by the examination of King Edward’s bones after they were discovered during excavations at Shaftesbury Abbey. On the left side both leg and arm were broken in two places and the neck, right arm, hip and leg were fractured, these injuries being consistent with the assault on Edward, his escape, fall from the saddle, and being dragged some distance by his horse.

John Hicks – Architect

Dec 1st, 2011
by Dorset Ancestors.
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Early in the 19th century, following a century of decline and neglect a program of church building and restoration was embarked upon on a scale not seen before or since. Nationally, between the turn of the century and 1850 two thousand new churches were built and building continued at this pace until 1870. Dorset played its part in this revival with Ferry and Crickmay taking the major part of the projects here, but this was to change in 1850 when a new man arrived in Dorchester and quickly established himself as an ecclesiastical architect.

John Hicks was born in Totnes in Devon; he was the son of John and Frances Hicks. His father was a clergyman and schoolmaster. John Champion Hicks uprooted his family from Devon and moved to Rangeworthy in South Gloucestershire, where he was appointed vicar. His son, John, who had received a good education and was a classical scholar, started an architectural practice in Bristol in 1837. Not much is known of his time there or where he trained, but we do know he designed and built two churches and had restored another by 1848.
 
It was John’s older brother, James, who first moved to Dorset. In 1837 he was curate at Piddletrenthide and became vicar there in 1845, a post he held for forty years. It was probably James who encouraged John to move to Dorset after his marriage at Rangeworthy in 1850 to Amelia Coley. We know from the 1851 census that John and Amelia were living at the Manor House at Piddletrenthide. ‘John Hicks: Architect’ is listed in a directory for 1852/3, which shows him at 39 South Street, Dorchester. He and his wife lived above the office, next door to William Barnes’ school.

Commissions came into the office for vicarages in Dorchester and Lyme Regis, a school and school house at Long Bredy and church restoration work at Piddletrenthide. But it was his work in 1859 at Rampisham that really established him in Dorset as an ecclesiastical architect; here he added a nave and side aisle. After Rampisham there was a steady flow of commissions and he built or restored nearly thirty Dorset churches before his death in 1869.

On 11th of July 1856 John Hicks took on the son of a local builder. He was articled to Hicks for three years and because of his youth this was extended for a further year. In the summer of 1860 the young man entered John Hicks’ employment as a paid assistant but left in 1862 before going to London to gain more experience and to pursue a career in writing. He returned to Dorchester and was again Hicks’ assistant from 1867 until his death in 1869: he was, of course, Thomas Hardy.

For those of us outside of the world of architecture and from this distance in time John Hicks is, without doubt, Dorset’s best known Victorian architect. However, our memory of him may have less to do with his work and more to do with his association with Hardy.

By all accounts John Hicks was a “genial, well-educated, straight dealing man” who was much liked. His work was generally admired and appreciated.  Unusually for such a prominent man we have not been able to find an obituary to him in the Dorset County Chronicle, other than a simple death notice: ‘February 12th at Dorchester, in his 54th year, Mr John Hicks, Architect’.

Thomas Hardy dedicated his poem ‘The Abbey Mason’ to him and Florence Hardy noted in 1927 that Thomas Hardy had commented that “if he had his life over again he would prefer to be a small architect in a county town, like Mr Hicks at Dorchester.”