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John Willis – Penman of East Orchard

Feb 3rd, 2012
by Dorset Ancestors.
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In the churchyard at Iwerne Minster, under a memorial stone, lie the remains of John Willis, gentleman of East Orchard. He died on the 23rd of April 1760, in his sixty-third year. Described as a man of “unblemished integrity” he was the master of Orchard school for thirty years and one of the eminent writing masters of his day, attracting to this quite part of Dorset scholars from Europe and the dominions.
 
His skills with the pen and his ability to pass on these skills earned him a considerable fortune. His copies were said to be equal, if not superior to copper plates. His Will reveals he had estates, land and tenements in several parishes including East Orchard, Iwerne Minster and Compton Abbas, which earned him a substantial annual rental income. On his death it was his brother Robert and his nephew John who inherited the income from all his accumulated wealth.

According to Hutchins he was “a native of Child Okeford” and Hutchins went on to describe him as one of the most eminent writing masters in Dorset and possibly the kingdom. Apparently, by study and application Willis trained himself to a level of perfection in this art that was recognised internationally.

A contemporary of Willis, William Massey, had this to say about him; “he was a fine penman, but never published anything from the rolling-press except a few single copies, for the use of his own school, engraved by Mr George Bickham and Mr Thorogood… As this gentleman never had the small pox, it is reported that he had a strong notion or opinion, that if he came to London, he should have it; on which account he could not be prevailed upon to see that famous city, though he had a strong inclination to it.”

In the quite churchyard at Iwerne Minster, on his memorial stone are included the words:

“Envy be dumb, great Willis scorns thy spite.
Thou must allow that he alone could write.
Most distant regions celebrate his fame,
The world concurs to eternize his name.
In all things equal to the best of men,
But had himself no equal with the pen.”

 

Miss Julia Colson of Swanage

Jan 9th, 2012
by Dorset Ancestors.
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She was a kindly, good-hearted lady, a stalwart of the church, confident and not shy in letting her opinions be known. A woman of independent means, Julia Colson knew that with privilege came responsibilities. In his seventy-ninth year Thomas Masters Hardy (1887-1976), the son of a Swanage builder, thought it important to write down his memories of this “grand old lady.” As a boy he had attended classes run by her and she clearly played a part in shaping his life and the lives of many other young men of Swanage.

Her father was the Reverend John Morton Colson who for forty years was the Rector of St. Peter’s, Dorchester. He married Julia Story of Stockton, Durham, at Stockton on the 27th of April 1826. Julia was their first child, baptised at St Mary’s, Piddlehinton on the 21st of March 1830; she had one sibling, a brother, Thomas Morton Colson, who was baptised in the same church on the 10th of May 1833. (See our story Thomas Morton Colson 1833-1908 in the Swanage Category.)

Her grandfather was the Reverend Thomas Morton Colson (1764-1830), he took over the position of Rector of Studland from his father, The Reverend Thomas Colson, following his death in 1784. The middle name of Morton is in remembrance of Jane Morton, the second wife of the Reverend Thomas Colson.

Census records from 1841 to 1861 reveal the family home was at Swanage and subsequent census returns tell us that following the death of her father in 1863 and her mother’s passing two years later she continued to live in the town until her death in the closing month of 1916. Mr Hardy recalls: “she was a great church worker and used to run a Coal Club and Blanket Club for Swanage and Herston.”

In those days Swanage had a fleet of ketch-rigged sailing vessels, taking away stone, bringing back coal and building materials as well as engaging in other coastal work. Julia Colson was the local agent for the Shipwrecked Mariners Society and she is remembered for attending the wreck of the Netto at Peveril Point ledges in 1900 and making all the arrangements for the welfare of the captain and his crew. When Mr William Brown, Coxswain of the Swanage lifeboat, lost his life in a gale during 1895 it was Julia Colson who broke the news to his widow and family and some years later she had to tell Mrs Brown that her youngest son had been drowned when a sailing boat was run down off Swanage by the pleasure steamer Stirling Castle.
 
For well over fifty years Julia Colson ran a class for teenage boys and taught them reading, writing and drawing. Mr Hardy remembers she had text books on trades and encouraged her pupils to take up subjects connected with their trades, such as masonry and building construction. Mr Hardy recalls “there were piles of drawings of church tracery windows, arches, buildings, also ships and boats – mostly etchings these latter – and she could tell you the names of former lads who copied these same drawings. I think every boy who went to the classes copied the particular etching called ‘The Wolf, Brig of War, off Dover, flying signal flags.”

The classes commenced in the autumn and went on until the spring.  The Sunday classes lasted only half-an-hour as Julia Colson knew the lads liked to take a walk along the cliffs. A dinner was held at the end of each year when roast beef, two large veal and ham pies and other treats were served and the best drawing by each lad was exhibited. There was no charge for the classes; Julia Colson provided everything and each Christmas she gave each lad the Parish Church Almanac and also a pair of mittens that she had knitted herself. There were book prizes for the best class attendance. Mr Hardy recorded an occasion when he could not decide which of his drawings he would put forward for the “party.”  He told a chum that he “would toss a coin.“ Miss Colson overheard him and told him in a stern voice “I will have no gambling in this house” and selected the drawing herself.

She kept a library and her students would take out books, returning them on Fridays. She employed a young lad to work in the garden and run errands for her and he would take books to the lighthouse-keepers and bring back the ones lent previously. On a fine summer’s evening she would have ‘her boy’ row her boat to the stone quay where she would board and he would row her around the bay.

Mr Hardy remembers her arriving at church one Sunday and seeing a silk top hat placed on the font – she knocked it off with her umbrella as she sailed down the aisle. On another occasion the parson’s sermon was rather long, so Miss Colson announced she had to get home to her dinner and left the church.
 
Mr Hardy tells us: “If we met Miss Colson outdoors, we had to give her the naval salute and she would promptly return it, but she wore dark blue glasses and looked straight in front. However, she would reprimand a boy if, thinking she did not see him, he did not salute.”

A Miss Bartlett of Wareham was a life-long friend and the two ladies visited each other for their summer holidays. Julia Colson died during the First World War when some of her lads were away in the services but they were well represented by many of her older ‘old boys’ who were present at her funeral.

Pouncy Family at Dorchester

Jan 6th, 2012
by Dorset Ancestors.
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Previously, we have written about the respected Dorchester journalist Harry Pouncy (1870-1925) and John Pouncy (1818-1894) the house painter turned photographic innovator and his son Walter Pouncy (1845-1918), who in his day was Dorchester’s pre-eminent photographer. But the municipal records for Dorchester reveal that in the early 17th century many of the family were an unruly lot. (See our stories: ‘Harry Pouncy – A Great Publicist for the Dorset Scene,’ and ‘John Pouncy’ in the Dorchester Category.)

Frequently on the wrong side of the law they saw themselves as victims of the town authorities. As butchers they leased their premises in the Shambles near St. Peter’s church from The Corporation. They were a couple of rungs up the social ladder and one or two of them were surprisingly well connected. Much of the trouble stemmed from them preferring the old ways; they were at odds with those trying to reform the town but at the same time some of them were Freemen of the town and one of them was appointed the town’s “Viewer of flesh.”

In 1606, after the arrival in Dorchester of the puritan minister the Reverend John White, the townsfolk were persuaded to turn away from their ungodly ways and most saw the Great Fire of 1613 as a sign of God’s displeasure with them all. (See our story ‘The Great Fire of Dorchester,’ in the Dorchester Category.)

While Matthew Chubb, at the time Dorchester’s richest resident, demonstrated his disapproval of the reverend gentleman and his puritan ways by surreptitiously publishing slanders against him and very publicly choosing to walk to Fordington for his Sunday sermon, the Pouncy’s were more hands-on with their objections and frequently clashed with any one representing authority. (See our story ‘Matthew Chubb of Dorchester’ in the Dorchester Category.)

At a ceremony at Dorchester’s Holy Trinity Church on the 16th of June 1570 John Pouncy married Margaret Haggard uniting two of the town’s families of butchers. We don’t know a lot about the couple other than that they had a large family and at least two sons,  of whom Thomas and Roger, survived. In the accounts for the borough for 1585 there is an entry: “Paid to Hunte, the Surgion, for healinge of Pouncye.”

The name of Thomas Pouncy appears in the borough records. He was in trouble on one occasion for missing church and he also had a couple of drinking offences listed against him. Yet he was a saint when compared to his son and some other family members; he was considered respectable enough to sit on juries.

Roger Pouncy was a Sheriff’s bailiff for the gentry as well as being a butcher and he was a member of Matthew Chubb’s circle. Chubb left RogerPouncy a small bequest. Roger was to become the most prosperous of the Pouncy’s and has been described elsewhere as the “Godfather to the unruly and unregenerate of Dorchester,” perhaps, a reference to the fact the he often gave bond or stood surety for family and others who found themselves in trouble. Roger Pouncy like Matthew Chubb preferred the old ways and disliked the reforming tendency of the town authorities. In his old-age he was an angry and embittered man.

Thomas’ son, also named Thomas, was a thug and regularly in trouble with the authorities. The records tell of how he threatened to kill a man and then threw his meat cleaver at him. There is a report of him threatening a maid at an ale house, beating-up a man from Martinstown, breaking a bull-keeper’s head with a cudgel at a bull baiting session and he was frequently accused of abusing the constables, sergeants and anyone in authority. He had little respect for his own family: in 1633 he was bound over following attacks on his mother-in-law and when in 1637 he was charged with attempting to stab a neighbour the records reveal that his wife had run away and left their children on the church steps. 
Thomas and Rogers son’s came to the attention of the authorities in 1632 as we can see from an entry for June 1st:  “1632, June I. ” William Douche, servant to Mathew Bonger of this Borough, Henry Pouncey and William Pouncey, Sonne Nathaniell, Giles Morey yonger, Rychard Stone the glouer’s Sonne, Edward Meller sonne of Wm. Meller. Wm. Douch confeseth that all these boyes and John Green’s sonne met together vpon Sabbath day last at Burton in farmer Monday’s ground, and played at Nine Holes for money, a farthing a game. Wm. Douch confesseth he lost one farthing and Wm. Perry, Htimfrey Perry’s sonne, lost a penny in that company. This was doen about 4 of the clock at afternoone, and not one of them were at ther parish church at prayer at afternoone that day, nor at any other church. These all being greate boyes, yt is ordered they shall find good sureties to play no more at vnlawfull games, and shall pay xzd. A peice for absens from church at that time.”

A few months later William Pouncy, the son of Roger Pouncy, was put in the stocks for a similar offence: “1632-3, March 9. Wm. Pouncy, son of Roger Pouncey, senr., confesseth that he and other young men ” in two severall companies thr they plad Five Holes, some other Nine Holes,”at the time of Evening Prayers and sermon. Wm. Pouncey committed to the stocks.”

An entry in the town records for 1633 suggests the Pouncy womenfolk behaved little better than their husbands: “1633, June 28. ” It is now ordered that Christian Jenkens, Susan Lyeigh wife of John lyeigh, Charitie Robenson, and Thampson Pouncey wife of Thomas Pouncey the elder, shalbe plounced or duckt three severall times vnder the water for common Scolds presented at the last Iyawe day, and a warrant granted to the constables to that purpose the same day.”

There is an entry in the records for March 26th 1636: “Thomasyn, wife of Thomas Powncy” saith that a little before Easter last Roberte Powncy, sonne of Roger Powncy of the Borough aforesaid, being in his father’s howse in the same Borough, and there being some speeches vsed that the said Roberte Powncy was to goe to Mr. White, the minister, to be examined before he came to the Sacrament, he, the said Roberte Powncy, said he would not go to the said Mr. White, he would see his . . . . on fire in or at the pulpit first.”

Another of Thomas’s sons, Henry, found himself before the courts on a charge of incest with his younger sister Grace. It seems the two youngsters shared a bed, probably as a result of overcrowding and the girl complained about her brother’s unwanted attentions. The boy found himself in the workhouse because he was “Masterless and living in a lewd and uncivil manner.”

Another of Roger Pouncy’s sons, also named Roger was a little less rowdy than his cousin, Thomas. Nevertheless, he would frequently clash with the authorities, often as a result of his duties as a Sheriff’s bailiff acting for the country gentry. It seems he was foulmouthed and he was charged for uttering 24 oaths during one argument with the authorities. He would use violent language to denounce the town’s officers and when that did not work he would think little of assaulting them.

Like Matthew Chubb and most of the country gentry the Pouncy’s were set against the Reverend White and his puritan ways but they were fighting a loosing battle. Come the Civil War Dorchester was for Parliament and The Corporation provided a list of Royalist sympathisers in the town; the list was kept in London and the Pouncy family was on it. On the Restoration one member of the family was granted a pension for services to the King.

Later in the 17th century the Pouncy’s were still making trouble and two of them were arrested but escaped. In 1699 there were complaints about eight unlicensed ale-houses in the town and again the family was involved.
 
In the 18th century the name of Harry Pouncy appears on a list of school masters at Trinity School  and then there was Robert Pouncy born 1756 (possibly the son of the schoolmaster) who was a Captain in the British East India Company, and in 1813 the name of Thomas Pouncy is included in a list of Dorchester’s freeholders. It seems respectability evolves.

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.”

Tryphena Sparks 1851-1890

Oct 25th, 2011
by Dorset Ancestors.
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She was born on the 20th of March 1851. Seven days later her mother went to the Registry Office and formally declared her daughter’s arrival in to the world. She was the sixth child so her parents were by now quite used to taking their children to St. Mary’s church at Puddletown for baptism and they were quietly confident this would be the last time – mother then being 46 years old. Although Tryphena was not baptised until she was six years old.

Fit and healthy, the girl sailed through school and at the age of 15 became a pupil teacher.  Her parents were justly proud when at the age of 18 she went on to a teacher training college in London.  On completion of her course in December 1871 she immediately applied for and was offered the position of headmistress at a day school for girls in Plymouth, Devon.  This was a prestigious post with a salary of about £100 a year – a princely sum for someone from a rural background well used to living amongst people scratching a living from the countryside.

Six years later she resigned her teaching post at Plymouth and married the proprietor of a public house. The couple had a daughter followed by three sons. After the birth of her last child there were complications from which she never fully recovered. Her health deteriorated and she passed away on the 17th of March 1890, just three days before her 39th birthday. She was buried at Topsham in Devon.

Her life had been full, interesting and worthwhile but not remarkable, which begs the question: why, when we enter her name into an Internet search engine, are we offered thousands of entries? Being the cousin of Thomas Hardy would not alone account for Tryphena Sparks’ posthumous celebrity.

In 1890 on hearing of her death Hardy penned a poem he entitled ‘Thoughts of Phena at News of Her Death’ in which he referred to her as “…my lost prize.”  The poem was first published as part of Wessex Poems in 1898 but  interest about a relationship between Tryphena and Thomas Hardy really took hold in 1962 with the publication of ‘Tryphena and Thomas Hardy’ by Lois Deacon in the ’Monographs on the Life, Times and Works of Thomas Hardy’ series.  Deacon claimed the couple had a child together and suggested Tryphena was the daughter of her “supposed elder sister,” Rebecca.  In 1968 Lois Deacon and Terry Coleman published their book ‘Providence and Mr Hardy’ repeating the sensational claim about their being a child.

A few Hardy scholars came out and supported Deacon in her claims and by the early 1970’s even the pages of The Dorset Year Book became part of the battlefield for warring scholars. The claims have been given no credence by Hardy biographers and we have failed to find any hard evidence such as a birth certificate, baptism register entry, census record, or death certificate and conclude that Lois Deacon read too much between the lines of the novels and poetry of Thomas Hardy and relied too much on the memories of a very old lady, Mrs. Eleanor Bromell, Tryphena’s daughter.

Accountants, we are told, can make figures say whatever you want them to say and so it is often the case with family historians who are tempted to bend the facts to fit in with their wishful thinking. It seems Lois Deacon may have fallen into this trap and read far too much into three little words and in the process elevated a young Dorset born school teacher into something approaching cult status.

There are photos of Tryphena Sparks in the photo gallery

Matthew Chubb of Dorchester

Oct 14th, 2011
by Dorset Ancestors.
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In the early years of the 17th century the wealthiest man in the prosperous trading town of Dorchester was Matthew Chubb. During his lifetime he held all the important offices of the borough and for a time he was the Member of Parliament for the town. He was enterprising and hard working, though not altogether a self-made man. Much of his wealth was inherited and his journey along the path too riches was helped by marrying well – twice. He was the kind of man who craved the acquaintance of his social superiors, even though financially he had the better of them. Arguably, he was a generous man but his charity was usually self-serving; he liked his good works to be visible and acknowledged.

Matthew was the son of John and Agnes Chubb. John came from Misterton near Crewkerne in Somerset and he married Agnes, the daughter of John Corbyn, a prominent member of Dorchester society. Matthew was born in 1548 and shortly after his birth the family moved to Dorchester where John prospered and quickly established himself, becoming a member of The Corporation and the Town Steward by 1555. There is evidence that John Corbyn conveyed property to John Chubb and in due time this property passed to Matthew.

In the 1560’s Matthew set up a school in Dorchester but abandoned the project when The Corporation sponsored a Free School. He became a scrivener, drawing up wills and conveyances and he appears to have had some negotiating skills, he lent money and was a goldsmith. Like his father he became a member of The Corporation and was himself appointed Town Steward in 1583. He was sent to Exeter by The Corporation to lobby and negotiate for Dorchester to keep the Assizes. In 1601 he became Member of Parliament for the town and was re-elected in 1604, though, on this occasion claimed his health was not up to the job but his colleagues still re-elected him. Actually, Matthew was in good health throughout this period and we are left to assume that it did not suit him to have to be away in London so much.

Towards the end of the reign of Elizabeth I and the early years of the reign of James I he was the most important member of The Corporation but his influence began to wane once the Reverend John White arrived in the town in 1606. It seems Matthew Chubb had quite liberal views and he frequently disagreed with some of the ideas the minister was promoting to his congregation at Holy Trinity. After the great fire of 1613, which destroyed much of the town, many people were convinced they were being punished for their loose morals; congregations grew in all three Dorchester parishes following the fire.

John White was a moderate puritan, though clearly not moderate enough for Matthew Chubb. At one point things between the two men reached such a low ebb that the layman preferred to walk the lanes to Fordington to say his prayers and hear a sermon. It was generally believed that Chubb was behind the anonymous pamphlets distributed in Dorchester suggesting all manner of impropriety on the part of the minister, whose popularity was in the ascendancy.

On November 12th, 1613 Matthew Chubb was authorised by King James I to loan £1,000 towards the rebuilding of Dorchester after the great fire. He and his wife rebuilt the George Inn and endowed an almshouse for women.

Matthew Chubb died in 1617.  His widow, Margaret, died in 1628, when their only son and the heir to their fortune was Matthew Chubb Junior but at the time of his mother’s death he was still under age. Margaret Chubb made a will on April 18th 1625 leaving all her lands and property to Robert Coker on the condition that Joan, his second daughter, married her boy. Robert Coker was a goldsmith who had been a good friend of Matthew Chubb Sr. Matthew and Joan married but Matthew passed away in 1632 and on the January 23rd 1633 Joan Chubb conveyed the property back to her parents, Robert and Martha Coker.

Mrs Bligdon’s Bakery and the Birth of the Dorset Knob

Oct 9th, 2011
by Dorset Ancestors.
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This is the story of a Dorset woman who owned and ran the bakery where the first Dorset Knobs were baked. Maria Bligdon could not claim to have conceived the recipe for the delicacy but she was certainly instrumental in its birth and growth in popularity, particularly in West Dorset, where it is still produced.
 
In 1815, Fordington was a densely populated parish on the edge of the county town of Dorchester. Living conditions there were filthy and squalid, so it is difficult to imagine what could have brought William Pitcher to this place from Powerstock, where he would have enjoyed a rural lifestyle with fresh air in abundance. The same could be said of Maria Longman who came from Rimpton Mill near Yeovil, just over the county border in Somerset. It is possible these two young people knew each other previously or may even have travelled there together because on the 22nd of March 1815 they were married at St. Georges Church.

After marrying they didn’t linger in Fordington; they travelled through Dorchester they headed west, settling in the parish of Litton Cheney. Here, they would have been more at home. The stone and thatched cottages, many dating back to the 17th century at ease beside the twisting lanes and busy streams, would have been much more to their liking than the over-crowded tenements of the Dorchester suburb.
 
William and Maria would have worshipped here at the original church dedicated to St. Mary; what we see today is the result of an extensive restoration completed in 1878. It is at St. Mary’s their children were all baptised: Jesse on 11th of August 1816; Mary Brown on 31st of May 1818; John on 5th of March 1820; Nimshi on 13th of October 1822; Levi on 26th of March 1824; Daniel on 9th of September 1826; Maria Brown on 11th of August 1828; Elizabeth Martha Longman on 25th of July 1830 (Buried on 10th of May 1836); William Longman Brown on 19th of May 1833; and Jane on 18th of December 1834 (Buried on 4th of January 1835.) Brown is a reference to grandmother Pitcher’s maiden name.

William Pitcher was born at Powerstock, where he was baptised on Christmas Day 1789. William was the first son of Samuel and Mary Pitcher and he was a miller. Maria Longman, his wife, was born in 1795 at Rimpton Mill, which is near Yeovil and not so very far away from the Dorset town of Sherborne.
 
William handed down his knowledge of milling and baking to his children. In 1851 we find his eldest son, Jesse, working as a journeyman miller at Malassie Mill, St. Savior, Jersey; Levi was working as a miller at Notton Mills, Maiden Newton and William was a Journeyman Baker still living with his parents. One son, William, was a tailor by trade and lived at Portesham.

But it is their daughter Maria who is of particular interest to us. By all accounts she was a formidable woman with striking looks and great strength; reputedly she could handle a sack of flour as well as any man and was known for having her own way.

Early in 1852 Maria married John Bligdon, a man born and brought-up in Litton Cheney, where he was a boot and shoe maker. Soon after their marriage, Maria, who until then had been working as a servant, was able to persuade her husband to let her start a bakery business in the village, which became known as White Cross Bakers and later as White Cross Grocer and Baker Shop.

The business started in a small way with one assistant but quickly grew. Bakery products were delivered by horse and cart to villages with in a radius of about ten miles. In 1881 many villages in Dorset were cut off for days because of deep snow. To meet the pressing need of some of the villages her horses were shod with special nails that prevented slipping, the bread was packed into panniers slung on each side of the horses and a convoy set off on its difficult journey to reach some of the more distant customers.

In 1881 Maria Bligdon employed three bakers and two servants, all living on the premises. Her husband continued his business as a cordwainer. One of these bakers, a Mr Moores, brought with him a recipe for Dorset Knobs, a round savoury biscuit that quickly became a favourite with the customers. It is named after the Dorset knob button. The recipe consists of bread dough to which extra sugar and butter are added. The dough is then shaped by hand and baked three times; the result is very crumbly and similar to a rusk.
 
Nellie Titterington, Thomas Hardy’s, parlour maid, revealed that the author “would most enjoy a cup of soup, followed by two boiled eggs. He finished his meal with Dorset knobs and Stilton cheese, both favourites of Mr Hardy, Dorset knobs especially.”

With fat bacon the Dorset Knob formed the main diet of the men employed by Maria Bligdon at her Litton Cheney bake house and the biscuits were despatched to Dorset soldiers fighting in Africa during the Boer Wars.

Pound Cake was another speciality of the bakery and sold for sixpence a pound; her gooseberry tart was also very popular. A custom from the old days was the making of dough cake; the dough was supplied by the bakery to the villagers who made it into cakes which were baked at the bake house.
 
Those less fortunate, living off parish relief and seeking employment, were given penny bread tickets, which the bakery accepted towards the cost of a loaf of bread, at that time about four pence. The bakery would accept about £5 worth of tickets every month. Given that in those days there were two hundred and forty pence to the pound we can see Mrs Bligdon’s bakery was very busy.

Maria Bligdon was buried at Litton Cheney on 8th of January 1891 aged 63. Her husband, John, died in 1896. It is said that one of their sons took over the business and closed it in 1916. We have found no record of any children and believe it was a nephew who took over the business.

When Mr Moores left the bakery he went to Morcombelake where his sons started a business and produced Dorset Knobs. That business is still in existence today and during January and February the firm continues to bake Dorset Knobs, which are retailed mainly through smaller grocery outlets and exported.

Caroline Jane Cousins (1837-1927)

Jul 27th, 2011
by Dorset Ancestors.
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One of the Last Knocker-Uppers!

The idea of an Alarm Clock has been around for a long time but it was not until 1908 that a reasonably reliable device came onto the market at a price a working man could afford. This brought with it the demise of the Knockers-Uppers, a profession that finally died out in Dorset soon after the end of World War I.

This is the story of Caroline Jane Cousins, a lady who, in her twilight years managed to make a living as a Knocker-Upper in Poole; more specifically from the Quay to the Gas Works which took in Lagland Street, Thames Street, Stand Street, Taylor’s Buildings, Emerson Road and the High Street. For three pennies a week she would come around and wake up workers from their slumbers by tapping on the bedroom window. For most of her clients this would mean a really early morning call as work in most of the factories in Poole started at 6am.

In winter she would start her rounds well before daybreak, dressed in a black dress, white apron and shawl, all topped off with a white bonnet. She had a lantern and a long pole which she used to tap the windows with. She also had a whistle with which she could hail the police if anyone attempted to assault her.

She became known as ‘Granny Cousins,’ though by all accounts she was not the family woman this form of address implies, at least in her later years. Indeed, when one of her sons, Solomon, lost both his legs in an accident she took it quite philosophically and apparently showed little sign of grief when he died; neither does she appear to have had much contact with her children and grandchildren in her later years.

Recalling the days when she lived in the country was something she liked to do. Those were times when necessity meant she had to make a meal go a long way and this was her top tip: “You put yer piece o’bacon in pot and then when he’ve a-cooked a bit, put in yer cabbage, then whack up yer dough enough for the family and put he in on top. Tha’s Skiver Cake,  that is, an’ good for’ee, too. But, don’ee drow away the water ‘tis biled in. You drink that there an’ twill keep away all manner o’ diseases.”

She was the daughter of Benjamin and Sarah (Lovell) Bartlett and baptised at St. Mary’s church, Morden, on New Year’s Day 1837.  Her parents were both from close-by Lytchett Matravers and they married there on the 14th of June 1820.  Her mother died aged 49 and was buried on the 12th of August 1847at St.Mary’s, Morden. The census taken in 1851 records Caroline with her father, older unmarried sister Diana, and one-month-old niece Elizabeth, living at Sherford, Morden. In 1861 Caroline is lodging with Isaac and Martha Lovell at White Field, Morden; she is described as a nurse and house servant.

She married Joseph Cousins in the early months of 1863. Joseph was older than her by 34-years and after her marriage she more often than not appears in records as Jane. As far as we can tell Caroline and Joseph had four boys and two girls. In 1871 Joseph then 69 years of age and Caroline just 35 years could be found at 3, Horse Pond Cottages, East Morden, with them their children: Benjamin, Thomas and Louisa. (There are indications of another child born early in 1865. He was named Owen but we haven’t been able to establish were he was in 1871 and 1881.)

Joseph Cousins died in 1880 leaving Caroline in desperate circumstances. She was forced to move into the Union Workhouse at Wareham, taking sons Thomas and Soloman and daughter Dinah Fanny with her.

By 1891 Caroline had removed herself from the workhouse and was living at Scaplins Yard, Salisbury Street, in the St. James parish of Poole. With her is her daughter Dinah and sons Solomon and Owen, who is now married to Rosena Ellen (Gallop); they married towards the end of 1887. Owen was a bricklayer’s labourer.

In the years between 1891 and 1901 Caroline became detached from her children and was living at 1, West Street, St James, Poole, where she was employed as a housekeeper to a widower, James Arnold, a bricklayer.  The 1911 census records her at 24 Skinner Street a boarder with William Efemy, a fisherman.

We think her time as a Knocker-Upper started around 1901and continued until just after the end of World War I when she retired and also gave up working at the local twine factory. She was described as a strange old woman who didn’t wear her heart on her sleeve and had a way of talking at great-length to no one in particular, staring straight ahead as she did so.

After her retirement she joined the Salvation Army, a cause she remained faithful to until her death in 1927. She received no old-age pension and she was looked after by the parish. Having no home of her own she showed no signs of self-pity and lived in the humble lodgings she had acquired with a friend. She had enjoyed good health for most of her life, something she put down to always drinking the water she cooked her vegetables in.

Inevitably her strength started to fail her. She was taken to the local infirmary where she died aged 89. She possessed a battered alarm clock, which had no doubt accompanied her on her morning rounds. But she deserves to be remembered not only for her unusual occupation but because of her determination to get on with life despite all the hardship it threw at her.

 

Footnote:

Vanessa Marshall writes: Her daughter Fanny Dinah Cousins married Edward Martin Effemy in 1893 at St James’ Church, Poole and Granny Cousins attended the marriage. The had a total of eight children, including: Mary Fanny Caroline and James Effemy in 1904. Mary’s middle names were after her mother and grandmother. Unfortunately Fanny Dinah died in 1905, when Mary was only 14 months old.

Mary and her elder sister were fostered out, but Mary knew her grandmother Granny Cousins well. Furthermore, Granny Cousins was living with a distant relative of Martin Effemy’s – William Effemy (sic) in 1911. The sad thing was that Granny Cousins outlived all her children, but she knew her Effemy grandchildren.

Her granddaughter, Mary, went on to marry Robert William Frederick Bessant (whose own mother was also an Effemy and their first daughter – Mary Ann Diana Jane was born at Poole in 1932 – the Diana Jane part of her name being a tribute to her grandmother and great grandmother. Mary Bessant is my husband’s mother.

(Granny Cousins was not as detached from her family in her later years, as our article suggests. Ed.)

Christopher Bishop – a Dorset Shepherd

Jun 19th, 2011
by Dorset Ancestors.
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“My father used to say he’d been at it so long. Fifty-two years, including Sundays he’d a-call it, as shepherd. No holidaying in those days. But he loved it. His family, his dog, and his sheep and lambs, were life to Christopher Bishop.”


The words of Gertrude Burt, talking in 1970 to journalist Maynard Whyte about her father, four years before she died at the age of 91 years.
 
Our story starts and ends just a couple of miles or so from the border with Somerset in the north west of the county where the villages are small and picturesque. It is here that Christopher Bishop was born two years into the reign of Queen Victoria and it is where he grew-up and worked all his life save for a short sojourn at Osmington,  a parish by the sea near to Weymouth and where he buried two of his sons.

Melbury Bubb is a little village of a few cottages, an Elizabethan manor house and a farm. It is here on the 24th of July 1791 that Benjamin Bishop was baptised in the church dedicated to St. Mary. We will have more to say about this delightful church with its interesting old tower, ancient font and windows telling the parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins but that is for another time. Benjamin was destined to become an agricultural labourer and along the way, on June 5th in 1815, he married a Somerset girl, Caroline Gard, at St. James church at East Chelborough. There is more to say about this little church as well; here we will just note that it is difficult to find but well worth the seeking out just to see the unusual round east window.

Benjamin and Caroline Bishop had nine children, the last being Christopher, who was born in the early half of 1839 at East Chelborough. Leaving school at the age of ten he probably didn’t have a lot of choice but to become an agricultural labourer. He started his working life scaring birds off the crops on Jericho field at Ryme Intriniseca. The 1851 census tells us this was his lot in life. But things were looking up for him and ten years on, the census records him  being a shepherd at Melbury Osmond,  where he was employed by Mr Thomas Watts, a farmer of 260 acres employing four men, three boys and two women. It is here that Christopher met Jane Hallet, his wife to be.
 
Christopher and Jane married in 1862 and their first child, George, was born at Halstock in 1863. Two more boys, Benjamin and William, arrived while the couple were back at Melbury Osmond in 1870 and 1873; their daughter Gertrude was born at Osmington in 1884. That year the shepherd and his wife were to lose their eldest son. He followed his father into farm work and later he joined the railway and was employed at Nine Elms in London where he contracted typhus and died. George was buried at St. Osmond’s church, Osmington, on the 11th of December 1884.

In 1891 Christopher, his wife Jane and daughter Gertrude were back in the north west of the county at Ryme Intrinseca and visiting them was their son Benjamin then 21 years-old he was a stoker on a ship in the Navy.
 
Gertrude’s brother William was in the Marines. One day he was working on a gun and accidentally thrown backwards into the sea and drowned; it was thought that a chain held him under the water.  He was Gertrude’s favourite. She told Maynard Whyte: “he was so kind and used to pick me up and carry me home if he met me in the village. He was just twenty, I was nine at the time. When the letter came, my mother, who could not read, had to get someone from the village to read it to her. Then she said to me ‘Go down, Gertrude, and tell your father’…I could go again to that spot where I told him and know it. He took it bad as he was the one who could never shed a tear…It’s always worse for them kind, isn’t it?”

At the time of William’s death the family was at Ryme Intrinseca but William was buried on the 9th of November 1892 in St. Osmond’s churchyard at Osmington, where his elder brother lay. His death was a great sorrow to their mother. Jane Bishop passed away in 1895 aged 52 years. Gertrude, then just eleven years old, was left to comfort her father and she “kept house” for him recalling  “no mod-cons for them, a bucket dipped into the well brought up the water.”

Lambing was always in the open field in her father’s day. Gertrude recalled: “they used to thatch the hurdles and put them up for shelter. When we had been up all night with the sheep  in the lambing season, and tired out, I used to see to the lambs and sheep, I used to walk out among them and see they were all right, but they always were all right. Father would not have gone to bed if he’d not have known that. …you get many more sheep lambing on a rough, wet and windy night than on a still, cold frosty one.” The lambs were fat by Easter and the shepherd with his dog would drive them along to Yetminster Station.

Christopher Bishop died in 1908. He would have been 69 and for 52 of those years he had been a shepherd. He spent his last few years living with Gertrude and her husband, who was a gamekeeper. As in the beginning so it was at the end – he liked to sit in the fields and scare the crows away from the young pheasant birds.

Up to the end of his working days he earned no more than eleven shillings a week, but his daughter observed “…you could get a nice big piece of beef for one and six and we had plenty of our own vegetables. Coal was a shilling a hundredweight.” Thinking back, Gertrude said “They were good days..You didn’t have the money…You didn’t have the clothes, but you were far happier…They days were better than they be now, I fancy.”

In paintings and novels the role of shepherd is sometimes romanticised as an idyllic life. True, a shepherd might have commanded a couple of shillings more for his labour than an ordinary agricultural labourer but as Thomas Hardy observed, the shepherd is “a lonely man of which the battle of life had always been sharp with him.”

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.

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