by Anthony Harrison | Feb 26, 2025 | Blog
This is the first of two posts on the primordial role of the River Frome in creating the prosperous county town in which we now live. Since pre-Roman England wherever humans have tilled the soil, streams have been used to power waterwheels to mill the corn and other...
by Anthony Harrison | Feb 26, 2025 | Blog
I recently visited the former Royal Hospital for Seamen in Greenwich, part of which is now occupied by the Maritime Museum, and I was struck by its close links to Dorset. THE EARLY GREENWICH PALACE Its site on the south bank of the Thames, downstream from the City of...
by Anthony Harrison | Nov 8, 2024 | Blog
Almost immediately after the outbreak of the 1914-8 War a decision was made to house a prisoner of war camp within the precincts of the Royal Horse Artillery Barracks on the north- west outskirts of the town, at what has now in part become the Poundbury Industrial...
by Anthony Harrison | Sep 9, 2024 | Blog
IN THE STEPS OF THE TOLPUDDLE MARTYRS Ian Gosling, Chair of Dorchester Civic Society The history of the Tolpuddle Martyrs is closely linked to the wider economic and political context. In the 1830s the English countryside was a theatre of agitation caused by a...
by Anthony Harrison | Sep 9, 2024 | Blog
THE ROYAL FAMILY AND DORCHESTER Ian Gosling, Chair of Dorchester Civic Society As far as I have been able to establish the first royal visitor to Dorchester was King John (1199-1216) who made frequent visits to the town between 1204 and 1214, where he resided in the...
by Anthony Harrison | Aug 19, 2024 | Blog
We have been asked on several occasions if any of the eighteenth-century houses in the centre of Dorchester were designed or built by the Bastard Brothers of Blandford Forum. Who were the Bastards? The Bastards’ firm was founded in the late 17th century by Thomas...
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