From Tuesday 01 April free-to-enter Gold Hill Museum is open every day. Its volunteer supporters have been hard at work during the close season preparing two new temporary exhibitions and much larger shop, office and storage spaces. The intriguingly titled The Goddess, the Hound and the Fox presents the exciting discovery of a previously unknown […]
On Tuesday 01 April at 2.30p.m. at Gold Hill Museum Matthew Tagney will deliver an illustrated talk on The Liberty of Alcester. This is, Matthew says, A tale of peculiar historical boundaries, pious medieval practices, Mr Raspberry the brolly-maker, and “convenient buildings & exceeding rich meadow land”, wandering from past to present on Shaftesbury’s western […]
On Tuesday 04 March at 2.30 p.m. at Gold Hill Museum John Hubbard will tell the story of William Bankes’s transformation of Kingston Lacy, despite being driven into exile by a draconian Victorian moral and legal code. John writes: Bankes was obliged to complete the enrichment of his major restyling of the family home from […]
You can never have too many striking images of Gold Hill. This woodcut engraving was made in the early 1930s by the youthful John R. Biggs (1909-88), a recent graduate of the Derby School of Art. James Masters, the co-proprietor of The High House Press in Shaftesbury with his wife Beatrice, had advertised for an […]
F.Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby , published in April 1925, is widely regarded as a literary masterpiece and a classic example of the Great American Novel. By 2020 it was thought to have sold nearly 30 million copies worldwide, and 500,000 annually. Through the eyes of narrator Nick Carraway it tells the story of mysterious […]
This autumn we’re celebrating artists and artisans who have been ‘Inspired by Dorset’. Gold Hill Museum is one of 12 across the county hosting special creative hands-on activities or celebrating artworks and local artists. Shaftesbury was the cradle of the Dorset Button cottage industry, founded in 1622 by Abraham Case. (You can read about Four […]
At 2.30p.m. on Tuesday 05 November at Gold Hill Museum Tony Otton will give an illustrated talk on the remarkable career of aviation pioneer Louis Strange, born on the family farm at Spetisbury, Dorset, in 1891. The first powered flight in Britain was achieved in 1908 by the American Samuel Cody. Louis Strange saw the […]
“Welcome to Shaftesbury” is our final temporary exhibition of the season, showcasing a range of local printed tourist guides selected by our volunteer archives team and spanning nearly a century. Magnificent views to north, south, and west from Shaftesbury’s hilltop location are extolled by all the writers. (We are still doing it, with the benefit […]
Dr Nicola Tallis is fast emerging as one of Britain’s most popular historians, according to fellow writer Gareth Russell. Her brilliant new study of the early life of Elizabeth I, says the doyenne of Tudor biographers Alison Weir, is an outstanding achievement. The Shaftesbury & District Historical Society is delighted to welcome Nicola to Shaftesbury […]
The ninth century Alfred Jewel was unearthed by the ploughing of a field at North Petherton, Somerset, in 1693. It was given to the University of Oxford in 1718 and is now one of the Ashmolean Museum’s most prized treasures. North Petherton lies between Bridgwater and Taunton, six miles from King Alfred’s reedy Athelney hideaway […]
