On Thursday 24 September at 11.00a.m. The Shaftesbury & District Historical Society invited its members to take part in its first on-line Annual General Meeting. The meeting was comfortably quorate as members logged in from neighbouring counties and, in one instance, from a distant continent. The AGM is an essential part of the governance of […]
Gold Hill Museum opened to the public on Friday 07 August at 10.30a.m. Visitors will be asked to wear face coverings (unless exempt) and to provide contact details at the newly-screened Reception desk. This information is purely for any possible use by NHS Test and Trace, and will be destroyed after 21 days. On the […]
Forty-seven years after it was first made, homage continues to be paid to Ridley Scott’s Hovis ad. This time on 20 July 2020 the baker’s boy delivered fresh bread, not to “old Ma Peggotty’s place (t’was like taking bread to the top of the world”), but to the gate of Gold Hill Museum. The Harbour […]
On 15 June 1920 the renowned Australian operatic soprano Dame Nellie Melba made the world’s first radio broadcast of a live recital by a professional musician, from the Marconi Factory in Chelmsford. The Marconi Wireless Company had been making experimental broadcasts since February 1920. Dame Nellie was persuaded to lend her undoubted star quality with […]
In June 1520 King Henry VIII of England met with King Francis I of France at The Field of the Cloth of Gold. This was a diplomatic summit, an international sporting event, a fashion parade, and a festival all rolled into one: a spectacular opportunity for the rich and powerful to show off. Both kings […]
New levels of inventiveness were necessary to commemorate the 75th anniversary of VE Day in Lockdown Shaftesbury. At least the Appleby family’s Big Ben was not cocooned in scaffolding. Contemporary Swing music, Churchill’s 3pm speech and an Aunt Sally sideshow contributed to the 1945 atmosphere, while Social Distancing was strictly observed. Social Distancing also figured […]
Mayor and Mayoress Lead the Revels. Shaftesbury was beflagged as never before, and the oldest inhabitants declared that they had never seen such “goings on” in the streets, when the Mayor and Mayoress (Mr and Mrs Ralph Pearson) led off the dancing in the High Street with the “Palais Glide”, to music from loudspeakers. The […]
In September 1918 Britain’s dynamic wartime Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, visited Manchester Town Hall to receive the Freedom of the City. It was the city of his birth, to Welsh parents in 1863. By 1918 he had a formidable list of achievements in an illustrious political career. Old Age Pensions, introduced in 1908; National […]
Rin Tin Tin, the canine superstar of the 1920’s, was a big hit with young Shaftesbury film-goers. A local resident recalls that her father, born in 1918, enjoyed going to the “The Fleapit” to see Rin Tin Tin. This might have been the Picture Palace which, according to Roger Guttridge in Shaftesbury Through Time, closed […]
Shaftesbury’s cinema The Picture Palace opened in the High Street in 1913. The neo-Classical frontage was adjacent to the cycle shop on the site of what is now Bargains. After five grim years of war and a devastating flu pandemic in 1918-19, the cinema offered an escape – to a world of adventure, glamour and […]
