On Monday 03 June the famous Ridley Scott Hovis ad was re-launched on ITV. Both Meridian and BBC South contacted Gold Hill Museum and sent reporters to mark the occasion. Part of the BBC South Today evening bulletin was broadcast live from Gold Hill, with chair of Shaftesbury & District Historical Society Trustees Elaine Barratt adeptly fielding questions from Matt Graveling.

Earlier the intrepid BBC newshound had raided a local charity shop for a flat cap and borrowed an apron from the Salt Cellar restaurant so that he could reprise the part of the baker’s boy. Most of a recorded interview with Trustee Ian Kellett ended up on the digital cutting room floor; indeed the Meridian reporter said that he was only looking for 15 seconds of usable material.

Carl Barlow, the child actor in the original ad, was 13 in 1973 when he flew down the dangerous cobbles of Gold Hill with his feet off the pedals. Both Matt Graveling and his Meridian counterpart attempted the same feat, though understandably and sensibly over much shorter distances.

While it is nearly half a century since Ridley Scott made the Hovis ad, it appears to have become a significant landmark in British popular culture. It is certainly figuring in a forthcoming BBC documentary by Andrew Marr. It is constantly revisited by modern advertisers, most recently by a company promoting electric bikes. Gold Hill Museum would be pleased to see any material relating to the making of the original ad.

Please click here for the ThisisAlfred report on the remastering of the 1973 Hovis ad.

Tudor England was a dangerous place. There were plagues and wars, perilous childbirths and shocking infant mortality. But what risks did people face as they went about their everyday lives? Steven Gunn of Merton College and Tomasz Gromelski of Wolfson College are investigating this problem using evidence from coroners’ reports preserved in the National Archives. The four-year project entitled ‘Everyday Life and Fatal Hazard in Sixteenth-Century England’ is based in Oxford and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, with support from the Faculty of History and Merton and Wolfson colleges.

Professor Steven Gunn is the 2019 Teulon Porter Memorial Lecturer. At Shaftesbury Town Hall on Tuesday 24 September at 7.30p.m. he will give an illustrated talk on ‘Everyday Life and Accidental Death in Tudor Dorset and Wiltshire’. This event is free to members of The Shaftesbury & District Historical Society while non-members may pay £5 at the door.

May 2019. Mining has always been dangerous. Although tin mining was one of Tudor England’s major extractive industries, accidents are not well recorded. This was because for much of the sixteenth century the coroners of Devon and Cornwall were less efficient in sending in their reports, and perhaps in holding their inquests, than those of other counties. Yet when fatalities do crop up they are eloquent. May 1571 brought the death of Ewen Taylor, struck in the stomach by an iron bar while mining at Ilsington, and Oliver Hannaford, wounded with his ‘tynhoke’ while digging for tin at Ashburton.

The depth of some tin works, reached by long ropes, caused the deaths of two other victims more indirectly. At Polgooth in St Mewan in Cornwall in February 1591, Thomas Hicke, tinner, was working at the tin mine when the ‘wynder wyndinge rope’ caused him to fall into ‘the Tynworke poole or pitt’, where he drowned. At St Neot in December 1588, Michael Tapnell hoped to exploit the depth of the mine to avoid arrest for debt when his creditor turned up from St Blazey to take him into custody, bringing two other men to help. He let himself down into the tin working on a rope, intending to slip away into the furthest part of the mine, but suddenly his hands slipped and he fell to the bottom of the pit and broke his neck.

Extracts from the website of the Everyday Life and Fatal Hazard in Sixteenth Century England Project by kind permission of Steven Gunn.

May 2019 marks the centenary of The Sale of Shaftesbury…

The Tea and Talks session provides an informal opportunity for members of The Shaftesbury & District Historical Society to share with others historical gems that they have discovered recently, as well as enjoy delicious home-made cake. This year Richard Clarke has observations on the Hinton St Mary Roman Mosaic; Kathie Clarke has been collecting Postcards of Old Shaftesbury; Ray Simpson has unearthed some Notes on the Shaftesbury Fire Service from the Gold Hill Museum Archives; and David Grierson reports on a Skeleton in the (Family History) Closet.

This event is free to members. Non-members might like to consider joining The S&DHS. £15 for an individual annual membership gives access to next season’s 2019-20 programme as well as supporting the work of Gold Hill Museum.

Shillingstone Station opened in 1863 lit by oil lamps and closed just over a century later, still without gas or electricity. Built by the Dorset Central Railway, it became part of the Somerset and Dorset Junction Railway which provided a through route from Bath to Bournemouth. From 1910 The Pines Express gave holidaymakers from Manchester and the North direct access to the South Coast. Unusually for a small country station Shillingstone boasted a canopy, giving shelter to King Edward VII when alighting to visit his friends the Ismays at Iwerne Minster.

In February 1915 war poet Rupert Brooke marched with colleagues of the Hood Naval Battalion from Blandford Camp to entrain for Avonmouth and Gallipoli. It was easier to load the Battalion’s mules at Shillingstone rather than at Blandford. Brooke, well known for such lines as: Stands the Church clock at ten to three? And is there honey still for tea? died from septicaemia following an infected mosquito bite off Greece.

In 1966 Dr Beeching’s axe fell on the Somerset and Dorset line. The track was lifted in 1967; since 2005 volunteers of the North Dorset Railway Trust have been working to restore the station and some of the track. Jack Bath, Curator, and fellow Trustee David Caddy will tell the story of The Station They Never Closed (officially) at 2.30pm on Tuesday 05 March. This illustrated talk is free to members of The Shaftesbury & District Historical Society while non-members may pay £3 at the door.