Gold Hill Museum is hosting an Autumn Crafty Afternoon on Wednesday 24 October. Activities include apple pressing, making clay night-light holders, and creating autumn wreaths from natural materials. Pumpkins will be involved somewhere. Open to all ages, but children must be accompanied by a responsible adult. Entry is free; donations towards the cost of materials will be welcome.

Shepherd huts are currently all over the home and lifestyle magazines. Celebrities are snapping them up and fitting them out with today’s high-end luxuries. But originally, these shelters would have provided the most basic living conditions for agricultural workers. And the Shaftesbury area was full of them.
A forthcoming talk at Shaftesbury Town Hall will explain how our hilltop town was once at the centre of British shepherd hut production. Dave Morris has devoted much time to researching and restoring these structures. And he’s authored a book on the topic. ThisIsAlfred.com’s Keri Jones asked Dave to describe a shepherd hut.
“The simplest description is a small shed with a wheel on each corner and a curved tin roof. That sums it up in the briefest form, if people have seen one in a garden or at a country show,” Dave explained.

The huts were used as a base for agricultural workers and Dave says that they could be considered the English, lowland version of the Scottish bothy – a refuge for mountain farm labourers. “In the very far north of England and Scotland, you are less likely to come across a traditional shepherd hut. That’s because of the terrain. People would build a more permanent bothy,” said Dave. “But down towards the south of England you see the more mobile shepherds’ living quarters and it’s interesting to see that the style changed with the region and the need.”
Dave grew up in a South Somerset farming community and he remembers seeing shepherd huts from an early age. “I was aware of them. They were fun things. There weren’t so many in Somerset because of the farming landscape and the way that animals were attended to but they were quirky, quaint little hideaway huts on wheels that could be towed from field to field. That appealed to me as a child. It was like a den on wheels,” smiled Dave.
“And then, as I got a bit older, I became fascinated by them. I realised that they were dying out. In the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s they became almost extinct. They were abandoned in corners of fields as farming changed. Pre-1970 farming almost resembled Victorian-era methods. Then by the 1980s, farming was becoming more intensive and the shepherd huts were abandoned and left to rot. Suddenly there were fewer of them around. That piqued my interest.”
Shepherd huts were not so prevalent in Dave’s home county. “Somerset has slightly different agriculture and a different landscape. It doesn’t have shepherds in such high numbers as Dorset, Wiltshire and Hampshire. Terrain, as well as farming methods, affects whether you would have a hut on your farm. I’m still aware of the few places that had them around our area but nowhere near as many as you would have had around Shaftesbury,” said Dave.
Our area of the Blackmore Vale and Cranborne Chase would have been filled with shepherd huts. “Absolutely. It’s centre of the target,” said Dave. “Anywhere from Sherborne, through the rest of Dorset into Hampshire and Wiltshire is one of the key areas where you would have been likely to see a shepherd hut being used in the 1700s,1800s and early 1900s.”
Our area’s most famous author, Thomas Hardy, featured one of the structures in his writings. “There’s an immediate association in ‘Far From The Madding Crowd’ with the character Gabriel Oak and the shepherd hut. It’s not there by accident. This is stuff that Thomas Hardy would have been very familiar with,” Dave explained.
One of Britain’s most prolific shepherd hut builders was based in our hilltop town. “The Farris Company, who made shepherd huts, was actually based in Shaftesbury. Farris probably was one of the biggest mainstream shepherd hut manufacturers through the 1800s. They were two brothers. They started in Combe Bissett near Salisbury. They set up their own respective companies and John Farris came to Shaftesbury. They made hundreds. They were probably one of the last companies to make them. Farris would be making them, or repairing the huts, until the late 1950s and early 1960s. They were certainly well-known and well-respected agricultural engineers. I don’t know how many people were employed,” said Dave.
What’s the earliest reference to a shepherd hut that Dave has uncovered during his research? “The first written record is in the late 1500s in a manuscript, a book on animal husbandry. There’s the classic line, ‘the shepherd hut is a cabin going up on a wheel’. I found several image references from before then. The earliest is from 1363. Shepherd huts go back much further than the Victorian era – the time that people would initially associate them with.”
Some people are passionate about sheds. There’s even been TV programmes about that obsession. Does Dave believe that the addition of wheels puts the shepherd hut a cut above sheds?
“It certainly helps them stand out from any other shed. They can be moved from field to field, or from farm to farm. That’s just their practical working need. But through that, they start picking up their own history, because they travel. It is interesting when you speak to people who have one. You learn the route it has been on. It’s been to farm sales, it’s moved farms, it’s moved villages. It has seen different landowners. Often on the inside of the original shepherd hut there are scribblings and jottings left by the shepherds who have used it in the past. You might see lamb tallies – the number of lambs born in a particular year, or doodles about the weather. The whole object starts to have its own history which makes them a little more fascinating than any other particular type of shed,” enthused Dave.
Shepherd huts have become very trendy recently. David Cameron famously spent £25,000 on a luxury model for his Cotswold garden. He already has one outside his Cornish holiday home. Dave says he’s happy that shepherd huts are popular again.
“It pleases me that people are enjoying and using their huts in many ways. There seems to be no end to the innovative ideas that people are coming up with. That hasn’t changed in nearly 100 years. It doesn’t matter how you are using your hut, but there should be a nod of respect to how these were used back in the day when they were really tough living spaces. The shepherds would have been on the knife-edge of success or failure in any given year. That’s really difficult living. Provided we don’t lose track of that, it shouldn’t stop us enjoying our huts, however we use them.”
So is the audience for Dave’s talks primarily male? There is that cliché that men are obsessed with sheds and shepherd huts are similar. “You’re talking to a shed man here, definitely,” Dave laughed. “It is right across the board. Men, women, children, everybody loves shepherds’ huts. There’s something about them. It’s something that fascinates, attracts or is quaint, interesting or has a historical or useful link. There are so many interests.”
Dave Morris’s talk, delivered as The Shaftesbury & District Historical Society’s Teulon Porter Memorial Lecture, is called ‘The History Of The Shepherd’s Hut’. It takes place at 7.30pm on Tuesday, 2nd October at Shaftesbury Town Hall. Historical Society members can enter without charge. If you’re not a member, you can pay £5 on the door.

Copyright 2018 Keri Jones

There are mice in Gold Hill Museum. And the Museum Trustees would like your children or grandchildren to try and track them down!
“There are only six of them. And they have little Dorset buttons on them. That’s what makes them special,” said Elaine Barratt.
The museum’s team of volunteers have decorated toy mice with the type of buttons that dozens of Shaftesbury workers would have made in the 17th and 18th centuries. Elaine says the soft toys have been hidden all over the museum, to create a fun activity for younger visitors.

“We have a really good quiz to enhance the experience for 7- to 12-year-olds who come to the museum but we didn’t have anything for younger children, so one of our stewards, Lyn Pagano, came up with the idea to make these little mice and dot them around the museum in different display cases. Then young children, even toddlers, can go around and find them. All of the six are different designs and the children will be given a sheet with a photo of each, that they can tick off when they find them.”

While the youngsters search for the mice, adults can learn about button making, which was once a significant Shaftesbury industry. “A gentleman called Abraham Case started making them in the 1620s, we believe. It became a huge industry for Shaftesbury over 250 years until the Industrial Revolution and the machine completely killed the industry. It was a cottage industry employing a lot of women, children and probably men. They earned their living making Dorset buttons,” said Elaine.

The buttons are very different from the fasteners we know today. “Originally, there were a lot of sheep locally and they used a sheep’s horn and linen. Then the buttons developed into metal rings, which were sewn and blanket stitched around spokes with a little cross stitch in the middle. That secured them. They would have a shank put on them. The modern equivalent is much more decorative because those who make them have a lot more time. There’s a lovely display of them in Gold Hill Museum including the original ones. Some of them are so tiny they must have been made by children,” Elaine said.
The museum mice are wearing handmade Dorset buttons. “I made them,” said Elaine. “I couldn’t get rings small enough so I used florist wire around a pencil to form the rings.”

Gold Hill Museum is open every day between 10.30am to 4.30pm until Wednesday, 31st October. Admission is free but donations to help fund the maintenance of the historic building are gratefully received.

Copyright 2018 Keri Jones

An unexpected result of the Saturday 14 July session at Gold Hill Museum with Ciorstaidh Trevarthen, Finds Liaison Officer for Dorset and Somerset (above), was the significant re-dating of what was already thought to be the Museum’s oldest artefact. A hand-axe, currently labelled as a 200,000 year old Acheulean specimen, appears to be considerably older, with a date range of 500,000 to 250,000 BCE. Ciorstaidh advised that it was a particularly good example, finely made by a species of human predating Homo sapiens. It was found on Castle Hill, Shaftesbury, and may have belonged to one of the earliest Shastonians.

The morning linked in with the Museum’s Found Underground exhibition, where visitors are able to handle and identify mystery objects. With her wealth of knowledge and experience, Ciorstaidh was able to shed light on garden finds brought in by members of the public including pottery, metal and glass objects, and a ring which was definitely not from a Christmas cracker! She also identified 15th century buckles and a knife end, a medieval thimble and a small piece of multi-coloured Roman glass.

Former Lord Mayor of London Sir John Stuttard (above) has, with the assistance of Gold Hill Museum Librarian and Archivist Ray Simpson, written a biography of prominent early nineteenth century Shastonian John Rutter. Originally from Bristol, Rutter set up a printing and publishing business in The Commons, Shaftesbury, producing local historical and topographical guides. As a Quaker and a Whig sympathiser, Rutter was viewed with some suspicion by the Grosvenor connection which dominated local politics. In an age with a very limited male electorate and no secret ballot, it was easy for powerful landowners like the Grosvenors to dictate the outcome of Council and Parliamentary elections. Not to vote for a Grosvenor candidate was to risk eviction. Shaftesbury, with two MPs before 1832, was a typical pocket borough. In opposing Grosvenor influence and advocating Reform, John Rutter encountered a great deal of hostility and was nicknamed the “Turbulent Quaker.”  As part of Shaftesbury Civic Society’s Civic Day on Thursday 21 June at 3.30p.m. in the Garden Room, Sir John Stuttard will be keynote speaker at a free EqualiTeas event.

Listen to Keri Jones’s podcast of his interview with Sir John by clicking here