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Honour for Shaftesbury Museums Volunteer

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At the AGM of the Dorset Museums Association held on 24 November Chris Stupples of Shaftesbury was honoured as one of the Dorset Museums Volunteers of the Year. Chris was nominated by both Shaftesbury Abbey and Gold Hill Museums, and received his award at the newly-opened Steve Etches Collection, a remarkable display of marine fossils at Kimmeridge. Chris has been a prime contributor to Gold Hill Museum’s Heritage Lottery Funded Shaftesbury and the Great War Community Project. From 22 War Memorials in the Shaftesbury area he has researched the backgrounds of 377 named individuals, 111 of whom have no known grave – 7 still remain elusive, perhaps because of discrepancies in military records. Claire Ryley (left) and Ann Symons gave a well-received presentation to their Dorset Museums colleagues on the growth of the volunteer-driven Project, which currently involves 190 local people and plans to make its findings generally accessible through the launch of a website in the spring of 2017.

A Commemoration in Words, Music and Images of the Great War

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A moving commemorative event organised on Saturday 12 November by volunteers of the Gold Hill Museum Shaftesbury and the Great War Community Project attracted over 130 people to St James Church. Against a background of images recorded during the Heritage Lottery Funded Project, relatives of World War One participants, Shaftesbury School students, and the Community Choir contributed readings and choral items, with music played by Heather Blake. Researcher Chris Stupples, at the lectern above, presented a roll of honour, held aloft by Project leaders Ann Symons and Claire Ryley, listing the histories of every individual on the St James War Memorial. The two minute silence was accompanied by the Last Post and Reveille played by Sharon Hawkes, and followed by afternoon tea.  A retiring collection raised £380 to be shared between St James Church Refurbishment Fund and The Royal British Legion Poppy Appeal.

Smith and Jones Design The Cabinet of Curiosities

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Chris Jones of Smith and Jones Design Consultants popped into Gold Hill Museum to position the graphic panels for the North Dorset Museums’ Cabinet of Curiosities publicity campaign at half-term. Pride of place on the front page of the campaign leaflet goes to Gold Hill Museum’s medieval carved alabaster panel showing the entombment of St Catherine – or is it Edward the Martyr? This art treasure was discovered in the 1920’s concealed in the wall of a house in Shaftesbury High Street. St Edward features in Shaftesbury Abbey’s display, while Blandford Museum, Sturminster Newton Museum and Sturminster Newton Mill also contribute to the Cabinet of Curiosities. As the leaflet proclaims: visit them all! Further details at www.visit-dorset.com

Walter Bagehot – A Voice of Sanity

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On Tuesday 01 November at 2.30p.m. in the Garden Room at Gold Hill Museum, Parliamentary and constitutional consultant Barry Winetrobe will talk about Langport’s most famous son Walter Bagehot. One of the early editors of The Economist, Bagehot stressed the importance of the central bank as a bank of last resort in the event of a financial crisis, but is probably better known for his classic political commentary on The English Constitution. Though written in the 1860s and 70s, Bagehot’s works contain insights no less relevant today. As Chair of the Bagehot Memorial Fund, Barry Winetrobe has been instrumental in reviving interest in Bagehot, who had an asteroid named after him before being rediscovered by his home town at the heart of the Somerset Levels. This lecture is free to members of The Shaftesbury & District Historical Society, while non-members may pay £3 at the door. Further details via 01747 852157 or enquiries@goldhillmuseum.org.uk

Bumper Audience for “The Beckfords at Fonthill”

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Ninety-plus Shaftesbury & District Historical Society members and guests crammed into the Town Hall on Tuesday evening 04 October to hear Professor Caroline Dakers give an engaging and informative Teulon Porter Memorial Lecture. The advertised title was The Beckfords at Fonthill  but in fact Professor Dakers ranged over the builders and owners of six mansions in the Fonthill area, from the late sixteenth to the twenty-first centuries. Not all were as eccentric or ambitious as William Beckford, ruined by a collapse in the price of sugar, but many were movers and shakers, and at least two were beheaded. John Bradshaw, who presided over the trial of Charles I in a bullet-proof hat, lost his head posthumously. The question was posed as to why such a small area of Wiltshire should attract so many repeated displays of built wealth. Professor Dakers plans to answer many other questions about Fonthill in a book to be published within a year or so.

Venue for The Beckfords at Fonthill

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The subject of the 2016 Teulon Porter Lecture for The Shaftesbury & District Historical Society, given by Professor Caroline Dakers, is “The Beckfords at Fonthill.” The venue is Shaftesbury Town Hall (above), at 7.30p.m. on Tuesday 04 October. This event is free to S & DHS members, while non-members may pay £5 at the door. (Annual membership is available on the night and costs £15 for an individual, £25 for a family, and £3 for a student.) Please use the entrance at the left-hand side of the building, as you look at it from the High Street. Free parking is available after 6p.m. in the car park accessible from Bleke or Bell Streets, adjacent to Budgens supermarket. This is within 5 minutes’ walk and just around the corner from the Town Hall.

Reminisce about Plants and Gardening Tuesday 30 August 2.30p.m.

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The next Shaftesbury and the Great War Community Project Reminiscence Afternoon takes place at Shaftesbury Library on Tuesday 30 August from 2.30 to 3.30p.m., when the theme will be Plants and Gardening. This is an opportunity to hear about the research being carried out by project volunteers and to share family stories over tea and cake.

Anyone interested in joining the Ancestry Afternoon at Shaftesbury Library on Friday 26 August from 1.30 to 3.00p.m. should contact Ann Symons or Claire Ryley via education@goldhillmuseum.org.uk or 01747 852157.

The echinops / globe thistle was photographed in Gold Hill Museum garden on 04 August 2016.

The Beckfords at Fonthill

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The Shaftesbury & District Historical Society’s season of winter lectures begins in the Town Hall at 7.30p.m. on Tuesday 04 October with the Teulon Porter Memorial Lecture given by Caroline Dakers, Professor of Cultural History at London’s University of the Arts. Professor Dakers has published a number of works on nineteenth and early twentieth century British figures and movements in the arts, including the recent Forever England: The Countryside at War 1914-18. Her subject on 04 October will be The Beckfords at Fonthill.

Between 1796 and 1813 the most celebrated of the Beckfords, the eccentric William, employed the architect James Wyatt and 500 labourers to build a huge Gothic Revival mansion. The 90 metre tall tower of Fonthill Abbey collapsed three times, the last time in 1825 after Beckford’s straitened finances had forced him to sell. Now only a gatehouse and a small tower from the north wing remain.

This lecture on an intriguing aspect of local history is free to S & DHS members while non-members may pay £5 at the door.

A Cabinet of Curiosities Briefly Opened

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On 02 August professional photographer Paul McCabe of Southampton Photographic called at Gold Hill Museum to take publicity shots of people enjoying the Museum. His mission was also to photograph an object which will, for promotional purposes, form part of a “Cabinet of Curiosities” held by several North Dorset Museums. Gold Hill’s curiosity is exactly that: a richly carved alabaster panel found hidden behind the fireplace of a house in Shaftesbury High Street in the early 1920’s. It was probably created by the prestigious Nottingham School of alabaster carvers in the fifteenth century as an altar piece for Shaftesbury Abbey. Opinions differ as to who is shown being entombed. Is it St Catherine on Mount Sinai? Or is St Edward the Martyr, whose remains were buried at the Abbey? The panel, still showing traces of its original colours, was handled with great care and is now securely back in its display cases.

Memorial to the Fallen

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According to Australian historians Robin Prior and Trevor Wilson the five months of the Battle of the Somme, starting 01 July 1916, claimed 432,000 British casualties, of whom probably 150,000 were killed. Volunteer researcher Chris Stupples has added to the current HLF Shaftesbury Remembers the Great War Exhibition the names of 36 men from war memorials in Shaftesbury and the surrounding villages who were killed on the Somme. Sixteen have no known grave and appear among the 72,000 names on the massive Lutyens-designed Memorial to the Missing at Thiepval. One of these, Lance-Corporal Edwin George (Ted) Mullins, a cab driver from Shaftesbury, volunteered in 1915 and would have arrived on the Somme in early September 1916 with the 5th Battalion of the Dorset Regiment, which had seen service at Gallipoli and Egypt. On 26 September, the date given for Ted’s death, the Dorsets were involved in fierce fighting for Mouquet (Mucky) Farm, and Stuff and Zollern Redoubts. All were on the Thiepval Ridge, where there had been a chateau and a village, long since pounded to rubble, and where the Lutyens monument was later inaugurated in 1932.

The next Ancestry Afternoon is at Shaftesbury Library on Friday 29 July from 1.30 to 3.00p.m. Details from Claire Ryley and Ann Symons via education@goldhillmuseum.org.uk or phone 01747 852157.