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.

Sand Mandala Attracts Record Number of Visitors

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During the penultimate day of their residency at Gold Hill Museum, which coincided with the Sunday of Gold Hill Fair, the Tibetan monks of Tashi Lhunpo Monastery attracted a record number of visitors. 617 adults and 84 children came to view the finishing touches being put to the Mandala, an intricate representation of a palace with gardens and four gates aligned to the cardinal points of the compass. The design was created from memory using hollow pipes to vibrate grains of brightly coloured powdered marble into place. On the final morning to the accompaniment of chanted prayers and horn playing the Mandala was blessed and then swept up with some of the particles being deposited in the Museum Garden.

A Remarkable Work of Art Takes Shape in the Garden Room

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From Monday 27 June Tibetan monks from the Tashi Lhunpo Monastery will be creating a colourful Sand Mandala in the Garden Room at Gold Hill Museum. This beautiful but short-lived work of art represents a Buddha’s palace and is composed of millions of grains of coloured sand, painstakingly put into place using hollow metal funnels called Chagpurs. The monks can be seen at work during normal opening hours 10.30a.m. to 4.30p.m. and there is no charge. On Thursday at 6.30p.m. there will be a talk about the Monastery and the Sand Mandala; tickets can be collected from the Garden Room. The monks’ residency concludes on Monday 04 July with a ceremony starting at 10.30a.m. in which the completed design is ritually swept up and dispersed.

Tickets for a 7.00p.m. Monday 04 July performance by the monks of sacred music and dance in Shaftesbury Town Hall are available online at Eventbrite.com and from “Nature’s Treasures” in Shaftesbury High Street.

Meet the Team on Saturday 25 June 11a.m. – 3p.m.

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Each day of the season at Gold Hill Museum six volunteer stewards are needed to extend a warm welcome to our many visitors: on Saturday 18 June 100 adults and 12 children, followed by 100 adults and 18 children on Sunday 19 June. Our visitors, from all over the world, tend to be appreciative and many have interesting stories of their own to tell.

If you think that you could spare two hours a week, either in a regular slot or filling in as required, why not drop into Saturday’s Open Day in the Garden Room between 11.00a.m. and 3.00p.m. and meet some of our existing stewards? Over a glass of wine or a cup of tea or coffee they will be pleased to share with you the benefits of being a Gold Hill Museum steward.

 

Remembering the Great Battles of 1916

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Fourteen British ships were sunk, and over 6000 Royal Navy personnel died, in the Battle of Jutland on 31 May 1916. Two British battlecruisers blew up spectacularly with almost total loss of life. At least three local men died at Jutland: Gilbert John Maidment of Shaftesbury, Cecil Herbert Riggs of Berwick St John, and Harold Percival Hoskins of Enmore Green. Their details are now included in the Shaftesbury Remembers the Great War exhibition at Gold Hill Museum, thanks to the researches of HLF Community Project volunteer Chris Stupples.

The first three hours of the Battle of the Somme on 01 July 1916 claimed 50,000 British casualties, of whom 19,000 were killed. This will be the focus of the next Reminiscence Afternoon at Shaftesbury Library on Tuesday 28 June 2.30 – 3.30p.m. Another of the highly popular Ancestry Afternoons will take place at Shaftesbury Library on Friday 24 June 1.30 – 3.00p.m. For details of these Community Project events please email Ann Symons and Claire Ryley at education@goldhillmuseum.org.uk or phone Gold Hill Museum on 01747 852157.