All you never knew you wanted to know about Dorset

Those who wonder about the origins of Dorset Christmas carols, aspects of the county’s church architecture, the practice of wife selling, beheading posture, bewitched farm animals or giant hailstones in Sherborne in the nineteenth century will doubtless be all too aware of Notes & Queries for Somerset and Dorset. For such subjects – and myriad others Read More…

Picture perfect – Weymouth’s camera man

A dozen or so cardboard boxes, many without lids, sit on shelves at Dorset History Centre waiting to surrender their secrets. They contain some 7000 packets of negatives that effectively constitute the last 30 years of photographer Graham Herbert’s working career in and around Weymouth – an important visual record of everyday life from a Read More…

Conserving the past for the future

If history is all about the evidence, then how its sources are recorded and stored is of manifest importance. So the task of conserving and protecting the historical record for posterity is a vital part of the work undertaken at Dorset History Centre, the county’s archives service and local studies library. As a result of Read More…

Renovating Corfe Castle – what might have been

It is one of Dorset’s most familiar beauty spots, instant visual shorthand for the Isle of Purbeck. It has been photographed, painted and sketched from every conceivable angle – it even appears on the opening credits of the Disney film, Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Last year a computer animation student digitally restored Corfe Castle, but had Read More…