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| DORSET MEMORIES.
Dorset is renowned for its great literatury works and its beautifull landscape. Most folks are aware of names like Thomas Hardy and Enid Blyton. Hardy for his romantic tales of the Wessex landscape and Blyton for her finely crafted childrens stories.There have of course been others who were influenced by the Dorset landscape as a source for thier writings or their artistic abilities.
These range from Robert Louis Stevenson,William Barnes,T.E Lawrence to Augustus John the artist who roamed the heaths drawing and painting the Gypsies who frequented these landscapes.
There are are many areas of local life that have changed or long gone since those romantic days. At one time the heaths of Canford and Bourne were rich with Gypsies with their caravan homes scattered throughout the poole and bournemouth terrains.
Pehaps it was these that gave local man William Knott the idea for his caravan empire Bluebird Caravans, which was to be known worldwide.William Knott was originally selling shoe laces on the streets of Upper Parkstone.
Each year there would be Johnny onion men sporting their distinctive berrys, who came to poole from France with their bikes straddled with strings of onions dangling.
Poole had its large fairground each autumn which attracted many fairs from all over England and held boxing booths, the great wall of death,the ferris wheel,bumper cars and swishback rides and a vast number of darts,coconuts shies and attractions for local kids.
There was the new speedway track of Poole Pirates and the greyhound track which is still extremelly popular though in those early days there was Pooles own local champion speedway rider Brian Crutcher.Local fairground boxer Freddie Mills was to gain notoriety in boxing circles and Londons gangster world.
In the early sixties a local girl from Poole Ann Sidney won the glamourous Miss World Contest and with it the fame and prestige of celebrity.
The son of a Poole GP Tony Blackburn played in a local pop band, then became a DJ on the new pirate radio stations off the coast of England and he was soon to become a household name with BBC radio and TV with his familiar fast talking and his own brand of corny humour.
WARBLERS SONG
kaiser bill rode through kinson estate to visit guests family he couldn't wait he fell off carriage into river stour till village folks helped him out that fateful hour
twas afore the world war number one when Germany fought in France we Brits fought the Hun millions died it wasn't fun
then the canford house was rich in style they shot the deer all the while folks would gather on the kinson village green it was a pleasant country scene
kinson parish spread to Poole took in wallisdown and waterloo the sun was high and grass it grew long when zunners ran and fields were rich with warblers song.
At Wareham quay during one severe cold winter the river froze over and kids skated on the ice.In the summer months micky the monkey was a favourite attraction there in his cage,raising thousands of pounds each year for the national lifeboat institute. At lulworths Durdle Door large gatherings of youths often hundreds, from all over Dorset would congragate for folk festivals barbecues on the beach long before such events were recognised by the media. Driftwood was used for huge bonfires and live music was played by folkniks , like the popular Peter Franklin, there was a great atmosphere with no sign of trouble,many slept on the beach overnight. Children would slide down the grass slopes leading up to corfe castle on pieces of cardboard to the edge of the main road, somthing impossible to imagine in todays world of heavy traffic and safety conciousness. CHILDREN OF POOLE.
In the eighteen hundreds children were seen as the cheapest form of labour. This was no more so than in Poole compared to all of the market towns and farm cottages of the county of Dorset.
For over a century Poole had been at the forefront of the seafaring trade to Newfoundland. Then all this was to change as a direct result of the Neapolitan Wars with the collapse of this Newfoundland trade. In the early 1800s the population of Poole was 6,500 persons all packed into just 160 acres of land space with many families sharing one household and one outside privy. At that time the town had been built on the trade to Newfoundland and therefore the dock and quay had been the central point for a vibrant community. For the trade had provided the town with prosperity for the traders and business gentry who had now lost their privileged positions. Local unemployment during these years was extremely high with in excess of 2,500 men without a form of income. It was during these years that the new Poor law was brought into effect in 1824. There were many children in the Workhouse and kept in line by Beadles, many were taken on board ships and worked for naught but their lodging, food and clothing.
Things only improved when the new Victorians of the mid 1880s built the infrastructures of the modern potteries, brickyards and services. Using the local resources such as sand gravel clay etc as their means of income’. So it was that our local forefathers were the entrepreneurs who set the guidelines for the modern world of transport and commerce with roads, trains and buildings built out of the Dorset landscape.
POOLE AND THE PIRATE HARRY PAYE
By the beginning of the 15th century Poole was becoming a popular port of embarkation for pilgrims, on their way to the shrine of St. James at Santiago. There was a great deal of aggravation between England, France and Spain with raids on coastal towns a permanent hazard. The man who led the English reprisals was one Harry Paye. Part privateer, part pirate Harry led raids from Normandy right through to the Bay of Biscay and Finisteerre.
So angry were the Spanish and French that they sent a large fleet to attack Poole, which was un-fortified. After a fierce battle, the gallant men of Poole drove back the raiders using thick doors as shields. However, In spite of this valiant defence the church and town cellars were burnt.
As well as sacking the town, the raiders were looking for Harry Paye who was long gone. They did however find his unfortunate brother whom they killed before setting fire to the town and leaving. Two years later as revenge, Harry Paye captured 120 French vessels laden with iron, salt and lead and brought them triumphantly back as a gift for the valiant men of Poole.
POOLE OLD TOWN http://www.youtube.com/user/boroughofpoole#p/f/4/z0WJt7nBCOM
Watch a film about T.E Lawrence/ movie clip.
link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NxizMdpn08&feature=related
  
The Gateway to the Isle of Purbeck.
In Roman times the town was probably the site of a farm and or trading post. It is a place of kings. Wareham grew up as a port during the early Saxon times and had a flourishing cross channel trade by the 9th Century. The Danes attacked and ravished the town in 876, but were trapped by King Alfred and his army. Most of the Danes perished with their ships off Swanage whilst attempting to escape. King Alfred had the town fortified as part of his defence system and a mint was established there at St Johns hill.
After the Norman invasion trade to the town increased to Normandy and back. A castle was constructed in the south west corner of the town near to the River Fromes bank and this attracted some fighting in the wars of Stephen and Matilda in the early 12th Century. Early records show that Wareham provided three ships for the fleet assembled for the siege of Calais, whilst King Alfred who burnt the cakes was also thought to have founded the Navy at Ridge.
The empress Matilda is said to have captured the town only to have it taken from her by Stephen in 1142.The highest point of the west walls is called Bloody Bank where it is said Peter of Pomfret was hanged in 1213. He was stupid enough to declare himself a prophet and even more stupid to prophesy publicly that King Johns reign would end on 23rd May 1213. It didn’t and to discourage prophets in general and Peter in particular. John had him dragged from Corfe to Wareham and hanged.
Years later in 1685 Judge Jeffrey’s caused Captain Tyler, and Mr Holman to be hanged on Bloody Bank for taking part in the Duke of Monmouth’s rebellion. Afterwards their quarters were placed on the bridge and their heads nailed to a tower in the town. Wareham suffered a decline as a port in the 15th Century onwards. During the Civil War 1642/46 however both parties made vigorous attempts to control the town, with the Parliamentarians coming out on top. In 1762 a terrible fire destroyed much of the town . In 1847 the railway arrived outside the north walls. THE OLD GRANARY AT WAREHAM QUAY.
Wareham Quay must be one of the most photographed spots in Dorset, which means that the Old Granary, standing next to the river at the Quay’s south-eastern corner, is a familiar sight. In recent years it has been a modestly successful restaurant and bed & breakfast establishment but now it has been given a complete new lease of life as what its latest owners, Hall & Woodhouse, call a gastro-pub. The story goes back to the Great Fire of Wareham in 1762, which destroyed all the buildings on the Quay. What is now the Old Granary was re-built soon after and had various owners, notably Oakley Bros, grain merchants of Poole, for most of the second half of the 19th century.
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Tales of Dorset Tyneham the Lost Village of Dorset
The inhabitants of this tiny and remote Dorset village were given just days to pack their belongings and leave in the run-up to Christmas 1943. Their village-home and a swathe of the estate to which it belonged had been requisitioned as a military training area to prepare troops for D-day and the Battle of Normandy that followed. As they left, the displaced families are reported to have pinned a note to the Church door entreating those who came after to look after their village.
“Please treat the Church and houses with care. We have given up our homes, where many of us have lived for generations, to help win the war and keep men free. We shall return one day and thank you for treating the village kindly.”
Sadly for them, they were wrong. They were never to return as in 1948 the village and some 2800 hectares of land were compulsorily purchased and what was originally a temporary militarization of the area became permanent. It is still used for gunnery and other training today. The result is one of the strangest ironies in Dorset. The village itself is derelict, but the Church which the Ministry of Defence was required to maintain as part of the agreement to seize the land, is one of the best-kept you will find. While other Parishes must juggle the needs of dwindling income and rising costs of maintenance, St Mary’s Church Tyneham has an immaculate churchyard and building to match.
Today the layout of the village is as it was in December 1943, a time before motorcars had had their overriding impact on house and village design, so that the houses and other buildings are scattered here and there, often with no apparent connection to other buildings in the village. Or perhaps it is because the village is now so rich with trees and other greenery that the remains of the settlement and nature seem to mingle in complete harmony.
Nestled in its valley so close to the sea, Tyneham is simply a beautiful setting. But it would be nice to think that if there is any sense in which Tyneham has ghosts, they are those of a small, close-knit, rural, Dorset community of the 1940s, where everyone knew everyone else, where doors were never locked and children played happily in the lanes and the fields.
Today’s school-age children are also fascinated by the fully-restored schoolhouse, the only building in the village other than the Church to be complete with doors, windows and a roof. The school also has all the other things you would expect of a rural place of education of the day: rows of desks with inkwells; functional but elegantly curved metal coat pegs with the name of each pupil; bare wooden floors; a blackboard; and a piano. It is hard to enter the school and not see in your mind’s eye the children of the village sitting at their desks repeating their times tables or working from the teaching aids of the day still displayed around the single classroom.
Such is the beauty and fascination of Tyneham that you can visit just to walk through it and experience the village itself. Alternatively you can use it as a launch pad to explore the beautiful range walks through land that has been untouched by modern agriculture and is rich with wildlife. Or you can stroll from Tyneham the short distance down to the sea and Worbarrow Bay. Entry to Tyneham is free, but you are asked to pay £2 for parking, but you can stay all day, as long as you are away before the wardens lock the gates (times are clearly displayed).
THE MURDER OF EDWARD THE BOY-KING.
The Church, made strong in the West by Aldhelm and Alfred and Dunstan, was to hold men's imaginations for six centuries more, under the impulse of such scenes as were inspired by the murder of Edward. Follow the path of the martyr from Corfe to Shaftesbury. The story of the murder is simple and well known.
" The boy-king had reigned three years and eight months, when, having hunted in the woods round Wareham, (" now only a few bushes," says the chronicler, writing perhaps in the twelfth century), he remembered that his younger brother Ethelred lay at Corfe a few miles away. (" where now" and by implication not then "a large castle has been built."). He loved Ethelred with a pure and sincere heart. He dismissed his attendants, and rode to Corfe alone, fearing no one, since not even in the least thing was he aware that he had offended any man. Word of his approach was brought to Elfrida, his step-mother, who, " full of wicked plans and guile," rejoiced at the opportunity of obtaining her desire, and hastened to meet him and offer him hospitality. He said he had but come to see his brother, whereupon she invited him to refresh himself with drink. As the cup touched his lips, one of her servants, " bolder in spirit and more vile in crime " than others, stabbed him from behind.
He fell dead, " changing his earthly kingdom for a heavenly one, his transitory crown of a day for the unfading diadem of eternal happiness." The body was hurriedly carried for concealment to a cottage. ( local tradition says it was thrown into a well ) The account here given is freely adapted, from the St. John's College, Oxford, MS. life in monkish Latin, first printed by the present Dean of Winchester in 1903.
EILEEN SOPER
click here The Works of Eileen Soper
KINSON AND THE POTTERIES The reddish clays deposited around the north and east of Poole Harbour are not of the best quality but are suitable for the manufacture of bricks and pottery. In 1830 one third of the pottery in England was made from Poole clay. This gave employment to many from Elizabethan times onwards and over the years many small brick kilns and pottery works, especially in the Ashley and Alder areas, were established, worked for a time and then abandoned. There were several small family brick making concerns. The daughter of one such remembered that her father went out of business because he refused to make the inferior it was necessary to produce to keep up with the demand.
Each brick batch of bricks was tested by the method of dropping several and if they broke or chipped the lot were suspect and put aside for building outhouses or boundary walls. She recalls that the men of the family carried out a perpetual shift system as the kilns had to be tended day and night. Since all domestic cookery was by kitchen range, which meant a very hot kitchen in summer, it was customary for the wife’s to have an open-air brick range, sometimes communal, for fine weather cooking and washing. As the house of to-day requires a garage to shelter its car, so the houses of that time
Required an adjoining field to supply summer food and winter hay for their horsepower, the pony and cart. Another necessity was the family pig and most households kept a "pig in". Not an ounce of the animal was wasted and any spare fat was rubbed into the brick makers' mates'(wife’s and children’s) hands. A few potteries grew and remained as large concerns, but two only really relate to Kinson. The earliest brick works in the area was at foxholes in Newtown around 1755 the first pit was established in the area in 1852 and the Bourne valley potteries were established a year later in 1853. There was a great demand for bricks in those days for the building of the massive viaducts at Branksome along with new roads and bridges for the new southern railways. Nearby Bournemouth was also rapidly expanding and many houses and trades people were in high demand hence the growth of such heavy labour industries in the area. Clay pits, brickyards and quarries were springing up everyone, in an area so rich in sand, lime, gravel, stone and peat. Initially the migration workforce for these new industries were the navvy gangs who arrived in the area and were quickly identified with their familiar thick coats and corduroy trousers tied with thongs beneath the knees ,along with their cloth caps slanting over one ear. These men were too soon to integrate and marry into the local community. And at the same time many moved to live in the developing Newtown and up on hill area of parkstone. built to accommodate them with their new families. There were now new craftsmen aside from the former agricultural workers and farm laborers.These included brickmakers, potters...etc with new skills who worked n developed the new clay works, brickyards and potteries. Many of these new industries were self financed and developed by local families like Ray Wills great grandmother Elizabeth (Fancy) Rogers who financed and developed the family brickyards the Omnium Brick Company and the Alderney Brickworks which her sons managed from her humble beginning with one pig!! Many local families had their own smallholding farm in those days. KINSON POTTERIES Situated in the south-west corner of the parish towards Poole had 27 acres of clay of three different qualities Some beds being as much as 40 feet thick although all were under a great depth of sand. The pottery works here were started early last century but received a fillip with the increase in building around Poole and Bournemouth. In 1854 the Kinson clay fields and Fired pottery Company was established with a capital of £40,000. The money was raised by a business group from 'up country' and the potteries leased locally. By the 1860s the works had twelve kilns, a boiler, and engine house, drying shed, stables and offices. Bricks, tiles, chimney pots and drain drain pipes were made. At about this time oil had been found in Cananda and an oilfield established at Collingwood. Good fire-bricks were required for the processing and the potteries at Kinson manufactured refractory chimney flue bricks which suited the purpose. Orders were duly dispatched. Their progress was recently traced and went thus: - By horse and cart from the potteries to Poole Quay, by barge to London or Southampton, across the Atlantic to Quebec or Montreal, by raft or barge up the St.Lawrence river to York (present day Toronto), by railway to Collingwood harbour, by raft along the southern shores to Nottawasaga Bay to the beach nearest the site and by hand the rest of the way. Cheaper oil was found elsewhere and production at Collingwood ceased in 1861. Recently some of the bricks, each bearing the words KINSON, POOLE, were found in a field there .One was returned to England in 1969 and presented to the potteries. By 1884 the fortunes of the concern had declined when William Carter bought the Potteries. William was the son of Jesse Carter, virtual founder of the Poole Potteries, and was to be the father of Herbert Carter, well known in Poole. The new owner of the property reorganised, cut down here and rebuilt there, and relying on judgement and experience gained in small brickworks he already owned, he began to make a success of the business. Stoneware, drainpipes and various terra cotta goods were made. He adopted steam road haulage when it was first introduced to the advantage of the firm but to the decrement of the Corporation’s roads. Early calls to clients were by penny farthing and later ones by one of the first cars in the district. A German expert was employed to build a special kiln that was required. William carter moved into the hermitage, then a cottage overlooking the potteries and part of the property. By the beginning of the century his son Herbert was working at the pottery. According to Herbert Carter ,whose book 'I call to Mind' has been a valuable reference for this paragraph, the business was none too efficient with the best having to be made of an old engine with another similar one Added in 1905. Inside the sheds were lit by bottle-lamps, these being 'portable' lamps of cast iron which burnt poor paraffin. It was decided that the deep layer of sand, hitherto unused, should be utilised in the making of the new continental sand and lime bricks. This venture was not a great success and money had to be invested in new machinery from the Continent. At this point the power was changed from steam to anthracite (gas) in an endeavour to save fuel. There was gradual success until a setback in the form of an explosion which caused great damage, though no loss of life, and disrupted work for one year the firm gradually flourished in spite of competition from larger concerns; Herbert carter succeeded his father and became Chairman of Directors in 1908. By 1970 the potteries had been closed and demolished.
ELLIOT'S POTTERIES Elliot's potteries started at Bear Cross.Mr.E.A.Eliiot, who farmed extensively in the area, discovered good brick clay when a well was sunk on his farm at Cudnell. Brickworks were started here where the farm-land met the crossroads, and hand-made bricks were made from around 1880 to 1900.
When the clay at Bear cross ran out the brickworks was moved to the rise of land at West Howe, in Poole Lane. The clay here was a much better quality Ball Clay. Later, in 1912, drain pipes, terra cotta ware and roofing tiles were manufactured in addition to bricks. In 1922, Mr.N.T.Elliot entered the firm and by 1927 the manufacture of bricks for domestic fireplaces was started and these together with stoneware drain pipes, were made until the potteries closed in 1966. Bournemouth Corporation and Max Factor's (local light industry) bought the land.
To the east of Elliot's stood Painter and Ropers 'Kinson Steam Brickworks', later owned by Burdens. This was a smaller concern where hand-made bricks were manufactured. (Taken from Old Kinson by S.J.Lands)
POOLE POTTERIES:
In 1873, a Builder's Merchant and Ironmonger going by the name of Jesse Carter bought a near derelict pottery in the town of Poole, Dorset. The pottery remains in the same location today. Jesse had already realized that there was a large deposit of clay just to the north of the town, and an excellent means of transporting his goods out, and his fuel in, through the harbour. By the 1880's the factory was well known for its tiling products, mosaic flooring and advertising panels. A rival pottery in the same area was based at Hamworthy and known as the Patent Architectural Pottery. The Carter pottery rapidly overtook the Hamworthy factory in quality and quantity, and in 1895 the Carter family bought the competition for £2,000. The next significant occurrence was in 1901 when Jesse Carter retired. Upon his retirement he handed over control of the potteries to two of his sons, namely Charles and Owen. It would appear that Charles was the 'managerial' type and Owen was more of a 'hands-on' artist. Another name worthy of mention in the following period of twenty years or so is James Radley Young. Young was the head of the Design Department and his influence doubtless helped to put Poole Potteries where it is today. The period between 1901 and 1920 saw countless coming and goings of the Carter family involving sons, uncles, brothers and the like, and the First World War did not do much to help the situation. But the Carter Company prospered and distinctive styles were beginning to emerge.
THE STORY OF HOW DORSET AND ITS CHILDREN WERE INVOLVED IN THE NATIONAL CONKERS CAMPAIGN DURING WORLD WAR I.
CONKERS IN THE PLAYGROUNDS OF ENGLAND
At least one tradition survives am0ng the boys. Conkers were very much a British school boy activity. Virtually every British schoolboy once participated in this annual Fall ritual, concor fights with his mates.
I'm not sure just when this tradition bgan, but the term conker describing the game is first noted about 1840-50. Many traditions have built up about how to prepare and harden your conker. A hole is drilled in it and a string attached. Then the conker fights can begin.
With the modern popularity of computer games, however, conkers appears to have declined in popularity. It has not, however, disappered. An English commentator writes, "Conkers too were banned in the playground, but boys would bring them in in their pockets ready - strung and play after school. I never bothered much as I could never make a hole in them without splitting them but my brother did have a "champion" conker - a "68-er" he claimed. He used to get it drilled by a dad of a friend of his in the Cubs and used to soak them in vinegar for days to harden them and then put them in the oven - which I thought was cheating. He always had a supply soaking in a bowl on our bedroom window sill and I still hate the smell of vinegar."
We are unsure about the origins of the term "conker". One possibility is that it is derived from the word "conquer". The verb "conk" (to strike on the head) is noted in written usage about 1805-15, before the term is used to described the child's game.
THE CAMPAIGN FOR CONKER COLLECTIONS IN WORLD WAR I
British scientists were working on possible substitutes for maize that were available domestically. One alternative proved to be the conker (horse chestnut).
The Ministry of Munitions decided to use the Synthetic Products Company's King's Lynn which at the time was using potatos to produce butyl-alcohol and acetone. The Ministry of Munitions set out to set up the collection and transport process for the Fall 1917 harvest. The Ministry placed an ad in The Times (July 26, 1917): "chestnut seeds, not the green husks, are required by the Government for the Ministry of Munitions. The nuts will replace cereals which have been necessary for the production of an article of great importance in the prosecution of the War". The Ministry was a bit ambiguous, because they did not want the Germans to know about the shortages or the potential importance of conkers.
[Anonamous] School Children Mobilized The collection process was to use school children who for years in Britain had collected conkers for the annual conker fighting season. The school children were set to work.
Children all over Britain scoured their communities for conkers. Some schools even called off classes for a day and set the children to work picking up conkers. Some also picked up acorns for local pig farmers.
A commentator recalls, "I recall my gran telling me about this episode during World War I. She recalls collecting the conkers on the ground. The boys apparently were fearless. She remembers that boys would often climb the trees to get at the conkers." [Fergusson] Apparently in the process, children fell out of the trees they were climbing and quite a number were hurt. Some were even killed. I don't know if anyone compiled statistics on this. Transport and Production Problems
While large numbers of conkers were dutifully collected by the children, transport complications meant that only small quantities were ever actually delivered. The school kids, however, had done their bit and there were huge piles of conkers piled up at train stations all over Britain which began to rot. . While acetone could be produced from conkers, the yield was relatively low compared to what could be achieved from corn.
The conker collection campaign was not repeated in the Fall 1918. The Allies had largely defeated the U-boats in the North Atlantic through the use of convoys and corn was flowuing into Britain in large quantities. In addition by the time that school started again and the conker season arrived, the tide of battle on the Western Front had changed and an end to the War was in sight.
AT HOLTON HEATH Nr WAREHAM DORSET
Local school children were asked by the Ministry of Munitions to collect Horse Chestnuts; and six huge storage Storage silos were built to store the Horse Chestnuts. A larger bacterial fermentation plant was also set up in Canada as they had more Maize than the United Kingdom.
After the end of World War I the bacterial fermentation plant was demolished but the silos were kept.
In World War II the basements of RNCF silos were converted to Air-raid shelters; the silos being filled with earth to provide protection.
They survived beyond the closure of the Holton Heath site.
POSTERS ON DISPLAY IN ALL SCHOOLS
The following is the content of a notice that would have appeared on the walls of schools etc.
Collecting groups are being organised in your district. Groups of scholars and boy scouts are being organised to collect conkers. Receiving depots are being opened in most districts. All schools, WVS centres1, WIs2, are involved.
Boy Scout leaders will advise you of the nearest depot where 7/6 per cwt3 is being paid for immediate delivery of the chestnuts (without the outer green husks). This collection is invaluable war work and is very urgent. Please encourage it. THE BACKGOUND TO THE SITUATION Now, at the beginning of the war there was also a shortage of grain, and so Britain had to rely on imports of maize and even potatoes for starch. When supplies of maize ran short, clearly, another source of starch had to be found that would not interfere with the already restricted food supplies; and so by May 1917, Weizmann had adapted the process to produce the solvent from horse chestnuts - conkers.
Thus, in a last desperate measure, children throughout Britain were asked to collect conkers. However, according to the Imperial War Museum, in 1917, only 3,000 tons) of conkers were actually processed).
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DORSET AND D DAY.
Dorset played a major role in the famous Normandy D Day landings.Thousands of U.S and allied troops trained on Studland beach and Dorset ports such as Weymouth and Portland were used as main departure points for the troops..see http://www.bbc.co.uk/dorset/content/articles/2009/01/29/d_day_65_feature.shtml  http://www.bbc.co.uk/dorset/content/articles/2009/01/29/d-day-65-feature.shtml
WAREHAM TOWN MUSEUM
For a darker side of Dorset visit
History of The Scout movement at Brownsea Island |
Wi FAMOUS DORSET PEOPLE.
The county of Dorset is renowned for being the birthplace of many famous writers and where others visited and lived for a great deal of their lives. Dorset is also the home of a variety of great organisations and movements. Here I presnt a variety of such figures and their place in our history.
William Barnes.
(1801-1886)
William Barnes was an English Writer, Poet, Teacher, Clergyman, Poet and a Visionary. He was born on his fathers smallholding Pentridge farm in the Blackmore Vale, Bagber Common in Rushy ,Sturminster Newton Dorset in 1801.
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William Barnes spent his childhood around Pentridge Farm. Barnes has been called the greatest poet ever to have written in English dialect.
After being a solicitor's clerk and a schoolmaster, he was ordained into the Church at Salisbury in 1848. Barnes was critical of the modern industrialisation and the use of intensive farming methods.
He was a friend of Thomas Hardy, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold and Gerald Manley Hopkin.
After leaving school Barnes became a solicitors clerk. He later became a schoolmaster, establishing a succesfull school in Dorchester Dorset, which he ran with his wife Julie.
Barnes became an ordained minister in 1848,becoming Rector of Winterbourne Came in 1862. He was an expert linguist familiar with sixty languages, fluent in Greek and Latin,a skilled engraver and also composer.
He called for the purification of English by removal of Greek, Latin and foreign influences so that it might be better understood by the common folk.
Barnes's poems are characterised by a singular sweetness and tenderness of feeling, deep insight into humble country life and character, and an exquisite feeling for local scenery.
He was a great advocate of the countryside and all the benefits of fresh air and gentle exercise.
To many people he was seen a visionary, warning of a day when the roads would be full of vehicles and the fields of houses.What this would mean to our childrens health and well being. With no place for the child to play to use their limbs and lungs and thus we would have a sickly society.
What a great visionary Barnes was as all his prophecies are coming home to roost, for now our roads are full of traffic and our fields and spaces being more and more urbanised.
Whilst our children are suffering from lung conditions such as asthma, poor health and fitness.with problems of obesity and apathy prevalent.
AUGUSTUS JOHN
He studied at the Slade School in London (1894-99) with his sister Gwen John.
After injuring his head after diving into the sea while on holiday his personality changed.
He grew a beard, dressed as a Bohemian and drank heavily.
His painting became more adventurous and his friend, Wyndham Lewis remarked that John
had become a "great man of action into whose hands the fairies had
placed a paintbrush instead of a sword".
Considered to be the most talented artist of his generation, in 1898
John won the Slade Prize with Moses and the Brazen Serpent.
He developed a nomadic lifestyle and for a while he lived in a caravan and camped
with gypsies.
Later he moved in with Henry Lamb and Dorelia McNeill at Alderney Manor near Poole.
McNeill, who eventually became John's wife, featured in many of his paintings.
On the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, John was the best-known
artist in Britain. His friendship with Lord Beaverbrook enabled him to
obtain a commission in the Canadian Army and was given permission to
paint what he liked on the Western Front.
He was also allowed to keep his facial hair and therefore became the only officer in the Allied
forces, except for King George V, to have a beard.
After two months in France he was sent home in disgrace after taking part in a brawl.
John also attended the Versailles Peace Conference
in 1919 where he painted the portraits of several delegates.
However, the commissioned group portrait of the main figures at the conference
was never finished.
The younger son and third of four children in the John family . In 1897 Augustus suffered a serious head injury whilst diving into the sea that affected a change in his character, and critics have argued, resulted in the stimulation of his artistic growth. In 1898 he won the Slade Summer Composition prize with Moses and the Brazen Serpent, and after his graduation from the school he studied in France.
Early in 1900 Augustus married Ida Nettleship and they had five children together. Ida died tragically young aged just 30 in 1907 and he soon after married long time mistress Dorothy 'Dorelia' Mc Neill.
Augustus enjoyed a bohemian lifestyle, and was deeply influenced by the Romany tradition, lifestyle and language; he spent time travelling with gypsy caravans in Wales, Dorset and Ireland.
Augustus first visited Paris in 1900, and began exhibiting at the New English Art Club in the same year. He became a member of the NEAC in 1903 and staged his first one-man exhibition at the Carfax Gallery that year.
Augustus was also an art instructor at the art school affiliated to the University College at the turn of the century.
At the outbreak of World War One Augustus, by now a well-known British artist, gained a commission in the Canadian Army as a war artist with the help of his friend Lord Beaverbrook. However, the latter had to intervene as after spending two months in France the artist was involved in a brawl and sent home in disgrace.
Though well known and celebrated in the earlier part of his career for his brilliant figure drawings and oil sketching, by the 1920s Augustus was the leading society portrait artist in Britain.
Noteworthy figures such as Thomas Hardy, George Bernard Shaw, T E Lawrence, James Joyce, Dylan Thomas, W B Yeats, David Lloyd George, Ramsay MacDonald and Winston Churchill all had their portraits painted by John.
Augustus had become one of the most famous British artists of the day, his talent compared to Michelangelo, Gauguin and Matisse.
In 1927 the John clan moved to Fryern Court, Fordingbridge, which became a kind of open house for travelling artists.
In his later life and as his artistic career entered its twilight phase, Augustus became increasingly interested in politics, supporting the National Campaign for the Abolition of Capital Punishment and pushing government officials on the topic of travellers' rights.
Later, John helped to form the Artists International Association in response to the growth of fascism across Europe. And in wartime, along with the likes of Benjamin Britten, E. M. Forster and George Orwell, sponsored the Freedom Defence Committee. Augustus received the Order of Merit in June 1942.
In 1898 he won the Slade Summer Composition prize with Moses and the Brazen Serpent, and after his graduation from the school he studied in France.
Early in 1900 Augustus married Ida Nettleship and they had five children together.
Augustus enjoyed a bohemian lifestyle, and was deeply influenced by the Romany tradition, lifestyle and language; he spent time travelling with gypsy caravans in Wales, Dorset and Ireland.
In August 1911, John, Dorelia and children moved to Alderney Manor and turned it into a bohemian commune, in which guests would stay in gypsy caravans parked in the grounds for often lengthy periods.
Augustus continued in this promiscuous lifestyle, entertaining numerous affairs and expanding his celebrity circle of friends.
At the outbreak of World War One Augustus, by now a well-known British artist, gained a commission in the Canadian Army as a war artist with the help of his friend Lord Beaverbrook. However, the latter had to intervene as after spending two months in France the artist was involved in a brawl and sent home in disgrace.
In 1927 the John clan moved to Fryern Court, Fordingbridge, which became a kind of open house for travelling artists.
Augustus John lived out the last years of his life with Dorelia in Dorset, having travelled widely in his lifetime in Europe, America and Jamaica.
The King of Bohemia died in 1961 at the age of 83.
THOMAS HARDY.
Thomas Hardy, (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928)
Hardy was an english author of the naturalist movement, though he regarded himself primarily as a poet and composed novels mainly for financial gain.
The bulk of his work, set mainly in the semi-fictional land of Wessex. Hardy's poetry, first published in his 50s, has come to be as well regarded as his novels,. Thomas Hardy was born at Higher Bockhampton to the east of Dorchester in Dorset.
His father worked as a stonemason and local builder. His mother was well-read and educated Thomas until he went to his first school at Bockhampton at age 8.
His formal education ended at the age of 16 when he became apprenticed to John Hicks, a local architect. Hardy trained as an architect in Dorchester before moving to London in 1862; there he enrolled as a student at Kings College London.
He won prizes from the Royal Insitute of British Architecture and the Architectural Association. In 1870, while on an architectural mission to restore the parish church of St Juliot in Cornwall Hardy met and fell in love with Emma Lavinia Gifford, whom he married in 1874.
Hardy never truly felt at home in London and when he returned five years later to Dorset he decided to dedicate himself to writing.
Although he later became estranged from his wife, who died in 1912, her death had a traumatic effect on him.
After her death, Hardy made a trip to Cornwall to revisit places linked with their courtship, and his Poems 1911-1913 reflect upon her passing.
In 1914, Hardy married his secretary Florence Dugdale, who was 39 years his junior. However, he remained preoccupied with his first wife's death and tried to overcome his remorse by writing poetry. Hardy became ill with pleuresy in December 1927 and died in January 1928, having dictated his final poem to his wife on his deathbed.
His funeral was on 16 January at Westminster Abbey, and it proved a controversial occasion because Hardy and his family and friends had wished for his body to be interred at Sinsford in the same grave as his first wife, Emma.
However, his executor, insisted that he be placed in the abbey's famous Poets Corner. A compromise was reached whereby his heart was buried at Stinsford with Emma, and his ashes in Poets' Corner.
Hardy's work was admired by many authors including D.H.Lawrence and Virginia Woolf.
Robert Graves, in his autobiography, recalls meeting Hardy in Dorset in the early 1920s. Hardy received Graves and his newly married wife warmly, and was encouraging about the younger author's work.
In 1910, Hardy was awarded the Order of Merit Hardys Cottage and Max Gate in Dorchester are owned by the National Trust. Although he wrote a great deal of poetry, mostly unpublished until after 1898,
Hardy is best remembered for the series of novels and short stories he wrote between 1871 and 1895.
His novels are set in the imaginary world of Wessex, a large area of south and south-west England, using the name of the Anglo Saxon England kingdom that covered the area.
Hardy was part of two worlds. He had a deep emotional bond with the rural way of life which he had known as a child, but he was also aware of the changes which were under way and the current social problems, from the innovations in agriculture—he captured the epoch just before the Industrial Revolution changed the English countryside—to the unfairness and hypocrisy of Victorian sexual behaviour.
HOMER LANE
an account of the little commonwealth at evershot, dorset
Homer Lane (1875-1925) was Superintendent of the Little Commonwealth, a co-educational community in Dorset run for children and young people ranging from a few months to 19 years. Those over 13 years old were there because they were categorize as delinquent. An American by birth, he had early experience as an educator at the George Junior Republic. At the Little Commonwealth from 1913 to 1918 (at Evershot, Dorset) he pioneered what later we came to know as ‘group therapy’ and ‘shared responsibility’. His educational approach involved ‘the path of freedom instead of imposed authority, of self-expression instead of a pouring-in of knowledge, of evoking and exploiting the child’s natural sense of wonder and curiosity instead of a repetitious hammering home of dull facts’ (Wills 1964: 20). Unfortunately, his work in Dorset came to a rather abrupt end after two of the young female ‘citizens’ claimed that Lane ‘had immoral relations with them’ (Wills 1964: 163). As well as having an interest in offenders and expressive forms of education, Lane also worked as a psychotherapist (this also brought him into legal trouble).
__________
The Little Commonwealth is a co-educational community inhabited by children ranging in age from a few months to nineteen years, those more than thirteen years of age having been committed for a term of years for crime, as to a reformatory - in fact, the Little Commonwealth has recently been certified as a reformatory. The younger children are those who would in any case be subject to institutional care in asylums or orphanages. At the present moment the population of the Commonwealth is five adults, four of whom are women, forty-two boys and girls of fourteen to nineteen years of age, and nine younger children. This population is distributed among three ‘families,’ grouped by congeniality; each person is free to choose his own place of residence. Boys and girls live in the same families, sharing equally the responsibility for family maintenance and government, as well as the responsibility for the welfare of the younger children. The chief point of difference between the Commonwealth and other reformatories and schools is that in the Commonwealth there are no rules and regulations except those made by the boys and girls themselves. All those who are fourteen years of age and over are citizens, having joint responsibility for the regulation of their lives by the laws and judicial machinery organized and developed by themselves. The adult element studiously avoid any assumption of authority in the community, except in connection with their respective departmental duties as teachers or as supervisors of labour within the economic scheme. The citizens are paid wages in Commonwealth currency for their work in the various departments, and provide their own food, clothing, and recreations to whatever degree of comfort and elegance their earning capacity will permit. The wage paid corresponds to that of the outside world in similar employments The citizens are occupied chiefly with earning a living, to a regrettable exclusion of any considerable time for formal school-work. This, of course, does not apply to the children under fourteen, who have no work to do other than that chosen by themselves after the school-work is finished.
The improvident citizen, the slacker, if he is unable to pay his own expenses, must be supported from the public treasury, the funds of which are raised by taxation. If a discontented citizen causes any damage, fails to pay for his board, or runs away, the expense of misdemeanour is borne by the taxpayers. If the citizens’ court imposes any penalty upon an erring citizen which interferes with his employment, the community must provide him with necessities.
Thus it may be seen that in the Commonwealth there is a direct relationship between prosperity and morality. What better field could there be for the cultivation and growth of a code that is based upon the spontaneous virtues of adolescent human nature? And those virtues have certainly been in evidence during the whole of our four years of existence. The moral standards of the citizen group, as measured by its attitude toward the individual delinquent, have always been wholesome and clear and definite. This is as true of those offences that do not cause any expense to the taxpayer as of those that do. Hence our belief that in spite of the very prominent place in the organization of the Commonwealth occupied by the scheme of economics, the morality of the community is not exclusively of the £ s. d. type. That is, while honesty is the best policy in the Commonwealth as elsewhere, honesty is not entirely a matter of policy. During the first year, while the original group of citizens were assuming their new responsibilities, there were frequent sudden changes in the attitude of the group toward the individual wrongdoer. At times severe penalties were imposed upon him, and then quite suddenly the type of penalties would undergo a marked change. Such punishments as close bounds, fines and other forms of deprivation would almost disappear, the wrongdoer being merely expected to make restitution so far as was possible to the community or individual for any injuries he might have done to property. Each change had causes which are obscure and difficult of diagnosis, but of the highest possible importance in a study of the moral growth of the children.
Perhaps the most interesting period in the short history of the Commonwealth is that of the first few months after a group of about fifteen so-called criminal boys and girls had been collected and the experiment in self-government begun. These boys and girls had no idea of social order. Their conception of material values was most vague. Born and reared in city slums, surrounded on every side by the authority of parents, police and school officials, the victims of an especially narrow and restricted environment, their faculty of self-restraint was almost wholly undeveloped except when in close proximity to some restraining authority. Their idea of social relationships was limited to the primitive form of co-operation for self-protection - against authority. Separately they were passive, subdued and apathetic. Combined or as a group they were aggressive, fearless and anti-social.
It was necessary to employ extraordinary methods to free them from their misconceptions of society and social order. They had a very keen legal sense of right and wrong, but it could not be called a moral code. We said to them, ‘You may do as you please,’ but they did not believe it. In the presence of us adults they had no initiative, were self-repressed and passive. By themselves they were spontaneous, original, active and resourceful, but usually in a destructive direction. The acknowledged leader was the boy who had the best command of unconventional language, who was most daring in destructive activities, and who assumed the most defiant attitude towards adults. On the whole they were unusually obedient to a direct command or request; but it was the obedience of weakness, not of strength. Their ideals were anti-social. Now the conventional method of altering children’s ideals is to suppress their undesirable activities, and by means of some form of primitive treatment to impress our ideals upon them. But the logical method is to dissipate the child’s ideal by encouragement of his activities, until he himself discovers its advantages. The latter method was employed in the Commonwealth. I joined the group in its disturbing activities, became one of the gang, and by so doing speedily spoiled the fun. As the recognized authority in the community, my sanction and encouragement of midnight pillow-fights, larder raids and hooliganism did away with the element of danger involved, and it ceased to be fun. Now we were ready to organize in another direction, and did so. The citizens began to take interest in the more serious occupations at hand. The ideal of the group had altered. They helped with the work, and began to caution the more obstreperous about their conduct. Gradually they arrived at the point where the need for formal rules and laws was felt. They instituted not only a form of parliamentary procedure, under which rules were enacted, but also a judicial procedure by which violations of rules were dealt with. It is in the citizens’ court that one may get into closer touch with the spirit of the Commonwealth than in any other community function, and it is here that I look for the true spiritual expressions of our boys and girls. Now I will readily admit that in the greater community one does not, as a rule, search in the courts for manifestations of the spiritual life of a people, but that is because courts are legal institutions rather than the mouthpiece of a public code of morality as in the Commonwealth. All the citizens of the Commonwealth attend courts, and the highest judicial authority is the referendum. Disputed points as between the citizen judge and an offender are decided by public opinion by means of the roll-call. Each citizen must express an opinion.
This piece has been reproduced here on the understanding that it is not subject to any copyright restrictions, and that it is, and will remain, in the public domain.
First published: April 2001
ISSAC GULLIVER
In common with the other counties situated on the south coast of England, Dorset has a long tradition of smuggling, shipwrecking and even piracy. It is said that it was arguments between the twin boroughs of Weymouth and Melcombe Regis over smuggling that led Elizabeth I to combine them to form the basis of the modern town of Weymouth.
It was the nearby Dorset village of Fleet which inspired and provided the setting for J. Meade Falkner's novel, Moonfleet, a tale of old smuggling days made into a film in 1955 by Fritz Lang and starring Stewart Grainger.
Most Dorset families can point to a smuggler in there past, my own, (although as yet unproved), being no exception. Many of these stories have been documented by Rodney Legg in his fascinating book Dorset Smuggling, and there is an excellent collection of artifacts in the the Portland Museum. However in all the tales of smuggling in Dorset, one man appears more often than any other, and has been give the approbation of The King of the Smugglers and whose operations ranged from Poole in the east to Lyme Regis in the west.
Isaac Gulliver, the gentle smuggler who never killed a man, and with his gang, ran 15 Tuggers bringing from the Continent to Poole Bay gin, silk, lace and tea; all harmless commodities by today's smuggling standards. Gulliver's men even wore a uniform - the traditional smock of the Dorset farm hand.
Isaac Gulliver was born in Semington, near Trowbridge, in the neighbouring county of Wiltshire, to "Isaac Gulifor and Elizabeth his wife" a far from noble family, and there is even some doubt about his parentage, as in drawing up his will in 1765, Isaac Gulliver senior referred to "my son or reputed son Isaac Gulliver, otherwise Matravers".
Isaac was almost certainly following the family trade by becoming a smuggler, there is evidence to suggest that his father was also a smuggler, as an Isaac Gulliver is recorded in that capacity as frequenting the New Inn, Downton, Hampshire [1758] when son Isaac was only twelve. That group operated into Bitman's Chine, now known as Canford Cliffs Chine, Poole. It was this deserted heath, with its endless sandy beaches that would provide innumerable opportunities for Isaac junior in his twenties and thirties.
On the 5th of October 1768 he married innkeeper's daughter Betty Beale at Sixpenny Handley parish church. His father-in-law's hostelry, the Blacksmith's Arms, Thorney Down, was on the main road from Blandford to Salisbury and horse-shoeing was William Beale's other trade. He is said to have disapproved of the liaison but quickly adapted to reality as Gulliver would take over tenancy of the inn. His first daughter, Elizabeth, was born there in 1770 and his second, Ann, in 1773.
Those who think that smuggling has, of necessity, to be carried on somewhere near the sea, might note that Sixpenny Handley is around 30 miles inland, which is a long way to travel, loaded and under cover of darkness. Gulliver, though he had a liking for spirits and lace, might well have had another string to his bow - an enterprise founded on the availability of deer on the Chase ... and a tomb adjoining the local church where 'hot' venison could be stored for the duration of the hue and cry.
In a Blandford paper of 1770 it is related how the Excise Superintendent came with a posse of Preventive-men to seize a sotre of tea, tobacco, and brandy which lay hidden in a cottage in one of our hamlets [Sixpenny Handley]. On their return to Blandford, they beat off an attack made by the Free traders and brought their spoil safely to the Excise man's house. That night Blandford was held up by a body of 150 armed horsemen who persuaded the Excise man's wife, at pistol-point, to give back the contraband, with which they rode away in triumph.
There is of course no evidence to connect Gulliver with this event. The cottage is still in existence, and until a range was put in, one could stand in the open chimney and look up at the little chamber where the contraband was hidden.
Gulliver's career prospered and he moved his headquarters from the Blacksmith's Arms to the White Hart in Longham, and finally to a purpose built lodge at West Howe, Kinson in 1780. At the lodge, with crenellations giving it the appearance of a fortress, he had one secret room which was entered from a door ten feet up the chimney. Tunnels beneath led in all directions - one is believed to have bored as far as Parkstone. In fact, the whole of Kinson, including the church and rectory, is supposed to be undermined by smugglers' tunnels.
You have to use your imagination to understand why Kinson was such an important smuggling base. Visualise Bournemouth, Branksome and Poole without any habitation. From the sandy beaches the smugglers used paths across this great expanse of heath land to bring their contraband to Kinson. All along the way, they sank wells as hiding places should they be surprised by customs men.
It was during this period that In one of his amusing escapades, he feigned death, lying white-faced in an open coffin to the embarrassment of excise men, and kept up the pretense of his death by having a funeral at Kinson with the coffin loaded with stones.
Isaac Gulliver would have remained just another Dorset smuggler, had it not been for his great speculating genius. He wisely invested the proceeds of his smuggling activities, particularly in property, much of which was used for further smuggling activities.
In a report from the Custom House, Poole, to His Majesty's Commissioners of Customs in London [1788] it is mentioned that: "Gulliver was considered one of the greatest and most notorious smugglers in the west of England and particularly in the spirits and tea trades but in the year 1782 he took the benefit of his Majesty's proclamation for pardoning such offences and as we are informed dropped that branch of smuggling and afterwards confined himself chiefly to the wine trade which he carried on to a considerable extent having vaults at various places along the coast and "in remote places" .
Most of these 'remote places' were on his own property, these land acquisitions including Howe Lodge, Kinson, Bournemouth, near his eastern beach-heads and Gulliver's Farm, West Moors, close to the principal cart-route inland. On the foothills of Cranborne Chase, as well as Thorney Down, he owned Thickthorn Farm, Long Crichel, and nearby North-East Farm.
As has been previously mentioned Gulliver's 'kingdom' stretched the entire length of the Dorset coast. When he opened up a Western connection, he used the beaches of Burton Bradstock to unload his contraband. He bought a North Eggardon Farm, Askerswell at the foot of Eggardon Hill and his Poole associate John Fryer named a boat, Eggardon Castle, for its hill-fort upon which Gulliver planted a clump of pines as a landmark for his ships, (where they can still be seen today), his farm being a useful center for the customers in Bath and Bristol.
Lilliput, on the edge of Poole harbour naturally reminds the visitor of of that other Gulliver and his travels, however there is no record of Dean Swift, the author, visiting these parts. In Gullliver's time, Lilliput was called The Saltings, after the trade that was carried on there, and the new name is thought to be an oblique reference to Isaac.
It might be thought that an elegant residential area would not have taken its name from an apparently disreputable character, but we do know that he owned Flag Farm in the district, and it must be taken into account that having made his fortune from smuggling, Gulliver became a respected citizen, gentleman, and banker. He retired to the brick-built Gulliver's House, West Borough, Wimborne and died there on Friday 13th September 1822, leaving an estate of £60,000, with properties in Hampshire, Wiltshire and Somerset as well as those in Dorset, which would be worth multi-millions on modern values. His gravestone is in the floor of Wimborne Minster.
His only son, Isaac Gulliver [1774-98] died unmarried, but the daughters married into the Fryer family whose interest and abundant monies ranged from the Newfoundland fisheries to banking.
http://www.thedorsetpage.com/history/Smugglers/Smugglers.htm
HOMER LANE .
(1875-1925)
A. S. Neill described Homer Lane as 'the most influential factor' in his life. Here we look briefly at his life and work.
Homer Lane was Superintendent of the Little Commonwealth, a co-educational community in Dorset run for children and young people ranging from a few months to 19 years. Those over 13 years old were there because they were categorized as delinquent. Lane was in fact an American by birth, he had early experience as an organiser of the Ford Republic in Detroit.
At the Little Commonwealth from 1913 to 1918 (at Evershot, Dorset) he pioneered what later we came to know as ‘group therapy’ and ‘shared responsibility’. His educational approach involved ‘the path of freedom instead of imposed authority, of self-expression instead of a pouring-in of knowledge, of evoking and exploiting the child’s natural sense of wonder and curiosity instead of a repetitious hammering home of dull facts’ (Wills 1964: 20).
POOLE PEOPLE
THE DORSET PAGE
http://www.thedorsetpage.com/history/Smugglers/Smugglers.htm
AUGUSTUS JOHN. 
Augustus John was born in Tenby in 1878.
The county of Dorset is renowned for being the birthplace of many famous writers and where others visited and lived for a great deal of their lives. Dorset is also the home of a variety of great organisations and movements. Here I presnt a variety of such figures and their place in our history.
William Barnes.
(1801-1886)
.
William Barnes spent his childhood around Pentridge Farm. Barnes has been called the greatest poet ever to have written in English dialect.
After being a solicitor's clerk and a schoolmaster, he was ordained into the Church at Salisbury in 1848. Barnes was critical of the modern industrialisation and the use of intensive farming methods.
He was a friend of Thomas Hardy, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Browning, Matthew Arnold and Gerald Manley Hopkin.
After leaving school Barnes became a solicitors clerk. He later became a schoolmaster, establishing a succesfull school in Dorchester Dorset, which he ran with his wife Julie.
Barnes became an ordained minister in 1848,becoming Rector of Winterbourne Came in 1862. He was an expert linguist familiar with sixty languages, fluent in Greek and Latin,a skilled engraver and also composer.
He was a great advocate of the countryside and all the benefits of fresh air and gentle exercise.
To many people he was seen a visionary, warning of a day when the roads would be full of vehicles and the fields of houses.What this would mean to our childrens health and well being. With no place for the child to play to use their limbs and lungs and thus we would have a sickly society.
What a great visionary Barnes was as all his prophecies are coming home to roost, for now our roads are full of traffic and our fields and spaces being more and more urbanised.
Whilst our children are suffering from lung conditions such as asthma, poor health and fitness.with problems of obesity and apathy prevalent.
AUGUSTUS JOHN
He studied at the Slade School in London (1894-99) with his sister Gwen John.
After injuring his head after diving into the sea while on holiday his personality changed.
He grew a beard, dressed as a Bohemian and drank heavily.
His painting became more adventurous and his friend, Wyndham Lewis remarked that John
had become a "great man of action into whose hands the fairies had
placed a paintbrush instead of a sword".
Considered to be the most talented artist of his generation, in 1898
John won the Slade Prize with Moses and the Brazen Serpent.
He developed a nomadic lifestyle and for a while he lived in a caravan and camped
with gypsies.
Later he moved in with Henry Lamb and Dorelia McNeill at Alderney Manor near Poole.
McNeill, who eventually became John's wife, featured in many of his paintings.
On the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, John was the best-known
artist in Britain. His friendship with Lord Beaverbrook enabled him to
obtain a commission in the Canadian Army and was given permission to
paint what he liked on the Western Front.
He was also allowed to keep his facial hair and therefore became the only officer in the Allied
forces, except for King George V, to have a beard.
After two months in France he was sent home in disgrace after taking part in a brawl.
John also attended the Versailles Peace Conference
in 1919 where he painted the portraits of several delegates.
However, the commissioned group portrait of the main figures at the conference
was never finished.
The younger son and third of four children in the John family . In 1897 Augustus suffered a serious head injury whilst diving into the sea that affected a change in his character, and critics have argued, resulted in the stimulation of his artistic growth. In 1898 he won the Slade Summer Composition prize with Moses and the Brazen Serpent, and after his graduation from the school he studied in France.
Early in 1900 Augustus married Ida Nettleship and they had five children together. Ida died tragically young aged just 30 in 1907 and he soon after married long time mistress Dorothy 'Dorelia' Mc Neill.
Augustus enjoyed a bohemian lifestyle, and was deeply influenced by the Romany tradition, lifestyle and language; he spent time travelling with gypsy caravans in Wales, Dorset and Ireland.
Augustus first visited Paris in 1900, and began exhibiting at the New English Art Club in the same year. He became a member of the NEAC in 1903 and staged his first one-man exhibition at the Carfax Gallery that year.
Augustus was also an art instructor at the art school affiliated to the University College at the turn of the century.
At the outbreak of World War One Augustus, by now a well-known British artist, gained a commission in the Canadian Army as a war artist with the help of his friend Lord Beaverbrook. However, the latter had to intervene as after spending two months in France the artist was involved in a brawl and sent home in disgrace.
Though well known and celebrated in the earlier part of his career for his brilliant figure drawings and oil sketching, by the 1920s Augustus was the leading society portrait artist in Britain.
Noteworthy figures such as Thomas Hardy, George Bernard Shaw, T E Lawrence, James Joyce, Dylan Thomas, W B Yeats, David Lloyd George, Ramsay MacDonald and Winston Churchill all had their portraits painted by John.
Augustus had become one of the most famous British artists of the day, his talent compared to Michelangelo, Gauguin and Matisse.
In 1927 the John clan moved to Fryern Court, Fordingbridge, which became a kind of open house for travelling artists.
In his later life and as his artistic career entered its twilight phase, Augustus became increasingly interested in politics, supporting the National Campaign for the Abolition of Capital Punishment and pushing government officials on the topic of travellers' rights.
Later, John helped to form the Artists International Association in response to the growth of fascism across Europe. And in wartime, along with the likes of Benjamin Britten, E. M. Forster and George Orwell, sponsored the Freedom Defence Committee. Augustus received the Order of Merit in June 1942.
In 1898 he won the Slade Summer Composition prize with Moses and the Brazen Serpent, and after his graduation from the school he studied in France.
Early in 1900 Augustus married Ida Nettleship and they had five children together.
Augustus enjoyed a bohemian lifestyle, and was deeply influenced by the Romany tradition, lifestyle and language; he spent time travelling with gypsy caravans in Wales, Dorset and Ireland.
In August 1911, John, Dorelia and children moved to Alderney Manor and turned it into a bohemian commune, in which guests would stay in gypsy caravans parked in the grounds for often lengthy periods.
Augustus continued in this promiscuous lifestyle, entertaining numerous affairs and expanding his celebrity circle of friends.
At the outbreak of World War One Augustus, by now a well-known British artist, gained a commission in the Canadian Army as a war artist with the help of his friend Lord Beaverbrook. However, the latter had to intervene as after spending two months in France the artist was involved in a brawl and sent home in disgrace.
In 1927 the John clan moved to Fryern Court, Fordingbridge, which became a kind of open house for travelling artists.
Augustus John lived out the last years of his life with Dorelia in Dorset, having travelled widely in his lifetime in Europe, America and Jamaica.
The King of Bohemia died in 1961 at the age of 83.
THOMAS HARDY.
Thomas Hardy, (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928)
Hardy was an english author of the naturalist movement, though he regarded himself primarily as a poet and composed novels mainly for financial gain.
The bulk of his work, set mainly in the semi-fictional land of Wessex. Hardy's poetry, first published in his 50s, has come to be as well regarded as his novels,. Thomas Hardy was born at Higher Bockhampton to the east of Dorchester in Dorset.
His father worked as a stonemason and local builder. His mother was well-read and educated Thomas until he went to his first school at Bockhampton at age 8.
His formal education ended at the age of 16 when he became apprenticed to John Hicks, a local architect. Hardy trained as an architect in Dorchester before moving to London in 1862; there he enrolled as a student at Kings College London.
He won prizes from the Royal Insitute of British Architecture and the Architectural Association. In 1870, while on an architectural mission to restore the parish church of St Juliot in Cornwall Hardy met and fell in love with Emma Lavinia Gifford, whom he married in 1874.
Hardy never truly felt at home in London and when he returned five years later to Dorset he decided to dedicate himself to writing.
Although he later became estranged from his wife, who died in 1912, her death had a traumatic effect on him.
After her death, Hardy made a trip to Cornwall to revisit places linked with their courtship, and his Poems 1911-1913 reflect upon her passing.
In 1914, Hardy married his secretary Florence Dugdale, who was 39 years his junior. However, he remained preoccupied with his first wife's death and tried to overcome his remorse by writing poetry. Hardy became ill with pleuresy in December 1927 and died in January 1928, having dictated his final poem to his wife on his deathbed.
His funeral was on 16 January at Westminster Abbey, and it proved a controversial occasion because Hardy and his family and friends had wished for his body to be interred at Sinsford in the same grave as his first wife, Emma.
However, his executor, insisted that he be placed in the abbey's famous Poets Corner. A compromise was reached whereby his heart was buried at Stinsford with Emma, and his ashes in Poets' Corner.
Hardy's work was admired by many authors including D.H.Lawrence and Virginia Woolf.
Robert Graves, in his autobiography, recalls meeting Hardy in Dorset in the early 1920s. Hardy received Graves and his newly married wife warmly, and was encouraging about the younger author's work.
In 1910, Hardy was awarded the Order of Merit Hardys Cottage and Max Gate in Dorchester are owned by the National Trust. Although he wrote a great deal of poetry, mostly unpublished until after 1898,
Hardy is best remembered for the series of novels and short stories he wrote between 1871 and 1895.
His novels are set in the imaginary world of Wessex, a large area of south and south-west England, using the name of the Anglo Saxon England kingdom that covered the area.
Hardy was part of two worlds. He had a deep emotional bond with the rural way of life which he had known as a child, but he was also aware of the changes which were under way and the current social problems, from the innovations in agriculture—he captured the epoch just before the Industrial Revolution changed the English countryside—to the unfairness and hypocrisy of Victorian sexual behaviour.
HOMER LANE
an account of the little commonwealth at evershot, dorset
Homer Lane (1875-1925) was Superintendent of the Little Commonwealth, a co-educational community in Dorset run for children and young people ranging from a few months to 19 years. Those over 13 years old were there because they were categorize as delinquent. An American by birth, he had early experience as an educator at the George Junior Republic. At the Little Commonwealth from 1913 to 1918 (at Evershot, Dorset) he pioneered what later we came to know as ‘group therapy’ and ‘shared responsibility’. His educational approach involved ‘the path of freedom instead of imposed authority, of self-expression instead of a pouring-in of knowledge, of evoking and exploiting the child’s natural sense of wonder and curiosity instead of a repetitious hammering home of dull facts’ (Wills 1964: 20). Unfortunately, his work in Dorset came to a rather abrupt end after two of the young female ‘citizens’ claimed that Lane ‘had immoral relations with them’ (Wills 1964: 163). As well as having an interest in offenders and expressive forms of education, Lane also worked as a psychotherapist (this also brought him into legal trouble).
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The Little Commonwealth is a co-educational community inhabited by children ranging in age from a few months to nineteen years, those more than thirteen years of age having been committed for a term of years for crime, as to a reformatory - in fact, the Little Commonwealth has recently been certified as a reformatory. The younger children are those who would in any case be subject to institutional care in asylums or orphanages. At the present moment the population of the Commonwealth is five adults, four of whom are women, forty-two boys and girls of fourteen to nineteen years of age, and nine younger children. This population is distributed among three ‘families,’ grouped by congeniality; each person is free to choose his own place of residence. Boys and girls live in the same families, sharing equally the responsibility for family maintenance and government, as well as the responsibility for the welfare of the younger children. The chief point of difference between the Commonwealth and other reformatories and schools is that in the Commonwealth there are no rules and regulations except those made by the boys and girls themselves. All those who are fourteen years of age and over are citizens, having joint responsibility for the regulation of their lives by the laws and judicial machinery organized and developed by themselves. The adult element studiously avoid any assumption of authority in the community, except in connection with their respective departmental duties as teachers or as supervisors of labour within the economic scheme. The citizens are paid wages in Commonwealth currency for their work in the various departments, and provide their own food, clothing, and recreations to whatever degree of comfort and elegance their earning capacity will permit. The wage paid corresponds to that of the outside world in similar employments The citizens are occupied chiefly with earning a living, to a regrettable exclusion of any considerable time for formal school-work. This, of course, does not apply to the children under fourteen, who have no work to do other than that chosen by themselves after the school-work is finished.
The improvident citizen, the slacker, if he is unable to pay his own expenses, must be supported from the public treasury, the funds of which are raised by taxation. If a discontented citizen causes any damage, fails to pay for his board, or runs away, the expense of misdemeanour is borne by the taxpayers. If the citizens’ court imposes any penalty upon an erring citizen which interferes with his employment, the community must provide him with necessities.
Thus it may be seen that in the Commonwealth there is a direct relationship between prosperity and morality. What better field could there be for the cultivation and growth of a code that is based upon the spontaneous virtues of adolescent human nature? And those virtues have certainly been in evidence during the whole of our four years of existence. The moral standards of the citizen group, as measured by its attitude toward the individual delinquent, have always been wholesome and clear and definite. This is as true of those offences that do not cause any expense to the taxpayer as of those that do. Hence our belief that in spite of the very prominent place in the organization of the Commonwealth occupied by the scheme of economics, the morality of the community is not exclusively of the £ s. d. type. That is, while honesty is the best policy in the Commonwealth as elsewhere, honesty is not entirely a matter of policy. During the first year, while the original group of citizens were assuming their new responsibilities, there were frequent sudden changes in the attitude of the group toward the individual wrongdoer. At times severe penalties were imposed upon him, and then quite suddenly the type of penalties would undergo a marked change. Such punishments as close bounds, fines and other forms of deprivation would almost disappear, the wrongdoer being merely expected to make restitution so far as was possible to the community or individual for any injuries he might have done to property. Each change had causes which are obscure and difficult of diagnosis, but of the highest possible importance in a study of the moral growth of the children.
Perhaps the most interesting period in the short history of the Commonwealth is that of the first few months after a group of about fifteen so-called criminal boys and girls had been collected and the experiment in self-government begun. These boys and girls had no idea of social order. Their conception of material values was most vague. Born and reared in city slums, surrounded on every side by the authority of parents, police and school officials, the victims of an especially narrow and restricted environment, their faculty of self-restraint was almost wholly undeveloped except when in close proximity to some restraining authority. Their idea of social relationships was limited to the primitive form of co-operation for self-protection - against authority. Separately they were passive, subdued and apathetic. Combined or as a group they were aggressive, fearless and anti-social.
It was necessary to employ extraordinary methods to free them from their misconceptions of society and social order. They had a very keen legal sense of right and wrong, but it could not be called a moral code. We said to them, ‘You may do as you please,’ but they did not believe it. In the presence of us adults they had no initiative, were self-repressed and passive. By themselves they were spontaneous, original, active and resourceful, but usually in a destructive direction. The acknowledged leader was the boy who had the best command of unconventional language, who was most daring in destructive activities, and who assumed the most defiant attitude towards adults. On the whole they were unusually obedient to a direct command or request; but it was the obedience of weakness, not of strength. Their ideals were anti-social. Now the conventional method of altering children’s ideals is to suppress their undesirable activities, and by means of some form of primitive treatment to impress our ideals upon them. But the logical method is to dissipate the child’s ideal by encouragement of his activities, until he himself discovers its advantages. The latter method was employed in the Commonwealth. I joined the group in its disturbing activities, became one of the gang, and by so doing speedily spoiled the fun. As the recognized authority in the community, my sanction and encouragement of midnight pillow-fights, larder raids and hooliganism did away with the element of danger involved, and it ceased to be fun. Now we were ready to organize in another direction, and did so. The citizens began to take interest in the more serious occupations at hand. The ideal of the group had altered. They helped with the work, and began to caution the more obstreperous about their conduct. Gradually they arrived at the point where the need for formal rules and laws was felt. They instituted not only a form of parliamentary procedure, under which rules were enacted, but also a judicial procedure by which violations of rules were dealt with. It is in the citizens’ court that one may get into closer touch with the spirit of the Commonwealth than in any other community function, and it is here that I look for the true spiritual expressions of our boys and girls. Now I will readily admit that in the greater community one does not, as a rule, search in the courts for manifestations of the spiritual life of a people, but that is because courts are legal institutions rather than the mouthpiece of a public code of morality as in the Commonwealth. All the citizens of the Commonwealth attend courts, and the highest judicial authority is the referendum. Disputed points as between the citizen judge and an offender are decided by public opinion by means of the roll-call. Each citizen must express an opinion.
This piece has been reproduced here on the understanding that it is not subject to any copyright restrictions, and that it is, and will remain, in the public domain.
First published: April 2001
ISSAC GULLIVER
In common with the other counties situated on the south coast of England, Dorset has a long tradition of smuggling, shipwrecking and even piracy. It is said that it was arguments between the twin boroughs of Weymouth and Melcombe Regis over smuggling that led Elizabeth I to combine them to form the basis of the modern town of Weymouth.
It was the nearby Dorset village of Fleet which inspired and provided the setting for J. Meade Falkner's novel, Moonfleet, a tale of old smuggling days made into a film in 1955 by Fritz Lang and starring Stewart Grainger.
Most Dorset families can point to a smuggler in there past, my own, (although as yet unproved), being no exception. Many of these stories have been documented by Rodney Legg in his fascinating book Dorset Smuggling, and there is an excellent collection of artifacts in the the Portland Museum. However in all the tales of smuggling in Dorset, one man appears more often than any other, and has been give the approbation of The King of the Smugglers and whose operations ranged from Poole in the east to Lyme Regis in the west.
Isaac Gulliver, the gentle smuggler who never killed a man, and with his gang, ran 15 Tuggers bringing from the Continent to Poole Bay gin, silk, lace and tea; all harmless commodities by today's smuggling standards. Gulliver's men even wore a uniform - the traditional smock of the Dorset farm hand.
Isaac Gulliver was born in Semington, near Trowbridge, in the neighbouring county of Wiltshire, to "Isaac Gulifor and Elizabeth his wife" a far from noble family, and there is even some doubt about his parentage, as in drawing up his will in 1765, Isaac Gulliver senior referred to "my son or reputed son Isaac Gulliver, otherwise Matravers".
Isaac was almost certainly following the family trade by becoming a smuggler, there is evidence to suggest that his father was also a smuggler, as an Isaac Gulliver is recorded in that capacity as frequenting the New Inn, Downton, Hampshire [1758] when son Isaac was only twelve. That group operated into Bitman's Chine, now known as Canford Cliffs Chine, Poole. It was this deserted heath, with its endless sandy beaches that would provide innumerable opportunities for Isaac junior in his twenties and thirties.
On the 5th of October 1768 he married innkeeper's daughter Betty Beale at Sixpenny Handley parish church. His father-in-law's hostelry, the Blacksmith's Arms, Thorney Down, was on the main road from Blandford to Salisbury and horse-shoeing was William Beale's other trade. He is said to have disapproved of the liaison but quickly adapted to reality as Gulliver would take over tenancy of the inn. His first daughter, Elizabeth, was born there in 1770 and his second, Ann, in 1773.
Those who think that smuggling has, of necessity, to be carried on somewhere near the sea, might note that Sixpenny Handley is around 30 miles inland, which is a long way to travel, loaded and under cover of darkness. Gulliver, though he had a liking for spirits and lace, might well have had another string to his bow - an enterprise founded on the availability of deer on the Chase ... and a tomb adjoining the local church where 'hot' venison could be stored for the duration of the hue and cry.
In a Blandford paper of 1770 it is related how the Excise Superintendent came with a posse of Preventive-men to seize a sotre of tea, tobacco, and brandy which lay hidden in a cottage in one of our hamlets [Sixpenny Handley]. On their return to Blandford, they beat off an attack made by the Free traders and brought their spoil safely to the Excise man's house. That night Blandford was held up by a body of 150 armed horsemen who persuaded the Excise man's wife, at pistol-point, to give back the contraband, with which they rode away in triumph.
There is of course no evidence to connect Gulliver with this event. The cottage is still in existence, and until a range was put in, one could stand in the open chimney and look up at the little chamber where the contraband was hidden.
Gulliver's career prospered and he moved his headquarters from the Blacksmith's Arms to the White Hart in Longham, and finally to a purpose built lodge at West Howe, Kinson in 1780. At the lodge, with crenellations giving it the appearance of a fortress, he had one secret room which was entered from a door ten feet up the chimney. Tunnels beneath led in all directions - one is believed to have bored as far as Parkstone. In fact, the whole of Kinson, including the church and rectory, is supposed to be undermined by smugglers' tunnels.
You have to use your imagination to understand why Kinson was such an important smuggling base. Visualise Bournemouth, Branksome and Poole without any habitation. From the sandy beaches the smugglers used paths across this great expanse of heath land to bring their contraband to Kinson. All along the way, they sank wells as hiding places should they be surprised by customs men.
It was during this period that In one of his amusing escapades, he feigned death, lying white-faced in an open coffin to the embarrassment of excise men, and kept up the pretense of his death by having a funeral at Kinson with the coffin loaded with stones.
Isaac Gulliver would have remained just another Dorset smuggler, had it not been for his great speculating genius. He wisely invested the proceeds of his smuggling activities, particularly in property, much of which was used for further smuggling activities.
In a report from the Custom House, Poole, to His Majesty's Commissioners of Customs in London [1788] it is mentioned that: "Gulliver was considered one of the greatest and most notorious smugglers in the west of England and particularly in the spirits and tea trades but in the year 1782 he took the benefit of his Majesty's proclamation for pardoning such offences and as we are informed dropped that branch of smuggling and afterwards confined himself chiefly to the wine trade which he carried on to a considerable extent having vaults at various places along the coast and "in remote places" .
Most of these 'remote places' were on his own property, these land acquisitions including Howe Lodge, Kinson, Bournemouth, near his eastern beach-heads and Gulliver's Farm, West Moors, close to the principal cart-route inland. On the foothills of Cranborne Chase, as well as Thorney Down, he owned Thickthorn Farm, Long Crichel, and nearby North-East Farm.
As has been previously mentioned Gulliver's 'kingdom' stretched the entire length of the Dorset coast. When he opened up a Western connection, he used the beaches of Burton Bradstock to unload his contraband. He bought a North Eggardon Farm, Askerswell at the foot of Eggardon Hill and his Poole associate John Fryer named a boat, Eggardon Castle, for its hill-fort upon which Gulliver planted a clump of pines as a landmark for his ships, (where they can still be seen today), his farm being a useful center for the customers in Bath and Bristol.
Lilliput, on the edge of Poole harbour naturally reminds the visitor of of that other Gulliver and his travels, however there is no record of Dean Swift, the author, visiting these parts. In Gullliver's time, Lilliput was called The Saltings, after the trade that was carried on there, and the new name is thought to be an oblique reference to Isaac.
It might be thought that an elegant residential area would not have taken its name from an apparently disreputable character, but we do know that he owned Flag Farm in the district, and it must be taken into account that having made his fortune from smuggling, Gulliver became a respected citizen, gentleman, and banker. He retired to the brick-built Gulliver's House, West Borough, Wimborne and died there on Friday 13th September 1822, leaving an estate of £60,000, with properties in Hampshire, Wiltshire and Somerset as well as those in Dorset, which would be worth multi-millions on modern values. His gravestone is in the floor of Wimborne Minster.
His only son, Isaac Gulliver [1774-98] died unmarried, but the daughters married into the Fryer family whose interest and abundant monies ranged from the Newfoundland fisheries to banking.
http://www.thedorsetpage.com/history/Smugglers/Smugglers.htm
HOMER LANE .
(1875-1925)
A. S. Neill described Homer Lane as 'the most influential factor' in his life. Here we look briefly at his life and work.
Homer Lane was Superintendent of the Little Commonwealth, a co-educational community in Dorset run for children and young people ranging from a few months to 19 years. Those over 13 years old were there because they were categorized as delinquent. Lane was in fact an American by birth, he had early experience as an organiser of the Ford Republic in Detroit.
At the Little Commonwealth from 1913 to 1918 (at Evershot, Dorset) he pioneered what later we came to know as ‘group therapy’ and ‘shared responsibility’. His educational approach involved ‘the path of freedom instead of imposed authority, of self-expression instead of a pouring-in of knowledge, of evoking and exploiting the child’s natural sense of wonder and curiosity instead of a repetitious hammering home of dull facts’ (Wills 1964: 20).
POOLE PEOPLE
THE DORSET PAGE
http://www.thedorsetpage.com/history/Smugglers/Smugglers.htm
Augustus John was born in Tenby in 1878. 
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