William though had an even stranger tale to tell, proceeding to enlighten the eager scribe of his past history, a ‘romantic’ tale about his daring escape from the dreaded Portland prison, boasting he had been the only man to escape. its grey forbidding walls.
Category: Portland quarries
Misdemeanours and misfits in the Victorian courts; 1863.
I just love to browse the old newspapers and see what our ancestors were up to. The papers columns are filled with intriguing snippets of their daily lives, the usual hatch, match and dispatches, arrivals and departures, accidents and fights, and the misfortunes of those whose day to day activities managed to fall foul of…
1867; Danger Lurks in Portland Quarries.
The quarries on Portland are world renown. They are of a strange type of brutal beauty, glare from the white stone is blinding in bright sunshine, heat reflects mercilessly from calcified remains that makes up these huge slabs that tumble and totter precariously all around. Ultimately, their beauty belies the ever present danger that resides…
1862; Portland prison, The Pleasantness of Penal Servitude.
These facts are taken from an article penned by an unnamed author in the Cheltenham Chronicle of 23rd December 1862 and yes, that is genuinely what he titles his article…. The Pleasantness of Penal Servitude! They relate to the prison that was built on Portland to contain the convict labour force for building the Portland breakwater…
1906; The Portland boy buccaneers.
Slightly out of the Victorian era I know, but only just. This story caught my eye as it summed up the excitement and invincibility of childhood, feelings of the exciting escapades of the Famous Five, even though the lads involved were more teenagers, and the story had it’s slightly dark side. In the April of…
1865; Portland…keeping it in the family.
I know that Portland is not technically an island, (the Chesil causeway connects it to Weymouth), but it’s treated as such in many respects, not least that the folks on the island (I.m sure that being a proud race, they won’t mind me saying) have a long history of being fairly insular! nd When a…
1866; Portland quarry men and boys…theyz toils ‘n toils.
Portland is world famous for it’s quarries. This Isle is littered with immense craters in the ground, and large roughly hewn blocks of stone tumble in seemingly haphazard piles across the almost lunar landscape. There’s absolutely no doubt that those men and boys who slogged away day in day out in the quarries at Portland earnt…
St George’s churchyard at Portland. Murder in 1803
Now I.m not one of these people who normally likes to wander from church to church, but was stopped in my tracks (well, the car was stopped in it’s tracks really) when we parked opposite St George’s church on the top of Portland. The sun was just beginning to set in the sky, going down…
Portland’s Own Glorious Cheddar Caves…Ooopps, But Then Again, Maybe Not! 1869
When ever I research items of local history, it never ceases to amaze me the amount of articles in local papers of the time that tell of new or rare things that the Victorians discovered, but despite all their curiosity of the amazing natural world around them…their first reaction would be to grab their gun and…
Portlands own Jurassic finds 1837
One day, while quarrymen were hard at work, a large block of stone was removed from its bed some 40 odd foot below the surface. To everyones amazement it’s removal revealed a hidden and secret world, for beneath was the opening to a huge cavern.
VICTORIAN TALES FROM WEYMOUTH AND PORTLAND 