We’ll start with a touch of Christmastide shenanigans. A well respected farmer and businessman, Thomas Hole, was stood in the dock garbed only in a sheet and rug, much to the amusement of the court’s public attendees, in stark contrast his hands and face were blackened. Thomas was accused of being drunk and disorderly at the Crown hotel.
Category: Weymouth and Portland Inns
Smugglers Secrets Revealed 100 Years Later! Weymouth’s George Inn.
I know, I know, I’m always banging on about my love of old newspapers, but they really are fascinating. They fittingly flesh out Weymouth’s history. Such was the case when I read an article in the Dorset County Chronicle of Thursday 5th June 1884. It’s headline revealed ‘A Record of Smuggling Days.’ Apparently some modernisation…
Victorian St Nicholas Street: Weymouth
Numerous narrow streets tuck themselves away in and around Weymouth town. Ones that we don’t pay much attention to. Maybe sometimes travelling their length merely to avoid excess holiday traffic or that proliferation of poodling summertime pedestrians. They are merely a means of getting from A to B as quickly as possible, never a place to stop and admire the…
Victorian Castletown, Portland…Matelots, Mariners and Mishaps.
Now, I’ll be the first to admit, as much as I love the Isle of Portland, in all honesty I don’t know a great deal about it’s history, for that I defer to local historian and accomplished author, Stuart Morris. (image © West Dorset District Council Channel Coast Observatory) What I do enjoy is reading…
Park Street, Weymouth; 1901
I shall take you for a nostalgic stroll down what was once a very well-heeled and extremely busy street, bustling with numerous shops, businesses and public houses. The main fairway for most of the thousands of Victorian train travellers into and out of the town.
1879; Tragedy at the George Inn, Weymouth.
The imposing George Inn has stood on Weymouth’s quayside for centuries in one form or another. Wealthy businessman Sir Samuel Mico had purchased the George Tavern in the 17th c for use as his residence when he came to Weymouth to see to business matters, many of his trading ships came into what was then…
1838; Shipwreck at Osmington, Smugglers and Coastguards.
Life at sea has always been hazardous, natures fickle whims, and mans unpredictability has always caused dramas and deaths. For those whose livelihoods depended on the sea, and those who relied on the open water as their means of transport, they literally took their life in their hands every time they entered a boat. Nowadays…
VICTORIAN TALES FROM WEYMOUTH AND PORTLAND 