For children, life at school can be pretty rough and tough. Even during the Victorian period, with their propensity for strict discipline, the class room wasn’t always the safest place to be. In December of 1879, at the Borough petty sessions a case was brought before the three officials of the court, Mr W Talbot,…
Tag: drawings
1834; Weymouth’s Grand Park.
Isn’t it odd, you grow up somewhere, and the place names of streets, areas, and houses just trip off the tongue. You’ve always called them that, never known them as anything different. But have you ever stopped and wondered why they were so named in the first place? I was born in Weymouth more than…
1867; Devastating explosion at Weymouth saw mills.
One Tuesday morning in March of 1867, the men made their way to work at the business premises of 37-year-old William Sketchley. He ran a successful steam saw mill business in the Park district of Weymouth. William was not a native of the town, he had moved his family and business here from the London…
1886; Guy Fawkes night on Portland leads to riots!
The forbidding Verne citadel stands atop of Portland, built originally as part of Lord Palmerston’s coastal defences. Nowadays it hold prisoners serving their sentence for crimes to the community, but in the Victorian era it contained the might of the military. The soldier’s billeted within those strong walls came and went, some companies had better…
1896; Tragedy at Upwey mill, Weymouth.
One of the prettiest little villages on the outskirts of Weymouth is Upwey. As you drive into the meandering village, the houses and buildings snuggle themselves down into a wooded valley, and in the midst of this stands the tall building of the Upwey mill. It’s fed by the river Wey which springs out of…
1864; Weymouth as a nudist resort…
It’s quite weird really, you always have this perception of Victorians as being prudes and covered from head to toe, less some signs of sinful bare flesh should reveal itself. It wasn’t quite like that though…well at least for for the gentlemen! In 1864 a letter was sent to the Times, part of which was…
Weymouth 1873; Rub a dub dub, 3 men (not) in a tub….
Well, o.k. maybe the title is a bit lighthearted for such a tragedy, but when I read that it allegedly concerned 3 butchers assistants that the misfortune had befallen, a visual image immediately flashed in my mind of the popular nursery rhyme. Just put that down to my extremely warped sense of humour which seems…
1870; Pilfering pilots in Portland Roads
Being on the coast, and having both Weymouth Harbour and Portland Roads on our doorstep, a lot of the local men had always earned their living from the sea, and fiercely guarded their rights to do so. Not least the men who worked the local waters as pilots. These were were the men who from…
1899, Weymouth; The mysterious disappearance of the train driver.
At one time in Weymouth there existed a railway line that ran from Weymouth station, across an iron girder bridge over the large stretch of water known as the Backwater and on to Portland. (Virtually where the new road bridge now sits.) In the year 1899 came a report in the newspapers of the rather…
Victorian books, their articles and artwork….what to do?
I seem to have somehow accumilated rather a humongous stack of Victorian, mainly religious, weighty tomes, purchased primarily for the artwork they contain. However, reading through them revealed a vast amount of interesting articles on people, places and social history, which I’m still pondering what to do with. These are articles that I feel sure someone,…
VICTORIAN TALES FROM WEYMOUTH AND PORTLAND 