Well…that’s yet another year year done and dusted. My old Mum always used to say the older you get, the faster they go, and true to her oh so wise (but often infuriating) words, the older I’m getting, the faster they’re bloody well going. In fact they’ve now almost hit warp speed! New Year’s Eve is…
Tag: historic
Hitting the Headlines; Weymouth 1869.
When you stroll through the streets of Weymouth, do you ever gaze up at the at the old windows and mansards of these historic buildings and wonder what silent spectres peer through their bubbled panes or pondered the scenes they may have witnessed during their long existence. The lives of our ancestors past, of their families, neighbours and…
Death Becomes Us…Weymouth Wills and Legacies.
It’s often strange where a line of research takes you. What starts out as a simple enquiry ends up uncovering parts of Weymouth’s history that I never knew about, their family lines and tales twisting and weaving through time and place and the story of Weymouth itself. I was rummaging through the National Probate Calendar…
Weymouth Maritime Mishaps and Mayhem of 1857
Being on the coast and both valuable ports for trade, Weymouth and Portland have had their fair share of shipping disasters. Take the year 1857 and a peek into local papers reveals a concoction of calamities for those working the local waters. Even nowadays crowds love to stop and watch Weymouth’s town bascule bridge be raised to let…
Old Weymouth’s High Street; Everyday Life in the 1850’s.
We stop first at no 10 High Street, here lives 45-year-old Charles Buck, a coal merchant.
Love and matrimony came late to Charles, at the ripe old age of 40 he finds himself waiting nervously at the alter of Holy Trinity church for his bride to be.
1857; Victorian Day-trippers excitement… journey to Weymouth
Today, we all seem to take many things, including technology, for granted, as ever more sophisticated gadgets and inventions are unrolled into our society. We seem to have lost the beautiful wonder and awe of the Victorian era, when every new invention or places of travel created great excitement amongst the people, such sights were…
Weymouth’s Harbour Area; Brewers Quay
If there’s one place that I love to mooch around in Weymouth, it is an area named Brewer’s Quay for rather obvious reasons, if properly named, it’s Hope Square. This area has a lot of history, not least that it was where the breweries in the past chucked out that distinctive cooked hops aroma from…
Weymouth’s Victorian bandstands.
The final bandstand stood out at the end of what was once an elegant, curving pier, which brings us neatly back to where we first started our story of the Weymouth bandstands.
1867; Danger Lurks in Portland Quarries.
The quarries on Portland are world renown. They are of a strange type of brutal beauty, the glare from the white stone is blinding in the bright sunshine, the heat reflects mercilessly from the calcified remains that makes up the huge slabs that tumble and totter precariously all around. Ultimately, their beauty belies the ever present…
1888; Weymouth Queen Victoria Jubilee Clock.
The striking Jubilee Clock is an iconic image of Weymouth, it adorns thousands of postcards and holiday brochures and what local hasn’t stood under there at some stage of their life to meet someone? The year 1887 was a milestone in the reign of Queen Victoria. It marked the 50th year of her ruling over the kingdom….
VICTORIAN TALES FROM WEYMOUTH AND PORTLAND 