The Blandford Express

Not a lot of people know this but in the 1890s, there were plans to make Blandford Station into a railway junction. Connecting Bath with Poole and Bournemouth, the Somerset & Dorset Railway had already opened stations in Blandford and Shillingstone. The Wilts, Dorset & East Devon Railway was an ambitious plan to construct a new and additional route from Salisbury to Exeter via Blandford. The first section of 21 miles would leave the existing Salisbury to Yeovil line at Wilton and open new stations at Broadchalke, Sixpenny Handley and Pimperne before joining the Somerset & Dorset line in Blandford. The second section of 11 miles would run through Blandford St Mary, Winterborne Whitechurch & Bere Regis and then join the London & South Western, Poole to Dorchester line at Moreton Station. The final 50 mile section would be built via Shipton Gorge, Bridport, Charmouth, Lyme Regis, Seaton & Sidmouth and would then join the London & South Western Line at Topsh...

Panda  Blue Rasperry Ade, Strawberry Jelly & Ice Cream and Casper Ghostly Limeade were all unique soft drink flavours produced by the Panda Pops brand owned by Badger Beers. Panda Pops were often sold in small bottles of fizzy drink that were as sweet and sticky as it was as possible for them to be. Other popular Panda Pop flavours were Cherry Ade and Bright Green Cola. Even more singular blends could be concocted by mixing two or more flavours in a Panda Pops mixing bowl. Panda Cola achieved a sort of cult status and there is even a song, ‘ Warm Panda Cola’ . While among Panda aficionados there was even the spoof blend of Princess Diana Memorial flavour! The Blandford drink competed remarkably well against American giants Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola. Panda Pops date back to the 1960s when the Blandford brewer dropped the name of Sunparlor for its soft drink brands. Sunparlor had also been the name of a winning race horse owned by a member of the Woodhouse family. Cream soda was...

Blandford has always been associated with brewing beer. With iconic brands, both ancient and modern such as Tanglefoot and Stingo, Badger Beers come immediately to mind.  Yet, there have been local brewers other than Hall & Woodhouse. John Lewis Marsh was not an upmarket department store but the owner of a brewery based in Bryanston Street. Marsh was a Londoner, born in Clerkenwell and the landlord of the Kings Arms in White Cliff Mill Street, who diversified into brewing. The business traded successfully for half a century until it closed in 1938. Marsh was keen on advertising. However, he was aware not everyone in the town was an admirer of his products. There were those Blandford folk who believed in alcoholic abstinence and that its excesses undermined and damaged family life. So Marsh produced an advertisement claiming that excessive tea drinking was ‘more harmful than malt and hop beers in moderation.’ The publicity also quoted former Prime Minister, William Ewart Glads...

Although Blandford is known today for brewing and for button making in the past, gloving has also been an important industry in the town. Gloving dates back to at least the early 1700s as glover, John Creech is recorded as suffering great financial loss due to the Great Fire of Blandford in 1731. Robert & Edward Fisher in the Market Place, John Homer & Henry Edmunds in East Street and Thomas Bennett in Salisbury Street were all involved in the glove making business. The Will of John Homer, glover of Blandford Forum can be found in the National Archives. It is reckoned in 1851 there were some 1,700 people in Dorset described as glovers. The trade employed a significant number of outworkers with many living in the villages around Blandford. This enabled women to supplement their husband’s low agricultural wage while remaining at home to look after children. This system also made economic sense as the sale of gloves was highly seasonal business much dependant on the weather. Wool ...

  Not many Dorset villages can claim they have had a Royal Navy vessel named after them. Yet despite the ship’s incredibly short Royal Navy commission, the village of Durweston can make that claim. While despite the county not being renown for building warships, HMS Durweston was Dorset built. She was launched by the Dorset Yacht Company from its Hamworthy Yard in August 1955. HMS Durweston was designed to combat the threat of mines laid in coastal waters. The Dorset Yacht Company had been founded in 1938 and in 2013 celebrated its 75 th anniversary. HMS Durweston was a Ton Class minesweeper. All Royal Navy ships of this class were given the names of towns and villages with names that ended –ton. Unfortunately however, HMS Durweston had one of the shortest ever commissions in the Royal Navy. The vessel was  sold to the Indian Navy in 1956 and renamed the Kakinda. She remained in the service of the Indian Navy until 1981. (Illustrations: Minesweeper HMS Durweston & cre...

  In the late 50s and early 1960s, Pimperne Cricket Club played at Langbourne on a concrete batting pitch overlaid by matting. A particular hazard at Langbourne was cow pats as the pitch’s more normal use was for dairy cattle. To discourage the wandering animals, a temporary electrified fence had to be placed around the batting pitch which was inadvisable to touch Cricket in Pimperne went back many years. The Dorset County Chronicle  reports a cricket match between Pimperne and Chettle which took place in August 1867. It was a close game with Pimperne winning by one run with just one wicket to spare.                                                                ...

Powerstock Station’s great train robbery took place on April 14th 1858 at a time when the station master was away at Sunday morning church. Powerstock Station was on the railway branch line which connected Bridport with Maiden Newton and it served both the  villages of Powerstock and Nettlecombe. The station consisted of a single platform, a siding and a bungalow style building.   This meant that it could be used as a dwelling if the station became unviable. The station had opened in 1857 and until around 1862 was known as Poorstock. The  Bridport News  of Saturday 24 April 1858 reported that the plunderers effected their entrance by breaking a window. Fortunately there was little cash to be found in Powerstock Station at the time and the burglars escaped only with coppers to the amount of one shilling (5p) or just one shilling and sixpence (7.5p). No clue was found as to the identity of the depredators so the case of the Great Powerstock Station Robbery still remain...

  From Dorset Gallows to Van Diemen’s Land is the unlikely but true story of political corruption, hangings and transportation in the small market town of Blandford in Southern England.  It is available as a paperback from  Amazon in the United Kingdom, Australia and the USA. The book uncovers the extraordinary tale of two ordinary men, George Long a shoemaker and Richard Bleathman a butcher. Driven by belief and dissatisfaction they are swept along by events. Sentenced to be hanged in Dorchester Gaol for their protests against political corruption they are instead, following clemency appeals,  transported to Van Diemen’s Land -  on the other side of the world. ‘A fascinatingly  good read.  This book entirely complements the story of the Tolpuddle Martyrs - also transported to Australia.’ (Richard Holledge, newspaper editor, freelance journalist - London. As read in the Independent, New York Times & Financial Times. Author of   Voices of the M...

Wilts & Dorset double-decker buses were red and Hants & Dorset double-decker buses were green and both companies operated in Blandford. This was during an era when there was a proper bus network in Dorset. Bus timetables rarely changed from year to year and apart from Summer Saturdays there were few problems of traffic congestion in the county. With their open platforms at the rear, each double-decker had both a driver and a conductor. Between Salisbury and Weymouth via Dorchester there was a daily (no.34) hourly service operated jointly by Wilts & Dorset and Weymouth based, Southern National. Blandford’s bus station could be found just south of the Salisbury Road railway bridge and right next to a fish & chips shop. Hants & Dorset ran two routes to Bournemouth. One from Blandford was via Corfe Mullen ( 10) while the other (24 ), originating from Shaftesbury, journeyed via Blandford and Wimborne to Bournemouth. However, the latter took an interminably long time to...

A Portland man claimed he was brought up as a child to help smugglers run cargoes ashore at Church Hope Cove - a small, secluded beach on the eastern side of the Isle of Portland. Later, as a young man, he remembered one night landing 150 kegs of brandy there and then hurrying home to bed. He had not been in bed long before a coastguard officer knocked on the door asking him to help the Service out. He agreed and did this for several days and was then offered a job onboard the Revenue cutter Eagle. This meant chasing smugglers up and down the English Channel, confiscating their goods and sending them to Dorchester Gaol. Curiously these coastguard officers were smugglers themselves continuously making flying trips across the Channel and bringing home cargo after cargo of contraband goods. They would then sail out and capture some poor smuggler who never did half the business they did in a month. This group of reprobate officials was led by a former lieutenant in the British Navy. (Sourc...

North Dorset Railway is a heritage project which is, step by step, bringing Shillingstone station back to life. Here are some newspaper cuttings from the station’s past. Some show that then, safety was not always a prime consideration. The station was closed as a result of Beeching cuts back in the 1960s. Accident on Line.  On Wednesday morning when the Somerset & Dorset train leaving Poole at 8.10 was within half a mile off Shillingstone, and going at the rate of 30mph, the driver noticed a bull jump the fence from a field and stumble into the line when the train was only a dozen yards off and before it could get out of the way the right-hand life-guard and buffer of the engine caught it and literally cut it in pieces.’ (Weymouth Telegram: 22 nd May 1874) Railway Supper. On Friday, the employees of the Traffic & Permanent Way at Shillingstone Station held their annual supper in the school room (kindly lent by Reverend EA Dayman). Upwards of 30 partook of an excellent repa...

 In the Bridport News of Friday 6th February 1903, nonagenarian Digory Hopkins Gordge recalled his time as a Charmouth smuggler. With agricultural wages depressingly low, at around 16 old pence (6p) per day, merely carrying goods from a smuggling vessel to shore could earn around 30 old pence (12p) per night. This was an attractive proposition and could help to put food on the table. While farmers might complain about the effects of smuggling on their workforce, they would also be grateful to make gains from the trade themselves. Born in Bridport in 1809, Digory remembered in the 1830s a French lugger, carrying kegs of brandy, lying about four miles off shore. French crews, mainly from Cherbourg, would ship cargoes to the Dorset coast. They were guided to favoured landing places by fast growing clumps of trees planted on hills behind each inlet. Only the darkest nights were chosen for a smuggling job. As many as 70 men, drawn from local villages, put off in boats and came back with...

Charles Edgar Brine (20) was, on the face of it, a quite respectable agent for the Prudential Insurance Company and had recently moved from Blandford to Wimborne. However, he also had a duplicitous sideline involving the sale of bicycles.       In June 1891, Charles Edgar Brine appeared before Wimborne magistrates charged with stealing two bicycles valued at nineteen pounds. The first bicycle he had ‘borrowed’ from Frank King, a Wimborne machinist, to go on a ride with a friend. He said his friend was so impressed with the machine that he had kept it for a period and would probably offer to buy it. Brine said he would send King a telegram when he heard from the friend. None was received but Brine insisted he had sent one. In fact he had already sold the bicycle for just three pounds. He told the buyer he had sold it for a friend who was short of money. The second bicycle he had bought himself on hire purchase having paid a deposit of two pounds, Eleven pounds & eleven...

  With five substantial courses and twelve alcoholic toasts, Blandford Corporation’s 1910 Dinner was not a weight-watcher’s affair. The evening opened at Blandford’s Crown Hotel with a choice of either mock turtle or julienne soup accompanied with a glass of sherry. This was followed by fish which could be turbot, shrimp sauce, or fried fillets of sole. With this there was a German hock. After the fish, there were lamb cutlets and peas. Next was a meat course offering boned turkey, pheasant, York ham, roast chicken, game pie, spiced beef, tongue, sirloin of beef and finally galantine of beef. With this course there was both claret and champagne. As an ‘ entremets’ or desert, there was a choice of plum pudding, trifle, white jellies, compote of pears, apple tart or vanilla creams. As a ‘ digestif ’, one could partake of a glass of port. Then, twelve toasts followed responded to by twenty five diners interspersed by eight songs and two violin solos. First toast of the evening was to...