The Blandford Express

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...