The Blandford Express

‘Tis not well-known, but one year in the 1970s Shillingstone had the privilege of hosting the County’s Dwyle Flonking Championships. Equally little-known are the rules of the game. Two teams of twelve players are formed who dress up as yokels. To play they use a ‘dwyler’ (knitted cloth), a ‘dribbler’ (stick used to hurl the cloth) and two chamber pots, known as ‘guzunders’. The latter are filled with beer. Turns are determined by tossing a sugar beet. One team gathers in a circle and moves around an opposing player known as the ‘flonker’. This competitor dunks the cloth into one of the pots and then throws it at the opposing circling  players.  Points are awarded according to which area of the body the thrower hits with three points awarded for hitting a head.  However, if the player misses, called a ‘swadge’, the thrower has to drink as a forfeit the contents of the other chamber pot within a strict time limit. Alternatively, the player can dump the contents of the guzul...

Dorset Blue Vinny cheese enjoys Protected Geographical Indication (PGI), status so it is not any old cheese. This means this cheese can only be made at Woodbridge Farm, Sturminster Newton. It was the first food in this country to be awarded PGI status in 1998. Vinny comes from the Old English meaning to become mouldy.   For several centuries, Dorset Blue Vinny was made by farmers’ wives using left over skimmed milk after cream was taken away to make butter. This resulted in a dry, crumbly, low-fat blue cheese. Reputedly Blue Vinny was Dorset author Thomas Hardy’s favourite cheese. Unconventional methods were used to blue the cheese. These included placing dirty farmers’ boots nearby, dragging mouldy horse harnesses through the milk and even incredibly using slug slime. By the 1930s, factory cheese-making had increased dramatically replacing much of the farmhouse production. With milk rationing during and after World War II, production of Dorset Blue Vinny almost completely ceased. ...

For stealing four and a half pints of milk, valued at eleven pence and a farthing (around 4.5p),  Adilene Blanche Plaister, a single woman, of Shillingstone was sentenced by Sturminster Newton Magistrates to four months in prison with hard labour. Witnesses had observed her crossing a field at around 5.15am with a bucket under her arm. She was then seen milking a cow which belonged to Shillingstone farmer Edwin Charles Tuffin - a charge she did not deny. The farmer claimed this was the sixth occasion his cow had been milked. The Court was told that Adilene Plaister had previously failed to appear at court stating she would definitely not go even for forty policemen. She was brought to Court under custody. Before Sturminster Newton Magistrates, Adilene Plaister pleaded not guilty but added: ‘I milked his cow but only did it for a bit of fun. I did it to get my own back.’ She alleged that Mr Tuffin had milked someone else’s cow.  On hearing the sentence, Adilene Plaister exclaim...