The Blandford Express

Beaminster Tunnel opened on 29th June 1832. It is reckoned to be the only pre-railway road tunnel in the country still in use. The tunnel was built to take the road under Horn Hill thus avoiding a 1 in 6 gradient which was particularly difficult for horse-drawn traffic. Teams of horses were required to pull the wagons and carts up and over the hill. Engineer Michael Lane on this project also worked with the Brunels on the Thames Tunnel linking Rotherhithe with Wapping. Lane rose from foreman bricklayer to become one of Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s most trusted assistants because of the quality of his work. He almost lost his life when the Thames Tunnel flooded. Michael Lane later became Chief Engineer on the Great Western Railway. The tunnel was opened with much ceremony with the day being regarded in Beaminster, according to the Dorset County Chronicle,  as something of a holiday. Promoter of the project was local solicitor, Giles Russell who raised £13,000 by public subscription. Ce...

  Henry, the diminutive vacuum cleaner with eyes and a cheeky grin was conceived in Beaminster. Today, Henry is the only mass-produced consumer vacuum cleaner still produced in Britain. Numatic, the company that produces Henry was founded in Crewkerne in 1969 with just six employees. In 1971 the business moved to a Yeovil watermill and with  continued growth transferred to Broadwindsor Road,, Beaminster in 1974. During a trade show in Portugal in the 1970s, business owner Chris Duncan chalked a a wide grin under the hose outlet of the latest model together with a pair of eyes above. The model was then named, Henry. This caused such an amused reaction among onlookers that  Chris Duncan realised he had stumbled upon a potentially winning concept. The Henry model was then introduced commercially in 1981. To meet the growing customer demand, the company had to move production to Chard, Somerset in 1990. Henry also has sibling model variants named Hetty, Harry and James. There...