% Kith & Kin Timeline file
%
%           DORSET.TXT ver 1.0                      Oct 1997                         
%           CR Fry, 7,Thornbury Cl, Crowthorne, Berks RG45 6PE, England ;   <rod.fry@gecm.com>
% The extracts are from "Bound to the Soil: A Social History of Dorset", Barbara Kerr, EP Publ, 1975, a particular 
% county of interest for my family history of agricultural labourers in Symondsbury.  
% Other books dealing with labourers are the series by JL and Barbara Hammond, especially "The Village Labourer".  
% Extracts from these three books covering the Industrial Revolution are in the file LABOURER.TXT for TimeLine. 
% Probably some of the people mentioned in Kerr's book may be more easily traced now by using the computerised databases 
% of the SDFHS.   More details can be found in the book's footnote references, particularly the Dorset area newspapers,
% "Dorset County Chronicle", "The Western Flying post" & "The Sherborne Journal", even "The Times".   Also see Marshall,
% W., "The Rural Economy of the West of England", 1796;  Stevenson, W., "General View of the Agriculture of the 
% County of Dorset", 1812;  Claridge,J., "General View of the  Agriculture in the County of Dorset", 1793.
% Also used was "The Martyrs of Tolpuddle", TUC, 1934.
% Other extracts are shown by symbols:        [*]Weinstock,MB "Studies in Dorset History",1953,
%                                           [#]Weinstock,MB "More Dorset Studies" ,n.d.,
%                                        [$]Weinstock,MB "Old Dorset",1967,
%                                        [@]Bettey,JH "Rural Life in Wessex", 1977. 
FMT DD MMM YYYY
%
? ? 1213 = $Bridport; King John wrote commanding the Sheriff of Dorset to cause ropes, cables & twisted ropes for cordage to made.
? ? 1315 = $Bridport; taxation on hemp, flax and rope show it was a well established industry.
? ? 1331 = $Corfe; Adam de Corfe, a mason settled in London, lived in Farringdon ward, died leaving a tenement in East St, Corfe.
? ? 1530 = $Bridport; Act forbidding sale of hemp from 5mi about save in the market, because of competition from Burton Bradstock.
? ? 1550 = $Sherborne; Free Grammar School of Edward VI came into being, headmaster paid £16 per year
? ? 1562 = $ Wimborne Grammar School re-founded under a new grant.
? ? 1579 =$ Dorchester; Tho Hardye of Frampton left land revenues to support a school established 10 y earlier.
? ? 1600 =@ Affpuddle; Nicholas White made common herdsman for the manor, acting in same way a shepherd sheep-folded the common flock over the chalk downs. 
? ? 1600 > ? ? 1700 = @West Dorset; appearance and vigorous growth of Non-Conformity of Quakers, Baptists, etc.
? ? 1608 = @ Affpuddle; early reference in the manor rolls to use of water-meadows to obtain spring grass to feed the livestock.
? ? 1608 = @ Alton Pancras; vicar reported by his churchwardens because he 'went regularly to play footeball upon a sabbothe day'.
? ? 1608 = @Long Burton, Netherbury, Mapperton, et al.; renounced their Rogationtide processions because the enclosures have defined the bounds so well.
6 Aug 1613 = #Dorchester; 300 houses and two churches destroyed by fire.
? ? 1616 = @ Charminster; Tho Tyher accused by the churchwardens of witchcraft.
? ? 1617 = @ Upwey; complaint to the Justices about the tippling-house kept by Tho Jermyn on the common.
16 Nov 1627 = * Weymouth borough licences, e.g. John Rashley, fuller,5/-; Nich. Minard, carpenter,40/-;Tho Baldwin,tailor,40/- 
? ? 1628 > ? ? 1631 = @ Riots in Gillingham & elswhere because of disafforestation and enclosure of large areas causing loss of common grazing. 
? Sep 1630 = @ Beaminster; townsfolk complained to the Quarter Sessions about the 'blasphemous shewes and sights of puppet playinge'
? ? 1631 = @ Fordington; churchwardens reported 8 people to the Dean of Salisbury for playing 'with a Ball called Fives in the churchyard..'.
? Mar 1645 = @Shaftesbury,Gillingham,Mere,Wincanton; 10000 countrymen, the Clubmen, met to resist the depredations of the Civil War armies.
? May 1645 = @ Gussage Corner; Clubmen eatimated at40000 met plegded to form form an association to resist all plunderers and unlawful violence.
? Jun 1645 = @ Sturminster Newton; similar Clubmen gatherings and petitions for War to cease. 
? Aug 1645 = @Hambledon Hill2000 Clubmen opposed Crowell, but defeated by clever tactics and 300 locked up in Iwerne Courtney church.
? ? 1661 = Motcombe; Ed Devenant vicar of Gillingham accepted payment in kind by the farmers of 1/- in the pound rent in place of tithes.
? ? 1675 > ? ? 1707 = $ Portland stone quarries; Christopher Wren virtually controlled quality of stone output.
ABT ? ? 1640= @ Tho Fuller Rector of Broadwindsor wrote the hemp in the Beaminster Bridport area is better than elsewhere.
? Apr 1644 = # Beaminster; a musket discharged into a gable destroyed 144 houses, Parliament petitioned for £2000.
28 Jun 1684 = # Beaminster; again destroyed by fire, briefs sent out 13 Sept 1685 to collect support.
BEF ? ? 1698 = Tho Hyde of Poole & Lewis Cockram of Swanage had a partnership to dig white Dorset clay.
? ? 1697 = $ Purbeck stone was to be sold as company joint stock.
AFT ? ? 1698 = Tho Hyde continued alone excavating Arne clay; then his son Geo, then his son Tho again.
AFT ? ? 1700 = $Shaftesbury; Abraham Case made cloth buttons.
? ? 1720 = Poole merchants petitioned for smuggling to be checked.
? ? 1722 = Poole merchants petitioned for smuggling to be checked again.
? ? 1725 = * Puddletown; outbreak of smallpox recorded.
? ? 1731 = # Blandford; almost destroyed by a great fire.
? ? 1732 = $ Wimborne; Geo Rogers making paper, buying old ropes and rags from Poole and also coal.
? ? 1733 = $ Buckland Newton; earliest enclosure by Act of Parliament.
? ? 1735 = Thornford; Exchequer Court awarded Rev Embris great and small tithes; case was reopened in a 17 year battle of the Rector in 1800s.
? ? 1738 = Sherborne workhouse opened.
? ? 1739 > ? ? 1863 = Symondsbury; three generations of Syndercombes directed village affairs
? ? 1740 = Symondsbury; butter was 4 to 6d/lb.
? ? 1741 = Bere Regis; Poor House erected on Warren Heath remote from the village.
? ? 1742 = $ Beaminster; paper mill in East St.
? Nov 1744 = Symondsbury; G Syndercombe gives 8d for scaling 16 lbws of hemp.
7 Jul 1755 = Symondsbury; G Syndercombe gives 2d/week to Anne Tucker for teaching his daughter Edith 
? ? 1748 = $Weymouth; 21 yr lease granted to R Prouse & J Bennet to erect wooden bathing houses on north side of harbour.
? ? 1749 = Bere Regis; Poor House was rebuilt and enlarged; most parishes could at this time help their poor labourers
? ? 1750 = Mid-century survey of Bere Regis, showed 13 out of 26 tenants with < 30a engaged in trade.  
ABT ? ? 1750 = Kerr suggests the widely held belief that labourers gradually lost their land, grazing rights, independence & self respect. 
ABT ? ? 1750 = Arne manorial land was virtually now all in the hands of gentry and yeomen.
ABT ? ? 1750 = Hard cheese about 1.25d to 3d per lb.
? ? 1753 = Askerswell; Grace Roberts (nee Travers) wife of Rich Roberts signed the churchwardens' accounts.
? ? 1753 = Bad harvest distressed the poor; trade depression Rob Cleeves lost his copyhold to Tho Hyde. 
? Nov 1753 = Gillingham; Poor Cottages existed - Manor Court Rolls.
? ? 1753 = * Sherborne; John Sharrer, a Whitechapel silk thrower rents Westbury Mill
? ? 1753 = $ Wareham; Robert Bacon occupied West Mills on the Piddle making paper, this ran until 1830.
3 May 1754 = #Bridport; 52 trustees met at Bull Inn to organise turnpike road to Beaminster, labourers employed at 1/2d per day.
? ? 1754 = Symondsbury;  G. Syndercombe letting out cows at £3/5/0 per year
ABT ? ? 1755 = W. Canonicorum; Overseers Accounts, Abbotts Wotton Quarter; Poor house had its inmates by now.
? Aug 1756 = Bere Regis;  a bad harvest.
? Jul 1759 = Symondsbury;  G. Syndercombe, Rectors' accounts, splitting thistles women paid 5d per day, Hannah Taylor paid 1d to pull charlock; again in Oct 1760.
25 Jul 1762 = #Wareham; fire destroyed centre of town.
ABT ? ? 1762 = Beer Hackett; Overseers' Accounts show repairs to the Parish House in this decade.
? ? 1764 = * Sherborne; Sharrer takes on his nephews Wm Willmott and Geo Ward into partnership in silk mill.
6 Nov 1764 = Beaminster; riots arising from the high price of corn; 
25 Feb 1765 =Beaminster;  bunting mill at Stalbridge destroyed and Marnhull mill attacked, repulsed by 16 young men.
? Aug 1766 = Bere Regis;  a bad harvest.
? ? 1768 = $ Thorney Down, Handley; Isaac Gulliver smuggler lived here for 10 y, then moved to Kinson.
? Jun 1770 = $Blandford Workhouse; 3 men and 11 women made 15 gross of large and small buttons
? ? 1771 = @ Crichell; Arthur Young writes of Humphrey Sturt's land reclamation and growing of sainfoin, lucerne, buckwheat and carrots. 
? ? 1771 = Jos Wedgewood agrees to buy 1400 tons yearly of Tho Hydes clay.
BEF? ? 1772 = * Sherborne; original silk mill workings much enlarged.
? Jan 1773 > ? Mar 1773 = Sherborne; Wm Willmott great shortage of raw silk, discharged his labourers with reluctance. 
AFT? ? 1773 = Demand for wheat began to exceed home production.
? ? 1774 = Motcombe; Rev John Hume spent his episcopate rounding up tithes! at Lady Day he received over £100.
3 Feb 1775 =$* Sherborne; Wm Willmott silk mill owner, dismissed nearly 50 out of 150 workers, few months later had too much work!
? Dec 1777 = * Sherborne; Wm Willmott complains of competitors taking his Westbury Mill work force.
? Mar 1778 =$ Thorney Down; tea & liquor seized by excise men.
? Sep 1779 = $* 500 French prisoners moved through Sherborne to Winchester prison and on to Exeter.
? Mar 1780 = * Sherborne; Willmott complains about Dorset militia quartered in the town distracting his workers.
31 Mar 1781 = # Beaminster; third fire destroys 60 houses, £800 received from appeals
? ? 1781 = $ Westbury Mill, dry summer, Wm Willmott silk mill owner forced to install horse-driven wheels to help.
? ? 1781 > ? ? 1784 = Seasons of bad harvest, corn prices rose.
? ? 1783 = Canford; Tho Hyde at public vestry meeting protested for the poor against enclosures.
? ? 1787 = $ Tho Howard prison reformer visits Dorchester prison; found 32 men & women prisoners.
? ? 1788 = Dorchester Prison plans adopted, done by London architect Wm Blackburn in consultation with Tho Howard; started in 1790 finished 1795.
? ? 1789 > ? ? 1794 = Symondsbury & Loders; leading hemp and flax producing areas, see returns for peoples' names, such as Hussey, Whettham, Fookes.
AFT ? ? 1789 = Market boom in exports particularly ropes and nets to North America
? ? 1792 = $ Witchampton; Paper mills worked by Stephen Burt.
? ? 1792 = Bad harvest and rumours of war.
? Feb 1793 = French War began.
? ? 1793 = $ Beaminster; Samuel Cox had 600 hands and 2000 in the neighbourhood making sailcloth. 
? ? 1793 = $ Bridport; Samuel Cox had 2,000 hands making sailcloth.
? ? 1793 = $Sturminster Newton; over 1000 hands employed by 4 or 5 clothiers making swan-skin a coarse white flannel for soldiers and fishermen.
? ? 1793 = $ Shaftesbury; Claridge estimates 4,000 women & children employed by a Mr Atchinson in button-making.
? ? 1793 = $ Purbeck; Claridge reporting on stone quarrying found 400 employed; 50,000 tons shipped annually from Swanage.
? ? 1793 = $ Bridport; Claridge estimated 1,800 people in the town and more than 7,000 in the neighbourhood on rope industry, 2/3 of flax & hemp imported from Europe & America.
? ? 1794 = Dorset produced 3,699 stones of hemp, with over half grown in Loders & Bradpole most probably in small acreages let to cottagers.
? ? 1794 = Walditch; whole of output of 14i stones produced by 4 growers Walditch Common Fields.
? Jul 1794 =$ Act to Raise Volunteers to protect Realm from French raised £2500 in Dorchester.
6 May 1795 = Berkshire JPs, et al., met at Pelican Inn, Speenhamland and resolved on policy to 'tranquillise a hungry labouring population', it gave a fatal impulse to the reduction of wages; it had been convened to raise them!
? ? 1796 = @ Dorset Friendly Societies numbered 12; over 100 in Somerset;tried to help offset the harsh economic climate.
ABT ? ? 1797 = @ Eden wrote about a Blandford labourer living on tea , bread, cheese, potatoes, broth made from bullock's cheek, treacle to sweeten the tea. 
? ? 1798 = Symondsbury; butter reaches a high of 1/1d to 1/2d per lb.
? ? 1798 > ? ? 1803 = $ 22 companies of Dorset yeomanry raised. 
ABT ? ? 1800 = Bridport; butter and cheese wagons to London were getting good prices, took 4 days. 
? ? 1800 = B.Bradstock; stone weavers' cottages built
? ? 1800 > ? ? 1815 = Roughly over this period weavers & spinners would join in the harvesting efforts.
? ? 1801 = W.Canonicorum; although there were high wheat prices in 1799/1800 only 303a in 5,420 ploughed for corn.
? ? 1801 = Jackhams; Poor House built.
? ? 1803 = B. Bradstock; Rich Roberts builds first spinning mill, Grove House Mill, may account for unemployment in villages as the labourers took flax & hemp swingling as a winter standby.
? ? 1804 = $Radipole; Hanoverian regiment stationed in the barracks outside Weymouth.
? ? 1804 = Communications to the Board of Agric; 20-30 cows average for West Dorset farmer, many had far fewer.
? May 1805 = $ Blandford; Dorset Volunteers assembled, about 700 strong for exercises.
? ? 1806 = $ Poole; Mr Florence Customs officer, asked for help from 14th Regiment Light Dragoons at Wareham when needed.
? ? 1807 > ? ? 1815 = B. Bradstock R. Roberts applied to overseers of parishes of Cranborne, Shepton Mallet & Ottery St Mary, but not clear whether he took any children. 
ABT ? ? 1810 =B Bradstock; Rich Roberts, monthly shipments from Bridport to London butter, sailcloth & yarn and hemp & clover seed, sent hemp seed to Belfast.
? ? 1811 = B. Bradstock; Rich Roberts making enquiries about installing gas lights in his Mill.
? ? 1812 = $First branch of the National Society for the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Est. Church founded in Dorset.
? ? 1812 = @ Stevenson said potatoes introduced into gardens some 30 or 40 y previously, but widely as a field crop in early 1800s, a vital food element for farm labourers.
? ? 1812 = Potato growers round Bridport, Beaminster & Abbotsbury were able to cope with drop in hemp & flax demands after 1815.
? ? 1812 = $ B. Bradstock; Rich. Roberts writes to his London agent for barrel of good white herrings for the poor of the parish as provisions are dear.
2 Aug 1812 = B.Bradstock; Rich Roberts complained over barrels of potash sent from London for the farm.
? Aug 1813 = A summer giving a bountiful harvest.
ABT ? ? 1812 = B Bradstock; R Roberts leased Cogden Farm with its outcrops of Forest Marble for building stone; it also gave good crops of wheat and barley.
? ? 1813 = B.Bradstock; Rich Roberts says he has 2 water-spinning mills, wages are low as anywhere, and 10 or 12 villages nearby with unemployed people. 
? ? 1814 = $ B.Bradstock; Rich Roberts writes he now has 3 mills, two for spinning flax, tow and hemp; had two mechanics from Leeds to set up and make machinery. 
? ? 1814 > ? ? 1818 = Dorchester Quarter sessions; increasing numbers of convictions for poaching to supplement their diets.
7 Jul 1815 = Allied troops entered Paris with end of the Peninsular War.
ABT ? ? 1815 = Hard cheese about 5d per lb.
? ? 1815 = @ End of Napoleonic War some 15% of Dorset population receiving parish relief and labourer's position steadily worsened. 
? ? 1816 = @ Portland; 50 members of the Methodist society cast out for not renouncing their belief in witchcraft.
? ? 1816 = $Buckland Newton; first National Society school opened for the Poor; 13 more over the next 20 years.
? Mar 1816 = Agricultural State of the Kingdom, Board of Agric.; many Dorset farmers found falling prices of 'stock, crop, fine wool, etc. left them in dire straits.
? ? 1816 = Said to be a year with a wet summer, early snows, rising poor rate reduced many farmers.
? Apr 1818 = Swyre; 4 children sent to prison for pulling twigs from the hedges for fuel.
? Mar 1819 = Cranbourne; 14 yr old Matilda Lane sent to prison with hard labour for taking underwood.
? ? 1818 = Plural voting allowed in Vestries for ratepayers whose rateable value is more than £50 a vote for every £25 of rateable property (Hammond).
? ? 1821 = $ Census shows a fifth of all Dorset families engaged in handicraft were in Bridport.
ABT ? ? 1822 = A depression year as was 1821.
? ? 1824 = Committee on Agricultural Labourers' Wages, in a Dorset village reported they had to give up their cottages to become pensioners, farmers would only employ pensioners.
? ? 1824 = Committee on Agricultural Labourers' Wages; A Dorset clergyman claimed labourers lived on tea & potatoes.
ABT ? ? 1825 = Hazelbury Bryan, the Rector attempted to offset enclosures by renting 5a plots free to agric labourers , 13 a were also let at £2 per acre to 30 labourers.
? ? 1830 =$ Bridport, only four sailcloth manufacturers left.
? Aug 1830 = Poole; Charles X arrived in town following Bourbon collapse.
22 Nov 1830 = Bere Regis crowds harangued by magistrate, James Frampton, who read Riot Act at Winfrith Newburgh.
? Nov 1830 = Stour Provost had many craftsmen, including wheelwrights & basket makers, but suffered some machine destruction.
? Nov 1830 = Cranborne, Edmonsham, Handley, Stour Provost & East Stour areas had disturbances 
? Nov 1830 = Blackmoor Vale; not enough corn for threshing nor any water meadow courses to be cleared by the agric labourers.
2 Dec 1830 = Gillingham; farmers (W.Bell, John Dunn, Sam Hannam, Tho & Geo Matthews) met to agree on 9s /week wage, providing tithes and rents reduced.
? Dec 1830 = Dorchester Special Commission; 55 men appeared in courts arising from the disturbances, 6 death sentences reprieved, 13 transported.
AFT ? ? 1830 = Steam driven threshing machines began to appear in farmyards.
ABT ? ? 1830 = John S E Drax, a prominent landowner was sympathetic to the labourer's plight and so disliked by his peers. 
ABT ? ? 1830 = A depression year as was 1829, whole of Europe shaded and cloudy, but harvest was plentiful with good potato crop.
ABT ? ? 1830 = Bridport; arsonists caused a 100 gentlemen to patrol the town nightly. 
? Jan 1831 = @ 62 prisoners tried at Dorchester, West Dorset with similar landscape and farming to Somerset was less afffected 
ABT ? ? 1831 = Estimated that number of persons in Friendly Societies was 5% in Dorset compared to 17% in Lancs.
? ? 1832 = Outbreak of cholera in Dorset significantly affected trade.
? ? 1832 = Reform Bill passed, but only enfranchised the middle classes
? ? 1832 = Gillingham; Shadrach Dunn opens his seed business, demand was increasing from knowledgeable farmers
? Oct 1833 = Tolpuddle; Friendly Society of Agricultural labourers formed in Tho Standfield's cottage.
24 Feb 1834 = Tolpuddle; Geo & James Loveless arrested with James Hammett, Tho & John Standfield and James Brine. 
21 Apr 1834 = London; public demonstration at Copenhagen Fields against trial and verdicts of Tolpuddle labourers.
17 Aug 1834 = All except Geo Loveless arrive in Sydney, he reached Tasmania 4 Sept.
? ? 1834 = Report of Poor Law Commission, reported it was more profitable for labourers to marry wives with bastard children as the parish guaranteed putative father's contribution.
? ? 1835 > ? ? 1837 = 4,323 migrants moved under Poor law Commissioners, majority from Suffolk and the south-east counties, only 10 from Dorset [Redford,1926].
? ? 1836 = Tithe Commutation Act, simplified payment, pruned the abuses but left the principle.
? ? 1836 = Ending of flax & Hemp subsidies and lessening naval demand discouraged need to cultivate fibres.
13 Jun 1837 = Geo Loveless returns to London as steerage passenger on the "Eveline".
17 Mar 1838 = Jas Loveless, Tho & John Standfield and James Brine arrive at Plymouth  on the "John Barry" the 11th Sept 1837.
26 Mar 1838 = The Tolpuddle men arrive at Dorchester on the way to their village.
? Aug 1838 = James Hammett arrives at the Ongar, Essex, farm given to 3 of the men, but returns to his wife at Tolpuddle in due course and enters building trade. 
? ? 1840 = Bere Regis had a surfeit of traders compared to 1750s.
? ? 1840 = $ Witchampton; in the paper mills William Burt employed 40 hands.
? ? 1841 = Bere Regis; 5 grocers had established themselves; 4 dressmakers also there.  
? ? 1841 = Census showed 645 Irish labourers in Dorset compared to 3,402 in Hants and 4,084 in Devonshire.
? ? 1841 = Bere Regis; only old brick maker and young assistant, but building was at a standstill in most places.
? ? 1841 = Arne; out of male population of 80 only 17 agricultural labourers. 
? ? 1841 = B. Bradstock Census only 16 women engaged in spinning out of 330. 
? ? 1841 = Bradpole Union Workhouse, fifth of inmates had been connected with hemp and flax processing.
? ? 1841 > ? ? 1851 = W. Canonicorum; only 4 new houses built, building trade depressed.
? ? 1842 =$ Bridport, only two sailcloth manufacturers left.
ABT ? ? 1843 = B Bradstock; Grove Mill by now grinding corn (as it was in 1964).
ABT ? ? 1845 = Yetminster; round this time hazel and willow used for rake making.
? ? 1846 = Repeal of the Corn Laws.
? ? 1848 = Select Committee on Agricultural Customs, tenant of Waterson Farm, Puddletown complained to the Committee.
AFT ? ? 1850 = Improved draining of fields made possible by manufactured clay pipes.
ABT ? ? 1850 = Generally carpentry, tailoring & shoemaking suffered overcrowding; builders, iron workers, saddlers fared better with strict apprenticeships.
ABT ? ? 1850 = Greatest part of Dorset woodland was man -managed copse.
? ? 1841 = Bere Regis; after 10 years now 7 grocers and 16 dressmakers
? ? 18     = W. Canonicorum; Crimea War caused breaking up of grass land for wheat.
? ? 1847 = Opening of Southampton to Dorchester railway secured a connection with London.
? ? 1868 = $ East Stoke Common; last enclosure by Act of Parliament.
10 Aug 1870 = Cokers Frome; two sets of double cylinder steam engines drove though Dorchester to Henry Mayo's farm to carry out the first steam ploughing contract. 
AFT? ? 1870 = Agricultural depression period.
? ? 1873 = @ 712 acres of flax grown.
? ? 1879 = @ Very bad year for harvests.
? ? 1881 = @ 225 acres of flax grown.
? ? 1884 = @ 117 acres of flax grown.