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Cattistock
Cattistock maps
Historic maps of Cattistock and the local area, hand-drawn by Ordnance Survey and Samuel Lewis. View all Cattistock maps
Cattistock area books
Displaying 1 of 18 books about Cattistock and the local area. View all books for this area
You can read extracts and browse photos from these books.
Memories of Cattistock
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Dorset memories
Emigrant Ancestor Baptised There Christmas Day 1773
George Coombs was born in Maiden Newton in 1773. He later took a soldier's grant of 200 acres in Ontario - where we still live.
Riversdale House, Maiden Newton
I lived here as a child of nine in 1950-1. We rented it from the owner, the delightful Sylvia Townsend Warner, author, who lived there with her partner, Valentine Ackland. The house literally stands with one wall in the river Frome. Paintings which hung about the house by "John Crask" must have had a special significance for the couple. You could sit in the library and watch the rabbits on the opposite bank and herons would sometimes come there too. There was a music room with a grand piano overlooking the river (middle of the house). In 1951 the Frome flooded, turning the house into an effective island. Today, the place looks much the same but the corrugated cladding has disappeared from the walls.
The Seasons of Childhood
This story written by Bee Snow 1928-2007 (nee Barbara Whitaker) about her childhood in Evershot, Dorset. Reared with three sisters, four brothers, four terriers and a jackdaw, I insisted by the age of five in accompanying this mixed mob on twice daily walks my mother decreed. We ran wild and free over the Dorset countryside. I supose largely tolerated because my father was the local GP. We were really an immature group of hunter-gatheres. Hunting was meant to be confined to rabbits, and we aquired some skill in helping our four terriers catch them. The death of the rabbit was often very painful to see and hear. I know I avoided witnessing it by tightly shutting my eyes, sticking my fingers in my ears and screaming "Kill it! kill it!" My eldest brother usually ran and dispatched the poor rabbit more quickly than could the terriers. My mother was always full of praise for the rabbits we carried home for the pot, but she always knew before we opened our mouths if... Read more
Easter 1962
I was one of 14 cyclists from Sussex who descended upon Cerne Abbas on Good Friday 1962, staying until Easter Monday. We literally descended, as the route we used was to come over the hill from Piddletrenthide swooping down the narrow lane into the village. We had left Sussex that Friday morning at about 7am and arrived in Cerne at about 7pm. We were 8 blokes and 6 girls and we were booked in at the Old Cerne Union workhouse, then doing bed and breakfast, now in 2007 a rest home. Torrential rain on the Saturday didn't stop us visiting Weymouth but on Sunday, when we went to Sherborne and Sturminster Newton the sun came out to allow us to don shorts for the first time that year. But the real enjoyment came from the two evenings spent in Cerne, especially Saturday night at The Royal Oak. In 1962 the pub bar area was much smaller than today, but we crowded in there, drinking the pub dry of draught Taunton... Read more
Childhood In Powerstock And Eggardon
Powerstock was my local village from 1951 to 1963. We lived at Kings House Farm at the foot of Eggardon Hill. My father Eddie Whitaker farmed (the hill rented and his 13 acres) for 12 or so years before moving to Somerset. I have visited with my family several times over the years and stayed at the Three Horse Shoes pub on one occasion, there I met one of my peers from school and caught up on people and places from the past. These visits ignihted fond memories of the past together with periods of acute anguish as only can be felt most keenly in the childhood experience. I remember cycling to school - always late! - and flying down the steep hill from Kings spurred on by brotherly challenge not to touch the brakes until the very last bend at the bottom (Wetley). It is now obvious, with the wisdom of years, that we were preserved from harm by the grace of God, because with narrow single track roads... Read more
My Childhood Memories
I was born at Drive Villa, Melbury Osmond in 1938, my parents coming both from London. But my father had a music shop in Yeovil.
My memories of Melbury Osmond are very happy ones, we had a school then infants and juniors, the school's still there as a house now. We had a shop and a post office and a bakery round the back.
The cottages were for the farm labourers who worked for the tenant farmers as Lord and Lady Ilchester owned most of them. Today that is all gone and so is the wonderful community as most of the cottages and farms have been bought or leased to weekenders from London etc.
When the war times came we had Americans in Melbury Park and I used to swing on my front gate waiting for the Yanks to throw sweets to me, I was too young for the nylons. On Sundays we would go to watch them playing basket ball in the park.
My mother who had a... Read more
A Tiny Sketch by Judges 1958 Found in Brisbane Charity Shop
I found a delightful pair of sketches beautifully framed 16cm x 11cm - one of the subjects was a skillfully crafted sketch of the Smith's Arms at Godmanstone - almost identically as it appears in the above photo - it was a real place.
The artist signed his/her name Judges.
The second sketch is of a Dorset cottage in Cerne Abbas the year earlier.
These sketches are a window to a place in a time long ago.
