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Town Hill
Town Hill maps
Historic maps of Town Hill and the local area, hand-drawn by Ordnance Survey and Samuel Lewis. View all Town Hill maps
Town Hill photos
We have no photos of Town Hill, although we do have photos of these nearby places:
Frampton| Littlebredy| Long Bredy| Martinstown| Frome Vauchurch| Maiden Newton| Litton Cheney| Portesham| Charminster| Sydling St Nicholas| Toller Porcorum| Godmanstone| Abbotsbury| Cattistock| Puncknowle| Dorchester| Fordington| Swyre| Upwey| Powerstock| Piddletrenthide| Preston
Town Hill area books
Displaying 1 of 18 books about Town Hill and the local area. View all books for this area
You can read extracts and browse photos from these books.
Memories of Town Hill
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Dorset memories
School Experience
We moved from Weymouth to Kingston Russel just after have taken the 11+ exam at St. John's school.
When I started at Long Bredy school I only remember one classroom and one teacher. Hand bells and country dancing stick in my memory as things that we did there. And the teacher taught me how to build a model glider from a kit.
I was very struck by the dialect of my new school friends who used words that were like a foreign language, thick and tharn being just two.
I had a great time and ran over the hills back home when I stayed late.
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.
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.
A Family Business
To anyone local to Dorchester this was a familiar scene day in and day out for almost 50 years. My grandfather Ben Courtney started selling 'fruit and veg' in 1947 from hand-carts on the roadside. His son Doug started in 1950 and various members of the family helped out through the week.
This picture shows my Aunt Isabel serving a regular customer with his two sons. Her father Ben is behind in his hat, serving, and her brother Doug is extreme left, carrying a box. My father (Doug Courtney) tells me his wife Joan was not at work at this time because she was expecting me to be born, in the June of that year!
Doug took over in 1960 and Trevetts worked alongside from the mid 1960s. Doug, Joan, Win, Isabel and Glad were the familiar faces that served. I did my fair share, working on busy Saturdays to ease the load. Everything was seasonal, and spring into summer brought a surge of fruit and... Read more
Parallel Parking in South Street in The 1960s
I had recently passed my driving test and drove a Morris Minor Saloon, to practice my parallel parking I used to drive down South Street after work or on a Sunday and park outside of Woolworths or Marks and Spencers and try various manoeuvres with the aid of the reflection of the car in the plate glass windows.
My Gt Grandparents Lived at Hangmans Cottage
My great-grandparents lived at Hangmans Cottage sometime during the late 1800s or early 1900s. My dad Robert Mitchell was born at Friary Cottage in 1904 which is a short walk from Hangmans Cottage. He used to tell me about his time spent with his grandparents at Hangmans Cottage when he was a boy. Sadly I am not sure as to whether it was his paternal grandparents which would have been called Mitchell or his maternal grandparents which would have been White-Matthews that lived there. I would really like to know, but sadly there is no-one left to tell me. I have visited both cottages on several occasions with my late father and have since taken my children & grandchildren to see both places. We now have several pictures of different generations standing outside Hangmans Cottage.
