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I decided to start on the social history of Drimpton by first acquiring as much information as possible on the inhabitants of this village over the last 200 years. The census returns are the best place to find out about the people living in the village at those set points in time. To date, I have transcribed the 1841, 1851, 1861, 1871 and 1901 census returns.
The village has at different times provided a home for a gentleman, a curate, farmers and their labourers (male and female), workers in a flax mill (male and female), and also the shopkeepers who provided the basic necessities of life.
With the completion of the 1881 and 1891 returns a better idea of the village inhabitants and village life should begin to become clear.
(July 2003)
Local Documents
In September I attended a talk at Beaminster Museum designed to aid local historians access a range of written resources at Dorset Record Office. Following this talk I decided to pursue the suggestion of studying the local tithe map. Dorset Record Office has a tithe map covering Drimpton which I have traced and also photographed the whole area we are studying (with permission).
Along with this map comes the apportionment. From this record it is possible to determine who owns the land; who rents it from them; what agricultural or domestic purpose it is used for; and its tithe value. The apportionment also records the names given to each field as known in 1841. I hope in time to find out by talking to local present day farmers if these names are still in use.
Most recently I have asked villagers if they have house deeds which they might be willing to let me see. It is still early days to see if this will be significant results.
(Nov 2003)
Useful contacts and the Internet
My research since Christmas 2003 has been much inspired by a letter received from a Mrs Colmer. Mrs Colmer has been researching her family tree and had found members who at sometime lived in Drimpton and Netherhay and was willing to share this information. Letters were exchanged. I sent what little information I had on the Colmers in return. It was the fact that Mrs Colmer had found mention of our project, BUILDING BRIDGES, on the Internet which made me realise it was time to surf the net!
I have managed to find many interesting sites. There were those providing indexes and those with information for sale. Now in my possession – all mentioning the village – are:
- 3 wills dating from the 17th century
- 2 Acts of Parliament concerning the turnpike
- the medal cards of two men who died in the First World War
This material and more that is in the pipeline will keep me busy for some time and spark off new channels of investigation I’m sure.
Thank you Mrs Colmer for reminding me that the Internet is such a valuable resource.
Finally, if there is anyone else out there able to offer and happy to share information on the people and places of Drimpton and Netherhay, please contact me, Jane Marsden, c/o Village Voices, 16 Chard Road, Drimpton, Beaminster, Dorset DT8 3RF
(March 2004)
May 2005
A Final Report - giving the flavour of researches into local history
The last few months have been a time of trying to put together the information I have acquired and rectify some of the omissions.
One of the areas it was decided to find out more about was the agricultural life of the village in the 19th century. Farming was the mainstay of the village. So important was farming that the school even closed for two weeks at the end of June beginning of July for haymaking.
The census returns for the 19th and 20th centuries give a basic background, giving the names of residents. But as Drimpton is a village, no addresses were listed, making it difficult to locate the family homes of the past. A little background of village families has been gained from people involved in researching their village family trees. Newspapers are another source of information. However they only report dramatic incidents amongst the poor. There is maybe a little more on their employers.
The farming community can be classified under three headings:
i. farm owners or tenants
ii. agricultural labourers
iii. those providing services or supplies
In the 1850’s Drimpton boasted five farms of over 100 acres employing 18 men and 10 boys. However, within the village 61 people claimed to work in agriculture. Do we assume from this that farmers only listed full-time employees; the rest being hired when needed? By the 1850’s agriculture was in difficulties. The average wage for an agricultural labourer had actually fallen from £40-8-0 per year in 1805 to £29-0-9 in 1851. Times were changing. Mechanisation was about to enter the farming scene.
Drimpton had also entered the industrial age. In the 1820’s a flax mill opened at Greenham (a neighbouring hamlet). It was providing employment for 45 of the villagers in the 1850’s. This number included 20 females as the mill offered better paid work than working on the land.
The landowners and farm tenants leave a clearer trail to follow in the way of legal documents, including wills. Most recently I have had access to older documents relating both to Bridge Farm (once called Drimpton Farm in pre-bridge days) and to Childhay Manor Farm. Village land seems often to have been owned by people who had no connection with the village, leaving tenant farmers in charge. None of the farms was overly large; the largest being 260 acres. The total farming acreage around the village was 650 acres according to the 1861 census. However the Tithe Map for 1841 reveals the acreage of the tithing of Drimpton as being over 1000 acres. Obviously land was worked by farms outside the village.
The services and suppliers to the village in the 19th century were far more numerous than within living memory. The census returns again supply us with basic information. They list 5 grocers, a baker, a butcher, 3 shoemakers, 5 dressmakers, 2 coopers, a blacksmith, a carpenter, a mason, a wheelwright, 2 landlords and a thatcher. Some of these people carried on more than one occupation.
Travel being difficult, local shopping was the norm. The shop goods were either locally sourced or brought in by carrier from a distance. Two snippets of information from other sources show how hard it was to travel.
The Rev. Solomon Malan, Vicar of the Parish of Broadwindsor (which included Drimpton) in the mid-19th century, stated: ‘A visit to Bridport (some 10 miles away) or Chard (some 6 miles away) was a thing to be talked about; a journey to Yeovil or Salisbury was a topic of a lifetime.’ The statement is a little strange coming from a man who had travelled as far as China, and who every few years was wont to go travelling around the Middle East for months at a time.
Elsewhere I have received copies of letters written by the Stockdale family in the 18th century. They reveal that travel and wider knowledge were things enjoyed more by the well-to-do. Mr Peregrine Stockdale writing from Bristol to his wife, who was staying with her aunt in Drimpton, tells of goings-on in Bristol and the country at large.
Even in the early 20th century travel was not easy. Long before cars became the mode of transport for everyone, the school log book makes mention of school supplies arriving at the station in Crewkerne (some 4 miles away) and being transported by the local carrier with his horse and cart. And a child who cut his foot while playing in the river at dinner time had to wait to be transported home by cart.
The First World War was to provide travel opportunities to young men of the village, many of whom would rather have stayed at home, I am sure. They ended up not only fighting in the trenches in France; some went as far as Mesopotamia (present day Iraq). Others were to march in the Holy Lands or spend days on the beaches of the Dardanelles, or even see service in Egypt. Many of these men had surely travelled very little in their lives before. Whether they had the time to observe and marvel at what they saw is another matter. The absent voters list for 1918 shows 13 men in the forces. We know of 7 more who died. But those who were of an age to be called up but not to vote are not recorded.
The 1881 census has given us a valuable tool to see movement. We can check each region of Britain to find anyone born in Drimpton, Dorset, and see how far they had moved. Members of the west country agricultural workforce were liable to travel within a 30mile radius to find employment. People with professions or in trade travelled further afield. William Pomeroy took his Drimpton-born wife off to Reading where he worked at the gaol. George Chubb joined the navy and was on board HMS Penelope at Harwich. John Pye was a stoker at a gasworks in Halewood, Lancashire. George Diment had taken his Drimpton-born wife, Ann, to Hunslet in Yorkshire to brew vinegar. And Thomas Everett was living in Neath, Wales, working as a maltster.
Drimpton may not have supplied any great historical heroes, or, come to think of it, any great villains, but we may have links to actress and comedienne Lucille Ball! Her ancestor is often reckoned to be one Roger Morey, born in Drimpton, who sailed to America from Weymouth on The Abigail in 1628 and was to have 12 children. Nathaniel Whetham also grew up in the village from where he first went to London and later joined Oliver Cromwell’s army. Here he rose to the rank of colonel during the English Civil War in the 1640’s. Then there was the Hardy family, members of which went from Sandpit to Australia in the mid-19th century, and founded the Hardy winemaking dynasty.
But, in the main, the people of this village have been born, worked, married and died in quiet anonymity.
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