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from DCA Community News magazine
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from DCA Community News magazine
Location: Dorset
Fontmell Magna - a village archive - an extract from an article about the Fontmell Magna project published in Community News, the quarterly magazine of Dorset Community Action (issue 91, Summer 2002)
Over 100 old postcards, a large scale map made in 1774, tailoring tools and materials dating back to 1861, and Women’s Institute scrapbooks of 1968 and 1983 - these are all part of the Fontmell Magna Village Archive, which is being helped to catalogue and promote its remarkable collection with funding from the Countryside Agency’s Local Heritage Initiative.
Fontmell Magna is a thriving community with a long history - as far back as the 11th century, the Domesday book records that the village had four water mills, which would have provided work and a living for quite a few people. Today it has its own school, cricket club, and post office/shop - and a number of residents keen to preserve the village’s history.
Fontmell Magna seems to have pioneered two very modern ideas many years ago.
A vellum-bound Village Clothing Book kept by the tailoring Stainer family from 1861 records how four generations of people in the community used a local savings scheme to pay for their clothes - a very early form of the “Christmas Club”, and a valuable insight into social history.
The meticulous written records of Springhead Farm between 1934 and 1949 reveal Rolf Gardiner as one of the first ecologists to promote organic farming. Last year his son, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, commissioned a survey of Gore Farm's forests, ecology and archaeology, and has donated a copy to the Archive
“Like all Dorset situations, there is less farming now than there was,” says Dr Ian Lawrence, “and that’s partly the reason why we’re trying to collect items from the farmers to establish some of their history.”
Volunteers meet monthly to sort out and catalogue the treasures, while St Andrew’s First School children are joining in by making a survey of local trees, which will lead to an exhibition in June.
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