It's August 1998 in Puddletown...
...and you're a little bored. You've already watched Titanic on VHS twice today.
Cher's "Believe" is playing on the radio for the 5th time.
After checking nobody's using the phone line, you turn on the computer and dial up to the internet.
10 minutes later, you're in and the interweb is yours to surf. The question is, where do you go?
Google doesn't exist yet.
It won’t be created until next month (September 1998).
Thefacebook won't be created for another 7 years.
And even then there won’t be much on there.
It's impossible to even do any online shopping.
All we can do is Windows shop (get it?!)
But as it happens, you are in luck.
THIS rural parish and its clergy are way ahead of the game.
There's a brand new website for you to surf!
Rev. John Walton's 1998 website
A site for “anyone wanting to know about the history of Puddletown, its church, its families, Athelhampton, Tolpuddle, Thomas Hardy”, Life (life.clara.net) was created by Puddletown’s Rev. John Walton at Easter 1998. It featured in the Dorset Echo a few months later.
The Dorset Echo ran a piece about the new website on 19th August 1998. Click on the image to read the full article.
Aiming to share the “delights of his parish” in a more modern way, Life was a very comprehensive and very cool website. With a What’s On page, news page, village history, and church service information, it would prove extremely useful to the people of Puddletown for years to come.
Click on the arrows (bottom right) to enlarge.
The 1998 you is just obsessed by the site's vibrant pink colour scheme and its fun Christian fish animation.
You linger a long while on the website, learning about the village, Dorset, Hardy, Tolpuddle... and ultimately feeling closer to your community.
Time to head down for a stroll along the Piddle!
As the creator of the 2025 village website, it was a real privilege to browse Rev. John Walton’s site as it looked in 1998 thanks to web.archive.org’s Way Back Machine. The Way Back Machine allows users to visit inactive websites from decades past. If you would like to take a look, type in http://www.life.clara.net.
The Life website was clearly a source of great enjoyment for Rev. Walton, and is a testament to his dedication to his parish.
It seems that the website remained live until the end of 2003. In those 5 years, it had received over 41,000 visitors.
There are several quotes from Rev. John Walton in the article that are an interesting indication of the passage of time.
Firstly, “I’m not expecting the thousands who would visit a Spice Girls site!” Spice Up Your Life! I know which site I prefer.
“It’s more accessible than thumbing through a book” – from my memory, back in 1998 it was a long winded process to get online, and I sometimes abandoned my attempt.
I can’t help but think that Rev John Walton would have been amazed by how quickly we can all access the new Puddletown site from the phones in our pockets.
Will people be using the Way Back Machine to look at the current website one day, I wonder…?
By Sarah Wheldon
Puddletown Village website creator