Diana Hooper investigates a friend’s potential family tie to the Tolpuddle Martyrs.

This is a lock of hair from Mary Antell, who died in 1891.
I found it in a memorial card amongst papers in the Thomas Hardy archive at Dorset History Centre.

Forget Google… Puddletown won the website game back in 1998. Who remembers the Life site by Rev. John Walton? It provided a wealth of information about the parish.

Puddletown has a memorial, gates and a lantern above the entrance to St Mary’s churchyard to honour the fallen of the Great War. On the left-hand side by the gate is a small plaque which reads, “Sit mortuorum pietas lucerne vivis”- Let the devotion of those who died be a lantern unto the living.

Did you know that Athelhampton House has been used on many occasions as a filming location? Eagle-eyed TV viewers may have spotted the house and gardens in 1976 when episodes of Doctor Who (with Tom Baker as the Doctor) were filmed there. Prior to that in 1972, Lawrence Olivier and Michael Caine made the film