Smugglers Secrets Revealed 100 Years Later! Weymouth’s George Inn.

I know, I know, I’m always banging on about my love of old newspapers, but they really are fascinating. They fittingly flesh out Weymouth’s history. Such was the case when I read an article in the Dorset County Chronicle of Thursday 5th June 1884. It’s headline revealed ‘A Record of Smuggling Days.’ Apparently some modernisation…

Victorian St Nicholas Street: Weymouth

Numerous narrow streets  tuck themselves away in and around Weymouth town. Ones that we don’t pay much attention to. Maybe sometimes travelling their length merely to  avoid excess holiday traffic or that proliferation of poodling summertime pedestrians. They are merely a  means of getting from A to B as quickly as possible, never a place to stop and admire the…

A Happier Weymouth Christmas of 1862…

Well…this is my second attempt at writing a blog post this year about life in Victorian Weymouth in the build up to the Christmas period. My first attempt at writing one that gave the reader a warm fuzzy glow, the feel-good factor, full of Christmastide cheer, had somehow ended up instead laden with the doom and…

December 1888; Weymouth Drunks, Domestics and Deaths

Picture this, it’s the year 1888, it’s December, on the cusp of Christmas and the good folk of Weymouth are going about their everyday business as usual. For some though, it was not to be a good ending to their year. Pretty much like todays inhabitant’s of our seaside town, those of the Victorian era…

Hitting the Headlines; Weymouth 1869.

When you stroll  through the streets of Weymouth, do you ever gaze up at the at the old windows and mansards of these historic buildings and wonder what silent spectres peer through their bubbled panes or pondered the scenes they may have witnessed during their long existence. The lives of our ancestors past, of their families, neighbours and…

Shopping in St Mary Street at the turn of the century:Part 1.

Over the next few posts on here I’m going to take you  for a stroll down through old Weymouth town, starting off in St Mary Street. Our visit will take place at the turn of the century; Queen Victoria’s long reign is about to come to an end with her sad demise and her son Edward…

Weymouth’s St John’s Terrace Gardens.

I know…it’s just outside the Victorian era, but close enough I thought. St John’s gardens are situated at the end of the long terrace of houses that run along the start of the main Dorchester Road, known as St John’s Terrace, past St John’s church which stands proud at the end of the sea front,…

1891; Wyke Regis church receives its new bells

There is a sound you don’t hear very often these days, the ringing of church bells. I loved to hear them. At one time their merry peel would call villagers to worship on Sundays, ring out joyfully at wedding ceremonies, or the solemn death knell  rung to mourn a person passing. In the Victorian era…

Weymouth 1873; Rub a dub dub, 3 men (not) in a tub….

Well, o.k. maybe the title is a bit lighthearted for such a tragedy, but when I read that it allegedly concerned 3 butchers assistants that the misfortune had befallen, a visual image immediately flashed in my mind of the popular nursery rhyme. Just put that down to my extremely warped sense of humour which seems…

Weymouths beginnings as a sea bathing resort 1750

When ever Weymouth is talked about concerning it’s seaside status,  generally it is said that George III made it what it is today, that’s partly true, but there is a little more to it than that. Weymouth was becoming popular long before the end of the 18th c. A certain Bath gentleman, Ralph Allen had…