Local history

A conduit to a past era

Roger Guttridge explores the history of a Sherborne landmark

Looking up Cheap Street c 1900 All ‘Then’ images from the Barry Cuff Collection

Looking up Cheap Street today. The milk cart of yesteryear has been replaced by a trailer carrying Christmas trees for this year’s public decorations

These days its main raison d’être is ornamental, although it can also serve as a temporary shelter during a storm or shower. But in its 500-year history, Sherborne’s grade-one listed Conduit has had several other uses, mostly in the 19th century. It was built by Abbot Mere in the early 1500s as a washroom for his monks and originally stood in the northern alley of the Abbey cloister. Some sources say it was built by ‘Albert’ Mere but I suspect this is an error that began with someone mishearing or misreading ‘Abbot’. It pays not to believe everything you see in print... In 1560, a couple of decades after Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries, the Conduit was moved to its present site in the Parade towards the bottom of Cheap Street. The hexagonal building originally had a short cross on its roof but that is long gone. The addition of windows and a door in 1834 made the Conduit a lot less draughty and enabled its next use as a

The Conduit from Long Street c 1900

reading room. Later it became an early Victorian police station and in 1861 a penny bank. One thing that is not welcome there today is the bicycle – a sign tells us that the parking of cycles is prohibited. The nearby village of Bradford Abbas once had a smaller version of the Conduit but it was ‘taken down by the overseer’ about 1800, ‘to the great regret of many of his neighbours’.

From Long Street today

The Conduit three ways

My ‘then’ pictures from Barry Cuff’s collection show the Sherborne Conduit from three still-recognisable angles. The one looking up Cheap Street in about 1900 (opposite, top) shows a horse-drawn milk cart in the foreground, albeit possibly super-imposed in the darkroom. At the junction with Long Street (far right) is Durrant’s grocer’s shop, whose tall delivery vans were a familiar sight in the Sherborne area. According to David Burnett’s book Lost Dorset: The Towns, Henry Durrant was a champion of Dorset Blue Vinny cheese when it was going out of fashion. I’ve heard that the original Blue Vinny needed prolonged exposure to the bacteria of a manure heap to reach maturity, but for some reason this is now against public health regulations! Henry Durrant was also a councillor and a magistrate but a 1931 Directory of Dorset lists him as an antique dealer in Long Street. The second picture (above) looking along Long Street

towards the Conduit and Conduit House, with the Abbey literally towering majestically above all, also dates from about 1900. Far right is Edwin Childs’ Cycle Works. Like many people in that business, he moved with the times and later opened a garage for motor vehicles further along Long Street on a site later replaced by the Cloisters housing development. J H Short, pictured outside the shop next door, was a family grocer. Opposite are the Castle Hotel, a favourite haunt of carriers, and the National Provincial Bank.

A rainy post-war Sherborne

The coats worn by the couple in the final picture looking towards South Street (above) suggest it is post-war, possibly 1950s. Frisby’s, the shoe shop chain, occupied the tallest of the buildings on the left side of South Street.

Looking towards South Street today

The coffin in the crypt

Almost 250 years after the funeral of the young Milton Abbey heir, questions remain about whose “body” was actually buried. Roger Guttridge reports

According to the Milton Abbas parish register, the funeral of the Honourable John Damer took place on 21st August 1776. Amid much pomp and wailing, the body of Lord Milton’s eldest son and heir was laid to rest in the family vaults beneath the north transept of Milton Abbey church. But were they? Milton Abbas villagers had serious doubts. Persistent rumours suggested that the young Damer not only survived his own funeral but was often seen out and about in later years. There is also cause to suspect that the coffin that today sits beneath the memorial to Lord and Lady Milton may contain something other than their son’s mortal remains.

Wild and foolish

As a young man, John Damer was the very definition of profligate. His costly pastimes included gambling and horse racing and his estranged wife Anne’s biographer Percy Noble described him as ‘one of a wild, foolish set about London, whose whole glory in life was centred in the curl of a coat-collar and the brim of a hat’. Noble added: ‘These young fops made up for a want of wit by the most extravagant display of ridiculous eccentricity.’ Three times a day, Damer appeared wearing a brand-new suit, and after his alleged death, his wardrobe was sold for the collossal sum of £15,000 (roughly £1.3m today). He ran up debts estimated at £70,000 (over £6m in 2022) – well over twice the annual income of his father’s Milton Abbey Estate. By 1776, his creditors were closing in and Lord Milton – who also had two other extravagant sons – had run out of patience and was refusing to bail him out. In the early hours of 15th August, 32-year-old Damer apparently shot himself in the head at the Bedford Arms in Covent Garden. At an inquest in the same pub later that day, a 22-man jury concluded that he had killed himself while not of ‘sound mind, memory or understanding, but lunatic and distracted’. But the circumstances were not straightforward. Innkeeper John Robinson explained that Damer had earlier dined in an upstairs room along with five entertainers he had requested – four women who sang and a blind fiddler called Richard Burnet. The ladies left at 3am after which Burnet was asked to leave the room and return in 15 minutes. Twenty minutes later, the

Anne Damer left her husband a year before his reported suicide

sightless fiddler told Robinson that Damer had not spoken since his return to the room and that there was a ‘disagreeable smell’ he thought might be from a candle that had fallen over. When the landlord joined him, however, he found Damer dead in his chair, bleeding from a head wound with a discharged pistol at his feet. On a table was a suicide note, which stated: ‘The people of the house are not to blame for what has happened, which was my own act.’

In collusion

Damer’s house steward John Armitage told the coroner his master had been in ‘oppressed spirits’ of late and Burnet confirmed he was not his usual cheerful self. If there is anything in the stories that Damer did not die that day, he must surely have had an accomplice or two and a replacement body waiting in the wings. This would not have been difficult to arrange, especially if the body was ‘borrowed’ to be returned later. In 1776, it was normal for a coroner and jury to view a body, but it’s fair to assume that none of them knew Damer personally so would not have known if it was not his. Given that Burnet was blind, it appears that Robinson and Armitage were the only people in a position to identify Damer’s body. Both had served him loyally for years. Could it be that they also co-operated in some elaborate scheme to fake his death? On the face of it, that is no more than speculation. A hundred years later, however, one Frederick Fane of Fordingbridge added substance to the story. During a visit to Milton Abbey, Fane heard about the legend of the ‘bogus funeral’. As it happened, his visit coincided with some repair work on the north transept, and the clerk of works invited him into the vaults, which were usually inaccessible.

Among numerous coffins was one bearing John Damer’s name and the date of his death, and Fane was invited to lift it. ‘This I found impossible due to its extraordinary weight,’ he later recalled. Invited to lift a second coffin, Fane did so ‘without the slightest exertion’. ‘There, sir,’ the clerk told him. ‘This one contains a body gone to dust. The other one is full of stones, as it ... whose whole was supposed by the glory in life was centred in the old villagers would be the case if any opportunity occurred for curl of a coat- investigation.’ collar and the Once the works were brim of a hat complete, the vaults were re-sealed and their coffins left to sit undisturbed indefinitely. Perhaps one day a need will arise to open the vaults once again. Until it does, the mystery of John Damer’s death will continue to remain a mystery. • Roger Guttridge’s books Ten Dorset Mysteries (1989) and Dorset: Curious and Surprising (2016) both include a chapter on the Damer mystery.

Milton Abbey and House in Damer’s time

All buttoned up

Rupert Hardy, chairman of the North Dorset CPRE, has been exploring the long history of the Dorset button

Modern Dorset Buttons made by Anna at Henry’s Buttons Image: Anna McDowell

It all goes back to Abraham Case, a soldier who fought in the Wars of Religion that ravaged Europe from the 16th to 18th centuries. He saw soldiers replace buttons on their uniforms by twisting a piece of cloth over a form and fastening it with a thread, but he may have been influenced in part by Brusselss lace. He was also impressed by the skills in the buttoner’s art, seen in the work of Northern French and Belgian button makers. He realised that Dorset had all the raw materials readily at hand: fabric, discs cut from the horns of Dorset Horn sheep and thread. Although originally from the Cotswolds, Abraham married a local girl. He set up his business in 1622 in Shaftesbury, going on to open depots in Bere Regis and other mid-Dorset villages. The catalyst for growing demand was the change in mens’ fashions at this time, from the old doublet and hose to a more modern waistcoat and breeches – which required buttons, of course. By the middle of the 18th century, nearly 700 women and children worked for the Case company alone, while up to 4,000 buttoners were employed in the industry around Shaftesbury and 3,000 around Blandford. The workforce were mostly outworkers; women and retired farm workers were able to make buttons from home. In North Dorset button making was the biggest industry, albeit

The original Dorset High Top (left), and a Dorset Knob button. Image: Anna McDowell

a cottage one, and second only to farming in employment. Tracy Chevalier’s book, Burning Bright, features a character, Maisie, who makes money from buttony.

High Tops and Knobs

The first buttons were called High Tops, and were mostly used on women’s dresses. The horn disc was covered by material and made into a conical button using a needle and thread. Flatter versions were called Dorset Knobs, and were possibly the inspiration for the local baked biscuit of that name. In 1731 a Yorkshireman, John Clayton, was brought in to reorganise the business after a bad fire at the Bere Regis depot. He used his contacts with Birmingham wire manufacturers to switch to metal rings, which were cheaper than horn. Some of these buttons were made using wire twisted on a spindle, called Singletons. Other variations, using a ring and thread, were called Blandford Cartwheels. The town’s earlier Huguenot lace industry was by then in decline, but the button makers had found a new use for the fine lace thread. The highest quality buttons were mounted on pink card, and exported, while seconds came on blue. The best buttoners could make a gross a day, earning three shillings and sixpence, much more than the day rate for an agricultural labourer.

Royal fans

The quality of Dorset buttons was noticed in London, where High Tops soon adorned the waistcoats of courtiers. There is speculation that Charles I went to his execution wearing a waistcoat made with Dorset buttons. Much later, Queen Victoria had a dress trimmed with Dorset Knobs. Cartwheels are probably the most popular buttons made today.

Unbuttoned

Sadly, the Industrial Revolution destroyed many cottage industries, including Dorset’s button-making. Benjamin Saunders began making machined buttons from his London workshop and took out a patent in 1813 for his fabric buttons. The death knell finally came with John Aston’s patented button-making machine which was demonstrated to great effect at the Great Exhibition of 1851. There was no way the Dorset buttoners could compete. There was acute distress across mid-Dorset, and from Shaftesbury alone 350 families were sent to the colonies at government expense. The situation had been made worse by the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1840 and the arrival of cheap food from the colonies, bringing in its wake a long-lasting depression in rural Dorset in the late 19th century. Farmers were forced to mechanise to compete and laid off thousands of agricultural labourers. Thomas Hardy’s tragic novels of rural hardship were based in this period, and the effects can be seen in the parish censuses of the time. At Winterborne Tomson, where I live, there were 53 inhabitants in 1841 but by 1891 this had halved. Those who left either emigrated or went to work in the factories of the North.

New buttons for MPs

Florence, the Dowager Lady Lees, tried to resurrect the button industry, learning from women who had been button makers long before. In 1908 she set up a small business making Parliamentary buttons for Dorset MPs in the constituency colours, but it died with the onset of World War 1. Today Dorset buttons are a heritage craft, but there has been some renewed interest – in particular Anna McDowell of Henry’s Buttons, near Shaftesbury, aims to help keep the history and skill of the Dorset button industry alive, organising workshops and talks. There is a permanent display of Dorset buttons at the Gold Hill Museum in Shaftesbury, and I recommend Thelma Johns’ book Dorset Buttons: Hand Stitched in Dorset for over 300 Years.

A revival of the Dorset button industry is inspiring a new range of crafts - these are hair clips, key fobs and yarn pins, all based on a traditional Dorset button by YarnWhirled.com