Local history

Blandford Hospital and the Case of the Sozzled Servant

In this month’s Then and Now, Roger Guttridge finds the cottage origins still within Blandford’s hospital and discovers the very first patients

An impromptu cricket match, with Blandford Cottage Hospital in the background. Picture from Lost Dorset: The Towns, by David Burnett, from Barry Cuff’s postcard collection

Working out exactly what’s what in these ancient and modern pictures of Blandford Hospital takes a bit of doing, so much has changed in 130 years or so. The hospital’s history dates back to 1883, when the Hon Miss Portman paid for the construction of a cottage hospital adjoining the Corner Coffee House near the junction of Salisbury Street and Whitecliff Mill Street. The first patient was reputedly a man injured in a wagon accident at Tarrant Hinton in March 1883. It became known as the Nurse House, but only catered for outpatients; the more seriously ill or injured being sent to bigger hospitals at Dorchester, Weymouth, Bournemouth or Bath. The Portmans of Bryanston House then financed the present hospital, which was officially opened on the 15th December, 1888. ‘This hospital,’ declared Viscountess Portman and the Hon L E Portman, ‘is principally intended for the necessitous poor of Blandford and those parishes in the neighbourhood which have no institution of the kind within easy reach of them. Such patients are admitted free of charge.’ In her diary, Julietta Forrester, wife of Lord Portman’s agent, noted that one of the first patients was a Iwerne Minster woman whose incapacity occurred in ‘rather laughable circumstances.’ In his will, the squire of Iwerne, Lord Wolverton, left instructions for everyone in his service to receive a year’s wages. Julietta believed this sweeping

... one of the servants ‘spent and drank’ her money, went upstairs to bed but then decided she needed another drop

bequest was a ‘clerical error’ by Lord Wolverton’s legal people, which cost his estate the then princely sum of £8,000. Apparently one of the servants ‘spent and drank’ some of her money, went upstairs to bed but then decided she needed another drop. ‘She stumbled, and, falling from the top of the stairs to the bottom, broke her leg,’ says Julietta. The mishap earned the sozzled servant the dubious honour of being one of the first two patients at the new Blandford Cottage Hospital. The other ‘first patient’ was a man: complaint unknown. The Portmans continued to pay the wages of the matron and nurses for many years.

No longer a cottage

The late Victorian photos are taken from somewhere close to the junction of Whitecliff Mill Street, Milldown Road and Park Road and show the original Cottage Hospital when it really was a cottage of sorts (opposite page). The location was known as Picket Close and the impromptu cricket match in the foreground is being played on what is now the home of Blandford Bowling Club. Fortuitously, the club was in full match mode when I arrived to take the ‘now’ picture (opposite, below)! The building in the background of the bowls match is one of many modern extensions that have seen the present-day Community Hospital grow to many times its original size. However you can just make out one of the original gables peeping above the roof line. The other Victorian picture (above) shows a rural-looking Milldown Road stretching away into the distance while the sweep into Park Road appears to follow a different line much closer to the original hospital than the present road – or perhaps there’s a foreshortening effect in the old photo? The aerial shot below shows how the original building is still there, but has been entirely consumed on all sides by later extensions, with just one gable and two chimneys showing where it still sits.

A similar view of the Cottage Hospital showing the junction of Milldown Road and Park Road. Picture from A Blandford Forum Camera, by Terence Sackett

The aerial view shows how the original cottage hospital has been consumed by more modern extensions. Image by kind permission of Mark Hume, Skyfast Media in Blandford

Has the sweep into Park Road moved further from the hospital since the original photograph? Image: Roger Guttridge

A Right Religious Rackett (pt. 2)

From the ‘fat old woman at the toll-bridge’ to coins of ancient Dorset, the Thomas Rackett Papers have them all – Roger Guttridge reports

Have you heard the one about the ‘fat old woman at the tollbridge’? Not my words but those of Mrs E Pulteney when describing the impact of a major storm which swept across southern England in March 1818. Writing from Lymington to Miss Dorothea Rackett, daughter of the Rector of Spetisbury and Charlton Marshall, Mrs Pulteney speaks of the ‘late tremendous weather’ and complains that ‘our house has been partly blown down, though without any serious injury to the inhabitants’. She then tells the comical tale of ‘the fat old woman at the toll-bridge’, who found herself knee-deep in flood water and unable to walk to safety. The woman’s son tried to carry her to a neighbour’s house but when the task proved too challenging, he ‘set her down in the water to get assistance’. It appears the ‘fat old woman’ survived but was not the only one in trouble. ‘They had six pigs in the house, which in the darkness they could not attempt to rescue,’

Spetisbury Rectory

Mrs Pulteney adds, ‘But in the morning, great was their surprise in finding them all alive and floating in the water.’

Irreplaceable fire loss

Mrs Pulteney’s letter is among more than 50 years’ worth of correspondence in the Thomas Rackett Papers, first published by the Dorset Record Society in 1965 and now reprinted, with additions, in hardback. Other topics referred to in the

letters range from Dorset land and grain prices to the freezing winter of 182930, from an 1833 flu epidemic at Blandford and Charlton Marshall to – perhaps most curiously – a ‘terrible depreciation’ in the value of books in 1830 and the related sale of many private libraries. In 1808, the Rev Thomas Rackett wrote to a friend describing a disastrous fire at John Nichols’ Fleet Street Spetisbury Church as drawn by Thomas Rackett for the second printing office and warehouses edition of Hutchings’ History of Dorset which destroyed, among other things, the proofs for most of the second edition of Hutchins’ History of Dorset as well as ‘the whole impression’ of Nichols’ own four-volume History of Leicestershire. Nichols was only insured for a small amount so his loss was ‘very considerable’.

“Great was their surprise in finding them all alive and floating in the water”

lifelong passions for all things historical and scientific. In 1815-16, Stourhead owner Sir Richard Hoare kept Rackett informed on his charting of ancient sites in Dorset and south Wiltshire. In one letter he announced his plans to ‘trace the Roman road’ from Sarum to Woodyates and thence to Badbury Rings, where he intended to ‘examine the camp to see if our survey is correct’. At Badbury Rings, he saw ‘two diverging causeways’, one heading for Dorchester, the other appearing to head towards Wareham. This puzzled him as there was no evidence of a Roman road reaching Wareham. He also noted a ‘great portion of another via’ leading from Hamworthy towards Vindogladia (by which he probably meant Wimborne or Badbury Rings) and on to Gussage Cow Down. Sir Richard was on the money with this speculation. We now know that the Romans built a road from their port at Hamworthy to Lake Gates, Wimborne, where they set up their 40-acre base camp for the conquest of South West England. Another road led from Lake Gates to Badbury Rings, where it split into three routes, one leading to Dorchester [the Roman Durnovaria], another into North Dorset and a third to Old Sarum.

Coins of kings

Being a wealthy antiquarian, Sir Richard employed his own surveyor, Mr Crocker, to record details of Badbury Rings, Hambledon Hill, Hod Hill, Maiden Castle and other sites. He described Hambledon – which he called ‘Hamilton’ – as ‘one of the grandest earthworks I ever beheld’. In 1832, a parishioner’s discovery of ancient Greek coins in a field at Charlton Marshall prompted Rackett to make further inquiries in the general area. Within six months he had collected more than 100 coins from the kings of ‘Syria, Macedon, Bythinia, Syrmium and Egypt’ and from ‘states and colonies of Antioch, Carthage, Cos, Mamertini, Rhegium,

Syracuse, Neapolis etc’. Rackett also refers to 70 to 80 silver coins found at Okeford Fitzpaine some years earlier. In a report to Henry Ellis, secretary of the Society of ...more than 100 Antiquities, he says coins coins from the kings plus the glass beads and gold of ‘Syria, Macedon, Bythinia, Syrmium ornaments found in Dorset barrows suggested ‘commercial intercourse’ between the local and Egypt’ Britons and people from the East, and perhaps even that ‘a colony was formed in this part of the Island’. Copies of the Thomas Rackett Papers are available by post from the Hon General Secretary, Dorset History Centre, Dorchester DT1 1RP (£14.95 + £2 p&p – cheques only) or in person from the Dorset History Centre.

Thomas Rackett and Tiberius Cavallo’s drawing showing the bearings of objects found at Badbury Rings