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The Greenwood Tree – March 2023

Posted on 26th February 2023

The theme of the March issue of The Greenwood Tree was Setting Sail and members responded with tales of their seafaring ancestors and stories of those who took the long voyages to the New World, Australia and New Zealand Editor Paul Radford previews the edition which will be mailed to members at the end of February and which SDFHS members can already view or download from the Members’ Area of the Society’s website There are several unusual features in the Setting Sail edition,... more

Hethfelton building site

Posted on 8th August 2021

In 1929 my grandfather Arthur Collings, a carpenter/builder by trade, became the foreman for the construction of a new building in or near Hethfelton, Wool, Dorset He had a Box Brownie camera and he took pictures of the building site which had quite a large workforce Some of the men, including Frank Hann later identified by my father, would have travelled from Nether Compton and stayed on-site somewhere during the week One thing that struck me was the height of the scaffolding... more

Women, ‘Gateway Ancestors’, and Sources

Posted on 22nd March 2021

Many of us, when we first become interested in family history research tend to focus on our surname and try to trace it back as far as possible Certainly this was my approach when I first started some fifty years ago A few years after I began I found a distant 'cousin' Hugh Pitfield who was also researching our family We combined forces and have co-operated ever since Image - Fine Art America The result is that we now have a comprehensive genealogy of the PITFIELD family that Hugh has... more

A Victorian Loo

Posted on 7th March 2021

In the March 2021 Greenwood Tree, which had a House History theme, John Damon recounted the history of Beaucroft House, Wimborne, Dorset He now describes one indispensable part of its furniture and fittings Beaucroft House was built in 1876 and, as I described in the latest Greenwood Tree, it played a part in both World Wars, first as a hospital and then as a billet for American troops In the 1950s, the house was divided into three residences My Damon family lived in one of... more

A Century in Chancery – the legal battle between two families.

Posted on 17th February 2021

In earlier times marriages were often business arrangements between families rather than the love matches we are used to today Marriages were associated with ‘marriage portions’ (dowries), often involving land and other property Such settlements could often be disputed if circumstances changed People went to extraordinary lengths to maintain ownership of land and to keep it ‘in the family’ A case in point is the extraordinary and complicated legal battle between the FULFORD and... more

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