WWI and WWII Memorabilia

The museum houses a large collection of WW I and

WW II artefacts. We have maps showing the

remaining physical features still scattered about

the town as well as objects of daily life during

both wars.

There is also material from the fire and police

forces covering the last 200 years.

The Victorian Child’s playroom includes this dolls’ house, which was made by Charles de Lacy Lacy in the 19^th century. He modelled it after Georgian house opposite his house in Grosvenor Street, and he filled the house with hand made furniture, pictures, ornaments and figures representing his family and domestic staff. The pictures are copied from old masters. It has been played with by four generations of the family, each one adding to it, and it even travelled with them on holiday in a specially made crate. The dolls and toys on display have been generously loaned by Dorothea Solly and her daughter Thomasina.

The Forge

The display is an exact reproduction of the forge

constructed during the 1890s in the out-buildings

of Diana Lodge to service the Portman Hunt horses.

It  was  in  use  up  to the early 1960s. The

photograph shows the hearth and chimney-work

of the forge. When the house changed owners in

2000, the vendor donated the bellows and anvil to

the Museum. Diana Lodge (formerly Shothole) is

only about 300 metres from the Portman Hunt Kennels,

a bit more than a kilometre south west of Bryanston.

The house, formerly a Georgian farm house, was

converted for use by the Master of the Fox-hounds

and became known as Diana Lodge after the goddess

of hunting.

Cobbler Shop

An almost complete cobblers shop was donated to the museum and is shown reproduced here. Shoe making is a complex process, with a range of machines to help the cobbler. On display are machines to cut and split the leather, punching machines and many hand tools for finishing the shoes. Wooden moulds (called lasts) were made to match the shape and size of individual feet, and the leather shaped around the lasts. Similarly, metal lasts were used for repairing shoes, and other machines for finishing, smoothing and burnishing the leather.

Music

Musical instruments include this organ, an ophicleide

and a serpent, and recently we have acquired a

beautiful clarinet made in the 1820s by Charles

Barfoot of Whitecliff Mill Street in Blandford.

It is made of boxwood and is in full working order.

The museum has also been given a selection of

uniforms, banners and musical instruments of the

Forum Marching Brass, a youth band formed in 1986

Palaeontology and Archaeology

This display puts many of the artefacts at the

museum into palaeontological and archaeological

context. It starts at the bottom with Jurassic

deposits, including a fossil Ichthyosaur donated

recently to the museum; and above this is the

Cretaceous level, the chalk on which much of

Blandford is built.

In the main part of the exhibit are three

archaeological levels shown on successive

platforms in the display: first the Stone Age,

with bones and artefacts from the Palaeolithic,

Mesolithic and Neolithic; second, the time of

the Romans, showing the partly buried remains

of a Roman building; and third, the Mediaeval

period, with tiles, pottery and bone from this period.

At the top of the display is an accumulation of

modern remains, what we know of as rubbish

but which future archaeologists will analyse to

show how 21st Century humans lived. The display

explains both the nature of archaeological remains

and how we order time and how we view changes

through time.

The museum houses artefacts illustrating

the history of Blandford Forum and the

surrounding area. This exhibits highlights

the major events of the last 400 years.

Starting with the 17th century, each panel

places events in and about Blandford in

chronological order and context.