For my umpteenth birthday someone had the bright idea of presenting me with "Weymouth - The Golden Years", a book of photos taken by G.Herbert and mostly covering the years 1945-65. Which was when I was I youngster. The photos are wonderful and bring back....well, like it was yesterday. The commentaries are also very good, but terribly depressing. This is X Street, demolished in '68 for road widening, this is Y House now holiday flats, and this Tudor House was considered unfit for human consumption and so demolished and replaced by public conveniences. I was happily considering taking my grandchildren, now they are of age to almost understand, to see the places where Granfer lived, went to school, played football/cricket or whatever. Don't think I will now. Firstly because I don't want to see what they've done to the place, secondly because I don't want to hear the nippers say "With all these buildings it looks just the same as Majorca - without the sun". This does not only apply to Weymouth of course, but the whole of Dorset (let the others look after themselves!). If you want a concrete hotel barrier between the towns and the beaches, stretching from Bournemouth to Lyme Regis, a sort of Costa Dorseta, that's your choice. Even the country villages are selling themselves off to the highest bidders - forbidding bellringing and various other aggressive activities. Wasn't there a thread a few months ago about Dorset being a nice place to live? It certainly WAS. OK, it's time for my pills and zen meditation. Geoff

Hi Geoff Awgh come on, there is very little change in most of rural Dorset, tis only place like Weymouth that have had big changes. Go out to places like Little or Long Bredy, Swyre, Netherbury, Beaminster and the like and they are still much as they were in Granfers day. We all have to accept changes in the way live, unfortunately. I know they call it progress but it aint always. Regards Pat W Bruton Somerset Researching Somerset -BEALE-KEEN-BRISTER-WILLIAMS-STOCK-HAWKEY Dorset - KEECH-DUNHAM-ACKERMAN-IRONSIDE-LEA-WALLIS-HOUNSELL-SAINT-RUSSELL-WOODSFO RD Durham - WARDELL-CHAPMAN-METHLEY Yorkshire - JEFFREY-DOBSON-DOYLE-MAUGHAN-CLIFFORD-BARKER-WADE-SWALE-ENGLAND-BECK-WAR DMAN-CARMALT -----Original Message----- From: Geoffrey EVEREST [mailto:geoffrey.everest@free.fr] Sent: 25 September 2003 20:39 To: ENG-DORSET-LIFE-L@rootsweb.com Subject: [DOR-LIFE] Deary me! For my umpteenth birthday someone had the bright idea of presenting me with "Weymouth - The Golden Years", a book of photos taken by G.Herbert and mostly covering the years 1945-65. Which was when I was I youngster. The photos are wonderful and bring back....well, like it was yesterday. The commentaries are also very good, but terribly depressing. This is X Street, demolished in '68 for road widening, this is Y House now holiday flats, and this Tudor House was considered unfit for human consumption and so demolished and replaced by public conveniences. I was happily considering taking my grandchildren, now they are of age to almost understand, to see the places where Granfer lived, went to school, played football/cricket or whatever. Don't think I will now. Firstly because I don't want to see what they've done to the place, secondly because I don't want to hear the nippers say "With all these buildings it looks just the same as Majorca - without the sun". This does not only apply to Weymouth of course, but the whole of Dorset (let the others look after themselves!). If you want a concrete hotel barrier between the towns and the beaches, stretching from Bournemouth to Lyme Regis, a sort of Costa Dorseta, that's your choice. Even the country villages are selling themselves off to the highest bidders - forbidding bellringing and various other aggressive activities. Wasn't there a thread a few months ago about Dorset being a nice place to live? It certainly WAS. OK, it's time for my pills and zen meditation. Geoff ==== ENG-DORSET-LIFE Mailing List ==== The Dorset Museum homepage can be found at: http://home.clara.net/dorset.museum ============================== To join Ancestry.com and access our 1.2 billion online genealogy records, go to: http://www.ancestry.com/rd/redir.asp?targetid=571&sourceid=1237

----- Original Message ----- From: pat.williams <pat.williams14@ukonline.co.uk> > Awgh come on, there is very little change in most of rural Dorset, tis > only place like Weymouth that have had big changes. Go out to places > like Little or Long Bredy, Swyre, Netherbury, Beaminster and the like > and they are still much as they were in Granfers day. Hi Pat Not quite the same , unless your Granfers more recent than mine . They have modern conviences like mains water & electric , and the very mixed blessing of a car . My Allen grandparents lived in a block of cottages just off Hatch Pond Road , Poole . The Council regularly tried to have them demolished as unfit for habitation , but the landlords held them off untill c 1920 when a mains water standpipe was installed at the end of the lane . Everybody was happy then ,the Council had done their bit for public health , the landlords put the rent up , and the cottagers carried on as before - paying rent as seldom as they could get away with , and using water from their (contaminated) wells , which was much softer and tasted better . In the mid 1930s the water supply was extended to the individual cottages , and mains gas arrived for lighting , cooking and heating water for laundry & baths , which must have become more frequent . Electricity & mains sewage arrived in the mid 1950s. Untill then the sanitary arrangements were an earth-closet across the lane . The contents were dug out 3-4 times a year and mixed with the compost heap for use on the large vegetable garden (hence the contaminated well) . I lived with my other grandparents , but I remember that cottage as a dingy smokey 2 up 2 down , with a dank front extension that was Kichen , Laundry , Bathroom & Cycle Shed all in one . 7 of their 8 children (born 1907/22) lived to draw their old age pensions , which leads to me taking a fairly robust view of the latest health scares . Mike Allen

Geoff Everest wrote: > For my umpteenth birthday someone had the bright idea of presenting me > with "Weymouth - The Golden Years", a book of photos taken by G.Herbert and > mostly covering the years 1945-65. Which was when I was I youngster. The > photos are wonderful and bring back....well, like it was yesterday. The > commentaries are also very good, but terribly depressing. This is X Street, > demolished in '68 for road widening, this is Y House now holiday flats, and > this Tudor House was considered unfit for human consumption and so > demolished and replaced by public conveniences. > > I was happily considering taking my grandchildren, now they are of age > to almost understand, to see the places where Granfer lived, went to school, > played football/cricket or whatever. Don't think I will now. Firstly because > I don't want to see what they've done to the place, secondly because I don't > want to hear the nippers say "With all these buildings it looks just the > same as Majorca - without the sun". > Hello Geoff I think you would certainly recognise some parts of Weymouth but, like most places, changes have not all been for the good. The seafront is much the same except that they demolished the pier part of the Pier Bandstand but then had a change of mind and refurbished the buildings part to leave it as a totally out of place interuption to the sweep of the bay (bit like a gert great zit on a pretty face really!). Buildings in the town centre have had the usual changes of use and ownership but the part between St Thomas Street and the inner harbour has changed totally from the Arts Centre to West Street. I rather like the way this part has changed for the Debenhams development has created a new shopping area close enough to the Town Centre to be part of it. The White Hart sits comfortably in the square created. From St Thomas Street to the seafront the buildings remain much the same although streets like St Alban Street are much more candy floss than Archie Bowns now. Wallaces toy shop is also long gone (a real shock for some returnees - how many times have I heard "even Wallaces toy shop has gone" when chatting to someone newly returned to the town!!). What has totally changed is the harbour area. The whole lot (including Hope Square and the inner harbour) has been totally "grockelfied" (hows that for a new word?). Only the Council Offices and some Government Offices on the old gasworks site are not dedicated to the visitor trade. No more mail boats, timber boats, tomato boats, trains along Commercial Road, Cosens, commercial slipways, John Deheers etc etc etc. Only one old gasometer still stands defiantly amidst all the Majorcaesque. Long may it continue to give a good old Westham salute to the busybodies who want it moved solely because "it does not fit in". As far as playing fields are concerned, Redlands is still there as is the Marsh (at both the facilities have been improved though). Radipole Park playing field is still there (still with football pitch, swings, slide and paddling pool) and I am fairly sure Wyke playing field is too. The Westham playing fields (the ones that used to be called the Golf Links or Longcroft playing fields) are now incorporated into the golf course. I don't know where you used to play your cricket and football but I think I have covered most possibilities. The old football ground (and the Sydney Hall) have long been an Asda Store with the football club being moved out to the Wessex Stadium which in turn displaced Speedway. Happily we got Speedway back this year on a site virtually end on to where it used to be (so about 1200 locals have got their weekly entertainment back after a gap of nearly 20 years). One of the other major developments has been a retail business park on the site of the railway's old Jubilee sidings and goods yard. If you stand on Alexander Bridge you would find everything totally changed. Sadly even the old bridge itself is now under threat as it needs repair and there are health and safety concerns about trains possibly derailing and hitting the supports (I kid you not - over a hundred years of complete safety is nothing to the H&S types). The main residential areas are much the same - Downclose, Chapelhay, Lanehouse, Westham, Park District, Radipole, Broadwey, Upwey, Preston are all the same but Littlemoor and Southill have expanded considerably. The people are much the same cosmopolitan mixture of locals and immigrants, a few more dossers and winos about the place but otherwise not much changed. Anyway Geoff, thanks for giving me the chance to have a good old wallow in nostalgia - I really enjoyed writing this. I would say definitely bring the grandchildren, there is enough of the old place still around (particularly off the main grockle routes) and some of the new stuff aint so bad either. Regards Ray Collins Weymouth, Dorset

Hello Ray & List First of all thanks for taking the time & trouble of writing all that out for me - and perhaps for a few others. Just for info, I left Weymouth in '65, to live down here near Marseilles. I returned infrequently as long as my parents were alive, but slowly and surely all my Dorset relatives took the trip down Quibo Lane (sort of Boot Hill, Tombstone for the uninitiated). My last trip to what I still consider strangely as 'home' was in '83, but not under the best of circumstances for visiting the town. I went to school at the Arts Centre, played in Patience at the Alexandra Gardens, was Wendy in the Scout's show at the Sidney Hall, saw the Ritz burn down and was a dancing dervish at the Pavilion. As for playing fields, there can't be many I don't know in Dorset. Best (?) memories are of Lyme Regis Grammar where the slope was so great that one goalkeeper couldn't see the other, and Poole, which was just beside the power-station and the mud was black with coal-dust - not very good for cricket-whites! As for Weymouth Marsh, perhaps one day a local historian will deal with it in detail. It really was a marsh, and was only drained when the american troops arrived in approx. 1942/3. When we came back from Malta in 1943 we lived in Chickerell Road, with the back garden touching the american camp on the Marsh. I wasn't there yet, but my brothers remember the chocolate bars and chewing gum flying over the fence. I don't know how many hundreds of tents there were, but they all disappeared overnight a day or perhaps two before D-Day. All that was left was a mountain of tinned food - mostly corned beef of course that the early worms along the road were quick to fill up their baskets with! Between walking to St Paul's, Arts Centre and the Grammar School I must have crossed the Marsh a million times, while it was still open land, and there was only a "sort of" football pitch where Pye Hill Rovers affronted Westham Wanderers every Saturday at about 25 on each side. It sometimes finished in generalised fisticuffs, but all in good fun and black eyes were rare. Yes, I did know about the Rec'. I even lived in Garibaldi Row for a short while (putty medal for the first who finds the place - it still exists!!). I don't suppose the Terras get much support out in the wilds of Radipole Lane - admitting that it can still be considered as the outback! Glad to know the White Hart survives - HJS told me the Golden Lion is now an orange-juice bar for trendy youngsters, with the trendy Beehive shop opposite it must be perfectly......trendy! Lastly, do you remember the gasworks hooter? 8, 12, 1 and 5 o'clock the whole town worked more according to that hooter than any other time-machine! Apologies to non-Weymouthians, but like Ray it did me a lot of good to get all that off my chest, and I promise the kids will get to see the place. Geoff

Hi Geoff and Ray Thank you both for bringing to life the land of my Dorset ancestors - even if they had long left by the times that you describe. Best wishes Maureen in steamy Bundaberg, Oz ----- Original Message ----- From: "Geoffrey EVEREST" <geoffrey.everest@free.fr> To: <ENG-DORSET-LIFE-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2003 3:45 AM Subject: Re: [DOR-LIFE] Deary me! > Hello Ray & List > > First of all thanks for taking the time & trouble of writing all that > out for me - and perhaps for a few others. Just for info, I left Weymouth > in '65, to live down here near Marseilles. I returned infrequently as long > as my parents were alive, but slowly and surely all my Dorset relatives took > the trip down Quibo Lane (sort of Boot Hill, Tombstone for the uninitiated). > My last trip to what I still consider strangely as 'home' was in '83, but > not under the best of circumstances for visiting the town. > snip