As you’ll see, I like tweaking photos either to blend them together or tweak their texture to give them a different character. The photos I’ve used tonight are mainly my own but not all, Google street view has helped me out with several. Several I took in the snow of March this year when there was no traffic and it was safe to stand in the road. 

Hopefully these tweaks will help to bring the old photos to life and make it easier to compare Charmouth now with Charmouth then. I’ve also gone through Neil’s website and teased out some of the little stories and anecdotes hidden within it to add a bit more colour. There is so much in Neil’s website that we’ve had to split the talk into two. This first part will take us from the top of the hill down as far as Barrs Lane.

So I hope that you’ll be able to take two things from this evening. Firstly what a wonderful, rich history Charmouth has and we’re so lucky that it has been preserved. And the second thing I hope you’ll take away is never to trust anything you see in a photograph.

Similarly this view painted in the 1830’s by Thomas Galpin is very familiar to us today.

On the right of this picture you can see two roads disappearing over the hill towards Lyme and it’s over there that we’ll start.

.It reads ‘DANGER, Dorset County Council , The Coast Road Between Charmouth and Lyme Regis IS UNSAFE’

It reads ‘DANGER, Dorset County Council , The Coast Road Between Charmouth and Lyme Regis IS UNSAFE’

Indeed even King George III had problems getting over the hill when he travelled through the village. The Western News reported that on the 20th August 1789 : 

"Between Bridport and Chard are two very large steep hills, Chideock and Charmouth. It was impossible his majesty's horses could here proceed in the swift manner in which he usually travels. The King dismounted and walked up the hill. 

The King said he had never travelled such a stage in his life. During all this part of the road the multitude walked with him, and at times (he) conversed familiarly with such as were near him.   

The people of the village of Charmouth had prepared a lofty triumphal Arch of oak boughs, with a crown of Laurel and wreaths of flowers. It was prepared by the rude hands of industrious peasants; but yet it was a greater compliment than the most magnificent column erected by the hand of tyranny to celebrate rapine and cruelty”.This isn’t a picture of the king but you get the idea

And here are the views then and now. I don’t think the bus will get under the arch somehow.

This shows on the left the type of trailer they were using.

The cage hit a tree and broke open and ‘Pasha’ the lion escaped. He lay by the road, seemingly enjoying the change for half an hour while queues of traffic and onlookers built up. The trainer was summoned from Lyme and approached with a rope but the lion got up and moved away which caused the spectators to start running and shouting. The lion was spooked and jumped over the hedge, heading towards Lily Farm.

Here we can see where Lily Farm was. The lion was heading towards the village.

Here’s Lily Farm in more tranquil times just a few years earlier. The lion spotted some cattle in the field. One of the cows immediately attacked it. A fierce battle ensued, in which for some time the cow held its own, and inflicted a severe gash with its horn. But the cow was terribly injured by the lion’s claws and eventually died.

The lion, now thoroughly roused, careered round the field and then dashed into the garden of Mr. Goodland of Lily Farm who was astonished to see it among his vegetables. He seized a gun and joined in the hunt with several other farmers and the village butcher Mr F C Marsh, who were all armed.

By this time a crowd of several hundred people was watching the operation from a distance. Some climbed telegraph poles or trees and others got on roofs. Shots were fired, one of which wounded the lion in the hind-quarters, and another in an eye. Then the lion went mad and raced around. The crowd scattered and one man was chased by the lion round an old building.

At this point, onto the scene strode the village postman, Percy Smith who, armed with a revolver, crept up close enough to swiftly despatch the poor animal.

LOOK AWAY NOW IF YOU DON’T WANT TO SEE THE LION AFTER THE SHOOTING

It was however rebuilt and here is the replacement built about 3 years later in 1886 - without a thatched roof this time. 

The space created in front of the New Inn where the four roads met was a useful gathering point.

This gathering was the start of the procession in 1911 to celebrate the Coronation of King George Fifth. That’s Andrew Dunn waving the flag. He’d been a sailor for some thirty years.  

I must admit that every time I now drive along this bit of road I always imagine Andrew standing there in the middle of the road waving his flag! 

We’ll be seeing more of this coronation procession later as it works its way down the Street. 

In 1939, while laying drains, workmen found the remains of the old toll gate that stood here

A hundred years later it’s a bit busier today. Thank goodness for the Bypass.

This photo shows one of the more colourful landlords, Jim Bridle, who was landlord between 1923 and 1934. Born in 1870 in Lyme, he joined the Royal Navy aged 15. According to information given to Reg Pavey… 

…he was in the field gun crew for Queen Victoria’s Jubilee parade, he was in the ship when Marconi made the first successful long distance wireless call from the Atlantic and, when in South Africa, he met and talked to Captain Scott on his last fateful journey to the Antarctic.

When he left the Navy he went to Windsor Castle and was an Attendant at the Albert Memorial Chapel where he met several of the Crowned heads of Europe including the Kaiser and the Archduke of Austria just a few weeks before he was assassinated. He treasured two gold sovereigns Queen Alexandra once gave him.  At the outbreak of the First World War he returned to the Navy and served at the Battle of Jutland. After the war he settled in Charmouth, naming his house St Helena after the first foreign soil on which he landed. 

As you can see, Jim Bridle seems to have led a rich and colourful life..…or was it just that our landlord was a good spinner of seamen’s yarns?? 

Opposite the Royal Oak is the curiously named Shoe and Stocking Cottage. In 1673 Anthony Tutchen, a successful and wealthy mariner, gave a freehold house in Charmouth and a field containing about one acre- ‘for the benefit of Seamen, Seamen's wives and children’. Originally the income from the house and land was to be used to buy stockings and shoes for the poor sailors and their families.  Later the building became an Alms House which stood on the site of the present cottage. This house contained three rooms below and three above and was occupied by six aged, poor, people who benefitted from having the accommodation plus a little bit of money rather than shoes and stockings.

When The Court next door was developed the view out of the front door was of this by now very dilapidated Alms house. So Mrs Stuart had it pulled down and a coach house built – this is the building we see today but it has retained the name as a link with the past. 

And here is Luttrell House today. Back in 1830 it was the home of the Reverend Thomas Hodges and his wife. It was reported that Reverend Hodges’ wife “got her brandy cheap from the smugglers then infecting the coast. The Excise officers lived at the bottom of the village. Their Chief wrote to the Rev. Hodges saying that he was coming down for a few days as he had work to do down there. Mrs Hodges got very anxious thinking he had heard of the brandy, but she knew well and trusted the excise officers’ house keeper, so she consulted her. 

It was suggested that the incriminating bottles should be put in a cupboard in the excise officers own house as the last place he would suspect. This was agreed so Mrs Hodges brought down the bottles hidden in the vast muff fashionable at the time"

By the way, have you noticed anything familiar about Luttrell House? Look at the door. Remind you of anywhere?

Maybe this will help. Yes, 10 Downing Street must have copied their door design from Charmouth! 

The photo is of Years 5 and 6 children from Charmouth who in 1981 went on a four day trip to London. If any of you went to the Old School I can highly recommend the section about it in Neil’s website that has a very full description of its history and many photos of the children.

Herbert wanted a place where sick workers and villagers from his estate could go to after their treatment in Salisbury hospital, so that they could benefit from ‘a more perfect and permanent restoration to health and also the hospital could gain room for fresh patients’.  This was quite a radical concept for the time. Sounds like a solution to bed blocking.

So in 1848 Herbert set up this 20 bed Convalescent Home here in Charmouth. The Home was described as being ‘fittedup for the reception of patients, under the care of a German Protestant sisterhood. Herbert also provided bathing-machines, and a donkey-cart in which to convey to the shore those who were well enough to bathe’. TB patients were said to have been treated here with special mineral water sent over from Germany.

The opening of the home in 1848 was attended by their good friend Miss Florence Nightingale.

Six years later, in 1854, Herbert was again Secretary at War. It was the time of the Crimean War and conditions for injured troops in the Crimea were being criticised so Herbert invited his friend Florence to go and sort it out. 

This illustration was the start of the story of ‘The Lady with the Lamp’.

In 1865, after the death of Herbert, a bigger convalescence home was built in Bournemouth and the Charmouth building reverted to a private house. Around this time the first bath in the village was installed in Little Hurst much to the consternation of the villagers who feared that water shortages would result

In 1889 it was purchased by James W Harrison of the printing firm Harrisons & Sons. As well as regular printing of things like the London Gazette and Burkes Peerage, they also produced 250 million blank telegram forms a year. Importantly they did all the secure, confidential printing for the Government, eventually becoming the printers of all the postage stamps in the country as well as for 100 other countries.

Ironically and with splendid symmetry, in 1859, it was Harrisons that published Florence Nightingale’s most influential work called ‘Notes on Nursing, What it is and what it is not’.

Oddly, because Harrison was an avid photographer (many of his photos appear in Neil’s site), there aren’t many photos of the house. This one from 1903 shows it hidden by bushes.

The Harrison’s ancestral home was in Hurst near Reading. Their house in London was known as ‘The Hurst’. And their house in Charmouth was named ‘Little Hurst’.

James  Harrison’s son, Sir Cecil Harrison, stayed at Hillside and owned the first car in the village, a De Dion, seen here outside the Coach House on the Knapp

And now we come to the Church, St Andrews which as we have heard was built in 1836 by Charles Fowler, the architect for Covent Garden. 

And in fact records show that in 1861 the front wall of the church had been moved forward by some 15 feet to enlarge the graveyard. Marked is Lydia Watts’ sweet shop, which jutted out awkwardly into the Street and had become derelict. It was demolished five years later, as was the parish pound and, indeed, the village stocks.

The parish pound would contain any stray animals (sheep, pigs etc.) that had been found wandering and they could be reclaimed by the owner for a small fee. Any not claimed would be sold at the market and the pound keeper could pocket the money. The pound was moved up to the junction of Old Lyme Hill and Old Lyme Road in 1866.

They were buried in the same area of the churchyard in what became known as ‘the cholera mound’. ….(Read out notice)  

Notice of Cholera!  

Be temperate in eating and drinking! 

Avoid raw vegetables and unripe fruit! 

Abstain from COLD WATER, when heated, and above all from ARDENT SPIRITS, and if habit have rendered them indispensable, take much less than usual. 

Sleep and clothe warm. 

Do not sleep or sit in a draught of air. 

Avoid getting wet. 

Attend immediately to all disorders of the bowel.

(As you can see French photography was much more advanced than our own. Actually this was to commemorate the 200th Anniversary of the event).

Napoleon learned that Smith was the nephew of Admiral Sir Sidney Smith who had inflicted upon Napoleon his first defeat by vigorously defending, both at sea and on land, the port of Acre (just north of Haifa)) and of whom Napoleon later said‘That man made me miss my destiny’. Napoleon hated sir Sidney Smith as much as he hated Wellington.

During the voyage to Elba Napoleon, who spoke with the other officers freely, only spoke once to Smith’s nephew, saying ‘Ithought very little of Sir Sidney’s gunnery at Acre as he fired very badly’. Lieutenant Smith, a gruff and rather surly tempered officer with a strong antipathy towards Napoleon after all his years as a prisoner answered back very tartly‘That Sir is exactly what Sir Sidney always said of you!’. They never spoke again.

Jane Austen stayed here in 1803 and here’s her quote from Persuasion… 

It is perhaps worth mentioning that around this time some locals would take the opportunity to approach the passengers stretching their legs and would ask if they were interested in buying some of the ‘Curiosities’ found on the local beaches. William Lock of Lyme Regis visited daily and became known as ‘Captain Cury’ (short for curiosity) for his offerings to travellers. He was also the Anning family’s arch nemesis as they both scoured the beach for the best fossils. But by selling to the travellers, news and examples of the fossil finds began to trickle back to London. Soon there would be a trickle of fossil hunters from London heading this way. That trickle sometimes feels like a flood today.

Travel by coach was not for the feint hearted:

In 1739 The Western Gazette reported…

"Our townsmen beheld by only going to Charmouth, thewonder of the day, better known as " The Exeter Flying Stage Coach" which reached Dorchester from London in two days and reached Exeter in three days… 

William Holly is seen here driving the Axminster Bus which was described as follows:

The 'buses had seating accommodation for two passengers by the side of the driver, four behind and occasionally a third row for four passengers could be bolted on the roof which normally was used for luggage. Inside there were seats for six people. When fully loaded there would be sixteen passengers and a third horse became necessary, which was ridden by Johnny Holly the youngest son, he returned when the 'bus reached the top of Greenway Head.

(Greenway Head is just outside Raymonds Hill) 

And here’s the modern equivalent. Even in 1963 big loads like these transformers also required the heavy haulage units to be coupled together.

By the way, in the 1930’s The Street was one of the first in the country to be built out of reinforced concrete slabs. Unfortunately the traffic was so heavy that it caused the slabs to move and start to damage roadside properties, When it was decided to remove them in the 1950’s a special machine had to brought over from Germany to break them up.

The writing was on the wall. Literally. The internal combustion engine was taking over and Gears Garage here was in the forefront of its advance.

On the left is Fred Marsh’s butchers, he was one of those involved in hunting down Pasha the lion.

Incredibly, someone from North Carolina saw this photo on the website and got in touch with Neil to say that one of the small boys in the photo was his father who was a son of F C Marsh and he, at the time, was living in Christchurch Dorset aged 96.

Right, well I see the 1911 Coronation Procession has made it as far down as Nisa. So let’s have a little look at the village stores. Note the sign for the Star Inn which used to be down the alley to the side of the stores.

The stores dates back to 1806 but the old thatched building that was there was destroyed by fire in 1862 and this is the replacement.

There is a remarkably complete photographic record of the ownership of Charmouth stores:

In the 1880’s it was Mortimers

But it is perhaps the ghosts that inhabit the building that are of most interest. 

Ellis Long, a prominent village resident, interviewed Joan Whittington in 1974. Joan told her about a grey-clad monk who was often seen walking slowly from the house, through walls and into the garden.

This apparition was always to be seen on Hallowe’en it was claimed and has been verified on two occasions by other residents of the house as recently as 1999. Also, perhaps once a year, they heard the sound of horses hooves galloping over the roof.

In addition, Joan spoke of frequent appearances of a young lady in white who sometimes passed the Whittington family on the stairs.

The White Lady, as she became known, was said to be a sad, young presence who did not disturb the family in the least. There was, however, one dramatic exception to her behaviour reported. In the 1950s, the Rev J Robinson, a relative of the Whittingtons, was playing the piano by candlelight one night when the White Lady entered the room and laid cold hands upon him, clutching him about the throat. He stopped playing and was so shocked that he never entered that room again.    

Joan also told Ellis of a damp smell in the drawing room. Bert Smith, local builder and village councillor, was called and found dry rot in the boards. Under the floor, an ancient well was discovered with the skeleton of a young woman laid across it. Very discreetly, to avoid unwanted attention, and with the rector’s permission, the remains were taken at night and buried in a secret spot in the church cemetery. 

Thankfully, the White Lady was never seen again!