History
LOST DORSET
NO. 24 WIMBORNE MINSTER
T
David Burnett, The Dovecote Press
owns and villages throughout Dorset will be celebrating the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee over the four-day holiday weekend this month. 125 years ago, in June 1897, Dorset dressed its streets with flags and bunting for another Jubilee, that of the Queen’s greatgreat-grandmother, Queen Victoria. Those in East Street, Wimborne, were modest compared to many. Sherborne’s streets, ‘presented an appearance the equal of which has never before been seen in the town.’ Typical, in even the humblest village, were processions, a funfair and sports, as well as a celebratory lunch or tea – both washed down with copious quantities of beer and cider. Sturminster Newton’s procession included a flotilla of boats on the Stour, Wareham’s was led by cyclists in fancy dress, whilst at Stoke Abbott in the Marshwood Vale the village fiddle band scratched away from a hay-laden farm wagon. One permanent memorial, and the grandest, is the clock tower in the centre of Thornford, complete with a weathervane by Albert Gabe, the local blacksmith. Lost Dorset: The Towns 1880-1920, the companion volume to Lost Dorset: The Villages and Countryside, is a 220-page large format hardback, price £20, and is available locally from Winstone’s Books or directly from the publishers. dovecotepress.com
64 | Sherborne Times | June 2022
