Hello to you all,

Sorry for the delay but here is the long awaited newsletter!

Well, we are now in situ at the Coach House in Gundry Lane Bridport.
We were very sad to leave the premises at Bridport but at least we are now warm and cosy.

It was a difficult decision to decide whether to try and stay at Burton and we looked into a heating system. Unfortunately this was going to be a huge expense and also required the building to be insulated. The electric radiators we had were hugely expensive and not very effective. The rent was just under £7000 per year and this raised our running costs substantially. We were advised by our funders that our aim was to be sustainable at the end of the funding term. Realistically this was not going to happen at Bridport.

After many meetings and much deliberation we started to look at cheaper premises, after a chance conversation with Alice Martin curator of the Bridport Museum and History Centre, we were invited to have a look at a room they had available.
The benefit of this was its central location and the rent was only £1500 per year. What a saving!

We moved in on the 31st of October – and we were back online on the 1st November.
My heartfelt thanks to the volunteers who gave their time to enable us to have a very smooth transition. Our surplus furniture and computer equipment was sold to the Citizens advice bureau in Bridport.

So what else happened in the last six months?
Tragically our Project Director David Burks died in June of this year. His funeral was held in Devon and was attended by his family – a few weeks later a memorial service was held at St Mary’s church in Bridport.

On the 16th June we held a conference at Marsh Barn entitled Westwood Ho! Revisited, this was a review of West Country Migration Research. We were delighted to welcome Professor William Van Vugt from Calvin College, Grand Rapids USA, as our guest speakers, Professor Graham Davis from Bath Spa university and Professor Roger Burt from University of Sheffield also provided us with thought provoking and fascinating information.

Two members of our Committee Dr. Diana Trenchard and Jane Ferentzi-Sheppard also gave very interesting talks on migration.

The day closed with a “Round Table discussion” – The future of West Country Migration Studies – where do we go from here?

During June and July we provided premises for a ten week course in beginners computing. We are hoping to continue to provide training by holding computer courses in family history in collaboration with Yarn Barton in Beaminster.
On the 22nd of June our AGM was held at Marsh Barn where a strawberries and cream tea followed.

Sadly we said goodbye to our chairman Cecil Amor – thank you very much Cecil for all your hard work and commitment.

Dr. Diana Trenchard was welcomed as our new chairperson.

Carolyn James also joined our committee; Millie Meech carried on as treasurer to assist with our move but has now resigned as treasurer due to other commitments.

Thank you very much Millie for your dedication over these last few very difficult months.
Jane Ferentzi-Sheppard, Maureen Stollery and David Templeman remain on the committee,

We also have a great team of volunteers – thank you to you all, especially John-Lay Flurrie for his help and advice.

Also a great big thank you again to one of our members who made us a fantastic monetary donation, we have purchased some great new resources which are proving to be extremely useful.

In July, Cecil Amor visited the centre with his group the Bridport History Society; this was a very successful visit and resulted in some new members.
Cecil also had a great article on Migration published in the Marshwood Vale.

A stand was manned by Tania and volunteers Elizabeth Gale and Jane Ferentzi-Sheppard at the Melplash Show. It was decided to have our stand in the Bridport Marquee.

This was a very long day but very worthwhile – Thanks again to Elizabeth and Jane for their help.

Dr. Diana Trenchard represented us at the History Forum on the 29th September at the Thomas Hardy School; our Migration exhibition board was on display.
Diana also gave a talk in October at the Dorchester Museum on Migration and the work of the Centre.

It is an interesting fact that Diana now has over 180 different spellings of Puncknowle found during her research – mainly on ancestry.

Sales of the Parish Packs continue – thanks to Carolyn James for coming in at short notice to put together some more!

We now have a fabulous new laser jet printer so we will be producing the Chideock Pack ourselves.

Diana has transcribed the Puncknowle Police Beat book and this will be available to buy from ourselves by the end of November, price yet to be confirmed. Again we are printing this in-house on our new printer!

We also have a new laptop and our own projector which we are using at all venues we attend, Diana road tested it at the Dorchester Museum and the feedback was very encouraging.

Maureen Stollery continues to provide help to our visitors and providing an invaluable online research service.

One of the main highlights of the year has to be the fantastic evening held at the end of August to welcome the author Tracy Chevalier as our Patron. This was a complete sell out and was held at Marsh Barn Bridport. Maureen has been helping Tracy with research for her new book about Mary Anning due out in 2009. Tracy said she was delighted to be our Patron and seemed very interested in the work we do. The Dorset Echo and the Western Gazette both provided great press coverage for us, we had a double page full colour spread in the Dorset Echo weekend magazine.

The Migration database continues to grow and we have a few new volunteers who are going to input for us.

We have lots of great stories to tell and in the New Year we are launching our new website. We will be updating this ourselves, so we can let you know when new names are added etc.

John BLANDY born in Piddletrenthide in 1783 Joined the army and one of the places he was stationed in 1807 was in the garrison at Madeira during the Napoleonic Wars.
He was very taken with the place, and when he came out of the army he returned there to set to as a “Wine Shipper”. At some time he returned to Dorset to marry his childhood sweetheart Janet BURDEN.

And how do we know all this?

One of our volunteers, Wendy, was entering his name and the minimal information that we had obtained about him, into the Migration Index. The name BLANDY and Madeira rang a bell with her, since she had recently returned from a holiday there. She was aware that the BLANDY name was everywhere in Madeira – travel agents, entertainments, wine company etc. A little research on the Internet showed that it was indeed all linked to that original Dorset migrant of nearly 200 years ago. And there was even a photograph of him playing tennis.

It is good to hear these stories and we are hoping our new website will be more interactive so we can keep you posted on other interesting features.

If anyone can help by doing some imputing at home please let us know as we have huge backlog to clear. This should be much easier to do now as the system has been simplified.

We are now open at our new Centre on Wednesdays and Thursdays 9.30 – 4.30. These hours tie in with the History Centre next door, this is great for our visitors as they now have access to lots more resources.
Also in line with the library and the History Centre access to Ancestry is free. We also have the worldwide deluxe Ancestry – great for looking at overseas records and shipping lists etc.

Please come and say hello next time you’re in Bridport.

Best wishes and thanks to you all for bearing with us over these last few, difficult months,

Hope you had a wonderful Christmas and we wish you all a healthy and prosperous new year!

Tania Cash
(Project Manager)

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Membership renewable in June 2008.