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The Salisbury Museum Volunteer Blog

Tag Archives: Poole

MORE INVESTIGATION OF OLD IMAGES by Volunteer Alan Clarke

16 Sunday Aug 2020

Posted by Salisbury Museum in Collections, Uncategorized

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Photo archive, Poole

As regular readers know, Alan looks after the photographic archive at the museum, much of his time being spent scanning early photos and trying to identify where and when they were taken and what they were about…

Scanning old glass negative plates is always exciting.

The camera would have been large and very heavy and the effort of taking a photograph with it was quite involved compared with today. The photographer would have had a number of unexposed glass plates which he would have brought with him; another appreciable weight. Thus, because of the cost and effort involved, each exposure tends to be well thought out.

The image below has so much in it. The camera would have been on a stand and thus no camera shake. This means that a scan at high resolution and then zooming-in can show much detail.

Poole best 1

 

 

Besides the original full image I have included a zoomed-in part. The first quest is usually to try and discover where the photo was taken. The masts of sailing ships and a line of railway wagons suggest a port. Then thanks to the clarity, when one zooms in on the buildings, it shows the probable names “POOLE” and “PORTSMOUTH”. But there is another short three letter word after the word PORTSMOUTH, just not clear enough to make out.

Poole best 2

 

Similarly, all the signs on the walls on the lower right are not quite clear enough for me to read. Is that LSWR on the sides of the railway wagons? Then the benefit of experience pays off. Maybe there is a listed building in the scene? I can just make out the name John Carter on one of them….

Yes, success. I discover from the web, details of Grace House-The Quay, Poole, which was formerly John Carter (Poole Ltd) Warehouse. Grace House is to the right of The Portsmouth Hoy Warehouse. A look on Google Earth confirms it is still there.

The three letter word after Portsmouth is “Hoy”*. No wonder I couldn’t guess it! Now what is the date of the photograph? There is no fence between the railway wagons and the street, as was common in a port. No cars or lorries, only horses and carts working. One female figure (perhaps a young girl?) far right is perhaps drinking a cup of tea (or some other beverage!) outside a hostelry with her dress not down to her ankles. There is a host of information about how we used to live.

The one item that stands out to me as being unusual is the dress code of the cyclist. I wouldn’t have thought that a boater was appropriate for riding a bicycle; plenty of lift surface for the wind to remove it from his head!

Also in the picture are a sack truck, a life buoy, another cyclist, three gas street lights. Thus I would think a date of around 1910. Maybe you can use the information in the image for a better guess.

I had no idea that the railway made it down to this bit of Poole Quay.

  • Hoy – a coastal vessel

 

POOLE 3

Photo – pooletourism.com

This photograph from the Poole Tourist Board shows that, in some ways, the Quay has changed little since the early 20th century. In the photographs which Alan has shown us, the small two-storey building with taller warehouses or granaries beyond is still there today (white, red tile roof) and is still a pub called the Portsmouth Hoy. The taller building, also white, is the building once called Carter’s (now Grace House) and the low green building was and is the Poole Arms. The railway tracks were certainly still there until recent years with the main line about half a kilometre away.  But a lot of gentrification has taken place. Most of the warehouses are now apartments. But the sailors can still slake their thirst….

 

Granny Cousins

28 Tuesday Jan 2020

Posted by Salisbury Museum in Wessex Partnership

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a knocker up, Granny Cousins, Poole, Poole Museum

As part of our partnership with Wessex Museums (made up of Dorchester, Poole, Devizes – Wiltshire – and ourselves) we have this from Poole Museum.

Granny Cousins was a Poole lady whose job it was, in the days before watches and clocks became common, to go about the town of Poole and wake up the rope-workers and others by hammering on their windows with a long pole. The most fascinating part of the story is that she is said to have started at three in the morning – pretty grim hours for her, but who was the poor workman who was first on her list and had to be up so much earlier than the others? Perhaps it was a case of last in, first to get up?

Granny Cousins died in 1927 – within living memory, almost anyway, for many – and it is interesting to think that her work was still necessary as late as the last part of the nineteenth century when she must have been in her prime. She is often referred to as the last of the ‘knocker-ups’, a role which must reach back centuries.

More about Granny Cousins next time….

The Ooser is Coming!

21 Tuesday Nov 2017

Posted by Salisbury Museum in Special Events, Wessex Partnership

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Dorset, Museum, News, Poole, Pottery

More about him later.  Meanwhile….

Pottery

Pottery

After the success of the first Spotlight Loan tour from the Wessex Partnership we have decided to continue with our own spotlight tours. This second series of Spotlight Loans between the four leading museums (Dorset County Museum, The Salisbury Museum, Poole Museum and Wiltshire Museum) will focus on ‘Made in Wessex’.  Wessex has been a centre of making for thousands of years. The downland, heathland, rivers and coast of Wessex have shaped the making and use of artefacts, from ancient flints to contemporary ceramics. The new tours will tell the stories of Dorset and Wiltshire focusing on this tradition of making, and reveals some surprising and fascinating objects to illustrate the theme.

Our first spotlight loan will be four examples of Crown Dorset Pottery. The Crown Dorset Art Pottery was established by Charles Collard in Poole in 1905. The pottery produced was very similar to that of the Devon potteries where Collard had previously worked, although Collard also developed new styles.

The pieces you see in the image below are examples of Cottage Ware, produced for the tourist and cheaper end of the market in a range of shapes and sizes. These were usually decorated with country scenes and a motto in Dorset dialect, often quoting the Dorset poet William Barnes.

Between November 2017 and November 2018 you will see the following objects:

Crown Dorset Pottery (Poole Museum)

Dorset Ooser (It’s a mask! Dorset County Museum)

Wiltshire Moonrakers Plate (Wiltshire Museum)

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