On August 29th 1913 a meeting was held of the Sturminster Newton Rural District Council. There were two topics on the agenda, the first was the shortage of affordable housing in the local villages and the second was the state of the sanitation in the same villages. It was noted…
“At a Meeting of the Owners of Property in this Parish [Child Okeford] legally intitled to vote,… at the Church in this Parish on Thursday the 22nd day of February…it was resolved that the Churchwardens and Overseers [of the Poor] shall, and they are hereby directed to raise the…
Readers of The Hill have learned of a group of 30 emigrants to Australia in 1849. The story was read by another amateur historian Barry Barnett who whilst not living in Child Okeford had, as one of his forebears, a man called Ben Weeks. Sadly Ben died from a fall…
Imagine for a moment that you have never seen a train, or the sea, or a ship. Sounds unlikely today but in 1849 it was normal not to have experienced any of these. Then imagine, those of you with children, that you are going to be confined with them in…
There has never been a good time to be born poor but the early to mid nineteenth century was one of the worst. Conditions in Dorset were particularly bad. In 1843 the Reverend Sydney Godolphin Osborne wrote of conditions in Stourpain [sic], “Within this last year I saw in a…
“And so the English groaned aloud for their lost liberty and plotted ceaselessly to find some way of shaking off a yoke that was so intolerable and unaccustomed” 1 There are few points in history where we can get anything like an accurate assessment of the size of the village…
The King vs the Inhabitants of Child Okeford -William IV takes on Child Okeford. “Welcome to the village, have you moved far to come here? Shillingstone? Not far then. Before you move in though could I see your Settlement certificate? You haven’t got one? Oh dear – Bailiff take them…
The Village Name The first recorded name of the village is in the Domesday book [1086] when it was known simply as Ackford. [The “Exeter” version of Domesday calls us Ackforda”. The origin appears to be “oak-tree” ford from the old English ac [oak] and [ford]. The ford is long…
Child Okeford’s “Hey Day” is the annual village fete. Where does “Hey Day” originate? Is it one word or two? Sadly we have no idea. No one is able to tell us nor can we find any clue from village records. The first record we can find was in the…
