Extract from:
Dorset Archaeological Society
Interesting Papers at Winter Meeting
The second winter meeting of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society
held in the County Museum on Monday under the chairmanship of Mr. Vere L. Oilver,
F.S.A., was devoted principally to the reading of papers.
NOTES ON BURTON BRADSTOCK.
At the morning session Mr. M. H. Ouseley, M.A., read a paper on the village
of Burton Bradstock, and its interest was enhanced by a series of photographs
shown by the epidioscope.
Mr. Ouseley said that Burton Bradstock was a village of about six hundred people and open to the sea, and photographs taken thirty-five years ago showed that the place had changed very little indeed. He mentioned that William the Conqueror gave the rectory of Burton Bradstock, with its dues and three other churches to the Abbey of St. Wendrille in Normandy, for his soul's welfare and that of his wife and family. But on this point he was afraid that Hutchins went Wrong in recording that only the rectory, without the dues, was given. At that time Burton Bradstock was a royal manor, and was listed with Bridport and Whitechurch Canonicorum. In the summer, said Mr. Ouseley, he went to Normandy and tried to re-establish contact with the Abbey, and to persuade the Abbot to make himself interested in the subject, but he did not meet with a great deal of success. The monks were intellectual and had produced a work dealing with the Abbey, but they were not all engaged in intellectual work, and made excellent shoe polish and furniture cream, kept bees, and went in for building. The history of the Abbey had been one of a great deal of ups and downs since its foundation in 649. Colonel C. D. Drew asked Mr. Ouseley if he had found much material in the village itself among the church or any other records.
Mr. Ouseley replied that he went to the Public Record Office in London and found there a 16th century indenture of lease of the manor of Burton Bradstock and various land and tithe to a man named Robert Newton in 1520, and the deed went on to say that in 1551 the same land, was to be leased to a man named Owen Quinn, but Hutchins gave Ralph Moyne as receiving the land in 1547. The next thing he found in the same place was a list of the church goods in 1552. He had not found anything in the way of documents except the registers, which went back to 1614. There was a house in the village with the letters and date "S.B., 1636, " and people used to say that this referred to Sam Brown, but he found an entry in registers that Simeon Bowering was churchwarden in 1641, and he was the owner of Down Farm.
Colonel Drew congratulated Mr. Ouseley on his excellent, pictorial record. He did not suppose that every village had such a complete record of its varied industries and activities. A good many villages were collecting their records to a greater or lesser extent, but he did not know any village that had such a complete set of photographs, or such charming ones, as those collected by Mr. Ouseley.
The Chairman congratulated Mr. Ouseley on his address and said that if every village went in for this sort of thing they would soon have a complete survey of the county.