The Blandford Express

Saint-Vaast-la-Hougue in Normandy.

Stingo was a popular Dorset drink in the 1960s and 1970s. It was a barley wine yet it was not a wine. The drink was a strong ale. It was called a wine because Stingo was known for its high alcoholic content similar to wine and for its rich and complex flavours. It was most definitely a drink for sipping rather than quaffing. Barley wine was produced elsewhere in England and was also known as Ind Coope Triple A and as Tennant’s  Gold Label but in Dorset it was definitely known as Stingo. Produced by Hall and Woodhouse in Blandford, it was brewed at a time when the company was managed by brothers John and Edward Woodhouse. The latter was a fine cricketer who captained Somerset County Cricket Club. Such was the fine pedigree of Stingo that it was truly a time in Dorset when you could truly claim: ‘I’m only here for the beer!’

He was the high-spirited parson initially of Lydlinch and then Chettle who was mad about sport.  However, these were the uncivilised ‘ past times’ of the 1700s such as bull baiting, cockfighting and owl hunting. It was said he hunted ‘everything from the flea in the blanket to the elephant in the forest.’   He was also an author and a magistrate although writer Desmond Hawkins reckoned he regarded the law as an inconvenience to be broken or upheld according to what suited him. William Chafin was a crusty character and rural eccentric who wore old boots and greasy leather breeches even when dining with royalty. Young William’s sporting career began when he accidently shot and killed an old lady called ‘Goody’ . Somehow, the future cleric avoided court conviction but his father insisted he spent a month in a loft as a penance on just bread and water. During this confinement, he passed the time trap baiting sparrows. Only four of his eleven brothers and sisters survived which...

  There were Shaftesbury, Blackmore Vale and Templecombe… and also Blandford Forum. All were railway locomotives from the age of steam with names from the West Country. Appropriately as a class, they were known as the ‘ West Countries’ . Because of their distinct and streamlined appearance they also became nicknamed the ‘ spam cans'. The ‘ West Countries’ were designed by Oliver Bulleid who was the Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Southern Railway Company. The company ran trains in the south and west of England  from Cornwall to Kent before the railways were nationalised in 1947. Locomotive Blandford (34107) was built by British Railways (Southern Region) and was the 1,000 th to be constructed by the Brighton Works when completed in April 1950. In November 1952, it was renamed as Blandford Forum. Initially Blandford was allocated to Bournemouth motive power depot which resulted in its use on the Weymouth-London (Waterloo) line. Occasionally, it might pass through Blandford o...

  With a large bounty for his head and after the execution of his father, King Charles II was prepared to pay virtually any price for help to flee the country. The King was hiding away from his pursuers in the home of Francis Wyndham  at Trent on the Dorset/Somerset border. Wyndham was given the task of finding a vessel to convey the Monarch across the English Channel to safety. Mariner Stephen Limbry from Charmouth was due to take a cargo from Charmouth to St Malo in France on 22 September 1651. After some tough negotiating, a consideration of £60 was agreed to secure a crossing for the King’s party. (This would be around £25,000 in today’s money!) Disguised as a servant to a married couple, the King arrived at the Queen’s Arms Inn at Charmouth. The building gained its name, it is said, from it housing Catherine of Aragon for a night soon after she arrived in England. So as not to be recognised because the Inn was busy, Charles remained in the stables. Francis Wyndham and his...

Chetnole Halt, 20 miles north of Weymouth on the Heart of Wessex Line, is Dorset’s smallest station - around 1,000 passengers use it annually. It’s also a train request halt so passengers on the station platform have to signal to the driver to stop. Opened in September 1933, it was originally constructed of wood as in the above photograph. In the early 1960s, the Government tasked Dr Richard Beeching with reducing the cost of running the country’s railways. Dorset stations such as Wimborne, Lyme Regis and Blandford closed. How did Chetnole, a village with a population of just over 300 people, keep its station? Maybe it was an administrative oversight by the British Railways Board bureaucrats at 222 Marylebone Road in London?