©Bryan Phillips Aug 2024

Want to know more about the lives of people who once lived in Milton Abbas? Do you have BARNES, HARVEY, HAWKINS, HAM, MITCHELL, or STANDFIELD ancestors?

Our member Clive Barnes gave a presentation to the Milton Abbas Local History Group at our meeting on 1 May 2024 entitled ‘Lawrence Hawkins, Blacksmith. A Craftsman’s Family in Milton Abbas’. Clive has now written this up into a superb piece of research and this is available to our members here.

Clive’s research is a great example of how the lost stories of people from previous centuries can be revealed using all the resources available to us today, as well as how the trades such as blacksmith was once so important to rural life and how it prospered and shrank with the changing times.

It also typifies the contacts and intermarriages amongst trades and families in a closed rural village.