author's tribute to the men and one woman of Dorchester who gave their lives during the First World War

Dorchester Remembers the Great War (Roving Press, £12.99) tells the wartime stories of nearly 300 Dorchester residents and the families left bereaved.

As well as providing an epitaph for the dead, Brian’s book also offers an insight into the lives of the 9,000 people who lived in Edwardian Dorchester, with its social hierarchy, agricultural and industrial workforces – the brewer Eldridge, Pope and Co was the largest employer – and varied shopping street.

The county town also had a very military air, with the Depot Barracks housing the Dorset Regiment and the Royal Artillery Barracks on the west side of town. Soldiers were a familiar sight on the streets – they attended church at Holy Trinity and drank in the Old Ship in High West Street.

Brian asks whether the constant presence of soldiers in the town made local lads more likely to sign up at the advent of war. Or were they caught up in the ‘spirit of the era’, which he describes as ‘the age of the British Empire and with empire came patriotism and a feeling of invincibility’?

Whatever, being rural lads they had the ‘skills and inclination’ to fight and when the call to arms came, many heeded it but never returned home.

Brian, who moved to Dorset in 1971, said: “I always attend the cenotaph service in the town and four or five years ago after everyone had gone I was looking at it and the names on it and thought it would be interesting to find out who the people were, what they did and how they fitted into Dorchester society.

“There are 250 names on the different town memorials and I researched them all. There wasn’t a lot of humour in it though.

“I read the story of Frank Adams who was accidentally shot and killed by his best friend and thought ‘it can’t get worse than this’, but then I read the next story, and the next and they were all bad.”

Dorchester Remembers the Great War is also part social history of the town and a memorial to places long since lost – such as the former sports shop Braggs that was next to the Old Ship Inn in High West Street and was originally an officers’ mess.

Or the Kwik Fit garage in North Square, which in 1885 became an Old Soldiers’ Home at the behest of two church-going ladies who wanted to offer the men somewhere to go other than the pub.

The infantry barracks were at The Keep on Bridport Road and the artillery barracks were in the Grove trading estate near where Scats Countrystores is today. By 1914, it had been turned into a prisoner of war camp and five years later there were around 4,500 German POWs in the town billeted in huts all over the Grove and Poundbury Hillfort, much to the fascination of the local ladies.

The Germans even have their own war memorial, which can be found at the eastern end of Fordington Cemetery.

Brian added: “Dorchester has a fascinating history and I hope that having read this book, those who spend time looking at the town’s Great War memorial may see more than just a name on a list and understand better the sacrifices that were made.”