What is a smuggler?   What did they smuggle?   Who were the smugglers?   Who benefited from smuggling?    Who lost out ?   What happened to smugglers when they got caught ?

As historians, Year 4 spent the morning at Shire Hall Courthouse in Dorchester looking at primary sources to find clues to answer these questions. We focused on the village of Swyre along the Jurassic coast towards Bridport. In 1847, the land and houses around Swyre were mostly owned by The Duke of Bedford – William Russell MP. He employed the schoolteacher in Swyre, Charles Barrett, to keep an eye on his property and the villagers. Charles Barrett kept a notebook on each of the villagers and it was this notebook that we used (plus Dorchester Prison records from 1847 and 1869) to find out about the smugglers in that area.

As well as investigating the villagers of Swyre, we had a tour around the court houses’ cells and the courtroom itself where we re-enacted a courtroom scene from 1869 when Charles Northover (a smuggling gang leader) was brought before the judge.

“WOW – being a historian is a bit like being a detective, piecing bits of a jigsaw together.”