TODAY we are starting a short series looking back at the founding of Dorset County Museum, which this year celebrates its 170th anniversary.

In modern times, home to so many treasures and a regular venue for talks and exhibitions, it is hard to believe that the reason the Dorchester museum exists is because so many treasures were unearthed when the railway was built to London!

The museum's Mark North has filled Looking Back in on some of the details.

The idea of building a museum to house Dorset's rich treasures was first conceived by a group of forward-thinking individuals.

On October 15, 1845, it was a group, including the Dorset poet, William Barnes; the vicar of Fordington, Rev. Henry Moule and Rev. C. W. Bingham, which decided that a museum was necessary for the county town of Dorset.

In 1845 land was disturbed and the Dorset landscape changed beyond all recognition as the South Western Railway was built from London to Dorchester.

Various specimens and artefacts were found within the disturbance of the land, and it was determined that it was ‘advisable to take immediate steps for the establishment of an institution in this town, containing a museum and library for the county of Dorset.’

It was at this moment, Dorset County Museum was born.

William Barnes' daughter Leader Scott aka Lucy Baxter told of the museum's establishment in her biography of her father ‘The Life of William Barnes, Poet and Philologist’, published in 1887.

She wrote: "In 1845 the South Western Railway was projected from London to Dorchester, causing great excitement among the inhabitants, and producing many results which would seem at first sight to be quite irrelevant.

"Landowners were aghast at threatened cuttings through their land, artists were rabid at the destruction to the picturesque, geologists were excited at the anticipated “finds " of fossil treasures in the chalk, and — here comes the unexpected result — the Dorset County Museum was founded, and William Barnes became one of its secretaries!

"As a proof of the new railway being the cause of the founding of the museum, it is enough to glance at the resolutions of the preliminary meeting held on October 15th, 1845, wherein it was resolved:

"1st, That, in consideration of the importance of this district with respect to natural history and both British and Roman antiquities, and, more especially at this time, when the disturbance of the surface of the country in the formation of railroads is likely to bring to light specimens of interest in these several departments of science, it is advisable to take immediate steps for the establishment of an institution in this town containing a museum and library for the county of Dorset.

"5th. That the Right Honourable Lord Ashley, M.P., be requested to become president of the institution.

"6th. That the Rev. C. W. Bingham and Mr. William Barnes be appointed honorary secretaries, and Herbert Williams, Esq., treasurer.

"All the archaeologists of the county came forward to assist the project of which Barnes was one of the most energetic promoters, and funds enough soon accumulated to make a modest beginning.

"A house was taken in Back South Street, and Mr. Barnes, with his three clerical colleagues, the Revs. Charles Bingham, Osmund Fisher, and Henry Moule, were soon constantly at work arranging and classifying.

"Specimens began to pour in as well as funds; William Barnes's two old friends, Mr. Charles Hall of Osmington House, and Mr. Charles Warne, F.S.A., sent duplicates from their respective collections of British and Saxon antiquities."

The naturalist, the Rev. J. C. Dale, of Glanville's Wootton, contributed butterflies and stuffed natural history specimens.

The antiquarians in the Isle of Purbeck placed in the museum their treasures, the ichthyosaurus, the fin of the plesiosaurus and other minor fossils, found in the Kimmeridge clay and oolite ; and William Barnes took all his pupils — who for the time had a mania for fossil-hunting — geologising in the new railway cuttings.

It was amusing to see the dignified way in which these young savants started, with bag and hammer, and the undignified return, covered with chalk soil and showing very juvenile excitement over their terebratulœ, echini, and belemnites.

Many of their “findings " went in with more important specimens, and thus formed the germ of the museum, with which William Barnes's name and labours have been connected for forty years.

*Next week we're going to be looking at how the museum's collection grew and how it eventually moved from an old house in a back street.

*ARCHIVE PHOTOS ARE COURTESY OF DORSET COUNTY MUSEUM