Author David Burnett has travelled to numerous villages for his new book, a carefully observed portrait of a rural way of life in Dorset. Joanna Davis reports.

IMAGINE holding a postcard in front of you of a rural scene.

In this image are villagers in Victorian clothing, all lined up, unsmiling, in front of the camera. They show a forgotten Dorset of self-sufficient villages complete with inns, shops, schools and a blacksmith's forge.

Now imagine stepping into this postcard in the present day - returning to the exact spot it was taken in. That's what author David Burnett did in writing his new book - a collection of postcards of rural Dorset and the story behind them.

"The whole project was very much a labour of love," he said.

Lost Dorset: The Villages and Countryside, 1880 to 1920, covers the years between the invention of the postcard in the 1880s until just after the First World War.

The pictures, taken by professional photographers, feature villagers posing for the camera and offer a fascinating insight to a rural way of life through a period of upheaval and change.

Using the 350-strong postcard collection of collector Barry Cuff of Sturminster Newton, David travelled the length and breadth of Dorset, finding the exact location of each postcard, knocking on villagers' doors and seeing what had changed or been demolished.

David, who has published the book under his own publishers, Wimborne-based The Dovecote Press, said the research took the best part of two years.

"Right at the beginning, I'd almost convinced myself that a picture of children outside the Wesleyan Chapel in Marnhull was of the village school. Happily, I decided to go and check for myself, thus avoiding what would have been the first of many horrible mistakes," he said.

Then began David's mission to track down the exact location of all 350 postcards.

He said: "I would go to every place and I would bang on doors and had I don't know how many conversations with people and drank I don't know how many cups of tea.

"People provided me with so much information, it was amazing. Everyone was so friendly."

David discovered so much information from going out to the villages, he said.

"In Bradford Peverell I had about half the village following me down the street with the postcard on my iPad, trying to find these cottages for me.

"There was a man who had lived in the village for a long time and he told me that the cottage in the picture was bought by his father for £25 but they were later demolished and are now used for parking. It was very surprising, especially to think how much that cottage would have been worth now!"

The research revealed contrasts in how much some villages have changed, David said.

"If you look at the picture of Lower Bockhampton and go there now to stand in that spot you see that nothing is different except the wall on the left. But a place where it did look very different from the postcard was Preston, Weymouth. From the Spice Ship, which was once the Ship Inn, the view is very different."

On the whole the villages with the least amount of change were those that were, and still are, owned by big estates.

"Back then 36 per cent of Dorset was owned by 10 families. These villages have experienced little change and have remained largely agricultural," David said.

David and collector Barry had discussed doing this book for many years before it came to fruition. Avid collector Barry goes to postcard fairs all over England and also finds postcards in charity shops and on Ebay.

The book's inside front cover and inside back cover shows the written side of the postcards. However, the messages on the cards were nowhere near as illuminating as the pictures, David said.

"I thought the messages would be really fascinating things but they are generally about the weather! But there was one sent from Sturminster Marshall which said 'Mr Hunt has committed suicide'. I then went on to find a postcard of Mr Hunt standing in the doorway of his own shop. And I then went to the Dorset History Centre and found a notice of his death. There was also a postcard which said he was recovering from depression. So there you had a whole story about one person's life and death.

"When I kept going back to the history centre to keep doing the research, my wife Sarah was saying to me, you have to stop or you'll just keep going on forever."

With limited space there were some quite bizarre pictures that didn't make the grade, David said, such as a rather grotesque image of burnt carcasses of horses and cows in a farm building.

There will, however, be plenty more postcards to enjoy in David's next book of postcards from Dorset's towns.

*Lost Dorset: The Villages and Countryside, 1880-1920 by David Burnett, published by The Dovecote Press, is available from every book shop in Dorset, priced at £20.