Located just outside Dorchester, Moreton is best known for being the burial place of Lawrence of Arabia. We look back at the last few decades of this interesting village.

  • When Mrs Bridget Frampton opened the doors to Moreton House in 1976, she worried whether the public would consider the 25p entrance admission good value.

Yet the opening proved a remarkable success. "I admit I was dreading it," Mrs Frampton said the following year. "I thought of people poking about in one's house and it seemed awful. But it turned out that people were very nice. Really lovely. They were courteous and considerate and very appreciative of what they saw. It was really rather a lot of fun."

Prior to 1976, Moreton House had enjoyed 400 years of stately privacy. The Framptons decided to open the property to raise funds for additional Whistler engraved windows in the village church, which is situated the grounds of the house. With Lawrence of Arabia buried just across the road from Moreton House, Mrs Frampton spoke of a personal connection she shared with the writer.

"He sent me a first edition copy of his Seven Pillars of Wisdom," she said. "It's still a family possession, but its value is reduced as Lawrence forgot to sign it."

  • Soldiers from the nearby Bovington Camp came to rescue in 1980 when the bells of St Nicholas required urgent repair.

Their restoration, and that of their supporting beams, was found to be alarmingly high, so the director of the Royal Armoured Corps at Bovington decided the work could be undertaken by the camp's Royal Engineers. The commanding officer, Major Mike Mound, said: "It was an excellent training task and called for ingenuity and for the practice of a number of sapper skills."

After removing the bells, the engineers had to replace the 250-year-old beams which supported them, before re-hoisting the bells and erecting steel joists for re-hanging.

  • A few years later, the new Whistler windows at St Nicholas' Church were unveiled to the delight of a packed congregation.

In the 1950s, a villager had asked artist Laurence Whistler to engrave five windows in the newly built apse, which had been destroyed by a stray German bomb. His commission was later extended to 12; all were completed by autumn 1984. The Moreton church is the only one in the world with its windows entirely engraved rather than stained. They show images of light and fire and scenes of English life, with each representing a different theme. A decade later, in 1994, parishioners refused to accept another engraved Whistler window because it was said to depict the suicide of Judas Iscariot. Worshippers regarded the subject matter as 'inappropriate' and 44 signed a petition to ensure the window was not put on display.

  • A digger driver unearthed evidence of a prehistoric settlement in Moreton while clearing land for a new car park in September 2001. Adam Surrey, of Weymouth, discovered an Iron Age pot, fragments of pottery and pits and ditches showing clearly where ancient boundary fences would have stood. Adam said: "It's an incredibly exciting find. The items date from 500BC to 500AD, including fragments of flints. Some of the ground has not been disturbed for 2,000 years." The relics were found next to the old village school, which was closed in the 1970s after more than a century of use.
  • Weeks later, the old school building opened as a tea room. Years earlier, its primitive facilities - a toilet block with no roof, no sports field and water drawn from a well - had been deemed inadequate for the 50 pupils. After standing unused for 34 years, Liz and Richard Frampton Hobbs, along with Beverley Stirling and Jane Gainsford, decided to convert the school into a café.

More than 70 ex-pupils attended a reunion to celebrate the opening of the tea room in October 2001. Liz, who helped organise the event, said: "The oldest person there was 93 and we also had people in their forties, so there was a real age range."Also in attendance was the school's last headmaster, Jack Parkin, then 87.