Dorchester, Dorset, 1635: "Sweetly scytuated in a pleasant valley"; Prisoners on Portland; Lieutenant Hammond; Daniel Defoe

See Topographical Writers in South-West England, edited by Mark Brayshay - University of Exeter Press, 1996, pages 81-89

On Portland: "A great Companie of Prisoners, digging, delving, haling, breaking and framing stones".

Two details from an illustration of Portland in David Burnett, Dorset Before the Camera, 1539-1855

"DAVID BURNETT founded the Dovecote Press in 1974 to publish the first of a series of books of old photographs recording life in Dorset".

I wonder if the prisoners hollered out any hammer or work songs in the Portland stone quarries, equivalent to those that Alan Lomax recorded in US State Penitentiaries in Mississippi and Louisiana

Early in the morning

Jumpin' Judy

Black Woman

Old Alabama

More from Alan Lomax's field recordings

Take This Hammer (Leadbelly)

County Farm Blues, Son House

Gaol Song, from A Dorset Book of Folk Songs, 1948


Daniel Defoe’s Dorset: Weymouth to Abbotsbury, Harry Bucknall, Dorset Life


Defoe in West Dorset, Dorset Life