William Barnes On Coffee-Houses in Dorchester and Dorset

William Barnes, from his article Dorset Folk and Dorset (The Leisure Hour, 1883/1884):

  

“Coffee-houses or coffee-taverns have been opened in most of the Dorset towns, and I do not know of one which has been closed as a hopeless failure. By the way, I find, from the Diary of Mr. John Richards, of Warmwell, that there was a coffee-house in Dorchester in 1700. It seems to have been frequented by the country gentry, as parcels were left there by one family for another”.


See also, An 1844 review of Barnes' dialect poems, The Gentleman's Magazine