Old films and history

Abbotsbury has been filmed since the newsreel days. British Pathé came to the Swannery in 1948, 1949 and 1955 and filmed the swanherd, the round-up and the feeding. The BBC came in 1979 for A Diary of Britain and found villagers worrying about the young having to move away. And there is a 2005 film of Garland Day, one of the last times the children carried the garlands through the village. All five are on the Old films page, free to watch.

The History pages go from the Iron Age fort to the 2021 census in eighteen short chapters: Orc and Tola founding the abbey, five hundred years of monks, the chapel, the Civil War fight in the church, the swanherds from William Squillor in 1393 to Dick Dalley, the smugglers, the fires of 1784, the railway that ran from 1885 to 1952, the coast road, Garland Day, and Chesil in the Second World War.

Both are on this site and cost nothing. Read the chapel and the monks chapters before you walk up the hill and the walk will mean more. On a wet afternoon the pub wifi and the 1948 film are as good a way through it as any.

If you want more, Dorset Council's Historic Towns Survey of the village, published in 2011, is online, and the Wessex Film and Sound Archive holds a 1991 television feature on Dick Dalley the swanherd, not online but viewable through the archive.

Old films of the village, History, Dorset Council, Abbotsbury Historic Towns Survey