Dorset worms abroad
Roger Guttridge unearths an unlikely angle on New World migration
Published in September ’18
The original church at Hermitage, Newfoundland
It was June 1997 and I was making my second visit to Twillingate on Newfoundland’s north coast. At a spot called Hart’s Cove, Jack Troake asked me an odd question. ‘Would ’ee like to see some real English soil, boy?’ said the Newfoundlander in what sounded to me like a Dorset accent.
Jack led me to a patch of ground that was sporting a healthy crop of grass and weeds: healthier, certainly, than most of the surrounding vegetation. Part of it had been freshly dug and the rich, dark soil was obviously quality stuff. It reminded me of the soil in my own garden at Wimborne. I soon learned the reason for that.
‘Slade and Duder had big fishing premises here at Hart’s Cove,’ Jack told me, referring to the heyday of the Poole-Newfoundland cod trade a couple of centuries before. ‘The sailing schooners needed ballast when they left England.’ That ballast consisted of Dorset topsoil, which on arrival at Hart’s Cove was tipped on a certain spot to create a fertile vegetable garden. Potatoes and carrots grew especially well, Jack said. He added: ‘People also came here to dig for worms for fishing.’
The freshly dug patch indicated that they still did. I quickly deduced that it wasn’t just the soil that came from Dorset. The ancestors of the worms did, too. ‘They’re the best worms in Newfoundland,’ said Jack. I asked him where his own ancestors came from. ‘From Dorset, I should say,’ he replied.
That was no surprise, as I had already discovered that 92 per cent of the ancestors of Twillingate came from Dorset and at least half of those from the Blackmore Vale. Reading the Twillingate phone book reminded me of the Sturminster Newton Primary School register in the 1950s. All the traditional ‘Stur’ surnames were there. Troake is also a Dorset name. When I told my mother this story on my return to England, she commented: ‘We had Troakes at school in Blandford.’
It all comes back to the historic connection between North Dorset and Newfoundland. For 300 years, Sturminster’s main industry was the production of swanskin, a coarse woollen cloth that was shipped from Poole to protect fishermen from Newfoundland’s winter weather. When the swanskin trade collapsed in the early 1800s, Sturminster merchants went directly into cod-fishing, setting up communities such as Twillingate and hiring Dorset labour to work there.
A week after my 1997 visit, I was having lunch at the Red Rose at Sturminster when I overheard a conversation on another table. One of the participants sounded just like Jack Troake. At that moment I realised that, despite the passing of 200 years since the arrival of his forebears, Jack didn’t speak with just a Dorset accent but a Blackmore Vale one. It was that specific.
For eight years, the historic trans-Atlantic links furnished me with enough material to write a monthly column for a Newfoundland magazine. During a drive up the Trans-Canada Highway in 1993, I stopped off at a place called Port Blandford and learned that it was named after a famous seaman called Captain Blandford – who originated in Dorset, of course.
There is also a village called Hermitage (population 499) on Newfoundland’s south coast. After I had addressed a Newfoundland audience about the connections, one man told me he came from Hermitage and that until he heard my talk, he had believed Newfoundland to be the only place in the world that did not recognise the word ‘me’. Instead of ‘Give it to me,’ Newfoundlanders would say ‘Give it to I’. I assured him I’d heard the same misuse of ‘I’ by many in Dorset.
Check out Hermitage, Newfoundland, on Wikipedia and you’ll read that it was so named by Channel Island settlers because an offshore island reminded them of Jersey’s tidal Hermitage Rock, supposedly the site of St Helier’s Hermitage. Oral tradition in Hermitage has it that its name comes from an early English surname, ‘Hermits’.
I can’t say I’ve come across that surname, but I can offer a third theory. During a visit to Hermitage, Dorset, in 1996, I met the Hounsell family, who showed me a drawing of the original church at Hermitage, Newfoundland, and pointed out the striking design similarities to its counterpart in Dorset. It was built in 1849 using stone shipped from Dorset – although not the first shipment, as that was lost in a storm. Dr Otto Tucker, one of the Newfoundlanders who made The Land of the Fish, a 1983 documentary film for CBC about the Newfoundland connection, told me: ‘There’s no indication of a direct link with Hermitage in Dorset, but there’s no reference anywhere as to where the name comes from, so it could well be from Dorset. Further research needs to be done.’
Another pair of churches that are said to have similar designs are St Peter’s, Twillingate, and St James’s, Poole. St James’s contains many reminders of the connections, including the columns of Newfoundland pine that hold up its roof. During a 1993 tour, members of the Dorset-based Wessex Newfoundland Society delivered a message to the Vicar of Twillingate from his opposite number in Poole, who wondered if they could return the kerosene lamps loaned to them by St James’s 100 years earlier. The Twillingate priest thought for a moment before replying that he’d be happy to oblige providing Poole returned the pine columns from St James’s. Needless to say, the lamps are still in Twillingate.
