Talbot Village History

Welcome

This website is an online archive of stories, photographs, documents and memories connected to Talbot Village and its surrounding area.The archive is organised in a few simple ways to help you explore:

Browse by Collections
Collections group together related material – for example by time period, theme, place or project.

Explore Exhibits
Exhibits tell a story. They bring together selected items with explanatory text to guide you through a particular subject or moment in Talbot Village’s history.

View Individual Items
Items are the individual records within the archive – such as a single photograph, map, document or recording – each with its own description and metadata.

If you’re looking for something specific, you can also use the Advanced Search to search across the entire archive and filter results by keyword, date, subject or type of material.

Featured Stories & Exhibits

The Moselle was built in 1852 by Ditchburn & Mare at West Ham for the General Steam Navigation Company (GSNC). The engines were built and fitted by the GSNC themselves at their yard at Deptford.

Born in Brazil, buried in Talbot Village

A short account of the Hawkins family’s emigration from Dorset to Brazil in the 1870s, and their later return to Wallisdown. Drawing on family history and Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles, the article explores the wider “Brazil movement” that encouraged English agricultural families to seek a new life overseas, often with difficult and disappointing results.