Rebuild works at trading estate unearth 100-year-old documents

Rebuild works have uncovered 100 year old documents under the floorboards at St Michael's Trading Estate.

Contractors working on the reinstatement of the Tower Building after the major fire in 2018 discovered a box of letters and other documents from when Edwards Sports occupied the building.

Martin Ridley, of the estate's owners and managers, Hayward and Co, said: "The find feels like an unintentional time capsule squirrelled away by an Edwards employee. We shall never know how or why they came to be there except that it must have been a deliberate act."

Mr Ridley has given the documents to Bridport Museum.

Emily Hicks, director of Bridport Museum said: "It's always exciting when something unique is donated to the Bridport Museum collection - but perhaps even more so when the find was discovered under some floorboards where it had apparently been tucked away for safe keeping for 100 years."

The box contained a bundle of around 20 letters, most of them had originated from Lillywhites Sports Outfitters of Haymarket, London, requesting that Edwards Sports in Bridport send them various pieces of sports netting.

Many are signed by 'Henry Benedictus' whose business was based in the Haymarket and is still trading today.

One of particular note is a 'special order' ticket for some tennis netting.

Once one of the most prominent netting businesses in the town, Edwards was bought out by Huck News a few years ago. Huck Nets still operate from Bridport today and continue making the tennis nets for Wimbledon and for tennis clubs across the country.

Jon Legg Bagg, now sales director at Huck Nets, was an office junior at Bridport Gundry in the 1970s. He recalls Edwards Nets as a key part of the business and remembers writing out orders by hand for Lillywhites.

St Michael's has been a trading estate now for more than 50 years, but before that it had been the centre of Bridport's netting and rope making industry, stretching back to the time of Henry VIII.

Emily added: "Bridport Museum already curates and cares for a large archive documenting the town's 800-year-old rope and netting history, but donations such as this help to add detail and colour to that unique story."

You can find out more about Bridport's connections with football and sports netting here.

Bridport Museum will re-open to visitors on May 17. In the meantime, you can subscribe to the museum newsletter and find out more about volunteering at its website and follow Bridport Museum on Facebook and Twitter.

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