LAST week we talked about Neil Mattingly's increasing collection of Claud Hider photographs, which included some of Tom Hunter and his family.

The Hunter family was well known in Charmouth and Tom was not the first to make his mark.

The Hunter Family were to play an important role in the history of Charmouth.

Their lives were mainly centred on the beach, where they were involved with fishing, bathing machines, bathing tents, fossil hunting and many other activities over the centuries.

Mr Mattingly has been through all available records and the earliest reference is of a marriage between Hannah and John Hunter at the Independence Chapel.

The family seem to have been regular worshippers there and most of the information he gathered comes from their patchy records

It is said that the ancestral Hunter was the son of a Scottish gentleman, who on a visit to this neighbourhood met and married a farmer’s daughter, as a consequence he broke with his family and settled here permanently, adopting his wife's social status.

John was born in 1754 and was to live to be 97 years of age, when he died in 1851.

Sadly his latter years were spent in the Almshouse on the Street, surviving on Parish Relief.

The Poor Rates for 1814 show John moving to a house at this time next to that of John Potter, a shoe maker and Benjamin Diment, the village blacksmith, where the fossil shop is today.

A census at the time describes him as a labourer and having two males and four females living with him, no doubt his family.

He is still living there in 1841 as can be seen by the Tithe Map and census for that year. He is a widower by then and his grand-daughter,Eliza aged 10, is staying with him.

It is his son, also John, who was to make his name as a fisherman and fossilologist. He was born in 1794, and at the age of 21 married Hannah Dean also living in Charmouth at the Independent Chapel. They were to go on to have 10 children, all of whom are recorded at being baptised almost annually at the chapel.

When their first is born and christened Robert, He is described as a sail cloth weaver, which continues almost each year until 1831, when he is shown as a fisherman, which he was to remain for the rest of his life.

He would have worked from home supplying cloths to William Burnard who had his factory near the bridge.

Sailcloth manufacture was Charmouth`s major business, but went into with the ending of the Napoleonic Wars. The largest firm was that run by Jacob Ridley Kitt on a site where Charmouth Lodge is today, which went bankrupt in 1815.

The fully stoyr of the extensive Hunter family is available on Mr Mattingly's website If you want to find out more, do click on this link freshford.com.