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Picture source: Adrian Harding

The Queens Head was situated on Coldharbour. This pub is now used as a private house.

Source: Mike Smith

Before the railway first came to Sherborne, there was a plan for the route to pass the Northern edge of the town, with the station on Coldharbour. This pub changed its name to The Terminus in 1858 in anticipation of becoming a major Railway Hotel. It was still present in the 1960’s before it was sold. It’s now a B&B.

Adrian Harding (February 2021)

Louis Cheeseman was the innkeeper there from 1901-1922 (from the census and Dorset electoral records), maybe longer. His son, Albert Victor Cheeseman, became a farmer at Ivy House Farm, Oborne, Dorset and employed Reginald Woolmington as a cowman. Reginald, using a gun from the farm, shot dead his wife, Violet. He claimed it was an accident, but after two trials at Taunton and Bristol Assizes was convicted of murder. However, his conviction was quashed by the House of Lords in the celebrated case of Woolmington v Director of Public Prosecutions [1935] AC 462, one of the most important cases in English law (https://www.iclr.co.uk/blog/news-and-events/150-years-of-case-law-on-trial/), which confirmed that there is ‘one golden thread’ running through English law, that the burden of proof is on the prosecution to prove the defendant guilty - that is, the presumption of innocence.

Richard Glover (March 2021)

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