Dorchester & South Dorset LETS

This is Christmas and Birthday rolled into one!
Article by our Newsletter Editor Chris Slade

We are now fifteen years old and so your roving reporter decided to interview our foundress.  At her new home in balmy Bothenhampton, Anne Rickard described how she and her husband Dave Rickard, started us all off in December 1994.

Dave and Anne Rickard - the founders of Dorchester LETS!(Performing at our LETS Harvest Supper in 2008)

They had moved to Martinstown from the teeming south east, intending to live the ‘good life’. They had a 16th century farmhouse and an Aga and a small child but little spare cash.  They joined the village baby-sitting circle, which was done in exchange for tokens (we used fancy paper clips in Maiden Newton) so were used to cashless transactions.

Among the prescribed publications for would-be country-lifers was ‘Country Living’ magazine and the edition of July 1994 had an article on LETS which prompted them to make enquiries via LETSLink UK. They discovered that the nearest chapter of LETS was at Wimborne, run then by Joanne Benson. This was too far away so it was then that the idea began to be formed that they would have to start a local group, probably an expanded version of the baby-sitting circle.

It was about that time that their daughter, Wendy, (who was working on local radio station Wessex FM) heard, in the newsroom, an interview with Janet Osborne on the subject of LETS and told her parents about it.  They made contact and things started rolling from there.

The official launch date was 1st December 1994. It took a lot of work and Dave remarked that he had never seen Anne so energised.  Funding came from the three local councils: Dorchester Town Council who provided free copying facilities; and West Dorset District Council and Dorset County Council. These two each insisted that ‘matched funding’ be found elsewhere so Anne matched them with each other!  This paid for leaflets and for the first directory.

The meeting was held in a old peoples’ home in Martinstown and besides some members who are still with us (Barbara Jenkins sprang to mind) there were also two people from Bridport: Vee Driscoll and Debbie Bond who went on to start the SW Dorset chapter soon afterwards and with whom we have always had close links.

Dave remembers that an early member was John Parker aka Jack Daniels aka Howling at the Moon. He was briefly landlord of the Greyhound at Sydling where necessary sustenance could be paid for partly in Marts.

Jenny was involved from the beginning, as was Janet Osborne. Anne wasn’t able to lay hands on the full list of founder members during our interview but thinks that there were up to a score involved. Were you one of them?  Tell us on the Blog about what you remember from the early days.

Anne confirmed my suspicion that our currency the Mart is based on the name Martinstown, but she pointed out that she had soon thereafter realised that a ‘mart’ is also a market place so it is appropriate.