Boarding students at Shaftesbury School have been busy getting to grips with local history after head of house Anita Baker started a History Club.

The first project is a metal detecting club run by Bob Dunford, a member of the house team, who provided students with metal detectors.

The youngsters were shown finds, given the rules and regulations around detecting ethically, and shown how to use the devices before being given a piece of land on-site to examine.

Anita, a member of the Midlands Archaeological Society, said: “This subject fascinated me for many years, particularly with the idea that you could well be the first person to hold an item in the palm of your hand that has not been touched by another human in hundreds of years.

“That feeling has never left me over the years and I wanted our students to be able to have that same experience.”

Anita, who said 362 finds have been recorded in Dorset since records began in 2012, added: “As one of those finds was in the grounds of our very own Barton Hill, while workmen were digging footings for the Sixth-Form block, I felt it would be an interesting way for our students to feel connected to Shaftesbury’s past, examine the history of the house, while igniting a sense of excitement about history and metal detecting.”

Next term, students will be starting a new project, researching the original Barton Hill Manor and the history of Barton Hill House.

Visits to Gold Hill Museum, spent examining old photos and maps, have shown the location was listed on a 1941 map as on the site of Tesco, but this has since been disproved. However, the original location has still not been found.

Students will learn research and retrieval skills, have the chance to visit the local records office and learn how to ‘read’ old maps to aid their research.

If any old Shastonians have any information or old memories/photographs to share, they are asked to get in touch with the school.