Limelight

Best historical tidbit du jour: there are many disused lime kilns around Portland that were once employed in the production of quick lime.  Quick lime was combined with an oxy-hydrogen flame which produced a brilliant white light, used in spotlights in Covent Garden and the London theatres during Victorian times.  From this we get the expression: being in the limelight.

In my spare moments, I've been having a weekend of mapping, geology, engineering, and lots of history, and I have been boring everybody senseless with my discoveries about the Isle of Portland.  Most people, being East Coaster and fans of cross-border shopping,  have thought I've been researching Portland, Maine (named for Portland, Dorset, by the way).   I have quickly subjected them to an introduction to *my* Portland though.  The favorite story has been of the prison convicts building the breakwaters for the harbour.  It is a good tale.

It turns out that Isabella Pearce and family were from Easton Village, not Weston.  They were in Weston by the time of the 1871 census though, from which I had retrieved information earlier than these newest facts about Abel Pearces' family.

Not surprisingly, I have been bringing my  Grandmother back to life in my dreams - it's wonderful, and painful... she's back, then I wake up, and she's gone again.

photo credit: http://www.compulite.com/stagelight/html/history-4/limelight-spot.html