Welcome to the Tolpuddle Martyrs' Museum and Festival Website
The Dorset countryside is beautiful but in the 1830s life in villages like Tolpuddle was hard and getting worse. Workers could not bear more cuts to their pay. Some fought back by rioting but this brought harsh punishments.
In 1834, farms workers formed a trade union. When six leaders of the union were arrested and sentenced to seven years’ transportation, a massive protest swept across the country. Thousands of people marched through London and many more organised petitions and protest meetings to demand their freedom.
The massive demonstration in Copenhagen Fields, London
Their ‘crime’ was to take an oath of solidarity in forming a trade union.
The protest campaign proved successful and they returned home in triumph.
Their story is now part of the development of a free and democratic society. It is celebrated in the small museum in Tolpuddle and at the Festival on the weekend of the third Sunday in July.
