A History Worth Telling: What's in a Name?
The Association History Project is a documentary history of the Community Association of Poundbury, being pieced together from thirty years of minutes, newsletters and correspondence held in the Association's own archive. It's a work in progress, and we're excited to share snapshots of our first reading of this written record as we go, which oral histories will add richness to from 2027. One of the charming things our initial analysis has turned up is just how much the Association's own name has grown and evolved right alongside the community itself.
Ask people Poundbury today and they'll know us as the Community Association of Poundbury, or CAofP — and also as Love Poundbury. From the documentation gathered thus far, the organisation appears to have worn at least four names with pride since 1995.
The earliest surviving minutes of the local association, from the founding meeting on 24 April 1995, call it the "Poundbury Village Association." That name still appears in the minutes of the AGM on 29 April 1996. But by the General Meeting just three months later, on 31 July 1996, the heading has transitioned to "Poundbury Village Residents' Association." We haven't found anyone proposing it, debating it, or voting on it — "Residents'" simply arrives, as though people had already been saying it for a while, and the minutes were just catching up.
The same quiet evolution seems to have happened again five years later. "Village" is still there in the minutes of September 2001. By that November's newsletter, it has gently dropped away, and the Association becomes, from then on, simply the "Poundbury Residents' Association." Once again, there's no paper trail explaining the change — just a community, it seems, settling into a name that fit better.
Were these names talked about quietly before a meeting, the way these things often are? Or did something more formal happen? We'd love to know — so if you remember, do get in touch at calltoaction@lovepoundbury.org.
There's a third name woven through this history with a story of its own: Love Poundbury. The earliest trace we've found is from May 2016, when committee minutes briefly mention a "Love Poundbury" magazine alongside "Discover Poundbury." But the name comes into its own the following year. In 2017, the PRA committee — led by incoming Chairman William Gibbons, with webmaster Mike Coleman building the Association's first website and social presence — rebranded the PRA's channels as "LovePoundbury with the PRA."
By the 2018 AGM, LovePoundbury had already reached 551 Facebook likes and 412 Instagram followers — a lovely start for a volunteer-run page. The name has carried through every chapter since: after the 2023 Big Poundbury Conversation, it was deliberately kept rather than replaced when the Association chose its formal new name in 2024, and is now being registered as a UK trade mark, to protect something that has become valued.
It's worth noting that a follow-up consultation found that a few residents weren't won over by the name straight away — some felt it didn't sound serious enough for a governance body. Nearly a decade on, however, Love Poundbury has it stuck and in October 2026 we revised the logo, a visible sign of how far this once-informal nickname has come.
The most recent change was different again — even more deliberate. When the Association reconstituted itself as a Community Interest Company in 2025, the new name — Community Association of Poundbury CIC — was chosen thoughtfully to avoid confusion with the separately run Poundbury Community Trust, and it's recorded in the Certificate of Incorporation issued on 4 April that year. Set alongside 1996, 2001 and the story of Love Poundbury, you can watch a community organisation growing in confidence, from names that simply emerged, to a name that was chosen with intention.
It's a small thing, but it points to something this project is finding: what has kept this community thriving for thirty years was not about having the perfect name or structure settled from day one. It's about people who persist with turning up and caring.
We're still building this picture, one document at a time, and we're loving what we're finding. If you've been part of Poundbury's story for a while, would you like to get involved in the oral history phase? It would help us fill in the gaps, add colour to what we've found, and even tell us where we've got something wrong. Get in touch at calltoaction@lovepoundbury.org — this is a history we're excited to finish together.