FORTY years ago community activists Sue and John Holman and Trevor Bailey decided to make a video about the North Dorset village of Bourton and its people. In the intervening years the film has been largely forgotten, but now the original tapes have been digitised by Windrose Media Trust, which was founded by Trevor Bailey,…
THIS year’s Archaeology Festival at Salisbury Museum, in the Cathedral Close, on Saturday and Sunday 27th and 28th July, will be one of the biggest for years, with a packed programme of events in the museum garden, the new hall and a demonstration marquee, featuring talks, participatory activities, folk music and more. As well as…
THIS stunning image by Shashwat Harish is one of the photographs on view at Dorset Museum and Art Gallery in Dorchester in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition from 19th July to 3rd November. The world-famous exhibition from the Natural History Museum, returns to Dorset Museum & Art Gallery this summer, showcasing the world’s…
TURN the clock in your head back to the time of Jane Austen and imagine you have been invited to a ball at Bath’s most fashionable venue, the Assembly Rooms. Then move forwards in time and here it is – an invitation to a ‘Fancy Ball’ on Saturday 15th June, from 6.30pm, at the elegant…
SHAFTESBURY once had one of England’s greatest abbeys and convents, destroyed in Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries – all that remains is an atmospheric and peaceful walled garden off Park Walk. So the subject for this year’s Shaftesbury Abbey Museum & Gardens Spring Lecture on Wednesday 22nd May is highly appropriate. Caroline Holmes, a…
CELEBRATE Somerset this year on Somerset Day, Saturday 11th May – and join in the community-based Big Somerset Picnic, with events across the weekend on 11th and Sunday 12th. As well as the opportunity to enjoy great food and drink, the aim of this year’s Big Picnic is to bring people together and improve opportunities…
BRITISH Museum curator Sophia Adams will give a talk about the important Iron Age and Roman finds from a grave on Cranborne Chase, at the Dorset Museum in Dorchester on Thursday 18th April at 7pm. “Traditions and Transitions: The Story of the Chettle Grave Group” will discuss the 2003 discovery of a locally made bronze…
A GENEROUS legacy has helped the National Trust to plant 5,000 trees as part of two new hedgerows on the Golden Cap Estate on Dorset’s Jurassic coast near Morcomeblake. Once established, the new hedges will become crucial wildlife corridors, absorb carbon, create shelter and provide a food source for a wide variety of birds, mammals…
STORYTELLER Tim Lowe will take his audience back to the 18th century in his performance of An Audience with George Chafin, at Chettle House near Blandford on Saturday 6th April a 2.30pm. Lowe reimagines the life of George Chafin, an MP who was Head Ranger of Cranborne Chase. He talks about his family and local…
TINY Clouds Hill, near Wareham, where TE Lawrence – Lawrence of Arabia – lived in the 1930s, is now open for the 2024 season. A previously undiscovered photograph shows one of the families who previously lived in the remote cottage – and gives an insight into its appearance before Lawrence. One of the National Trust’s…