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…
APRIL marks the 80th anniversary of Exercise Smash at Studland, a dress rehearsal for the D-Day landings, which took place at Studland Bay, and many other points along the south west coast, in 1944. The event will be marked with a series of commemoration events on 3rd, 4th and 5th April, including a display of…
JAPAN is famous for its cherry blossom season, when people flock to admire the ethereal and transitory beauty of the trees in full bloom. This spring, the National Trust team at Mompesson House in Salisbury’s Cathedral Close is launching a Festival of Blossom, with a trail around the Close until 4th June. You can pick…
ARE you and your children looking for fun and adventure this Easter? Dorset Museum & Art Gallery in Dorchester has a choice of activities and exhibitions for all tastes, including a chance for youngsters to dress up as birds (pictured). As well as the brilliant exhibition of Elisabeth Frink’s work and life, on until 21st…
HUMAN rights and peace activist Zohar Lavie brings her first-hand experience of working for justice and peace to the next Help Our Planet (HOP) talk at Sladers Yard contemporary art and craft gallery, West Bay, on Thursday 4th April at 7pm. The devastating suffering and violence we are witnessing in Gaza, the West Bank and…
IT has been impossible to ignore the story of the Post Office and the sub-postmasters, with the powerful ITV drama series and constant media reports of the hearings and the latest uncovering of lives ruined in one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in English legal history. But to hear the story first hand is…