Robin Mills met Sophie Gregory at Thorncombe, on the Dorset/Devon border
After two years living in Bristol my family lived in the village of Oakhill, near Shepton Mallet. Mum’s a vet, and my dad was a supermarket buyer amongst other jobs. I lived there until I was 18, enjoying a childhood surrounded by animals—rabbits in the kitchen, hedgehogs, guinea pigs (on leads) and always had a horse in a field nearby.
I met my husband Tom when I was 17 at Glastonbury Festival. He’s from a farming family, and until we met the thought of my involvement in farming never entered my head. His dad had given up dairying when he was 10, the farm had been let, so although he was desperate to farm, there was no farm in his family for him to go to.
Initially I had other ideas. We had our first child, Harry, when I was 19 (we now have 3 children) and I then trained as an accountant. I worked for a rural accountancy firm for a while, but we were soon looking for a farm to rent. Home Farm at Thorncombe wasn’t the first we looked at, but as Tom was a cattle foot-trimmer, working for Steve Poole, he was in a good position to find out about farms which were becoming available, and knew many of the owners. We were also calf rearing for Mike Tizzard at Corton Denham, who runs 8 organic dairies. Mike then became our share-farming partner when Home Farm
became available; we put in 20% of the equity to his 80%. The milk price was quite high at the time, so there was a lot of interest in the farm, and we didn’t think our bid would be successful. But the combination of a young family backed by an established business worked in our favour, and within 4 years we’d built up to 50% of the equity. Last April we managed to buy Mike out.
Since we came here the farm has grown from 280 cows, all spring calving, on about 600 acres. We’re now 1400 acres, contract farming 3 further farms in addition to the original Sadborow Estate tenancy. We keep 400 milkers, 150 beef cattle, and 200 replacement heifers. We also have 300 acres of arable land, and farm most of the land organically. The organic decision was originally a financial one, but over the years I’ve become passionate about how we farm. We have a lot of acres and not many buildings, so we need to maximise as much production as we can from grass, keeping the cows leading healthy lives outdoors for about 10 months of the year. We calve about 300 in the spring, and 100 in autumn to help balance milk production through the year. We have 2 full-time and 2 part-time staff, and our landlords are all enthusiastic about farming organically.
I never knew I could be involved in farming. Although my skillset probably ticks all the right boxes, it was never suggested at school or college, which maybe reveals a lack of insight or imagination in education. Among my friends were those who thought that dairy farming was “bad”, and so I began sharing my farming experiences, helping friends to get to know the cows and their characters. I also think it’s no good complaining about farming woes and poor prices without actively trying to educate people about the way their food’s produced. It’s a disaster that kids have so little idea about what happens on farms. How can we expect them to make good choices about either healthy food, or a potential career in agriculture, if they haven’t been presented with the facts about farming?
I enjoy being able to communicate the realities of farm life. If you put yourself out there, as I do, then you have to expect the negative as well as the positive, but by now I’m used to that. I belong to a great organisation called Women in Dairy, which facilitates meetings for groups of women across the country to meet and share ideas. I also run a mentoring group for younger women in farming, through face to face and online meetings, to try and encourage them in making decisions about starting their own business or taking a share in an existing one. The mentoring experience for them has been really powerful, and I get a lot out of it too.
We sell our milk through Arla, a farmers’ cooperative of around 7000 producers, both conventional and organic. A lot of the organic milk goes to Macdonalds, whose fresh
milk is all organic, to butter and cheesemaking, and to ownbrands, like Tesco’s organic which comes from Arla. I like being part of a cooperative within which you have some influence. There’s a profit share twice a year, and they try to achieve the best price possible for their members. I hold an elected position on the organic committee of the board of representatives. We meet in Denmark 3 times a year, have monthly milk price calls, and it’s fascinating to be on the inside of how the coop works.
There’s a lot of interest around the word “regenerative” as applied to farming. As organic producers we are in a sense already farming with regenerative principles, but I’m excited by the movement because it’s creating greater interest in agriculture and where food comes from, and it’s encouraging some farmers to change practices which aren’t great for the environment. It’s for organic farmers to own and maintain the integrity of their practices, but I’m openminded about all farming systems. It’s important that consumers have a choice.
Through Women in Dairy, in 2021 I won Dairy Industry Woman of the Year, which has opened a lot of doors for me. Then in November 2023 I was awarded a Nuffield Scholarship. The Nuffield Farming Scholarships Trust is a charity organisation whose aim is to bring positive change to agriculture by sending young farmers overseas to learn from others, and to then share the benefits of their experience on their return. I applied for the award because at the time the organic sector, especially dairy, was under a lot of financial pressure, so it was the perfect time to travel abroad to study other countries’ organic dairy industries. I will have to write a 5000-word report about my experience and give a 12-minute presentation.
Last year I spent 12 weeks travelling. We went as a group of Nuffields to Brazil, then to Australia and New Zealand. In Europe I’ve visited Austria, Denmark, France and Hungary. Then in Asia to Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Taiwan. On an atlas on our kitchen wall, we’ve marked all the places I’ve been and those I hope to go to, including Australia next week, where I also have family. Before the travelling I was spending a lot of time milking cows, which I loved—and still do—but it has forced our business to cope without me, which is a healthy thing. The farm had one of its best years when I wasn’t involved!
The estate team are currently hard at work converting a shed next to the cattle buildings into a classroom. This will be for local schoolchildren to come and see the cows close up, learn about how milk is produced, to smell the smells, to get the full experience, and spend time in our classroom developing their knowledge. We are hoping it will be an enriching experience for them, as nourishing as drinking milk.
Reading through this issue against the backdrop of a fast-changing world, it’s striking how much we exchange information and learn from different countries. In our cover story, Sophie Gregory mentions a scholarship that allowed her to travel as far afield as Australia, New Zealand, Asia, and Sri Lanka to learn about and share her experiences within the dairy industry. Marine biologist Owen Day works in the Caribbean, helping to replenish dying coral, which plays a vital role in the food chain and the region’s economy. Andrew Chater, who is curating this year’s From Page to Screen Bridport Film Festival, spends a great deal of his time in America teaching at the University of California in Los Angeles. He uses fiction to help students explore the different cultures of America. Using the same concept, he hopes the films at this year’s festival will encourage dialogue and understanding in this age of profound division. Anna Whitwham, whose book Soft Tissue Damage is published in March, studied Drama and English at the same University in Los Angeles and took up boxing as a way of dealing with personal trauma. She also trained in the famous Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn, New York, the gym that Muhammad Ali, then called Cassius Clay, trained at in 1964. Paul Lashmar, whose new book is also published in March, travelled to Barbados to learn more about British involvement in slavery. Dr Sam Rose, former CEO of the Jurassic Coast Trust, explored work in Chile to see the benefits of a thirty-year rewilding project. In this issue, Sam reiterates the principle of ‘right action, right place’ when it comes to rewilding, helping to find a balance between important production and encouraging farmers to use marginal land to help nature heal. So many people in local communities are proving the value of international cooperation daily.
Fergus Byrne
in your Marshwood Vale Magazine
DONATIONS
If you missed our Crowdfunder and would still like to donate to support the Marshwood Vale Magazine, please send donations either by cheque to Marshwood Vale Limited (address below) or direct to Marshwood Vale Limited at Santander a/c number 40455735 - Sort Code 09 06 66 - Ref: Donation
Contributors
CATCH UP ON OUR JANUARY ONLINE COVER STORY
Robin Mills met Sam Edwards at Cerne Abbas, Dorset
I’m the third generation of my family to live in this house in Cerne; my son George will be the fourth. I was born and grew up here, went to the village school, and would tear around the village on my bike among big groups of my friends, playing in the river, and building dens. Such a wonderfully free childhood for which I feel very privileged and lucky.
My dad Paul’s an agricultural engineer, often working very long hours. He started straight out of college, first for Bredy’s, then Vaughan’s, and now for Hunt Forest the John Deere people. Mum was pretty much a stay-athome mum, and I’m their only daughter.
I had a tricky time at Thomas Hardye’s school, Dorchester. At 14 I was diagnosed with scoliosis and following an operation I missed a lot of school in years 10 and 11 and had to drop some GCSE subjects. I had constant backache and missed out socially too, so came out of school at 16 rather lost about what I wanted to do. After a few fill-in jobs, I was offered a nannying job for someone in the village; so, I completed the childcare course I’d started at school, and carried on nannying for another 10 years, all quite local, for some very lovely people. I really enjoyed it.
I’d never met a sheep until I met Sam, my husband, in 2018. Never handled a sheep, never done a lambing, no experience whatsoever. Sam was then looking after his flock of about 200 sheep kept on odd blocks of grazing in the area, as well as working for contractor Bernard Cox. In September 2019 we went to Dorset County Show, where we saw some beautiful Red Devon heifers. We contacted the owners, and by the end of the month we had 5 in-calf cows, with 3 calves at foot. We rented a shed near here to winter them in; we also reared calves there, and that was the start of our livestock farming together.
In 2020 we bought 115 Poll Dorset sheep, all autumn lambing, from some friends who were selling their flock, expanding them to about 200. That autumn was my first proper lambing. Sam was still contracting, so I was on my own, with Sam helping by phone, and dropping in after his day’s work to help sort out any problems. It was a very steep learning curve, but I absolutely loved it. During that winter we negotiated the grazing of cover crops growing on local arable farms. These crops, such as mustard, buckwheat or clover, are grown over the winter on otherwise bare land as part of the Poole Harbour Nutrient Management Scheme, to reduce nutrients like nitrogen and phosphates leaching into
the rivers that feed Poole Harbour. Grazing them with our sheep gave us a plan based on autumn lambing, then turning the ewes and lambs out on to the cover crops, on which they thrived.
In 2021 I became pregnant with George, and then an opportunity arose to take on the grazing at St Catherine’s Farm, Cerne Abbas. We needed to buy in more sheep. Sam had stopped the contracting work and was working for Synergy Vets, heading up their specialised shepherding service. During that work he’d come across Highlander sheep, bred for prolificacy, efficiency and ease of care by Innovis, a sheep genetics company. We thought they’d suit us, so in June 2022 we bought a flock of about 200, and now we had a spring lambing flock. George was 6 months old by then, and as he got older he accompanied us with whatever we were doing, loving every minute. Our second lambing of the Dorsets was that autumn, followed by our first spring lambing of the Highlanders. Those two flocks formed the nucleus of our own sheep, about 400 altogether, which we still have.
All our stock are kept on land with temporary grazing agreements between us and the land owners. We own no land, nor do we have a tenancy over any land. That means we cannot produce stock which are Farm Assured, so we sell all our own stock at Kivells Auction at Exeter, where they generally meet a good trade.
Last autumn we started a breeding partnership with Innovis. Sam now works for them. They breed high index rams, and now we run their sheep as well as our own. From the Innovis-bred sheep we produce rams which are sold at specialist sales; we also grow on young rams born elsewhere for sale the following year. Our partnership with Innovis also involves grazing their own breeds of ewes, for example their wool-shedding sheep, of which we now have over 100 ewes. This is a new breeding development in response to the nonexistent market for wool these days which doesn’t cover the cost of shearing. The sheep are covered not so much with wool, more like thick hair, which sheds on its own in the summer. They also have a thicker layer of fat under the skin so are quite happy in the winter months. And because they don’t suffer from the nightmares of flystrike in the summer, we don’t need to be constantly protecting them with chemicals. Over time our partnership with Innovis has enabled us to own more and more of their sheep, and eventually we aim to own all the sheep we are contract farming for them. This
year we have put 950 ewes to the ram all together.
None of this could have happened without the generosity of my dad. The banks won’t lend to us because we have no security. Through the Innovis partnership, and our good relations with local farmers through grazing agreements, we have built up a significant size of business with which to step straight into a tenancy if one came up. Last September Sam and I got married in the village. We had a wonderful day, with a party in the Village Hall afterwards.
We do work hard. As well as our routine shepherding, checking and moving sheep, and electric fencing, Sam spends half the year selling rams and delivering them for Innovis, and I work 3 nights a week in Dorchester Hospital bank as a healthcare assistant, because we’re not yet in a position to pay ourselves, and we need to pay my dad back. Keeping sheep on temporary grazing licences involves a massive amount of travel every day, is a constant juggling act, and is inevitably insecure. At any time, you can lose some
grazing, so we’re constantly chasing new agreements. We did apply for a council farm tenancy, but they wanted a dairy there. So, we’re still looking.
Through Sam’s job with Innovis, the Farmer’s Guardian magazine wrote an article about us. We then got entered in their competition under New Entrants of the Year . We got short listed, did a Zoom interview, then got invited to the awards at the NEC, leaving George overnight for the first time with Sam’s mum. And then we won the award! We were told it was for our enthusiasm, determination to carry on in the face of adversity, and that despite no tenancy we’re still building our business. After that, Radio Solent got in touch for a phone interview with me, and then 2 weeks ago I was on a Radio 5 Live debate for an hour about the effect of the recent budget on farming. And because we’ve never thought what we do is a big deal, it’s actually nice to find people are interested, to get a bit of recognition. It spurs us on.
My father was born in Devon, and my mother was born in Guernsey just before the German occupation. She was evacuated with her mother, brother and sister, and she spent the war in England. It was only at the end of the war that she met her father for the first time. My parents met in Guernsey when they were still students and married soon after in St Peter Port. My mother had been an art student at Brighton and moved to Aberdeen with my father where he did a PhD in epidemiology. They had very little money but managed to buy a small house in Peterculter where my sister and I were born. When I was one, we all moved to Australia where my father was a lecturer at the University of Canberra. My first memories are of koala bears, kangaroos, spiders, and a picnic when my mother pulled me away from a deadly brown snake that I nearly stepped on.
suddenly, I was having to wear a jacket and tie, go to chapel in the morning and evening, and follow a strict timetable. I soon discovered there was a parallel world of illegal binge drinking and wild parties. I told my French friends they weren’t drinking enough—they were rather shocked.
After four years at Oxford I never wanted to see the inside of a laboratory again and needed to see the world. I joined a shipping company, who posted me to Antwerp—not quite the exotic destination I had hoped for. After a year I realized that it really wasn’t what I wanted, and I decided to do a master’s in marine biology at the University of Bangor in North Wales. I loved it. It was very international and the work was fascinating. I followed on with a PhD developing methods for rearing Dover sole in large numbers to restock the Irish Sea as part of a government programme with CEFAS.
My parents were adventurous, we would often drive into the outback where my mother painted landscapes. In 1970, my father took us all to Papua New Guinea where he was part of team studying tropical diseases, including Kuru, a disease affecting tribal villages in the Highlands and transmitted by eating human brain during traditional burial ceremonies. I remember the rainforest with flying foxes and giant toads, but my most powerful memory is when my father took me snorkelling for the first time. I can remember it vividly to this day, putting my head underwater and seeing this unbelievable explosion of small fish of every colour, as well as spectacular corals. It had a huge effect on me and awoke a lifelong passion for marine biology.
We moved to France when I was five. My father got a job with the World Health Organization in Lyon. My sister and I went to the local primary school and quickly spoke French to each other, much to our parents’ amazement. Apart from a year in Washington, D.C., when I was 12, we lived in France on the outskirts of Lyon until I was 18. The French countryside was very wild back then, and I was obsessed with collecting anything related to nature. My room was a small museum. I had jars of animals I dissected in formalin and collections of insects, feathers, eggshells, fossils—whatever I found. Every summer, during the long French school holidays, we’d go to Guernsey where I spent my time fishing, building lobster pots, and developing a passion for the sea. After passing the Baccalaureate, I applied to Oxford to study biochemistry, which meant a term cramming for the Oxbridge exam in an English boarding school in Norfolk. That was a real culture shock. After the Lycée in Lyon, where you could wear what you want, drink beers at lunchtime in the local bar, and were treated like an adult,
It was while living on Anglesey that I met my wife, Suki, at a house party my sister organised. She was very beautiful, a great dancer, interested in the French philosopher and naturalist Rousseau and passionate about her work as a primary school teacher in a tough inner-city school in London. I was smitten. After many weekends and several holidays together, she agreed to marry me. We married in Dunkeld Cathedral and moved into a little house right on the Menai Straits, and had two boys, Alastair and Jamie. In 1999, we moved to Dorset to continue my work with CEFAS in their Weymouth office. My work on Dover sole became relevant to fish farmers in other countries, so I travelled to Spain, Greece, and Norway doing commercial research projects. The work was interesting but I didn’t like the intensification of industrial fish farming and it’s increasingly negative impact on animal welfare and the environment. Then, out of the blue, someone emailed me about a possible project in Trinidad and Tobago involving aquaculture and marine conservation. I jumped on it and hunted for funding, which I eventually got from a wealthy Trinidadian businessman and philanthropist. In September 2001, nine months after the birth of our daughter Phoebe, we found ourselves moving to the tiny Caribbean Island of Tobago, where we lived for seven and a half years.
I did many different projects, including seaweed farming, mapping coral reefs, helping local glass-bottom boat operators to manage the impact of tourism and ran educational programmes for students—it was very handson conservation. In 2004, our small organisation called the Buccoo Reef Trust, won the annual Environment Award from the World Association of Non-Governmental Organizations. That really helped with fund-raising, and we
expanded our programmes to employ 18 staff. Family life in Tobago was great fun; we made lifelong friends, and our children loved the freedom and excitement of life on a tropical island. But eventually it was time to leave, and in 2008 we returned to Dorset. Adjusting back to English life proved harder for Suki and me, surprisingly, than for our children who loved their new school and wider friend group.
I joined a firm of consultants who focused on assessing the current and future impacts of climate change in the Caribbean and helping governments develop policies and adaptation plans. Sadly, many of these plans are not being implemented, hindered by a lack of political will and insufficient funding – a problem that’s all too familiar in richer country. In 2016, some of my colleagues and I set up the Centre for Livelihoods, Ecosystems, Adaptation and Resilience in the Caribbean (CLEAR), which focuses on more practical community-based interventions, and direct support for vulnerable fishing and farming communities. Poverty, especially in countries like Haiti, Jamaica and St Vincent, can make it much harder for communities to adapt to the profound impacts of climate change, like more intense hurricanes, coral bleaching, declining fisheries, sea level
rise, prolonged droughts and accelerating soil erosion.
One of our programmes is to train fishermen to become coral gardeners, and set-up underwater nurseries where more resilient corals can be propagated and then replanted on the reefs. The coral gardeners get an income from our grants, and the coral restoration can be made a tourism attraction, where locals can generate additional revenue from tours of the nurseries and visitors planting corals.
Unfortunately, much of the hard work was lost last year, when our corals amazingly survived a category 5 hurricane, but subsequently died because of the extreme marine heat wave that affected the Eastern Caribbean in late 2024. Sea water temperatures reached an unprecedented 31C, even down to 25m depth for several months. Our priority now is to identify the coral survivors, who are genetically more resilient, and keep propagating and outplanting them. While there is still hope to keep some corals alive, the reality is that coral reefs, as we know them, are unlikely to survive the current century.
Working all over the Caribbean for over 25 years has been an amazing experience and privilege. What has always inspired me, is the extraordinary resilience of often poor communities and their willingness to pull together for the common good.
Owen Day with one of the teams working to save coral in the Caribbean
EVENTS March
Click Here for an Easy Read version of this article
Saturday, 1 March
Free Celebrating Women event hosted by UNISON Somerset Health, to mark International Women’s Dayjoin in the festivities and enjoy a range of free practical workshops available for sign-up on the day. Support local crafters and artists by purchasing distinctive, handcrafted Mother’s Day gifts. Connect with various participating organizations, including St. Margaret’s Hospice, which will be hosting the refreshments area, Yeovil Diversity Project and Wessex Water. Timing:10.00-13.30 at The Gateway Centre Addlewell Lane, Yeovil Contact Susan Bickle on susanbickle. unison@gmail.com for details.
The Friends of Weymouth Library (F.O.W.L.) talk at 10-30a.m. in the library will be by Peter Marlow, who is one of the organisers for trips on the motor vessel (catamaran) MV Freedom, which caters for wheelchair users and those with a disability. Everyone welcome. Refreshments provided. Tickets obtainable from the Library (01305762410). @ £2 for members and £3 ror non-members. For other information phone 01305 832613.
Modern Jive Social Dance - No class just 3 hours of Modern Jive ‘Freestyle’ - 8-11pm - Chideock Village Hall. £8 per person - BYOB www.dynamic-dance.uk.
Sunday, 2 March
More Tales from under Shady Tree: Disappearing Lyme. Ken Gollop remembers growing up during 1940s and 1950s with the families fishing boat trips from Cobb Gate beach. The new sea walls and sewerage works have altered that part of Lyme and a generation has passed since Cobb Gate and Church Cliff beaches were working beaches, and the holiday trade is totally different now. Woodmead Halls, Lyme Regis. Doors open at 2pm for talk at 2.30pm. Admission £4, proceeds in aid of the friends of Lyme Regis Museum. Enquiries to David Cox, 01297 443156. Royal Ballet & Opera Screening: Swan Lake (210 mins) 2pm Bridport Electric Palace 35 South Street , DT6 3NY. Tickets £17 Book online electricpalace.org. uk
Monday, 3 March
Scottish Dancing in All Saints Village Hall. An evening of Scottish dancing in All Saints Village Hall, near Axminster, EX13 7LX 7.30-10.00 p.m. Tea
and coffee provided but please bring your own mug and wear soft soled shoes. No partner required. Cost £2.00 Contact David on 01460 65981 www. chardscottishdancingclub.co.uk.
Bridport Folk Dance Group If you like music, gentle exercise and socialising, do come along to our dance sessions in the W.I. Hall, North Street on Monday evenings from 7.15pm-9.30pm. No experience or partner required. Occasional live music and always a Caller to guide the dances. Only £3. Tea and biscuits. Tel: 863552 or text 07456730753 for more information. Six talks about Women Artists currently in exhibitions this Spring. There is a wonderful and almost unique opportunity to explore current exhibitions about women artists and photographers. Arists included Rachel Reckitt, Vanessa Bell, Tirzah Garwood, Helen Clapcott, Paule Vezelay, Ithel Colquhoun, Tish Murtha, Leonora Carrington, Linder Sterling(who takes inspiration from Colquhoun) and Dora Carrington. United Hall Bridport, starts 2pm-3.30pm. Online on Fridays from March 7th, 2pm. Fee £65. On line fee £60. Drop in lectures £13. To join the course, please email: chris.pamsimpson@btinternet.com. Tutor: Pam Simpson MA, Associate Lecturer University of the Arts.
Hawkchurch Film Nights, in association with Moviola.org, proudly presents ‘Conclave’ (120 mins, Cert. 12 - brief sexual violence references). The responsibility to find a successor to the Pope falls on a beleaguered cardinal (Ralph Fiennes) who finds himself embroiled in a conspiracy in this masterful psychological drama. Doors open 6.30pm, film starts 7.00pm at Hawkchurch Village Hall, EX13 5XD. Ticket reservations £6.50 from csma95@gmail.com or leave a message on 07753 603219 (socially-distanced seating available if reserved in advance); tickets also available in advance for £6.50 from Hawkchurch Community Shop or £7.00 on the door (cash only). Subtitles for hearing-impaired patrons provided if available. Home-made cake, teas, coffees, soft drinks, wine and other tasty refreshments available.
Modern Jive (Leroc) Social Dance Classes. 7:30pm, Chideock Village Hall. £7 per person, Come with or without a partner. Beginners and Returners Welcome Every Week. www.dynamic-dance.uk. Also 10th, 17th & 24th March.
Tuesday, 4 March
Steve Knightley Renowned Westcountry songwriter former Show of Hands frontman, is on a groundbreaking nationwide solo tour—the first since the iconic band disbanded and focused on promoting his latest album, The Winter Yards. Corn Exchange, Dorchester 7.30pm. For more information and tickets, visit dorchesterarts.org.uk or contact the box office on 01305 266926.
Scottish Country Dancing at Horton Village Hall Nr Ilminster TA19 9QR from 7.30 to 9.30 pm. Everyone welcome including first timers. £3.00 pay on the door. Why not come along and join the fun. For further information contact Anita on 01460 929383, email anitaandjim22@gmail.com or visit our web site at www. ashillscd.wordpress.com
Dance Connection Open Class, 7-8:30pm (doors open 6:50pm), LATCH, Litton Cheney Hall, DT2 9AU, 07787752201, danceconnectionwessex@gmail. com, www.joysofdance.co.uk.
Wednesday, 5 March
Kilmington Film Night Paddington in Peru (PG)
A wonderfully fun adventure with all the warmth, humour, and heart fans of this beloved franchise have come to adore. With just the right blend of humour and heartfelt moments. Doors and bar open 6.45 film start 7.15 at Kilmington Village Hall EX13 7RF. Tickets @ £6, or £6.50 on the door, can be ordered by contacting: John at wattsjohn307@gmail.com or Tel: 01297 521681.
Meeting Voices Community Choir, Chard. 19.30 to 21.15. Sing for fun. Learn songs in harmony by ear. Everyone welcome. Chard Guildhall. Fore St, Chard TA20 1PP. Phone 07534 116502 or email mvsecretary@outlook.com.
Thursday, 6 March
The Shanty Sessions come along and join East Devons finest, The Chantry Buoys, from Colyton, singing traditional sea shanties and other well known songs of the sea. Entrance is free and all proceeds go to selected local charities. A licensed bar will be open selling local ales etc, and soft drinks, from 7pm. The Buoys start at 7.30pm. The Marine Theatre, Church St, Lyme Regis DT7 3QB. https://www.marinetheatre.com/buytickets/
Zone of Interest (2023, Various, 12, 105 mins, Dir: Jonathan Glazer). German-occupied Poland, summer of 1943. More than anything, Hedwig, an indefatigable mother of five, wants to keep her well-organised life as is. After all, she has worked her fingers to the bone to create a fragrant slice of paradise to raise her children, and nothing will change that. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine that just a hair’s breadth away from the peaceful and idyllic Höss household, the unimaginable horrors of the Final Solution were unfolding in
full swing. Doors 7:00 pm, 7:30 pm start. Clapton & Wayford Village Hall (TA18 8PS). Membership £25, guests £5 per film. For more details, contact mickpwilson53@btinternet.com or ring Mick Wilson on 01460 74849 or Kathy Everard on 01460 30646. Folk dancing at Combe St Nicholas village hall (TA20 3LT) on Thursday 6th March 2025 at 1930 hrs. Ali will be calling and Fresh Aire are providing the music. It’s £4.00 per person which includes a cuppa and cake, all welcome and it is a lot of fun! Further details from Elaine on 01460 65909.
Chesil Bank Writing Shed. Do you write? Would you like to be a writer? Whatever you want to write why not come and learn with our creative writing group. New writers always welcome. 7pm - 9pm, Portesham Village Hall. Find out more by calling Linda on 01305 871802. Kilmington Film Matinee Paddington in Peru (PG) (See 5th March). Matinee, doors open 1.45pm film starts 2pm, cream-teas served during the interval but must be pre-booked with your seats @ £3.50. see above and www.kilmingtonvillage.com/otherorganisations.html for more information.
Lyme Voices Community Choir. 19.30 to 21.15. Sing for fun. Learn songs in harmony by ear. Everyone welcome. Baptist Church (Pine Hall round the back), Silver St., Lyme Regis, DT7 3NY. Phone 07534 116502 or email petelinnett2@hotmail.com.
Solo Charleston and Vintage Jazz Dance Classes1-2pm, St Marys Church Hall Bridport - Class for all levels and abilities - £6 - All Welcome www.dynamicdance.uk. Also 13th, 20th & 27th.
Thea Gilmore Bridport Electric Palace 35 South Street , DT6 3NY. Tickets £24 Book online electricpalace.org.uk.
Friday, 7 March
Mike Denham SpeakEasy with Tom “Spats” Langham - Mike’s guest tonight is arguably the UK’s top jazz entertainer, Tom “Spats” Langham. Tickets: £20. 7.30pm at Ilminster Arts Centre, TA19 0AN. 01460 54973 www.ilminsterartscentre.com
Saturday, 8 March
The Ghost of a Smile with Nicholas Collett. Powerstock Hut, Powerstock. Tickets: Adult 12.50, U18s £6. Age recommended 11+ Doors open at 7pm for 7.30 performance Cash/card Bar. Box Office: 01308 485730 or 07817 429907 or www.artsreach. co.uk.
The Pasadena Roof Orchestra, with an unparalleled reputation across the UK, Europe and beyond have been re-creating the sounds of a golden era of music from the 1920s and ‘30s to widespread acclaim for over 50 years. Hardye Theatre, Dorchester 7.30pm. For more information and tickets, visit dorchesterarts.org. uk or contact the box office on 01305 266926.
Table Top Sale - Musbury Village Hall, 10am to 12.30pm. Stalls include cakes, raffle, bric a brac and lots more. Refreshments including bacon buttys. All profits to St Michaels Church, Musbury, Enquiries call 01297 552440/552711.
Bridport & West Dorset Rambling Club 6 mile walk from Abbotsbury. For further information please ring 01308 898484 or 01308 863340. New members/ visitors welcome.
A Complete Unknown (15) 140 mins 7:30pm Bob Dylan biopic staring Timothée Chalamet. Bridport Electric Palace 35 South Street, DT6 3NY. Tickets £8.50 Book online electricpalace.org.uk. Also Thurs 13 March | 2pm
Sunday, 9 March
Singing Bowl Soundbath 2pm Bridport Unitarians, 49 East St, Bridport, Dorset DT6 3JX £16 Allow the Pure Sounds of a crystal and Tibetan bowl soundbath plus sacred vocal overtoning give you a sonic deeptissue massage, taking you into the deeper brainwave states of ‘the relaxation response’, while charging and balancing the aura and chakras of the subtle body, and detoxing the physical body. Please book in advance via 01935 389655 or email ahiahel@live.com.
Lyme Bay Chorale present ‘Panis Angelicus’ an hour of the western world’s most treasured choral masterpieces from 16th -19th centuries including
Frank’s Panis Angelicus, Buxtehude’s Magnificat, Mozart’s Ave Verum Corpus, Bruckner’s Ave Maria, concluding with Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus. With Musical Director and Conductor Alex Davis and Peter Irving Accompanist at St Micheal’s Parish Church, 4-5 pm. Admission is free but donations gladly accepted at the end of the concert. We are collecting to support our young Singers Bursary Scheme.
Monday, 10 March
Scottish Dancing in Chardstock An evening of Scottish dancing in Chardstock Village Hall EX13 7BH. 7.30-10.00 p.m. Tea and coffee provided but please bring your own mug and wear soft soled shoes. No partner required. Cost £2.00 Contact David on 01460 65981 www.chardscottishdancingclub.co.uk.
Bridport Folk Dance Group If you like music, gentle exercise and socialising, do come along to our dance sessions in the W.I. Hall, North Street on Monday evenings from 7.15pm-9.30pm. No experience or partner required. Occasional live music and always a Caller to guide the dances. Only £3. Tea and biscuits. Tel: 863552 or text 07456730753 for more information.
Winsham Art Club, 2pm at Jubilee Hall TA20 4HU. The theme this practical session is Still Life using any medium of your choice. It is a 2.5 hr. session led by a tutor. Small friendly group of mixed abilities. Members £5, non-members £7. Annual membership
£15. All welcome. Contact: Email : suzyna48@ gmail.com for further details.
The Bus Shelter Dorset for the homeless. 2 p.m. A registered charity offering rough sleepers somewhere to live. One of their volunteers will be talking to the members of The Dorchester Townswomen’s Guild after our AGM and a cup of coffee or tea. Dorchester Community Church, Liscombe Street, Poundbury, DT1 3DF. Donations of toiletries would be very welcome. Visitors welcome (£3). Enquiries 01305 832857.
Tuesday, 11 March
Scottish Country Dancing at Horton Village Hall Nr Ilminster TA19 9QR from 7.30 to 9.30 pm. Everyone welcome including first timers. £3.00 pay on the door. Why not come along and join the fun. For further information contact Anita on 01460 929383, email anitaandjim22@gmail.com or visit our web site at www.ashillscd.wordpress.com.
Dance Connection, 7-8:30pm (doors open 6:50pm), Uplyme Village Hall, DT7 3UY 07787752201, danceconnectionwessex@gmail.com, www.joysofdance.co.uk.
Singing Bowl Soundbath Digby Memorial Hall Sherborne DT9 3LN £16 Lie down, relax, and allow the Pure Sounds of a crystal and Tibetan bowl soundbath plus sacred vocal overtoning give
you a sonic deep-tissue massage, taking you into the deeper brainwave states of ‘the relaxation response’, while charging and balancing the aura and chakras of the subtle body, and detoxing the physical body. Please book in advance via 01935 389655 or email ahiahel@live.com.
Wednesday, 12 March
Meeting Voices Community Choir, Chard. 19.30 to 21.15. Sing for fun. Learn songs in harmony by ear. Everyone welcome. Chard Guildhall. Fore St, Chard TA20 1PP. Phone 07534 116502 or email mvsecretary@outlook.com.
Steve Knightley: The Winter Yards in Spring –Solo Tour 2025 - offering fans a bold new show. Following the acclaim of his Winter Yards album and tour, hailed as “a deeply atmospheric journey” (Spiral Earth), this fresh performance blends powerful new songs with reimagined classics from Knightley’s extensive career. Tickets: £22. 7.30pm at Ilminster Arts Centre, TA19 0AN. 01460 54973 www.ilminsterartscentre.com.
Thursday, 13 March
Ferocious Dog are heading out on a special acoustic tour which sees them dive deeper into their back catalogue and pay homage to traditional folk songs that have inspired them from the start. Corn Exchange, Dorchester, 7.30pm. For more information and tickets, visit dorchesterarts.org.uk or contact the box office on 01305 266926.
Scottish Dancing in Woodbury An afternoon of Scottish dancing in Woodbury Community Hall EX13 5TL 2.00-4.30 p.m.. Tea and coffee provided but please bring your own mug and wear soft soled shoes. No partner required. Cost £3.00 Contact David on 01460 65981 www. chardscottishdancingclub.co.uk.
The Man who built Wessex by renowned speaker Francis Burroughes 7pm for 7.30pm Upstairs (with lift available) Chard Guildhall. A very swift AGM will be held at this meeting. Annual memberships will be collected @ £5 for the year. Member pay £2.50 per meeting Guests are most welcome at £3.50 per meeting. For further details contact Tessa 07984481634.
Seaton Garden Club. A Talk by Dr Todd Gray on, The Historic Building of Exeter. The Masonic Hall Seaton. Time 2.30p.m. Members free. Non members £2.00 including refreshments.
Lyme Voices Community Choir. 19.30 to 21.15. Sing for fun. Learn songs in harmony by ear. Everyone welcome. Baptist Church (Pine Hall round the back), Silver St., Lyme Regis, DT7 3NY. Phone 07534 116502 or email petelinnett2@ hotmail.com.
Bridport History Society, to mark 200 years of train travel since 1825, will be welcoming Professor Colin Divall who will give a talk titled ‘Who Planned the Victorian Railways — and Did They Get It Right?’ Colin Divall is professor emeritus of railway studies at the University of York and was until 2014 head of the Institute of Railway Studies & Transport History. The talk, which follows a short AGM, will be held at the United Church Hall on East Street, Bridport. Doors open at 2.15pm for a prompt 2.30pm start. All are welcome, members £1pp, visitors £5pp. Bridport History Society meets on the second Thursday of each month (except July and August). Membership is open to all (£12 individual / £18 couple). Visit: www. bridporthistorysociety.org.uk.
Hard Truths (12A) 97 mins 7:30pm The latest drama from Mike Leigh starring Marianne Jean-Baptiste Bridport Electric Palace 35 South Street , DT6 3NY. Tickets £8.50 Book online electricpalace.org.uk. Also Sat 15 March 7:30pm
Friday, 14 March
Stephen Beville Recital: Beethoven Piano Sonatas 7.30 PM (doors open at 7 PM) St Michael’s Church, Shute EX13 7QW Tickets £12.50 via www. shutefest.org.uk and on door (booking advised; children 16 and under free).
Alasdair Beatson - Scottish pianist Alasdair Beatson is renowned as a sincere musician and intrepid programmer. He champions a wide repertoire on both modern and historical instruments with particular areas of interest: classical, early romantic and French music (especially Fauré), alongside the music of today’s composers. Promoted by Concerts in the West. Tickets: £25. 7.30pm at Ilminster Arts Centre, TA19 0AN. 01460 54973 www.ilminsterartscentre.com
Friday, 14 - 15 March
Mike Denham on piano will be inviting different friends on each night. On the Friday he will be accompanied by Trevor Whiting (sax & clarinet) playing jazz from Sidney Beche to Benny Goodman. On the Saturday two friends join Mike, firstly Steve Graham on trumpet and secondly Gillian Berry for violin & vocals; and they will be playing from ragtime to swing. Tickets £20 each. All concerts start playing at 8pm. Please arrive after 7:30pm. Pre booking and prepayment only. Each party of guests must give a contact. As usual price includes drinks & nibbles which are served in the interval, but exactly what, how and where depend on our discretion & weather. To order tickets please email info@tincletongallery.com or phone the gallery on 01305 848909. More information on website at www.tincletongallery.com. Tincleton Gallery, The Old School House, Tincleton, Dorset, DT2 8QR.
Saturday, 15 March
Quiz & Hot Supper. £10 per person; come in a team, or join one on the night; prizes for the winning teams. Licenced bar; raffle. 7pm; Clapton & Wayford Village Hall. Booking and payment in advance please, to assist with catering; phone Mary (01460 74849) or Julia (01460 72769).
Kilmington Community Cinema presents a WestEnd Theatre production of “Les Misérables”. “Les Mis’ has a towering passion and operatic intensity –not to mention absolutely belting tunes, in gorgeous multi-layered vocal arrangements – especially when sold by the sort of world-class singers that Mackintosh rightly insists on keeping it stocked with.” Matinee, 2.30 open pm Screening 2.45 pm, Evening Doors and bar open 6.15 screening 6.45pm at Kilmington Village Hall EX13 7RF. Tickets Pre-booked @ £10 under 15 £5 or £12 & £6 on the door, Pre-book by contacting: John at wattsjohn307@gmail.com or Tel: 01297 521681. Bridport & West Dorset Rambling Club 7.5 mile walk from Fleet. For further information please ring 01308 898484 or 01308 863340. New members/ visitors welcome.
Sunday, 16 March
Yeovil Railway Centre, Yeovil Junction Station, Stoford BA22 9UU: First Steam Train Day of the new
season. Recorded information on 01935 410420. For information about the Centre, see www.yeovilrailway. freeservers.com.
Dance Connection Workshop - Archetypes, 2:305pm (doors open 2:20pm), Uplyme Village Hall, DT7 3UY 07787752201, danceconnectionwessex@gmail. com, www.joysofdance.co.uk.
Dalwood Jazz Club presents Annika Skoogh’s “Orpheus” (A 6 piece band brought together by a love of Brazilian music) with Annika - vocals, Martin Jenkins - Hammond organ, Steve Dow - guitar, Jade Gall - Flute & Sax. - Gary Evans - drums & Colin Seddon - percussion. 3pm. Dalwood Village Hall, EX13 7EG, near Axminster. Bar for beer/wine/ soft drinks and teas/coffees/cake etc. Parking at the Village Hall. £12.50p If possible, please book in advance and pay cash at the door. t.mackenney111@ btinternet.com. www.dalwoodvillage.co.uk.
Garage sale in and around Broadwindsor DT8 3QD. 10am – 2pm. More than 20 households taking part all over the village. Maps will be available on the day in the community shop, The White Lion community pub and Comrades Hall. Donations from stallholders are being given to the village hall for improvements to the car park. Bacon rolls, cake, tea and coffee served from the hall between 10am-2pm. The White Lion will be open for Sunday lunch from 12.30-2.30pm and booking is essential by calling 01308 867070 or emailing info@ whitelionbroadwindsor.co.uk
Monday, 17 March
Scottish Dancing in Chardstock An evening of Scottish dancing in Chardstock Village Hall EX13 7BH 7.30-10.00 p.m. Tea and coffee provided but please bring your own mug and wear soft soled shoes. No partner required. Cost £2.00 Contact David on 01460 65981 www.chardscottishdancingclub.co.uk.
Bridport Folk Dance Group If you like music, gentle exercise and socialising, do come along to our dance sessions in the W.I. Hall, North Street on Monday evenings from 7.15pm-9.30pm. No experience or partner required. Occasional live music and always a Caller to guide the dances. Only £3. Tea and biscuits. Tel: 863552 or text 07456730753 for more information.
Tuesday, 18 March
Scottish Country Dancing at Horton Village Hall Nr Ilminster TA19 9QR from 7.30 to 9.30 pm. Everyone welcome including first timers. £3.00 pay on the door. Why not come along and join the fun. For further information contact Anita on 01460 929383 , email anitaandjim22@gmail.com or visit our web site at www. ashillscd.wordpress.com.
Dance Connection Open Class, 7-8:30pm (doors open 6:50pm), LATCH, Litton Cheney Hall, DT2 9AU, 07787752201, danceconnectionwessex@gmail. com, www.joysofdance.co.uk.
Wednesday, 19 March
Coffee Morning, including cakes, scones & savouries, and bacon/egg rolls (made to order), 10.30am – noon; all welcome. Clapton & Wayford Village Hall. More details from Julia (01460 72769). Colyton & District Garden Society AGM. All welcome, come along and have your say if you have any ideas. Also: Spring Bulb Show, enter just one, two or all three categories, just a bit of fun, judged by Anne Swithenbank. Colyford Memorial Hall, EX24 6QJ , start 7.30 pm. Parking in the hall car park. Information: Sue Price 01297 552362. Meeting Voices Community Choir, Chard. 19.30 to 21.15. Sing for fun. Learn songs in harmony by ear. Everyone welcome. Chard Guildhall. Fore St, Chard TA20 1PP. Phone 07534 116502 or email mvsecretary@outlook.com.
Thursday, 20 March
The New Arts Group, The Queen of Sheba: Empress or Enigma? Speaker: Chris Bradley Cost: £10.00 Time: 2.00pm (tea/coffee from 1.30pm) Bridport Town Hall.
Folk dancing at Combe St Nicholas village hall (TA20 3LT) on Thursday 20th March 2025 at 1930 hrs. Mic Spenceley will be calling and Chris Toyne will be providing the music. It’s £4.00 per person which includes a cuppa and cake, all welcome and
EVENTS IN APRIL
Live or Online send your event details to info@marshwoodvale.com BY MARCH 14th
it is a lot of fun! Further details from Elaine on 01460 65909.
Lyme Voices Community Choir. 19.30 to 21.15. Sing for fun. Learn songs in harmony by ear. Everyone welcome. Baptist Church (Pine Hall round the back), Silver St., Lyme Regis, DT7 3NY. Phone 07534 116502 or email petelinnett2@hotmail.com.
Couples Only Partner Dance Class - Perfect for ‘First Dance’ practice! - 7:30-9:30pm - Glow Collective, St Michaels Trading Estate, BridportLimited spaces - Must be booked in advance £20 per couple - www.dynamic-dance.uk
South Somerset RSPB Local Group. Dan the Bat Man An illustrated talk presented by Daniel Hargreaves, Bat Programme Manager at the Vincent Wildlife Trust. 7.30pm The Millennium Hall, Seavington St. Mary, Ilminster, TA19 0QH. Entry: Group members £4, non-group members £5, under 25’s Free. Tea/coffee & biscuits included – Wheelchair access. Further details from Denise Chamings on 0781473846 or www.rspb.org.uk/ groups/southsomerset. Everyone welcome.
Ashley Hutchings + Blair Dunlop 7:30pm The Guvnor of folk-rock Bridport Electric Palace 35 South Street , DT6 3NY. Tickets £22 Book online electricpalace.org.uk
Friday, 21 March
Apples In Winter tells the story of an American mother, Miriam, whose son is on death row for a terrible crime. His last request is his mother’s apple pie. As Miriam shows the audience how to make the perfect apple pie, she tries to understand what happened to her son. Tickets can be purchased online at Manor Pavilion Theatre or at the box office: Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays 10.0014.30, in person and by phone 01395 514413. The Critic A gripping tale of ambition, deception, and intrigue, with an all-star cast, The Critic is a must-watch for film lovers. Doors Open: 7:00 PM - Film Starts: 7:30 PM. Tickets: £6.50 (includes a drink or ice cream). Milborne St Andrew Village Hall.
Lympstone Military Wives Choir are at The Beacon Kilmington EX13 7RF for the 100th Anniversary of the Royal British Legion Kilmington Branch. All welcome, open 7pm choir 7.30. Tickets @ £10 under 16 £5 can be booked by contacting David david.dowden@btinternet.com or 01279 32128.
Dave’s Big General Knowledge Quiz - Come and support the Arts Centre with a wonderful evening of quizzing! Fiendish questions, bar and a raffle await. Tickets: £15 per team of 4. 7.30pm at Ilminster Arts Centre, TA19 0AN. 01460 54973 www.ilminsterartscentre.com
Saturday, 22 March
Awake my Soul - The Mumford and Sons Story, with beautiful vocal harmonies, and foot-stomping drums this is a chance to hear all Mumford & Sons’ best hits, including Little Lion Man, I Will Wait, The Cave, Roll Away Your Stone and many more. A stomp and holler not to be missed! Hardye Theatre, Dorchester 7.30pm. For more information and tickets, visit dorchesterarts. org.uk or contact the box office on 01305 266926.
Milborne St Andrew Village Hall Quiz Night –
Think you know it all? Put your knowledge to the test at our Village Hall Quiz Night! Grab some snacks, gather your team or join one on the night for an evening of trivia, fun, and friendly competition. Max team size: 6 people - £2.50 per person. Bar opens: 7:00 PM. Quiz starts: 7:30 PM Whether you’re a quiz master or just in it for the laughs, everyone’s welcome! Book your place now; email: chair.msavh@gmail.com. Come along for a great night out—see you there!
Bridport & West Dorset Rambling Club 6 mile walk from Piddletrenthide. For further information please ring 01308 898484 or 01308 863340. New members/ visitors welcome.
South Somerset Choral Society March Concert J S Bach St. Matthew Passion. First performed on Good Friday 1727 in St Thomas’s Church in Leipzig, Johann Sebastian Bach’s St Matthew Passion lay neglected for a century until it was revived by Felix Mendelssohn in 1829, the later composer describing it as ‘the greatest of all Christian works’. Certainly regarded as a supreme masterpiece of the choral repertoire, South Somerset Choral Society are thrilled to be performing the work for the first time. Bach sets St Matthew’s account of Jesus’s last days in a profoundly moving sequence of choruses, arias, recitatives and chorales. The Lutheran congregation of Bach’s day would have known all the chorale melodies (hymn tunes), and our 2025 performance will be sung in English, with copies of the chorales being provided to encourage full audience participation! With a team of five outstanding soloists and accompanied by a professional orchestra, South Somerset Choral Society are delighted to be joined by the talented young singers of Perrott Hill School Choirs for what promises to be a memorable and uplifting musical experience. 7.30pm St. John’s Church, Church Street, Yeovil BA20 1HE. Tickets £18 (under 18s £5). From Ticketsource and from South Somerset Choral Society on 07342 240543/07979 840442
Sunday, 23 March
Tenebrae Hailed as “phenomenal” (The Times) and “devastatingly beautiful” (Gramophone Magazine), Tenebrae is renowned for its passion and precision. Directed by Nigel Short, this award-winning choir performs globally. St Mary’s Church, Dorchester 7pm. For more information and tickets, visit dorchesterarts. org.uk or contact the box office on 01305 266926.
Monday, 24 March
Scottish Dancing in Chardstock An evening of Scottish dancing in Chardstock Village Hall EX13 7BH 7.30-10.00 p.m. Tea and coffee provided but please bring your own mug and wear soft soled shoes. No partner required. Cost £2.00 Contact David on 01460 65981 www. chardscottishdancingclub.co.uk.
If you like music, gentle exercise and socialising, do come along to our dance sessions in the W.I. Hall, North Street on Monday evenings from 7.15pm9.30pm. No experience or partner required. Occasional live music and always a Caller to guide the dances. Only £3. Tea and biscuits. Tel: 863552 or text 07456730753 for more information.
Winsham Art Club, 2pm at Jubilee Hall TA20 4HU. The theme this practical session is Pen and Ink with Watercolour. It is a 2.5 hr. session led by a visiting tutor. Small friendly group of mixed abilities. Members £5, non-members £7. Annual membership £15. All welcome. Contact: Email : suzyna48@gmail.com for further details.
Screenwriter, Chris Chibnall, will be launching his highly anticipated book Death at the White Hart. Chris will be joined on stage by the brilliant Jennie Godfrey, author of The No.1 Sunday Times Bestseller The List of Suspicious Thing, in what promises to be an inspiring event. 7.30 pm Bridport Arts Centre, 9 South St, Bridport DT6 3NR Tickets from 01308 424204
Tuesday, 25 March
Scottish Country Dancing at Horton Village Hall Nr Ilminster TA19 9QR from 7.30 to 9.30 pm. Everyone welcome including first timers. £3.00 pay on the door. Why not come along and join the
fun. For further information contact Anita on 01460 929383 , email anitaandjim22@gmail.com or visit our web site at www.ashillscd.wordpress.com.
Dance Connection, 7-8:30pm (doors open 6:50pm), Uplyme Village Hall, DT7 3UY 07787752201, danceconnectionwessex@gmail.com, www.joysofdance. co.uk.
Bridport U3A monthly talks are held at Bridport United Church hall, East Street, Bridport, DT6 3LJ. They start at 2pm and last 45-60 minutes, followed by a Q&A then refreshments. Members free, visitors £3. The March talk is by Justine Salkeld of the Dogs Trust, who will tell us about their work rehoming dogs.
Wednesday, 26 March
Uplyme and Lyme Regis Horticultural Society. AGM then Talk ‘No Nettles Required – The Truth about Wildlife Gardening’ by Ken Thompson. Uplyme Village Hall. Doors open 7pm, Short AGM at 7.30pm then talk. Members free; guests £3. More information https://ulrhs.wordpress.com.
Meeting Voices Community Choir, Chard. 19.30 to 21.15. Sing for fun. Learn songs in harmony by ear. Everyone welcome. Chard Guildhall. Fore St, Chard TA20 1PP. Phone 07534 116502 or email mvsecretary@outlook.com.
Thursday, 27 March
Somerset Opera performing Gilbert & Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore. Martock Church; TA12 6JL. Performance time: 7:30pm. Tickets: £12 or £10 at Guardianstickets@gmail.com /07547 213992/ Martock Gallery/ Martock Newsagent Website:www. martockonline.co.uk/events; www.somersetopera.org. uk/
Lyme Voices Community Choir. 19.30 to 21.15. Sing for fun. Learn songs in harmony by ear. Everyone welcome. Baptist Church (Pine Hall round the back), Silver St., Lyme Regis, DT7 3NY. Phone 07534 116502 or email petelinnett2@hotmail.com.
An Evening with Aggers 7:30pm International Cricketer and Broadcaster. Bridport Electric Palace 35 South Street , DT6 3NY. Tickets £34.50 Book online electricpalace.org.uk.
Friday, 28 March
The All Seasons - Bringing to life the music of Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons, The All Seasons present a show that will wow fans of the Jersey Boys sound. Tickets: £22. 7.30pm at Ilminster Arts Centre, TA19 0AN. 01460 54973 www.ilminsterartscentre.com.
Saturday, 29 March
Ninebarrow the multi-award-winning folk duo, Hardye Theatre, Dorchester 7.30pm. For more information and tickets, visit dorchesterarts.org.uk or contact the box office on 01305 266926.
Dalwood Jazz Club presents Derek Nash & The Martin Dale Quartet. 3pm Dalwood Village Hall, EX13 7EG (near Axminster). Bar for beer/wine/soft drinks and teas/coffees/cake etc. Parking at the Village Hall. £12.50p. If possible, please book in advance and pay cash at the door. t.mackenney111@btinternet. com. www.dalwoodvillage.co.uk £12.50p If possible, please book in advance and pay cash/card at the door. t.mackenney111@btinternet.com.
Trial and Error. Talk by retired Old Bailey judge and author, Her Honour Wendy Joseph KC. Chideock Village Hall, Main Street, Chideock. 7.15 pm Advance tickets only, £10. Bar and nibbles. Janet.carey747@ btinternet.com.
Bridport & West Dorset Rambling Club 6.5 mile walk from Sidbury. For further information please ring 01308 898484 or 01308 863340. New members/ visitors welcome.
Artist’s Talk: Philip Sutton RA in conversation with Tim McClure, Arch Deacon of Bristol, Retired. 4pm Sladers Yard, West Bay Road, West Bay, Bridport, Dorset DT6 4EL. gallery@sladersyard.co.uk. Tel. 01308 459511 Tickets (essential) £12 from Sladers Yard.
A Night of Blues ‘n’ Boogie 3 fantastic blues acts. Bridport Electric Palace 35 South Street, DT6 3NY. Tickets £17.50 Book online electricpalace.org.uk
Sunday, 30 March
Opera Boys, with beautiful vocal arrangements, spectacular close harmony and a great line in humour. Hardye Theatre, Dorchester 7.30pm. For more information and tickets, visit dorchesterarts.org.uk or contact the box office on 01305 266926.
Opa Rosa are an energetic acoustic ensemble sharing music from the Balkan, Greek, Klezmer & Roma traditions. 8pm Marine Theatre, Church St, Lyme Regis, Dorset DT7 3QB. £14 advance £16 on the door. Tickets available at www.marinetheatre.com. You can also purchase tickets from the Lyme Regis Bookshop and Bridport TIC (01308 424901).
Singing Bowl Soundbath Oborne Village Hall Sherborne DT9 4LA £16. Please book in advance via 01935 389655 or email ahiahel@live.com
Monday, 31 March
Scottish Dancing in Chardstock An evening of Scottish dancing in Chardstock Village Hall EX13 7BH 7.30-10.00p.m. Tea and coffee provided but please bring your own mug and wear soft soled shoes. No partner required. Cost £2.00 Contact David on 01460 65981 www.chardscottishdancingclub.co.uk.
If you like music, gentle exercise and socialising, come to our dance sessions in the W.I. Hall, North Street, Bridport on Monday evenings from 7.15pm-9.30pm. Tel: 863552 or text 07456730753 for more information.
TNature Studies
By Michael McCarthy
he feeling of being in on a secret is a curiously enjoyable one, even if it’s not a deliberately-kept secret, just something that most people don’t know about. I have that feeling with winter aconites. Because I’ve come to realise that most people are not aware of their existence, even though these flowers form one of the highlights of nature at the start of the year. Certainly, looking back at the winter which has just ended, and which I remember as wet and dark and muddy, they were a highlight indeed.
There are few plants which actually have their main flowering season in January. Winter heliotrope is one, with its big green leaves and pale mauve flowers with their marzipan scent, and hazel is another—it’s in January that hazel produces those dangling yellow catkins. But winter aconites are the best. They’re in the buttercup family, though a lot less common than our various buttercup species, and they’re particularly pretty: before the petals fully open they are striking golden globes, bright yellow heads sitting on top of a neck-ruff of green leaves, as it were, so that in Suffolk, according to Richard Mabey in Flora Britannica, they are known as ‘choirboys’. And in direct sunlight they seem to glow.
I originally encountered them when we lived near Kew Gardens, and I started noticing this patch of small bright blooms outside the visitor centre which flowered before everything else. I looked them up, but I couldn’t find much written about them. They seem to be on very few people’s radar. Perhaps it’s because they’re not native plants, but introductions from continental Europe, although they’ve been here since at least the sixteenth century. They’re in gardens, and as escapes in places like parks and churchyards and roadside verges, but here’s another peculiarity about them—they’re found much more in eastern England, in East Anglia in particular, than in the west. And indeed, when I got an email
An incomer’s discovery of the natural world in the West Country
on January 20 which said: “Small signs of spring here, despite the raw weather. I love the way the aconite glows like a little lamp” it was from my friend Jeremy, who lives in Suffolk.
But winter aconites can be found in the west of England too, and in the time I have been here I have come to realise that there are Dorset enthusiasts for this little-known flower which, we might say, is the snowdrop’s rival. One is Mrs Sylvia Gallia of Nether Cerne, and on one of the few bright mornings of the winter Robin Mills and I went to see her with her aconites, some scattered under a mulberry tree and others in a lovely large patch in her garden by the river. We then went on to see Sylvia’s friend Jack Wingfield-Digby, who has a garden teeming with aconites in Hazelbury Bryan, and from there to see Andrew and Josie Langmead at Stock Gaylard house with its deer park on the road to Sturminister Newton, who have a splendid aconite display around a weeping ash tree on their lawn.
All these people love their aconites. “In bright sunshine they turn on—they’re like little suns,” said Jack Wingfield-Digby. “We look out from our kitchen window and when it’s dull you can only just pick them out, but when the sun comes out it’s a blaze of yellow. Suddenly it’s like there’s 100 per cent more of them.” I don’t doubt there are other Dorset aconite-lovers; in fact, it seems to me that anyone who gets to know this flower, with its beautiful warming brightness at the very darkest and barest time of the year, will fall for it.
I love it myself. And as I said, it is also a curiously enjoyable feeling to know about it when so many people do not—to be, as it were, in on the secret. But I’m only too happy to share it.
Recently relocated to Dorset, Michael McCarthy is the former Environment Editor of The Independent. His books include Say Goodbye To The Cuckoo and The Moth Snowstorm: Nature and Joy.
Click Here for an Easy Read version of this article
The R, F-Word
Let’s
/
talk about farming
By Dr Sam Rose
Ihave been working with rewilding in different ways for more than 5 years now. Learning from this, I have felt a growing feeling in my bones that we are approaching an inflection point, a point of change in how we as a nation respond to the biodiversity and climate crises, and how we manage nature restoration at scale. This inflection point involves rewilding approaches, and has a lot to do with farmers, so read on!
To backtrack a bit, when I started my work on rewilding in 2019, it was bold and exciting and new and—to be honest—the preserve of the very few. There was very little press about it, except disingenuous comments about wolves and beavers, but the successes of Knepp were starting to be seen, and people were taking note. I would not agree with those who say only those who could afford it, did it, because it was always a business decision, and very risky one at that, but yes some people had more resilience to risk, and thank goodness for them. They considered the opportunity cost and went ahead anyway. These pioneers have paved the way for larger scale changes we are starting to see now.
Since then, the attention in the media and from landowners has grown exponentially. People have been rewilding, or wilding, their land, fields, gardens, window boxes and lives. It has taken off, and despite continued pressure from those who accuse it of ‘woke nonsense’, it is now a key part of our toolkit for helping restore ecosystems in our demonstrably nature-depleted country. By the end of my MA research into rewilding through photography, I was firmly of the opinion that if we want to improve nature at scale in the UK, it has to be the landowners taking the lead. I will return to this at the end, because I have seen a subtle change.
Rewilding is fundamentally based on the principles of allowing natural processes to happen—letting the cattle choose where and what to browse in a large free-roaming area, or allowing a river to form its own course, rather than being dredged and cleared. Well, stripped back to its basics, and despite the policy-led incentives of the last 50 years to ‘grow-baby-grow’ at whatever the costs to nature, some farmers have been allowing nature to do its thing on the lessproductive (marginal) parts of their farm for years. If you consider the core principles of rewilding, these farmers have been using them for a long time, as a choice against the incentives to intensify, but they
have mostly not been recognised or rewarded for it. It is broadly the case that if you have been using intensive practices—and there is no blame here, these practices were incentivised—then you get more money to restore that degraded land for nature than if you had been looking after your land well for many years. This disparity has to change, and good practices need to be supported and rewarded.
The key principle here is right action, right place; maintain production on areas of good quality farmland
So where am I going with this? Well, the last government initiated a set of new agricultural subsidies called the Environmental Land Management schemes (ELMs), based on public money for public goods—i.e. payment for managing land in ways that benefit all of us, through cleaner water, reduced flooding, more biodiversity, locking up carbon and so on. Yes there have been agri-environment schemes for years, but they have been prescriptive, complex and unpopular. The new approach has new mechanisms, notably the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) and Landscape Recovery, both of which focus on public money for public goods. For me—and this is the key point of this article—these schemes, particularly Landscape Recovery, bring the rewilding-type, natural-process led approaches within the reach of the average farmer. This includes small farms, large farms, tenants or owner-occupiers, and incentivises these people to make changes appropriate to their land that benefit all of us and to be paid for those benefits appropriately.
Furthermore, the approach of Landscape Recovery encourages continued food production, perhaps lower quantity but higher quality, on land that can take it. This might be through less intensive grazing, or regenerative agriculture (regen) techniques being done alongside more marginal land that perhaps is better for ‘production of nature’. The key principle here is right action, right place; maintain production on areas of good quality farmland through regen or regen/organic techniques, but on steeply sloping land with heavy soils and needing a lot of input, focus on producing nature.
There is also an emphasis in Landscape Recovery
on improving the rural circular economy, so that more food is available locally and is affordable, and on reconnecting people with food, non-farming communities with farmers. You might say that this is nothing new, people have been trying to do this for years, but the difference here is that Landscape Recovery is dependent on many farmers and landowners working together, and some of the 56 projects around the country (including in Dorset) have more than 50 participants and over 10,000 acres of land.
So how do I know this? Well in my day job I am working on delivering one of the Landscape Recovery projects and I see the potential for holistic change for nature and farming with people working together. It is exciting and pioneering, but untested, and we are part of the government’s pilot stage, so watch this space. In term of the R-Word, we don’t necessarily use it very much in the project, but many of its principles are set into some of the changes that partner farmers are making. The arrival of this collaborative and large-scale approach through Landscape Recovery has, for me, democratised rewilding approaches, and given farmers who could not take the risk before now the opportunity to adopt practices that they know are
better for the land, and all of us, and be supported and paid to do that.
This democratisation is my inflection point. If it works and can be rolled out, it will be transformational. As Charlie Burrell said in my podcast with him a few years ago “everybody has the right to walk out of their door into nature”, not meaning that we have to have nature reserves everywhere but seeing nature as an integral part of our farming landscape. It is good for people, for biodiversity, for the climate and its good for farming, and hopefully will encourage more younger people to get into the beleaguered sector. I said above that change will only happen through landowners taking the lead, but my subtle change to that now is that change will only happen if farmers and landowners take the lead. This new approach can do that, my only question is whether to call it—borrowing from the tech sector—Rewilding 2.0 or Farming 2.0?
Dr Sam Rose is a photographer and podcaster about nature and rewilding—see his website at whatifyoujustleaveit.info and podcast “What if you just leave it?”. He also heads up the Brit Valley Landscape Recovery project (britvalley.org) but the views expressed here are personal and are not said on behalf of the Brit Valley Project or West Dorset Wilding.
Reader in Journalism at City, University of London, Paul Lashmar first began studying the history of slavery when he developed a Channel 4 series on Britain’s slave trade in 1999. This month he writes about one of the West Country links from his latest book.
Richard Drax—the Conservative MP for South Dorset until July 2024—has made the Drax name famous across the globe. At the beginning of the decade, he inherited the family’s Drax Hall sugar plantation in Barbados that was one of the earliest created in the British Empire around 1630. Until the abolition of slavery in 1834, over a period 200 years and some eight generations, Richard Drax’s ancestors had owned as many as several hundred enslaved African captives at any one time. His family are now unique as an original settler family that still owns a working sugar plantation. Despite pressure from reparation campaigners in the Caribbean, UK and elsewhere, Richard Drax has refused to make a formal apology or a public gesture of compensation for the years of slavery.
Richard Drax’s family live in Charborough House, a mansion famous for being enclosed by the landmark ‘Great Wall of Dorset’ which runs alongside the A31 near Wimborne. But the name Drax is a relative newcomer to Dorset. The former MP and BBC reporter’s full name is Richard Grosvenor PlunkettErnle-Erle-Drax. It’s a rare four barrelled name where the final addition was approved by George V in 1916. It is the Erle branch of the family that is longest associated in the Marshwood Vale magazine’s circulation area. And there have been some remarkable and some controversial characters in the Erle line.
According to 18th Century historian John Hutchins, ‘The Erles were a very ancient and knightly family. The first that occurs in the pedigree is Henry de Erle, Lord of Newton, County Somerset. They were subsequently styled of North Petherton in that county, and seem afterward to have removed to Culhampton, County Devon. They held the manor of Parva-Somerton, or Somerton-Erleigh, in the reign of Edward II by grandserjeancy of being the king’s chamberlain; by service of pouring water—on the King’s hands on Easter or Christmas day,’ (Hutchins 1774 Vol. I. 184). The first Erle we have some records of was Walter Erle, the son of John III Erle of Cullompton in Devon, by his wife Thomasyn.
Circa 1540, a 20-year-old Walter Erle (I) was sent up from Devon to Hampton Court to serve in the Courts of King Henry VIII. Musicologist and retired
professor at the University of Exeter Nicholas Sandon has researched the life of Walter Erle and has shown that he was a musician and composer as well as a servant in various courts. ‘His successful exploitation of his position, and his employers’ evident appreciation of his services, are reflected in the numerous grants of property and other perquisites that he received over more than thirty years,’ says Sandon.
When home in Devon Walter Erle resided at Colcombe House in Colyton. He married Mary, a daughter of a local gentleman, Richard Wyke, at St Andrew’s Church, Colyton in 1549. When her father had died Mary inherited the Charborough Estate and Walter and Mary moved to Dorset. Walter lived until 1581 and left Charborough to his son Thomas Erle (1) who died quite young in 1597. An elaborate memorial to Thomas with him in armour and separate tomb can be seen in Morden Church near Charborough.
One of Thomas’s sons, named after his grandfather,
General Thomas Erle early 18th Century.
would become English Civil War colonel and MP Walter Erle (II), a leading Parliamentarian and Puritan. He was in charge of the siege of Corfe Castle but infamously failed to take the Royalist stronghold. While he took refuge in London for many months, the Royalists burnt down the Tudor Charborough House probably in revenge for the destruction of a Turbeville family’s manor house. At the end of the Civil War he rebuilt the house. His grandson, Thomas Erle (II) who was born 1650 was a lawyer. He first fought as a militia officer in the Battle of Bridport during the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685. The Drax family legend has it that Thomas Erle (II) initiated the Glorious Revolution of 1688 by plotting in a Charborough icehouse with fellow conspirators to rid England of the popish James II and replacing him with William of Orange. (Although it is probably a myth). Present at Monmouth’s defeat at the Battle of Sedgemoor, Thomas Erle took to the soldier’s life. With William on the throne, Colonel Erle went on to fight the Irish Catholics at the Battle of the Boyne, Battle of Aughrim and the Siege of Limerick being seriously wounded on several occasions. Hutchins provides a detailed account of Thomas Erle’s part in the battle of Aughrim. The battle was fought partly
in a bog, was difficult and the Protestant army came under heavy fire from the Irish:
‘But the Irish had so well ordered the matter that they had an easy passage for their horse among all these hedges and ditches, which yet being observed by the valiant Colonel Erle, he encouraged his men telling them ‘there was no way to come off but to be brave.’
Promoted to General, Erle served for many years and also fought in the Low Countries and Spain. He died in 1720, the last of the Erles as such. The year before his only grandchild Elizabeth had married Henry Drax from the sugar rich family who owned Drax Hall plantations in Barbados and Jamaica. Henry and Elizabeth combined three family fortunes. From then on the family were known as the Erle-Draxes.
With the addition of slave-based revenues, the ErleDrax ancestors expanded their mansion and land and today the estate covers 23.5 square miles and has at least 125 properties. It is the largest estate in Dorset owned by a family.
Drax of Drax Hall: How One British Family Got Rich (and Stayed Rich) from Sugar and Slavery. An unauthorised history of the Drax family. Pluto Press (March 2025). Hardcover ISBN: 9780745350516. eBook ISBN: 9780745350523.
This
Month in the not so distant past
Click Here for an Easy Read version of this article
Looking back at historical moments that happened in February, John Davis highlights a Medical Pioneer.
The Lakeland poet, William Wordsworth, was not the only one impressed by daffodils. The bright, golden coloured flower, so often the symbolic harbinger of springtime, has also caught the eye of other groups and concerns. Prominent among these is Marie Curie, an organisation which has its origins in the 1930s but was not officially established until 1948.
Taking its name from a pioneering scientist, Marie Curie provides hospice care and support for anyone with an illness they are likely to die from. It aims to fund-raise throughout the year but its ‘big push’ comes during the month of March with the annual Great Daffodil Appeal. The spring flower was first adopted as a logo by Marie Curie in 1986 to act as a symbol of renewal and hope and many will make a meaningful contribution locally by wearing the yellow daffodil pin.
Although Marie Curie studied, worked and lived in France for most of her life, she was born in Poland’s capital city Warsaw in 1867 as Maria Sklodowska and was the daughter of a secondary school teacher. Well known for her prodigious memory, Marie did well at school. Polish universities were not allowed to offer places to women at that time and her parents did not have sufficient money to send her to study abroad. To raise the necessary funding Marie worked as a teacher and then as a governess, also finding time to study at secret meetings of women workers who had joined the so called ‘free university’.
Marie then invested her earnings in a move to Paris where she enrolled to study science at the Sorbonne, already one of Europe’s top higher education establishments. It was a period of great hardship. She devoted all her energy to studying, living in a tiny attic flat and subsisting on a diet of bread and butter and tea. She obtained a degree in mathematical sciences in 1894 and the following year married Pierre Curie, another scientist she had met at the Sorbonne.
The Curies first studied the powerful rays, similar to X-rays, given off by the element uranium. They called the process radioactivity. Then they began to experiment with a mineral called pitchblende whose
radioactivity appeared to be far greater than that of uranium. This resulted in the discovery of a new radioactive element which they named Polonium after the country of Marie’s birth. Later, as a result of their research, another new element, this time radium, was found producing radioactive waves of far greater strength.
As Pierre crossed a busy street in Paris, he was knocked down and killed by a heavily laden horse drawn cart.
Even the birth of the couple’s two daughters, Irene in 1897 and Eva seven years later, did not interrupt their experiments. They used most of the money they earned through teaching on equipment and materials, did most of their work in a draughty damp shed and suffered burns and illness because of the toxic chemicals they handled each day. In recognition of their major discoveries, they were awarded one of science’s top prizes, the Nobel Prize for Physics, in 1903. They shared the honour with French scientist, Henri Becquerel who had also been working on radioactivity at the same time.
Suddenly disaster struck. One evening the following year, as Pierre crossed a busy street in Paris, he was knocked down and killed by a heavily laden horse drawn cart. Marie was devastated to have lost both her husband and her work partner. She confided in her diary that she was finding it difficult to carry on. “How can I continue to work in a laboratory where I never thought I would have to live without you.”
It was a major turning point in her life. From then on, she devoted even more of her time and
energy to completing the scientific work they had started together. In 1906 she was appointed to the professorship that had been left vacant by her husband’s death and became the first woman to take up a teaching post at the Sorbonne. She published her findings on radioactivity in 1910 and was awarded a second Nobel Prize, this time for chemistry, for achieving the isolation of pure radium. By 1914 Marie had supervised the completion of the research laboratories at the newly built Institute of Radium in Paris. During the First World War she worked with her daughter Irene, herself a famous scientist and a Nobel Prize winner, to develop the use of radioactivity in the field of medicine. This involved driving round field hospitals near the battlefields with prototype X-ray equipment to be used in the treatment of wounded soldiers. In later life, Marie Curie continued to extend the medical applications of the radio active substances she had discovered. The word ‘curie’ came into the language as a unit for measuring radioactivity. She travelled the world lecturing and receiving awards. Wherever she went she used her influence to raise money for scientific research.
Marie died in 1934 at the age of sixty-sevenkilled by poison from the very substances she had struggled for so long to understand and which now can do so much good in the treatment of diseases like cancer.
With springtime hopefully just around the corner, it would be only fitting that Wordsworth has the last words:
“For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.”
Semi-retired and living in Lyme Regis, John Davis started working life as a newspaper journalist before moving on to teach in schools, colleges and as a private tutor. He is a history graduate with Bachelors and Masters degrees from Bristol University with a particular interest in the History of Education and Twentieth Century European History.
The Nobel prize winning scientist, Marie Skłodowska Curie (1867-1934) in her laboratory. Photo by Henri Manuel, 1908
Vegetables BEYOND THE GARDEN
by Caddy Sitwell
The
Horticultural Show. Part Two: Showers and Growers “Are we mad, daft or stupid?”
Whilst training to be a vegetable judge I had fallen into the delightful realm of the Horticultural Show. Growers and showers at all levels gently welcomed me to their craft, sharing tips and tales. But occasionally, very occasionally the competitive tension can bubble out—especially at staging time.
In 2021 a frazzled woman was heard through the canvas at the Melplash Show shouting at her longsuffering husband, “lay those peas out properly or I’ll thwack you round the head with this cucumber”. She meant it. She really meant it. It’s hard work growing, transporting and staging perfect show vegetables. That was in fact the only year she entered but it certainly takes a particular temperament to become a ‘shower’. It requires patience and a methodical commitment to perfectionism—having a practical nature with a dose of ‘allotment style’ thrift can help enormously. Some vegetables need both dawn and dusk visits, with staking and tweaking throughout the summer. Timing is key and a careful succession of seed sowing is needed to ensure peak condition on show day. For instance, cauliflowers take between 14 and 16 weeks to grow and are notoriously only ‘right’ for two days. They are quick to ‘blow’ into frothy curds so a batch is sown every ten days to try and compensate for the vagaries of the weather. A Cornishman told me he grows 2000 pickling shallots to give him the best chance of finding a matching set of twelve and the reigning stump carrot champion grows 104 carrots from which he hopes to find ten good ones.
Vegetable growing was traditionally seen as the man’s domain with flowers left to the ‘ladies’ but not so any more with Sherie Plumb of Essex being regarded as possibly the best show potato grower in England. Her husband and children are all involved in showing and I’m told grow 400 bags of potatoes annually. A helpful family is an invaluable asset and is surprising how many partners can be sucked into this world—shocked to find themselves balancing French beans or tomatoes on their laps in the back of the already rammed, show-bound car.
At top shows the vegetables themselves are often not normal, they are grown from special seeds in highly controlled environments, with regularised watering, temperatures and soil mixes. Three-foot parsnips can be grown in oil barrels, leeks are
First
Prize for Sherie Plumb’s show potatoes
blanched by daily wrapping in plumber’s insulation or brown paper and onions the size of your head should, it is said, traditionally be sown on Christmas day. This could well be a ‘traditional’ ploy to get out of the washing up, as also I presume, was the ‘necessity’ of preparing carrot barrels on Boxing Day. But size is not the goal. Old school growers in fact dismiss the ‘giant veg’ world as bringing the subject into disrepute and an Americanisation—the goal for them is a perfect matching set, in peak condition, never tasted but creepily perfect.
Rows and rows of these perfect carrots or tomatoes or beans stretching into the distance are surreal and at first glance it seems an impossible task to differentiate between them. The RHS Horticultural Show handbook has, luckily, a pointing system and detailed advice to guide the judge on the different attributes sought in every vegetable. Cauliflowers for example require a ‘creamy white curd that sits well in the hand’ or celery needs to be ‘blemish free, clean, well-blanched’, tomatoes must be ‘shapely, ripe but firm’ and blanched leeks should have ‘long barrels with no sign of softness or splits, a tight button and be free from bulbing and ribbiness’.
As vegetables have their idiosyncrasies so do the showing community and I suggest that a similar range of characters exists today as in its Victorian heyday. There are the showers who chase the cups and money known as ‘pot hunters’, the hopeless optimists who keep entering but never learning and a wealth of keen, self-taught horticulturists. My respect for successful growers is boundless, especially as year after year has seen me failing to master the twenty pointer ‘long carrot’. They often have to put up with the ubiquitous patronising amusement and ribaldry but total focus on growing exceptional vegetables is no joke. It can be obsessive, totally consuming and take over your summer, but it’s certainly not madness.
March in the Garden
By Russell Jordan
March is officially the first month of spring, although I know gardeners of a Celtic persuasion count the festival of Imbolc, or February 1st, St. Brigid’s Day, as the true start of new growth and renewal. Certainly there were some early spring bulbs, and late winter flowering shrubs in February but March sees an exponential increase in the amount of visible blooms. With any luck there will also be an increase in the number of days when it feels warm enough to be outside in the garden, finishing off all those tasks which need to be completed before the end of the month.
The kind of things that need to be done without delay are all those operations that rely on plants still being largely dormant and not yet into active growth. Finish mulching and cutting back tasks in beds and borders. Lift and divide herbaceous perennials, as you go along, and generally chuck some ‘fish, blood and bone’ fertiliser about. Gently forking the soil between plants is very pleasing and finishes the bed nicely. Remember to relieve compaction, in areas where you have trodden, by deep forking to remove your footprints and aerate the soil. I count ‘deep forking’ as the kind where you plunge the fork fully into the ground and then lean back on it. This lifts up the soil and encourages the air, which was squeezed out due to compaction by your feet, to re-enter the soil structure. Good air exchange in soil is necessary for healthy root growth which is why compacted, or waterlogged, soils tend to inhibit plant growth and can actually kill plants.
Shrubs grown for their winter stems should be
‘stooled’ (cut down to the base) to force them to produce new stems this growing season because it is the new growth which has the most vivid winter colour. The usual candidates for this sort of treatment are the various coloured stem Cornus (dogwood) and Salix (willow) varieties. Young specimens should not be treated quite so brutally as they need to be a few years old before they have the resilience to bounce back from being cut to the ground. A generous feed, with a general purpose fertiliser, is recommended both for the newly stooled plants and those that are still establishing.
It’s getting a bit late to plant bare-rooted plants but you should get away with it if you are fastidious with your watering and take extra care to plant them well, mulching generously. Most woody and shrubby plants can be planted bare-root, during winter dormancy, and it is practically de rigeur for roses which can be ordered from specialist rose growers and dispatched via the post. On the subject of roses, pruning should be completed this month, before applying fertiliser and a good dollop of well rotted manure at the base of each plant.
Last month I ventured that you might like to try sowing some hardy perennials indoors, or in the greenhouse, but March is the first month when you could try some outdoor sowing. Hardy annuals are one of the cheapest and easiest ways of adding summer colour and they can be sown as soon as the weather starts to warm up. As long as your flower beds are relatively weed-free then sowing the seeds in situ couldn’t be easier. If you are worried that you’ll
not recognise your chosen hardy annuals from annual weeds then sowing in rows, just inches apart, means that they will be obvious once they start to grow. These sowing lines completely disappear once the annuals fill out and fill the space. If conditions take a turn for the worst, or there is a danger of birds and other wildlife disturbing the seed-bed, then covering it with horticultural fleece protects the seedlings until they fully established.
If the weather is warm enough for hardy annuals to germinate then, as sure as eggs is eggs, annual weeds will be germinating too. Removing annual and perennial weeds now, while they are still small, will save a lot of time during the rest of the year. Hand weeding is particularly effective while they are still small, and easily dislodged, but hoeing will only work when it is performed during dry weather and the disturbed weed seedlings die before they get a chance to grow new roots.
If you are growing your own tender annuals, the sort that are generally available later as ‘bedding plants’, you will need somewhere heated and light. In a cold greenhouse the extra heat may be supplied with a heated propagator. If you have sufficient space, and a nicely centrally heated home, then a warm windowsill may do and it’s much easier to
keep an eye on germination when the seed trays are where you’ll see them everyday.
Some experimentation is required as a sunny windowsill may end up ‘cooking’ your seedlings while a north facing spot may never get warm enough for ‘exotic’ seeds which require a steady 65-75ºF to germinate. There is a danger that the seedlings will become etiolated (stretched) as they strain towards the light coming in from just one direction. Turning the pots on a regular basis helps or, if you are handy with such things, rigging up some sort of light reflecting screen, on the unlit side, should prevent the emerging plants from leaning towards the light. All the hassle and uncertainty, of raising tender plants, can be avoided if you are willing to pay a little more in order to obtain similar varieties as small plants via mail-order or from garden centres when they become available.
All this talk of tender plants is a little premature when the reality of March is that it’s still more likely than not that there will be overnight frosts. Also, there will be a majority of days when the average temperature remains below seven to eight degrees centigrade, the temperature required for most lawn grass to grow, so, despite the prevalence of spring flowering bulbs, the garden is still only just beginning to wake up.
PROPERTY ROUND-UP
March into Spring
PILSDON GUIDE PRICE
£1,450,000
A unique opportunity to purchase a charming extended and superbly renovated detached former farmhouse, 2 bed log cabin, large and versatile modern barn/outbuildings set in 8 acres. Approached by narrow country lanes with magnificent wide-span panoramic views to distant hillsides and the coast.
Kennedys: 01308 427329
MONKTON WYLD
£975,000
Stunning detached 6 bedroom family home, situated in the rural village of Monkton Wyld. Sits on the fringes of its own grounds, with formal gardens, a swimming pool and approximately 1 acre of land. Fox & Sons: 01297 32323
TINTINHULL GUIDE PRICE
£645,000
This fabulous Grade II listed former cider mill has been stylishly refurbished. With a large and welcoming entrance hall, a gorgeous main reception room with high ceiling. Three bedrooms, three bathrooms. A low-maintenance garden, double car port.
Greenslade Taylor Hunt: 01935 415300
BEAMINSTER GUIDE
£695,000
A charming Grade II listed property in the heart of Beaminster Square with a well positioned shop, a separate two bedroom first floor apartment and a main house which is arranged over three floors. Mayfair Town & Country: 01308 862606
CHARMOUTH £625,000
Characterful Victorian detached house currently run as a successful holiday let. Three bedrooms, large principal bedroom with dressing area and en-suite. Beautifully presented. Private courtyard garden. Parking.
Gordon & Rumsby: 01297 553768
WHITCHURCH CANONICORUM
£699,950
Nestled in the heart of the picturesque village of Whitchurch Canonicorum lies a 4 bedroom, detached property that seamlessly blends elegance with comfort, offering a double garage, en-suite and copious amounts of parking.
DOMVS: 01308 805500
Clergyman’s sayings to be celebrated in village pub
A17th century clergyman from West Dorset who came up with the famous saying “Charity begins at home but should not end there” is being celebrated in a new project at Broadwindsor.
Bridport artist and signwriter Jemma Thompson has been commissioned by Windrose Rural Media Trust to inscribe some of Dr Thomas Fuller’s quotes inside The White Lion community pub.
Margery Hookings, who is leading the project, said: ‘We’re delighted to have secured Jemma’s services, especially as The White Lion is one of the pubs in Palmers Brewery’s original portfolio and Jemma was so instrumental in bringing the work of Palmers signwriter, George Biles, to life in the amazing exhibition in Bridport last year, as part of the Dorset Town of Culture initiative.’
the church was always packed. He was an extraordinary man, a prolific author and one of the first English writers able to live by his pen.
‘His many sayings are very much relevant today, including “We never know the value of water until the well is dry” and “A fox should not be on the jury at a goose’s trial.”
In the final year of his life, Fuller became Chaplain Extraordinary to Charles II. In 1651, the monarch had spent a night concealed in Broadwindsor, while he was on the run during his six-week flight from the Battle of Worcester.
Fuller’s sayings will also be the theme of a flower festival in the village church over the weekend of 31 May–1 June when Broadwindsor stages its inaugural Oak Apple Fair.
The Rev Thomas Fuller (1608-1661) was Rector of Broadwindsor from 1635-1641 and his son, John, was baptised in the village on 6 June 1641.
Said Margery: ‘Apparently, his sermons were so witty,
Commemorating Thomas Fuller is just one strand of Windrose’s project, Born & Bred which focuses on gathering oral histories of people aged 55 and over who were born and/or bred in Broadwindsor.
Witty clergyman Dr Thomas Fuller
DEEP FRIED SEASHORE VEGETABLES WITH OYSTER MAYONNAISE
We are an island surrounded by sea and we are a bit shy about eating seaweed and seashore vegetables for some reason, although we don’t think twice about putting sushi rolls in our shopping bags. Which is of course nori seaweed or laverbread—widely eaten in Wales with bacon and cockles and what a delicious combination it is. I have used it for years since discovering it.
I’m often seen on the estuary and beach gathering sea beet, sea purslane, sea aster etc and it naturally attracts passers by asking what I’m doing. I always tell them it’s free extremely nutritious food and try it. All of the inshore seaweeds are good to eat and it’s only some of the seaweed in very deep water that can be poisonous. Kelp or Kombo as it’s called in Japan is used to make dashi and is high in natural MSG when most of us think it’s a nasty chemical used in Asian food. But lots of foods have it like anchovies, mackerel, parmesan etc.
Anyway, back to seashore vegetables and seaweed and you will be pleasantly surprised by how tasty these little snacks are. They can be made from most seaweeds like bladderwrack, kelp, dulce, sea lettuce etc. Where can you get seaweed if you don’t live by the sea you may ask. Well, a friendly fishmonger who has oysters may part with some as oysters are often packed with seaweed. Or, buy dried kelp from an Asian supermarket or online.
INGREDIENTS
• 150g fresh seaweed, washed well or half the amount dried and soaked in water overnight
1. To make the oyster mayonnaise, put the oysters and their juice in a pan, bring to the boil and simmer for 30 seconds and remove from the heat. Blend the oysters and juice in a liquidiser with a third of the mayonnaise then transfer to a small bowl and mix in the rest of the mayonnaise and the chervil.
2. Preheat about 8cm of oil to 160-180°C in a large thick bottomed saucepan or electric deep fat fryer.
3. Meanwhile make the batter by whisking in enough water to make a light single cream type consistency then lightly season.
If you enjoy foraging for ingredients for recipes like these, join Mark on one of his Hix & Wild days. Visit: markhix.co.uk/ hix-and-wild/
• Vegetable or corn oil for deep frying
• Sea salt flakes For the batter
• 100g gluten free self raising flour
• Cold water to mix
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
4. Ensure the sea vegetables and seaweed are dry then break it into bite sized pieces. If large then dip into the batter and fry a few pieces at a time for just under a minute until crisp.
5. Serve on a dish or plate with the oyster mayonnaise in a dipping bowl.
MARK HIX
EXPLORING THE NARRATIVES IN
the American Dream
Curating this year’s From Page to Screen film festival, Andrew Chater has tried to open up a conversation about an America that is fast becoming unrecognisable. He talked to Fergus Byrne about the films he has chosen and the diverse and complex nature of the country they represent.
As the burning embers from the Los Angeles fires contrasted with the melting snow drifts that caused havoc in southern America, citizens of the United States desperately tried to understand what would become of their country as their new president, Donald Trump, began to make his mark.
America is a country that was born on a vision of hope, a country built on the American Dream where every person had a right to work hard to make a success of their lives. Today, for many, that dream no longer exists. It is a fractured society, deeply divided, unsettled and nervous. And a nervous country, especially one with so much firepower, is a recipe for tense relationships.
In this year’s From Page to Screen (FPTS) film festival, curator Andrew Chater, a Beaminster Director/Producer and lecturer on American History, is using his vast knowledge of American literature to create a programme that will open a conversation about the complexities of the United States of America.
It is an ambitious and vast undertaking, but Andrew’s vision for the Bridport-based festival is to foster community engagement and discussion of American cultural diversity. The programme hopes to reflect on the broader implications of American societal issues, including the American Dream, and the importance of conversation in addressing these challenges.
He hopes that by stimulating debate about what
he describes as ‘the nature of America’, and giving audiences a little bit more of an understanding of some of the things which seem ‘most strange and bewildering about America right now’, we may see a ‘reflection of our own situation.’
As we sit in his office surrounded by shelves of books revealing America’s history and development through its literature, Andrew points to the parallels that we are facing in this country. He says America may be ‘tearing itself apart’ right now, but in the UK, we have a ‘populist phenomenon that we haven’t encountered before’, and we could be on course for a similar journey.
Curating the Bridport-based film festival has given Andrew an opportunity to delve into the film adaptations of many of the books that he has been using to help his students in America gain a better perspective on the myriad strands of development of that vast country. The recipient of six BAFTA and two Royal Television Society Awards, Andrew joined the BBC as a graduate trainee in 1988, and in 1990 he joined BBC Education, where for the next six years he directed a wide variety of programs for schools, including Shakespeare Shorts, which won him his first BAFTA award.
According to BBC research, in the early 2000s, Andrew’s output was being used by 75% of British secondary schools. Since then he has launched Lodestar Productions and Timelines.tv and, along with his Hollywood studio executive wife Louise, has lived between the UK and Los Angeles since
2011. As well as launching a new series called Bookpackers Andrew also teaches courses at the Faculty of English at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles.
The recent devastating fires in Los Angeles are not only a poignant reminder of the instability of politics in America, but they are also much closer to Andrew, who was due to leave for the next semester a couple of days after our meeting. The person he was going to stay with had been evacuated, and his daughter, although not near the fires, is also in LA.
With an original long list of 150 movies, Andrew has been trying to develop a way of understanding America’s ‘regional pathways’. He has blocks of books covering the whole country, from LA culture, New Orleans, and the Appalachians to New England and New York. ‘The novels,’ he says, ‘help us understand the mentality of particular places.’ He points out how different areas were founded by people ‘centuries ago’, and they all came with ‘different motivations.’ For example, the people of the Midwest arrived with different motivations to the people of New England, to the people of New York and to the people of the South. Those who went West, he says, were also a particular kind of people, ‘and they took with them their own particular assumptions.’
Today, the map of America is predicated on all of these different composite parts, and many of them have radically different ideas about fundamental things. ‘What does Liberty mean?’ Andrew asks. ‘Liberty up in the Northeast means the freedom from doing certain things. It’s protecting yourself from bad stuff. It’s creating utopias by curtailing some freedoms.’ He describes it as the ‘old Puritan lines.’ While in the South, Liberty was perceived to be an incredibly hegemonic thing. ‘We have freedom, but the enslaved people don’t. Liberty is something we fight for, but we don’t perceive it to be for everyone.’
‘Whereas, in Appalachia,’ he says, ‘freedom is protecting the family against the incursions of everybody else.’ He describes the Midwestern idea of tolerance as that of letting your neighbour be as your neighbour will be, and says that notion is a ‘beautiful American thing, and that’s the thing we’re losing sight of now.’
Through the pathways that he has followed over America’s literary journey, Andrew sees how the Appalachian version of Liberty, born out of
frontiersmen, feeds into a ‘kind of selfish American ideal.’ A theme now prevalent in more corporate settings, it shows how the power to economically succeed on money terms alone, is at the expense of society.
It might be easy to think of America as a somewhat parochial country with two strips of sophistication on either side. However, Andrew suggests that it is much more complex than that. ‘The point is’, he says, ‘that we don’t think of America as being this jigsaw of different mindsets, and only if we start to understand where it’s come from do we get a sense of why it’s at war with itself now, and what might emerge out of all these warring factions.’
Films that include The Grapes of Wrath, The Age of Innocence, Winter’s Bone and The Day of the Locust sit alongside The Hate U Give, Nickel Boys, and Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. They are an adaptation of literature that lets us experience the lives of Americans. Andrew cites the Atticus Finch quote about walking a mile in another man’s shoes to illustrate how reading stories from the perspective of people who think differently from ourselves allows us to question our own beliefs. ‘How do I admire this person in spite of myself?’ he asks. ‘Do I admire this person, or do I empathise at least, or sympathise with where they’re coming from?’
He describes how children from very conservative backgrounds may ‘better understand racial problems or societal malfunctions’ and the things that fundamentally set us back as a society, ‘and they start to see that maybe their parents’ American dream is not the pure reality.’
Within the bubble of his classroom, he also sees how ‘on the other hand, progressive kids, activist kids, kids who’ve been fed a very strident and limited worldview of war between identities are allowed to understand a slightly more oldfashioned notion of what nice Republicanism was.’ The classroom space, although a bubble to begin with, becomes a place in which people from different backgrounds can actually talk across that divide and take their better understanding out into the world. ‘We’re just encouraging that process of conversation.’
From Page to Screen, the Bridport Film Festival runs from April 23rd to 27th. For full details and to book tickets visit: www.bridport-arts.com/fpts/
fighting trauma
Launching her new book in Bridport in March, Anna Whitwham talks to Fergus Byrne about how she elected to deal with trauma in a boxing ring.
When you are a teenager, sitting in A&E with a bloody nose after a fight can be a traumatic experience. But for Anna Whitwham, that particular episode has strange parallels to a path she took much later in her life.
A group of men were fighting outside a pub in South London and, infuriated when one of them punched her friend in the face, Anna marched up to him and told him he shouldn’t punch a girl. He simply turned around and punched her in the face too.
The nurse in A&E gave the two blood-splattered young girls some friendly advice: don’t get involved when men are fighting; they often don’t know what they are doing. ‘But of course, he did’, remembers Anna. ‘He did it twice!’
Today, as an author, lecturer, and boxer, she lives between London and Dorset with her daughter Sylvie. Although she was scheduled to have a boxing match at the end of March, she will instead be launching her second book, Soft Tissue Damage, in Bridport.
Following on from her award-winning first novel, Boxer Handsome, which was published in 2015, Soft Tissue Damage is about Anna’s compelling need to physically participate in what many see as the somewhat unfathomable world of legally hurting someone while getting hurt in return.
The book examines the transformative impact of boxing and the many different relationships we can have with pain. At the same time, it is also the story of a long and painful goodbye to a mother who had been a powerful influence on Anna’s life, and an exploration of how we deal with what can feel like a paralysing loss.
Soft Tissue Damage and Anna’s entry into the world of boxing were born out of her emotional displacement after her mother’s life was taken by cancer.
Although the stories of her mother’s death and Anna’s journey into a mostly masculine world of punch bags, sparring, bruising and blood are inextricably linked, we are immediately drawn to discuss boxing, why it happens, and the different reasons people are beguiled by it.
After her mother’s death, Anna says she needed to reshape her life. By chance, she came across a whitecollared boxing event when dropping her daughter off to dance practice in West London. One of the trainers asked her if she would like to box. Her instinct was to laugh. She was soon to turn forty, and the idea seemed a joke. But a stronger influence, a need for some
kind of jolt, a reset, took over. For most people the idea might seem extreme, but perhaps boxing could become a trauma to help salve another trauma.
‘I started training and it just absolutely took over’, she tells me. ‘It was at a time when I really needed to actualise something about pain that I couldn’t find a language for.’ Without hesitation, though unsure of whether the comment might be too strong, she says, ‘It really, really saved me. My trainer saved me. The fight saved me. The training saved me. And when I say saved me, that sounds a bit dramatic, but it really helped me to get to the next bit of grief.’
Soft
Tissue Damage is an engrossing
cauldron
of bruising compulsions
She had already written her first novel, Boxer Handsome, inspired by her grandfather, who had been a boxer in East London. It was an exercise that brought much of her family history to life. Boxing was already part of her life. A single mum since her daughter was one, the child’s father was also a boxer. But with the death of her mother, Anna ‘desperately needed to open up the map a little more’. She says she needed to return to her grandfather’s world ‘and, therefore, my mum’s world.’ She wanted to ‘open up the layers of history’ of her grandfather’s life. After the loss of her mother, taking up boxing and learning about her family were ways of ‘returning to the safety of my family.’
Anna doesn’t fit the archetype perception of a boxer. Her long, slender hands constantly battle voluminous, unruly red hair. She is tall and slim, more model than bruiser, but still a shape that lends itself to a long reach and the potential to keep another boxer at bay. Today she points out her recent nail extensions, alluding to the possibility of a waning interest in whether to get back into the ring again. With the fight at the end of March already postponed, she looks at her nails, an unlikely addition for a boxer, and muses: ‘I wonder if that book has now been written?’
But she knows boxing will never leave her. Its role in her life is too entangled. It’s not only in her DNA, it is emotionally ingrained. Soft Tissue Damage is an engrossing cauldron of bruising compulsions that manifest in sometimes brutal but often illuminating questions—though not always answers.
In the book, Anna talks about a time in her youth when self-harm was part of a search for an understanding of herself. I ask whether taking up boxing, so much a part of her recovery from loss, is also a natural way for her to escape something else inside her. But no. If anything, it is an escape into, rather than out of something.
‘Boxing is empowering’, she says. ‘It’s definitely a sort of owning of the body and putting yourself in a space where you do feel bigger, and you do feel physically quite strong.’ She’s not saying boxing is the only way to do this, but ‘it does give you a quiet power. When you walk into a ring, however symbolic, it feels like an empowered thing to do rather than a destructive thing. The self-harm was definitely about shrinking and diminishing and, yes, actualizing a pain, but it was about sort of erasing a self. Whereas boxing is about pronouncing “I am here” much more.’
Born in London, Anna describes herself as being ‘awful’ at school, but she went to Queens University in Belfast and loved it, doing a scholarship in Drama and English at the University of California in Los Angeles, followed by an MA. She now teaches on the MA course in creative writing at Royal Hollaway in London. She has been surrounded by books all her life. Her father is a writer, and her sister is a literary agent. Writing became a natural path.
While her first book, the novel Boxer Handsome, is a brilliantly written story of blood, history and East End family power play, with strong characters from both the Irish traveller and Jewish communities, Soft Tissue Damage, although not without its own brutality, is closer to home. In this book she owns every word, every descriptive line, every emotion and every bruise.
But despite the bruising, she remembers the death of her mother and the process at the end as strangely ‘ordinary’. The chat with the doctor when it was clear her mother’s body no longer wanted food left Anna in a place of abstraction. Remembering and explaining how it felt, she unconsciously makes fists and immediately apologises for the body language. ‘While my sister wanted time and prognosis and just absolute, absolute certainties, I was always in the abstract,’ she says. She still brackets the experience in the abstract and feels that boxing ‘is a way to punctuate some of it. Make it concrete. Make things finish and end properly.’ While boxing is finite and a more ‘complete narrative’, she sees death as incomplete, reflecting that we don’t know where our loved ones are when they are gone. So often our experience of loss is linked to our nurtured beliefs and absorbed ideology. We need to know where that loved one has gone when they leave us. Is it really forever? Where is that energy that was once so powerful? Anna describes herself as a spiritual person but “place” still raises a question: ‘I don’t know about the certainty of another place, at all’ she says.
Having gone through the process of writing a book inspired by her grandfather, she wonders if that place is in our grandchildren. She describes her daughter as having a great resemblance to her mother. Was there ‘some sort of exchange?’ she asks. She felt it with her own grandfather. An affinity that is hard to quantify. ‘There’s something about grandparents and grandchildren that is very powerful.’
That may be the answer. A part of them is in us and our children. In Soft Tissue Damage , Anna describes a moment with her mother “when death was still just in the abstract”. She asked her how she might find her when she was gone. Her mother turned and with certainty, simply said: “I’ll find you. Don’t worry about that”.
Anna Whitwham will launch her new book, Soft Tissue Damage, at Mercato Italiano in Bridport on Thursday March 27th. The event is free to attend but tickets need to be booked at: https://mercatoitaliano.uk/events.
Click Here for an Easy Read version of this article
Soft Tissue Damage is published by Rough Trade Books
Kit Glaisyer: The Cinematic Landscape is an evolving exhibition of Kit’s immersive West Country landscape paintings in his gallery and studio, including original paintings, drawings, and prints on canvas. Open Saturdays 10am -34pm or by appointment. Kit Glaisyer Fine Art, 11 Downes Street, Bridport, Dorset DT6 3JR. 07983 465789 www.kitglaisyery.com @kitglaisyer.
7 - 26 March
David Bachmann, Tom Hoar, John Martin An Exhibition of landscpes, cityscapes and still life by these three artists whose distinctive work will create a striking show. The landscape subjects will be paintings of English and European scenes. The still life and interior subjects offer a complimentary balance to the landscape paintings. The Jerram Gallery, Half Moon Street, Sherborne, Dorset, DT9 3LN UK. +44 (0)1935 815261. info@jerramgallery. com. Open Tuesday to Saturday 9.30am to 5pm.
Until 8 March
Christopher Riisager Paintings of Dorset, Wiltshire & Sicily. Presenting the fourth solo exhibition of new paintings by Christopher Riisager, the result of two years of painting the wonderfully varied landscape of Dorset and Wiltshire, as well as the more arid landscape of Sicily. The Art Stable, Kelly Ross Fine Art, Child Okeford, Blandford, Dorset DT11 8HB.
8
March - 4 May
Nicola Hicks ‘Dressed for the Woods’ the first solo retrospective of Nicola Hicks MBE FRSS – one of the most significant British sculptors of the 21st century. In
celebration of the artist’s 65th birthday, the gallery will present more than 30 exceptional works, drawn from each majormajor series of Hicks’ career to date. Messums West Place Farm, Court St, Tisbury, SP3 6LW. Email: west@ messums.org. Telephone: (Thurs - Mon) +44 (0) 1747 445042.
8 March - 8 June
Strength and Resilience: Somerset Women in the Second World War. An exhibition exploring the impact of 19391945 on the lives of four women with links to the West Country, including photographs by celebrated photographer Lee Miller and spy Odette Hallowes. The exhibition marks the 80th anniversary of VE Day. Exhibition at Somerset Rural Life Museum, Glastonbury.
Until 9 March
Restless Earth Paintings by Anthony Garratt and Frances Hatch ARWS, with paintings and ceramics by selected gallery artists, and furniture by Petter Southall at Sladers Yard, Contemporary Art & Craft Gallery, West Bay, Bridport, Dorset DT6 4EL. Open: Weds to Sat 10–4pm. All work can be viewed on www.sladersyard.co.uk. Telephone: 01308 459511 or email: gallery@sladersyard.co.uk.
11 March - 4 April
The Blessed Virgin Mary of my Dreams An exhibition to celebrate the latest book from winner of the King’s Gold Medal for Poetry, Selima Hill, in collaboration with Moby Hill (artist), Archie Stokes-Faiers (stonemason), Rod Hill (textiles) and Luke Thompson of Guillemot Press. Free entry. Open Tuesday – Saturday. 9.30am - 3pm. Ilminster Arts Centre, The Meeting House, East Street, Ilminster,
The Dorset Pavillion Celebrating the bounty of Dorset - this exhibition challenges conventional expectations of regional art by offering a powerful, tactile, and evocative exhibition that speaks to deep time; the land: the political; the literary; and the historical. Returning from its triumphant debut in Venice where it had over 7000 visitors from 30 countries – it presents an earthy mix of contemporary artworks from 28 artists and provides a refreshing local, visceral, raw and playful exhibition that celebrates the parish-sized thinking that is both resurgent and under threat. Bridport Arts Centre, South Street, Bridport DT6 3NR.
15 March - 11 May
Philip Sutton RA Portrait of the Artist. Seventy years of self-portraits, the places they were painted and more. Sladers Yard, Contemporary Art, Furniture & Craft Gallery · Licensed Café, West Bay, Dorset DT6 4EL. www.sladersyard.co.uk. 01308 459511.
Until 16 March
Artists in Purbeck: Spirit of Place a groundbreaking exhibition at the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum in Bournemouth. This first-of-its-kind exhibition celebrates the rich artistic legacy of Purbeck, Dorset, through the eyes of renowned and emerging artists. It is a captivating exploration of the Isle of Purbeck’s diverse landscapes, including quarries, seaside towns, and iconic landmarks like Corfe Castle. The exhibition features over 70 works and provides a unique opportunity to explore the Isle of Purbeck through the eyes of artists. Russell-Cotes Art Gallery & Museum, Bournemouth. www.russellcotes.com.
22 March – 26 April
Ashish Ghadiali: Sensing the Planet Debut solo exhibition by filmmaker and environmental artist, Ashish Ghadiali. Through his works, Ghadiali seeks to reveal how racial justice serves as a door towards intimacy with the life of our planet in crisis. Tuesday – Saturday, 10am – 5pm. Thelma Hulbert Gallery, Dowell St, Honiton EX14 1LX thelmahulbert.com. 01404 45006.
Until 23 March
Drawing on Dorset celebrates the county as a source of inspiration for artists. In 2019, Dorset Visual Arts presented an open-call project which invited submissions from artists who make drawings in, of or about Dorset. A launch exhibition also saw the publication of a book of the same name with essays by Tania Kovats and Professor Anita Taylor and accompanying statements from the 35 selected artists. The exhibition then toured around the county, allowing artists and audiences to contemplate and engage with this essential component – the catalyst – of creative investigation. The Sherborne, Newland, Sherborne, Dorset DT9 3JG. https://thesherborne.uk/
29 March – 12 April
Tom Halifax Lost Property A Retrospective exhibition. The Allsop Gallery, Bridport Arts Centre, South Street Bridport. Open from 10am – 4pm Tuesday – Saturday Free entry. www.bridport-arts.com
Until 21 April
An Uncommon Thread Featuring Rachael Louise Bailey, Max Boyla, KV Duong, Charlotte Edey, Nour Jaouda, Lindsey Mendick, Jack O’Brien, Nengi Omuku, Tai Shani and Georg Wilson. The exhibition is in collaboration with Alice Black, Berntson Bhattacharjee, Carl Freedman Gallery, Gathering, Ginny on Frederick, Pippy Houldsworth Gallery and Union Pacific. ‘An Uncommon Thread’ features 10 contemporary artists living and working in the UK. Hauser & Wirth Somerset, Durslade Farm, Dropping Lane, Bruton, Somerset BA10 0NL.
Until 11 May
A British Museum Partnership Exhibition with Colchester + Ipswich Museums delves into the lesser-known history of gladiatorial contests in Roman Britain. The exhibition showcases iconic objects like the Colchester Vase, depicting a real gladiatorial battle, and the Hawkedon Helmet, the only confirmed gladiatorial armour from Roman Britain. These artefacts, along with others, reveal the violent spectacles that entertained the public and underscore the significance of gladiators in Roman culture. The exhibition will feature finds from Maumbury Rings in Dorchester, a unique site originally a Neolithic henge that was transformed into a Roman amphitheatre nearly 2,000 years ago. This adaptation reflects the cultural imprint of the Romans on Britain. Free as part of Museum entry. Dorset Museum & Art Gallery, High West Street, Dorchester DT1 1XA. www.dorsetmuseum.org.
Who’s behind ‘The Art of the Photograph’?
A NEW series of articles about photographers working in the wider local community starts in the April edition of Marshwood+, the online issue of The Marshwood Vale Magazine Published monthly online and every two months in print, The Marshwood Vale Magazine will be learning about local photographers, as well as those drawn to the people and places that make up the area in and around the Jurassic Coast. In April we meet Neil Barnes, a Bridport based photographer whose work spans the decades. From photographing the Norfolk floods in 1976 to the recent storms at West Bay, his work features breathtaking landscapes that adorn the walls of many homes and businesses. Visit www.marshwoodvale.com to subscribe to our newsletter alert so you never miss an issue.
‘JUST looking with all your attention and painting what you see’ is how Philip Sutton RA describes his technique as an artist. The results are powerful. Vast euphoric celebrations of nature. Heart-stopping selfportraits and tiny, tender drawings.
At 96, Sutton still paints every day from his home near the sea at West Bay in Dorset. His work has never fitted into any box. Always totally original and true to himself, it is deservedly and gloriously celebrated.
From Saturday March 5th to Sunday May 11th, Sladers Yard in West Bay will exhibit some of his many self-portraits.
Born in 1928, Philip Sutton RA has been painting brilliantly observed paintings for the past 70 years. Running through his work is a rich vein of selfportraits that chart his life from 1952 to the present. Sutton’s love of theatre and Shakespeare in particular, manifests in the costumes, hats, and flamboyant birds in his paintings, but most of all in his marvellously expressive face.
Undoubtedly, some of his finest paintings, the selfportraits collected in this selling exhibition range from tiny 20cm square to 120cm square, expressing every human state from wild and powerful to pitiful and deranged. The artist himself, however, is clear-headed and full of extraordinary memories and stories that chart the
history of the last century. Painted with a freedom and clarity originally inspired by Matisse but always entirely his own, he conveys his poetic vision through his brush. Philip Sutton RA Portrait of the Artist will be at Sladers Yard, West Bay, from 15 March to Sunday, 11 May. Visit www.sladersyard.co.uk for full details.
Philip Sutton RA The Clown from Manorbier 1991
PREVIEW March
Never too much – 45 years of The Specials
LYME REGIS
THE Marine Theatre at Lyme Regis celebrates the 45th anniversary of the release of Too Much Too Young, when the Specials Ltd come to the venue on Saturday 15th March, re-creating the energy and enthusiasm of the legendary two-tone and ska band that formed in Coventry in 1977.
The band, which included Terry Hall and Neville Staple, was also known as The Special AKA. The lead track of their 1980 The Special AKA Live! EP was Too Much Too Young, which reached No 1 in the UK singles charts.
The Specials Ltd aim to show younger fans what they missed.
March at the Marine also includes General Levy, a veteran of the UK Urban Music scene on 1st March, chill out duo The ORB comes to Lyme on Friday 7th, Adrian Cox Trio explore an alternative ragtime repertoire on Thursday 13th, Jamaican DJ and MC Congo Natty is at the Marine on Friday 21st, folk rockers Mad Dog Mcrea return on 22nd and Oisin Leech, the Irish folk singer and songwriter will be introducing his music to Dorset fans on Wednesday 26th.
Brit pop singer songwriter John Power is at Lyme Regis on Friday 28th and Bristol MC and songwriter Gardna on Saturday 29th and the very musical month of March finishes with Jazz by the Sea with Opa Rosa, who play the music of the Balkans and Eastern Europe to the Dorset Coast on Sunday 30th.
Fifty years of music in the museum DORCHESTER
THE Dorset Museum Music Society celebrates its 50th season in 2025, with a full programme of concerts performed in the beautiful setting of the Victorian Hall on Wednesday evenings.
The anniversary season, which began in February with a performance by Californian-born and Lithuania-raised pianist Ignas Maknickas, continues on 26th March when Pocket Sinfonia brings a programme of works by Mozart and Beethoven to Dorchester. The four musicians perform classical orchestral works as they would have been experienced in 19th century provincial England.
They are followed on 23rd April by violin/piano duo Amber Emson and Leah Nicholson, who have chosen Beethoven’s Violin Concerto No 3 , Brahms Violin Sonata No 2 , Lili Boulanger’s 2 Morceaux: Nocturne and Cortege , and Franck’s Sonata for Violin and Piano .
The season continues on 21st May with the Trio Archai Piano Trio, winners of the 72nd Royal Overseas League Competition of 2024, who will play works by Mendelssohn, Block and Schubert. On 25th June Lumas Wind Quintet comes to Dorchester to play music by Coleman, Shostakovich, Nielsen, Reicha, Milhaud and Lalo Schifrin and the Fibonacci Quartet will give the July concert, on 23rd, with a programme of Haydn, Janacek and Smetana.
The Victorian Hall seats only 120, so early booking is recommended. All concerts begin at 7.30. For more details visit the website, https:// dorsetmuseummusicsociety.uk/
Mark Steel and the Leopard DORCHESTER
MARK Steel is coming to Dorchester, but this time he will be poking fun at himself. His new show, The Leopard in My House, details his battle with throat cancer. It’s a battle he is winning, but only his rapier wit could make a comedy show out of it.
Cancer has done nothing to dull his acute political observations or quash his “frankly bonkers” energy. See him at the Thomas Hardye School Theatre on Friday 7th March, starting at 7.30.
He is followed on Saturday 8th by the Pasadena Roof Orchestra, still re-creating the sounds of the golden era of music from the 1920s and 30s. They have been delighting audiences with music from Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Duke Ellington and hot jazz for the past 50 years.
The school hall next hosts a tribute to music of a more recent era, when Awake My Soul - The Mumford and Sons story comes to Dorset on Saturday 22nd March. Four musicians in tweed waistcoats and skinny
The Specials LTD coming to the Marine Theatre in Lyme Regis
jeans recreate the music and story of the stomping folk rock band.
On 29th March, Dorset favourites Ninebarrow are back with Dorchester Arts at the school, Jon Whitley and Jay LaBouchardiere combine beautiful vocal harmonies and melodies, performing songs inspired by and rooted in the landscape and history of the British Isles.
A Comic Twist on Dickens TOURING
ARTSREACH favourites Gavin Robertson and Nicholas Collett return to Dorset for three performances of The Ghost of a Smile, two of Charles Dickens’s creepy tales given a comic twist.
“Like The Woman in Black, but funnier and with fewer people,” says adaptor/director Gavin.
The Queer Chair, from The Pickwick Papers, tells the story of Tom Smart, who, sheltering from a storm for the night, gets more than he bargained for from a wizened and debauched piece of furniture. In The Ghosts of the Mail, after a welllubricated supper in Edinburgh Old Town, Jack Martin climbs into a compound containing the derelict skeletons of old coaches, and he falls asleep. He wakes up as a passenger on an 18th century mail coach, with three creepy companions.
The Ghost of a Smile will be at Sandford Orcas Village Hall on Friday 7th March, Powerstock Hut on Saturday 8th and Shillingstone’s Portman Hall on Sunday 9th March, all starting at 7.30pm.
Dorset playwright’s Pot Licker TOURING
DORSET-based writer Ed Viney’s dark comedy Pot Licker is on a tour of the county in March. The play, which began life at Poole’s Lighthouse Arts Centre at a new writing event, looks at what happens when three teachers decide to bend the rules after coming across a bag of drugs in their school’s lost property. Rich, Kris and Zara should report the drugs straight away, but the school faces imminent closure, so is there another way to deal with the bag?
“It’s about what happens when good, respectable people do something bad with inevitably disastrous consequences,” says Ed. Ed Viney took Pot Licker to the first Pipeline Session for new writing at the Lighthouse in January last year. An excerpt was rehearsed and read by actors. “I was relieved when it was well received, and afterwards, in the theatre bar, between Lighthouse and Dorchester Arts, we started a plan of how this might work. The rural touring network Artsreach came on board.
“For me as a writer, to hear the words lifted
The Ghost of a Smile will visit villages around the area in March
off the page and spoken aloud by performers is invaluable. That’s when I knew I had something worth developing, and now, a year later, we are getting ready to go on tour.”
Ed has worked with theatres across the south west and nationally, including the RSC, Bath Theatre Royal and Bristol Old Vic.
You can see Pot Licker at Poole Lighthouse (12th and 13th March), Dorchester Arts at the Corn Exchange on 14th and 15th March, Weymouth College Bay Theatre on 18th, The Royal Manor Theatre on Portland on 19th, Halstock Village Hall on 20th, Barnfield Theatre in Exeter on 21st and 22nd March, Bridport Arts Centre on 26th and Bath Theatre Royal’s Ustinov Studio from 27th to 29th March.
March’s Concerts in the West TOURING
THERE will be a warm welcome for Scottish pianist Alasdair Beatson when he returns to Dorset and Somerset for the March series of Concerts in the West, starting, as always with the coffee concert at Bridport Arts Centre, on Friday 14th at 11.30am. The tour continues at the evening at Ilminster Arts Centre at 7.30, and the final recital is at Crewkerne’s Dance House on Saturday 15th, also starting at 7.30. The programme includes Eight Variations of a Theme
of Beethoven by Ferdinand Ries, Faure’s Theme and Variations and Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata in F Minor
Beatson is renowned for his wide repertoire on both modern and historical instruments, from Classical, early Romantic and French music and contemporary composers. He is also a regular member of chamber ensembles and quartets.
Bournemouth Sinfonietta Choir Athelhampton
ON Saturday 5th July, Bournemouth Sinfonietta Choir will be travelling west to Athelhampton House for a special musical event, Athelhampton: a Musical Portrait will take its strictly limited audience on a musical journey exploring the house, its gardens and its fascinating history.
The Great Hall was built in 1485, and remains largely unchanged as generations have moved through the house and its beautiful grounds.
The performance starts at 5.30pm. For more details, visit www.bschoir.org.uk
Multi-instrumental Cornish trio Touring
JACLARABAG is a new collaboration between three of Cornwall’s best known theatre musicians, from Kneehigh, Miracle and Wildworks, among others.
Alasdair Beatson will be at Bridport, Ilminster and Crewkerne in March
Surviving Sexual Abuse BRIDPORT
A FEMALE-led dance and theatre project called WomanEwer comes to Bridport Arts Centre on Friday 21st March with a challenging performance of I Have a Bruise.
The company’s productions are based on real-life stories performed by five professional dancers who are all survivors of sexual abuse. Although the work deals with difficult subject matter, it also celebrates womanhood, survival and strength.
First seen in France as J’ai un bleu, I have a Bruise is choreographed and directed by the company artistic director Laura Kenyon.
Artsreach is bringing them Dorset in March. Jim Carey on accordion, trombone and guitar, Giles Kings on clarinet, bagpipes, whistle and saxophone and Claire Ingleheart on fiddle and clarinet, combine music and vocals to combine eclectic folk songs from across the world, with a generous dose of original material. The trio is at village halls at Buckland Newton on Friday 14th March, East Stour on Saturday 15th and Corfe Castle on Sunday 16th, all starting at 7.30.
Tenebrae at St Mary’s Dorchester
THE beautiful acoustic of Dorchester’s St Mary’s Church sets off the exquisite sounds of Tenebrae on Sunday 23rd March at 7pm.
The programme spans Renaissance choral works to contemporary masterpieces, including works by Lassus, Gibbons, Tallis, Weelkes, Byrd, Britten, Chilcott and Judith Weir.
After the 39 Steps TOURING
IF you loved The 39 Steps, look out for Hannay Stands Fast, the sequel on a national tour with Our Star Theatre and coming to Honiton’s Beehive Centre on 1st March at 7.30.
Adapted by David Edgar from John Buchan’s tale, Hannay Stands Fast sees our dashing hero on a mission to thwart a deadly threat to England. Like The 39 Steps, the show is performed by four actors playing a total of 53 characters in countless locations, created with trunks, crates, suitcases and ladders.
It will be back in the area at Teignmouth Pavilions on Saturday 22nd March, Taunton Brewhouse on 25th, Swanage Mowlem on Thursday 8th May, Dorchester Corn Exchange on Friday 9th and Sidmouth Manor Pavilion on Saturday 24th May.
Jaclarabag coming to Dorset in March
Screen Time
with Nic Jeune
Top Six at the Flix
Bridport Arts Centre
I’m No Angel (1933)
Mae West, slinging sexually-charged oneliners left and right. There’s nothing shocking about her words today, but at the time she was at the cutting edge. In fact, after the production code started really being enforced, this film was effectively banned for decades. S P Murphy. SeanPaulMurphyville.
Bridport Electric Palace
A Complete Unknown (2024)
What A Complete Unknown shows brilliantly, however, is the way that music in the right hands becomes a weapon. The galvanising power of The Times They Are a-Changin’… is thrilling. Better still are the sweetly savage harmonies between Dylan and his former love Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), whose note-perfect performance is the film’s secret ingredient. Wendy Ide. The Guardian.
Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy (2025)
Mad About the Boy is a heartfelt, charming return to the chaos surrounding the one and only Bridget Jones. You might even shed a few tears. Laura Venning. Empire
Plaza Cinema Dorchester
Mickey 17 (2025)
“In most sci-fi films and fantasy stories, eternal life is treated as something sublime, spiritual, profound,” he says. “I was really captivated by the idea that human printing is not respectful at all. You’re literally reproducing humans like an inkjet printer.” With Mickey 17 and Mickey 18 running amok, that printer is about to jam. Somebody call tech support. Bong Joon Ho. Director (Parasite)
Mubi
Three Colors Blue (1993), White (1994), Red (1994)
In the trilogy, “Blue” is the anti-tragedy, “White” is the anti-comedy, and “Red” is the anti-romance. All three films hook us with immediate narrative interest. They are metaphysical through example, not theory: Kieslowski tells the parable but doesn’t preach the lesson. Roger Ebert. Roger Ebert.com
Chris Chibnall launches new book BRIDPORT
THE acclaimed writer of Broadchurch and show runner of Dr Who, Chris Chibnell, is on home ground when he launches his new book, Death at the White Hart, at Bridport Arts Centre on Monday 24th March.
The story is set in the picturesque Dorset village of Fleetcombe, which has two pubs, a small playground and enough charming cottages to keep a thatcher in business. It’s the last place you’d expect a grizzly murder.
A body is discovered tied to a chair in the middle of a nearby road, with a stag’s antlers on its head. The victim is soon identified as the landlord of the White Hart pub. Detective Nicola Bridge is not short of suspects. In a small village, the pub landlord knows everyone’s business but beneath the idyllic surface, the residents of Fleetcombe have plenty they want to keep hidden.
He will be talking to Jennie Godfrey, the author of best-selling The List of Suspicious Things
Sleepless in DORCHESTER
THERE are plenty of doctors who have had second careers as comedians, but Ed Patrick may be the first anaesthetist to make the leap. His show, Catch Your Breath: The secret life of a sleepless anaesthetist, comes to Dorchester Arts at the Corn Exchange on Friday 21st March at 7.30.
Ed has performed at the Edinburgh Fringe and hosts the Comedians’ Surgery Podcast, where he speaks to fellow comedians about their health stories. He has also appeared on Have I Got News for You?
His show is also at Portsmouth Guildhall on 28th March, Forest Arts in New Milton on 29th March and at Bridport Arts Centre on 5th April.
Chris Chibnell is launching his book at Bridport Arts Centre in March
Ed Patrick will be in Dorchester on March 21st
Strange Boy
EYPE
Strange Boy comes to St Peter’s Church, Eype Centre for the Arts on Saturday 22nd March, 7.30 to perform music from their debut album Love Remains
Described as ‘enthralling, elegant ballads’ by MOJO and ‘the most beautiful melancholy’ in Rolling Stone, the record itself was recorded largely in the crypt and nave of a Gothic Church. So the surroundings of St Peter’s will be the perfect setting to hear their unique blend of raw songwriting, rich electronic textures, soaring vocals and tender piano.
While the band is based in London, for Matt Huxley (one half of the duo), this will be a homecoming gig, having grown up and now returned to live in Bridport.
Support comes from multi-instrumentalist composer and singer Robert Lee and friends.
Tickets via @StrangeBoyMusic or https://circle-dance.eventcube.io.
The Young Lit Fix
The Beck
By Anthony McGowan
Cover illustration by David Wardle
Published by Barrington Stoke
Paperback £7.99
Reviewed by Nicky Mathewson
THE Beck is a fabulous piece of modern fiction full of Anthony McGowan’s trademark humour. Beautifully produced by Barrington Stoke to be very readable and accessible especially for Dyslexic readers.
Kyle’s grandad has always seemed weird to him, his house, his smell and his wig. The house in shades of brown and orange was the last place he wanted to be, but mum and dad were dumping him there while they went to “sort some things out in town” which was obviously code for something. Something was going on with mum and dad that Kyle couldn’t figure out, but they didn’t seem completely happy.
After a reluctant walk down to the beck (stream) with his grandad Kyle learns a bit about the natural world on his doorstep and the wildlife living there which he had no idea about. Grandad isn’t so dull after all and his acerbic wit and quest for the preservation of the beck win Kyle over.
Their quest to save the beck from development turns into an adventure that brings them closer and helps to create a bond that is full of love and respect.
School bullies and family tension make Kyle’s life a lonely one at times, but new friends can be found where you least expect them and this story is wonderfully uplifting. I loved it.
Perfect for anyone with a reading age of 9+, interest age 10+
10% off for Marshwood Vale readers at The Bookshop on South Street, Bridport. 01308 422964 www.dorsetbooks.com
Matt Huxley and Kieran Brunt perform at Eype Church in March
Drax of Drax Hall
By Paul Lashmar, Pluto Press, London 2025
Review by Christopher Roper, January 2025
SOME 70 years ago my history teacher began a class by drumming his fingers on his desk top, and saying, “I want you to hear the squire on his horse, trotting through the eighteenth century, property, property, property.” The improvement in agricultural methods in this country, and the expanding wealth arising from West Indian sugar plantations were two sides of the same coin. They formed the economic base for Britain’s global mercantile empire that extended through the eighteenth century, and the Industrial Revolution of the nineteenth century. In Drax of Drax Hall, Paul Lashmar tells the story, of how “One British Family Got Rich (and Stayed Rich) from Sugar and Slavery”, as a lens that illuminates many interwoven strands of British history from the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII down to the present century.
Two fixed points in his story are Charborough Park in East Dorset, familiar to anyone passing on the A31 from its long wall and elaborate gates, one crowned by a five-legged stag, and Drax Hall in Barbados, first settled by James Drax in the early 17th Century, where the Drax family still grow sugar in the 21st century. James Drax was not just another settler; he pioneered the use of enslaved Africans in growing and processing sugar, and embedded the concept of chattel slavery, unknown in British Law, under which the enslaved person loses all rights as a human being and is treated in the estate accounts as another form of livestock, alongside mules, horses and cattle.
James Drax calculated that it was cheaper to work enslaved Africans to death over five to ten years, and replace them with new imports, than to treat them humanely and lengthen their working lives. Drax’s methods, geared to the integrated production of refined sugar, rum and molasses, were innovative, highly efficient and hugely profitable, allowing the owner to “live like a prince,” according to a contemporary visitor. His system of production was widely copied and became the template for producing tobacco and cotton using enslaved African labour in the southern colonies of North America, underpinned by a refusal to recognise the common humanity of those enslaved.
The full name of the present owner of the two properties is Richard Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax, with the extravagant hyphenations charting matrimonial alliances, contracted when the family lacked a male heir, and the story of the Erles is as interesting as that of the Drax family and deeply
linked to Dorset. Walter Erle began his adult life as a skilful musician at the court of Henry VIII, when the dissolution of the monasteries opened a field of opportunity to the quick-witted and ambitious. At the beginning of Henry’s reign religious orders are estimated to have owned 25% of all England’s agricultural land, and with the expulsion of the monks, it all passed into private hands. Since the monks had been the main providers of education and medical care to the rural population, it’s not surprising that this massive transfer of wealth was not universally welcomed, and resisted in northern and western England.
Walter Erle accumulated land through a combination of grants from his royal patrons, speculative purchases from the Court of Augmentations, the office charged with selling off monastic lands, and an advantageous marriage to Mary Wykes, who brought Charborough into the family as part of a shared inheritance. By the time his son Thomas died in 1597, he owned 11,000 acres, much of it around Charborough. His descendants navigated the religious and political upheavals of the 17th Century with skill, siding with Parliament in the run up to the Civil War, but avoiding involvement with the execution of the King, ready to welcome the Restoration, assist in the suppression of Monmouth, but ready to support William III against James II both in England and Ireland. Several held seats in Parliament.
The dynastic twists and turns are complicated, but following them is eased by excellent family trees, and a well-structured index. Anyone interested in understanding our history, and particularly the history of Dorset, should read Paul Lashmar’s engrossing book, which brings both academic rigour and journalistic flair to bear on his material. I liked the way he lets the facts speak for themselves, calling in contemporary sources to buttress the narrative, without attempting to apply twenty first century value judgements to seventeenth century sensibilities.
He deals with the issue of reparations well, recognising its complexity, but not letting the Draxes off the hook, contrasting Richard Drax’s attitude with those of the Trevelyan and Lascelles families. In his Introduction, Paul refers to how little he and others of his generation (me included) learned at school about Britain’s role in developing the transatlantic slave trade, and its economic importance. He mentions at one point how Charborough Park and Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park could be interchangeable, and I recalled how Fanny Price’s request that her uncle, Sir Thomas Bertram, tell her about the slave trade, is met with “dead silence” from her family. Drax of Drax Hall makes a significant contribution to penetrating the curtain of silence.
One message I took from this admirable book is a quote from James Baldwin that heads the Introduction, “Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced”. Paul brings us face to face with our history.
Published by Pluto Press in March 2025. Hardcover ISBN: 9780745350516. eBook ISBN: 9780745350523
The
Click Here for an Easy Read version of this article
Whalebone Theatre by Joanna Quinn
Review
by John Davis
I TRY to avoid what I term door-stop fiction books. You know the ones, they weigh in at 600 plus pages and, if you manage to persevere, tend to flag through the middle sections as the characters settle into an unexciting routine and the plot loses its traction.
As far as size is concerned, this is one such book but it appealed because it is set in Dorset and has been written by a local author.
The story-line encompasses the life and times of several generations of the same land-owning family who run the fictional Chilcombe estate bordering the south coast. Starting at the end of the First World War, we are navigated through the 1920s and 30s until concluding in 1945.
Central to everything are the three siblings, Christabel, Florence and Digby, who graduate from childlike play-acting on the beach and the escapism of the local woods and beaches to undercover work in Nazi occupied France when they are adults.
The writing style is refreshingly inventive. Some chapters contain letters, postcards, diary entries, newspaper articles and lists as a way to move events along. The author, who teaches creative writing, also infuses the narrative with some unique descriptive phrasing like “….November rushes in, dragging winter behind it like a trail of rattling cans.” And there is room for philosophy as well, “War might depend on people who don’t flinch but humanity rather relies on those who do.”
In brief, this is a book to be savoured. It requires time if it is to be fully appreciated. If there is one slight quibble, it’s that the main driver of tension, especially in the final third, comes from actual historical events rather than from within the characters themselves and it takes those reliable baddies, the Nazis, to help the adrenaline to pulse late on.
Published by Penguin 2023. ISBN: 9780241994146
Book ahead
Book now and always have something to look forward to.
Paul Young, Hardye Theatre, Dorchester, April 9. Tickets from: www.dorchesterarts.org.uk.
Catrin Finch and Aoife Ni Bhriain, The David Hall, April 12. Tickets from: www.thedavidhall.com.
The South, Electric Palace Bridport, May 17. Tickets from: www.electricpalace.org.uk.
The Dub Pistols, Marine Theatre, Lyme Regis, April 4. Tickets from: www.marinetheatre.com
Reviews by John Davis
WITH all the emphasis in recent years on the works of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, the Brontes and Thomas Hardy, George Eliot is a Victorian novelist who often slips under the radar.
Eliot was really Mary Ann Evans who chose to write under a pseudonym because she believed it would increase her chances of getting her work published.
Silas Marner is one of the few books that I return to after previously reading which is why I recommend it here.
The title character is a linen weaver falsely accused of stealing money from the strict religious group to which he belongs. He has probably been framed by his best friend who makes matters even worse by marrying the woman Silas is engaged to. Banished from the sect, his life shattered, his trust in God lost and his heart broken, Silas re-locates to a village in rural Warwickshire where he continues to work as a weaver although living a more reclusive life.
He toils all hours. His work is highly skilled and the pay is good. He becomes a hoarder of the hard-earned coins, many of them golden, which he loves to count. One foggy night the coins are stolen and Silas sinks back into a deep depression.
Then, one snowy New Year’s Eve, a two-year-old waif wanders into his cottage. The child’s mother is found dead in the snow outside and Silas takes on the role of adoptive parent. He has been robbed of his material gold but symbolically has it been returned to him in the form of this golden-haired youngster who he names Eppie?
Other notable novels written by Eliot and worthy of attention include Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss and Middlemarch, described by Virginia Woolf as “one of the few English novels written for grown-up people.”
Published by Penguin Classics
Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan
THERE were two reasons for choosing this title. The first was the fact that Jodi Picoult is a well-established American novelist I’d not sampled before. The second was to see how characterisation, narrative and plot come together when two authors wield the pen (or, more likely these days, the keys).
How do joint authors combine their talents? Do they sit around the table with coffee while one dictates and the other types, adding ideas of their own, or do they use elaborate display boards full of flow diagrams, photographs, arrows and memo notes like they do in crime detection programmes?
Whatever method this pair used it works. With an intricate plot, it’s not the easiest read but persevere with the frequent time scale changes, the social issues that are raised like abuse and gender and more twists and turns than a mountain road through the Alps.
In essence, the lead character Olivia has escaped her abusive marriage and returned to her roots to take charge of the family beekeeping concern.
Her son, Asher, was six at the time but now he is fully grown and in his last year at high school. Kind, good looking and athletic, he is popular at school and has a girlfriend, Lily.
The action ramps up when Lily is found dead at the bottom of a flight of stairs and Asher becomes the local detective’s prime suspect. Perhaps Asher has hidden things from her, so to what lengths will Olivia go in order to prove her son’s innocence?
Footnote: On completion, consider whether the choice of the title has importance as a metaphor for the story as a whole. In actuality, mad honey is reddish in colour and is made from the nectar and pollen of rhododendrons. While sweet to the taste it can be toxic once digested.
Published by Hodder
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Selima Hill launches illustrated new poetry with exhibition in Ilminster
DORSET poet Selima Hill’s latest book The Blessed Virgin Mary of My Dreams is an illustrated sequence of short ‘poems in prose’, published by Guillemot Press.
Awarded the Kings Gold Medal for Poetry in 2024, Selima lives by the sea in Dorset with her dog Edward.
To celebrate the launch of the book there is an exhibition of the original illustrations by Moby Hill at the Ilminster Arts Centre. Also on show are works in response to Selima poems by Rod hill (textiles) and Archie Stokes-Faiers (stone mason).
This month we feature a short poem from the collection with illustrations by Toby Hill.
First I’m Going to Have to Apologise
First I’m going to have to apologise and then, because it will have been so difficult, I’m going to have to ask you to leave; you’re going to kiss the nape of my neck and walk away without another word.
The exhibition will be at Ilminster Arts Centre, The Meeting Houes, East Street, TA19 0AN from 11 March - 4 April, Tuesday - Saturday 9.30 - 3.00.
Royal Doulton Dinner Service.
Harvest Garland design - 52 items in superb condition. £45 ono. Please phone 01404 42081 for details
Vintage Watkins Copycat (not original case), WEM Westminster amp, Maya guitar. All working. £450. Please phone 01404 42081 for details.
13Kg (Green) Butane gas cylinder, half full. £55. An elderly but good quality barbecue used with it comes for free. 7Kg(Blue) Calor gas cylinder, fullish, I think £40. Flymo lawn rake in very
good condition £15. Telephone Allan on 07787837281.
French cast iron ‘Marmite’ pot on legs and with lid. Not really suitable for cooking but attractive and decorative for garden or interior decoration. 31cm diameter, 30 cm high and 40 cms overall with handles. Happy to send photos. £40. 01300 341637. Electric fire to stand in a fireplace or against a wall. Attractive design in black enamel with brass detailing. Moving flame effect showing through artificial coals. 2 kilowatt output or
FOR SALE
just flame effect. Very little used similar to current model called Burley Welham which costs £479. Photos available. Free delivery in the area of the magazine. £80 ono. 07973 327 077.
Keen Mens ‘Pyrenees’ Walking boots. Brand new size 8 leather mens walking boots, still unwrapped in box. Bought them to walk the Pyrenees this summer but sadly my walking days are over as a result of a foot injury. These are top quality boots valued at well over £100. Sell for £85, 01300 341637.
Stuart. Will send photo on request.
BOSS me-50 COSM Guitar multiful effects pedal. studio 10s Music (Gibson Baldwin) ed. + electric guitar. £110.00. ph 07494057654.
Automatic Folding Machine for A4 Paper. Made by Martin Yale model number P7200. Only £50, similar on ebay, is over twice the price. Lyme Regis 07425 171961.
MS Brenmen 1911 bronze bell and anchor + calendar 1986 -2035 compass. £50.00. phone 07494057654.
Large Circular Saw , probably 60 years
old, ring for more information. Lyme Regis 07425 171961. Giant Bike model Revel frame good condition spares or repair £35 Lyme Regis 07397 155910.
Toyota Industrial straight stitch, needle feed machine. Perfect working order. £250 ono. Tel for details: 01395 578880. Optolyth telescope TBS80 angled, little used with eyepieces x20WW, x30WW,x20-60 zoom, cover and tripod. £295ono. Please phone 01404 42081
The River Char gets a Health Check
WHEN government monitoring of the River Char was cut a few years ago, local volunteers set out to assess water quality. Their findings appear in a landmark report:
1. Bacteria: E. coli and enterococci (a serious risk to human health) routinely exceeded safe levels at all the group’s test sites, including Charmouth Lagoon—a popular spot for families to swim near the beach. After heavy rain, numbers spiked by up to 1,000%, probably due to agricultural and road runoff, and septic tank overflows. Wessex Water’s storm overflows are also involved.
2. A Chemical Cocktail: levels of phosphorus, aluminium and iron (harmful to aquatic life) surge after heavy rainfall. Weedkillers and insecticides were also found.
3. Glimmers of Hope: surveys revealed reasonable populations of mayflies, caddisflies, bullheads and even young eels. Who’s Responsible?
The Report points at intensive farming practices (e.g. poor slurry management); homeowners (some fail to maintain their septic tanks); and Wessex Water (storm overflows). But it says we are all implicated: some gardeners use toxic pesticides and weedkillers; many pet owners use environmentally toxic wormers and flea treatments; many of us put chemicals, medicines and poisons into the drains and have investments/pensions in companies that make products that poison the environment.
We can all reduce the pollution that we are responsible for. But many farmers cannot afford to transition to sustainable agriculture. Some householders cannot afford the £10,000+ cost to replace an old septic tank or the increase in water bills that are needed for Wessex Water to upgrade its infrastructure faster.
The citizen scientists of the River Char Action Group acknowledge that, without government leadership and finance, there’s little hope for the future of our river.
Read the report at www.riverchar.org.
By Andrew Carey
WANTED
Coins wanted. Part or full collections purchased for cash. Please phone John on 01460 62109 or 07980 165047. July 24
Dave buys all types of tools 01935 428975
Do you have a shed / garage full of old tools, car bits, unfinished projects etc? I buy job-lots of vintage items. Also enamel signs & slot machines & complete collections, 07875677897 Jan 24
Vintage & antique textiles, linens, costume buttons etc. always sought by Caroline Bushell. Tel. 01404 45901. Jan 25
Collectables, bygones, vintage, autojumble, Job-lots & collections a specialty.
Good prices paid 07875677897 mar
Secondhand tools. All trades and crafts. Old and modern. G. Dawson. 01297 23826. www.secondhandtools. co.uk.
Stamps & Coins wanted by collector / investor. We are keen to purchase small or large collections at this time. Tel Rod 01308 863790 or 07802261339.
Lightweight cottons [Liberty prints, shirts, etc] to make patchwork quilts for Project Linus to give to children in hospital. Diana 07768 223030
FURNITURE. Antique restoration and bespoke furniture. Furniture carefully restored and new commissions undertaken. French polishing and modern hand finishes. Phil Meadley. 01297 560335. phil.meadley@btinternet.com
Piano, violin, theory tuition at your home. Highly qualified teacher. Adults and children welcome. Beginners to advanced. Dr Thomas Gold 07917 835781.
Advertise Here Telephone 01308 423031 or email: info@marshwoodvale.com
WANTED
Tractors and Machinery, Pick-up Vans and Tippers. Best prices paid. Tel. 07971 866364.
