Community

MARKET KNOWLEDGE

SIMON STEVENS, SHERBORNE COUNTRY GARDENS

Welcome to The Sherborne Market! What brings you here?

Sherborne Market is everything that we are about. Being in the heart of our community and getting to meet and talk to our friends and customers whilst showcasing what we have to offer. The Sherborne Market is a fantastic way of getting our name out there and has led to some lovely new contacts whilst being a part of a thriving monthly event in the town.

Where have you travelled from?

We are very lucky and are only a stone’s throw away. We are based in Sherborne, which makes it very convenient to pop back and pick up anything that we may have forgotten. Such as our gazebo canopy last month!

Tell us about what you’re selling?

We specialise in reclaimed whisky barrels which go as everything from planters and water features to water butts and patio tables. We also supply locally crafted steel obelisks, vintage galvanised planters, milk churns and decorative garden pieces. Our theme is ‘English country gardens’ and we aim to provide quality, reclaimed, recycled, sustainable and natural items wherever possible that instantaneously become part of the garden.

Where and when did it all begin?

I previously worked in property maintenance and gardening. A long-term customer and friend who has a beautiful country cottage garden asked if I could get hold of some whisky barrel planters. We went in on a batch together and after repotting my acers and roses I sold the few that were left over which went quicker than expected. Once supplying half barrels, I was asked for a whole barrel, and then a water butt and so on, and so Sherborne Country Gardens was born. I love the outdoors and my garden and am a great believer in reusing existing resources. I have found this to be much more enjoyable than my previous main line of work and so made the decision to run with Sherborne Country Gardens and see where it may lead. I still use my customer’s garden as a benchmark, in that if I can picture it there, I would be interested in stocking it.

What do you enjoy most about selling at markets?

I am very much a people person and love to meet and greet. I worked in the hospitality industry when I was younger and being at the market takes me back to the days when you would never know who you would meet. I have met some incredible people at the market who have been kind enough to offer their wealth of advice and wisdom from their experience. I am always happy to chat and offer any help.

If you get the chance, which fellow stallholders here at Sherborne would you like to visit?

Colin at The Vintage Salvager has some amazing handcrafted pieces and if you haven’t been along to see him in front of the Abbey yet, I would highly recommend you do. You won’t be disappointed. We are working our way around, tasting the different cuisines of the world which can be found in Pageant Gardens. We haven’t had the same one twice as yet and have thoroughly enjoyed them all. I think we’ll be going for a Thai lunch this month.

Where can people find you on market day?

You can find us at the back of Pageant Gardens opposite the train station. Please do come along and say hello!

SHERBORNE U3A

Sue Thomas-Peter

This year the u3a movement, established over forty years ago to enhance and enable a positive later life, is planning a celebratory week with ‘u3a Day’ on Wednesday 21st September. Throughout its development it has been encouraging learning, staying active and socialising together. The UK network comprises in excess of 1,000 groups, in towns and cities up and down the country. As of January 2020, total membership exceeded 450,000.

Here in Sherborne, we have one of the highest numbers of members amongst the eighteen groups in Dorset, currently 765, and we have been gaining in membership throughout the over twenty years since our establishment. We currently have 68 groups of members meeting up to partake in a wide variety of activities ranging from art, bridge-playing, crafts, dancing, geology, hiking, languages, and lunch groups through to table tennis and walking with many subjects and topics in between. All of the activities are led by volunteer group leaders willing to share their skills and expertise. This is matched by the appreciation and enthusiasm of their group members.

Meeting up and socialising in larger numbers is also an important part of our year with regular coffee mornings in the Cheap Street Church Hall on the third Wednesday in each month. Our year begins with Enrolment Day, this year on Friday 2nd September, where our group leaders are ready to sign-up returning and new members to their activities, however, membership is available at any time throughout the year. Each year we hold a quiz and in the middle of the year the ‘Summer Showcase’ where we come together to have lunch and celebrate the achievements of the previous year. Around Christmas time we also enjoy another large get-together. In addition, there are often ‘one-off events’ for example earlier in the year we collaborated with Sherborne School in a concert where we enjoyed performances given by the pupils.

For a modest annual fee, you can join as many groups as you wish. Joining in is made easier when you are surrounded by others who have similar interests. If you would like to know more please make contact or come along to our Enrolment Day at The Digby Hall on Friday 2nd September. We look forward to meeting with you.

u3asites.org.uk/sherborne

___________________________________________ Friday 2nd September 10am-12pm Sherborne u3a Enrolment Day The Digby Hall, Hound Street sherborne.u3a@gmail.com 01935 814728

OUR MAN IN WESTMINSTER

Chris Loder MP, Member of Parliament for West Dorset

Image: Len Copland

When I speak to people from across the UK and even from around the world, the name of this patch of England – Dorset, never fails to get a mention. And the three things that people always think about when I mention Dorset never change: ‘beautiful countryside, beautiful beaches, and Thomas Hardy’.

Thomas Hardy is an author whose works you may or may not have read, but most likely you will have heard of him and the significance he holds to West Dorset in particular to this day. In Dorchester, we have Hardy’s birthplace, the house he designed and built himself, Max Gate, and a catalogue of buildings and backdrops that are unmistakably linked to his novels.

The OCR Examination board announced in late June this year that poems from several of the UK’s most beloved and respected writers were to be removed from the syllabus in favour of writers who in their opinion enhance the ‘diversity’ of the syllabus. Among the writers whose poems have been removed include Philip Larkin, John Keats, Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and Thomas Hardy.

And while this is just one exam board replacing a smattering of poems, I cannot help but think such a

move is throwing the proverbial baby out with the bath water. The sentiment this invokes is far deeper than it may look on the surface, because the implication is that these poets are not ‘diverse’ enough, or insufficiently able to fill the diversity criteria.

Whilst it is important that young people can engage and relate to the work and the people they study, I feel we need to move on from the notion that skin colour or sexual orientation alone forms the foundations of a writer’s ability to engage and connect with its intended audience.

Thomas Hardy, on the face of it, appears to fall into the category that many of the more evangelical preachers of identity politics demonise – a straight, wellto-do, old, white man. And a Victorian man at that.

What is often missed out is the fact that, in reality, Hardy was perhaps one of the most prominent champions of oppressed minority groups of his day.

Born to a poor family near Dorchester and son of a builder, Hardy’s family could not afford a university education and he started work as an architect. This soon took him into London, where his working-class roots made raw the social divisions and injustices in Victorian society. The more I learn about Thomas Hardy, the more I see myself in him. Born in Sherborne, son of a farmer, couldn’t afford a university education etc and this is probably why I feel compelled to write about him.

Hardy developed an interest in social reform, becoming a great admirer of the great English philosopher John Stuart Mill whose philosophy formed the bedrock of societal reforms from the mid-1800s to the 1900s.

In his novels, Hardy’s eloquent portrayals of Dorset were beautiful, capturing every colour, sound, shape and feeling with great clarity. But they never glossed over the struggles that rural working people faced. He never shied away from discussing the taboos and provided relatable, strong, and beloved protagonists that those who faced societal ostracisation could relate to and admire. Tess of the D’Urbervilles for example shocked Victorian high society with a strong heroine based on the dairymaids he would have seen working across West Dorset at the time - a single mother to a child, born through rape, who like thousands of young women at the time, became shunned and condemned by society. Her struggles mirrored those of millions then, and to some extent many even today.

One of the two Hardy poems removed from the syllabus, ‘The Man he Killed’ was written from the perspective of a man forced to kill another whom in any other circumstance, he could have shared a drink at a pub with, simply because he was his ‘foe’. It was inspired by Hardy’s disgust at the Boer War: the waste of life and destruction of human good nature. Hardy lived through the Boer wars and the First World War, watching thousands of young men from Dorset leave their families to die in a conflict for which he could see no reason.

I am not averse to evolution in literature but removing Hardy and other authors from the 18/1900s and replacing with new, much more recent and diverse middle-class authors in their entirety reduces exposure and I fear is part of a policy to erase still more of our very important history.

I believe the main question we need to consider is this: do we base the subjects our children learn about at school on the demographic attributes of the author so that young people relate to them? Or, as is my view, so we focus on the context of the literature and expand people’s minds with insights no longer available in living human memory.

chrisloder.co.uk

EBBX is an independent non-profit networking group that brings together business owners from Sherborne and the surrounding areas.

VISITORS MORNING

WEDNESDAY 21ST SEPTEMBER 7.00-9.00am at Castle Gardens, Sherborne

Booking essential Email our secretary to book your place info@sherbornebusinessexchange.co.uk www.sherbornebusinessexchange.co.uk SHERBORNE

The Early Bird Business Exchange

“Win the morning, win the day”