Community

STREET SPIRIT

Nico Goodden, Photographer

Caroline, aged 76, photographed near Sherborne Castle. An inquisitive mind, she graduated last year with a BA (Hons) in Design and Innovation through the Open University.

FULL CIRCLE

Adam Dimond, Stonemason

I’ve lived in Sherborne nearly all my life and have worked in and around the area for various stonemasonry firms for over 27 years. I restore old buildings and generally tackle all aspects of working with stone. It’s through Sherborne Stone that I came to work on this local project, which I was really pleased about. It’s been a case of things coming full circle on this job. I have a personal connection to Sherborne House, as I went to school there and, from first-hand experience, know just how impressive the building is.

It was a lovely place to go to school and I will always remember going up the painted staircase as a student – one because it’s quite something, and two because we had to be really careful! The Gryphon School was being built at the time and so I spent my last two years of schooling between Foster’s School and here at Sherborne House. I remember having science in the main building and music next door in the stable wing. It’s really great to see a building that I’ve got memories of being brought back to life, having sat doing nothing for so long. It also feels good to be working on it with my own hands.

When I left school in Sherborne, I became an apprentice for Richard Bowring – he was repairing stones on the Conduit at the time in the town centre. A few years later we worked on Sherborne Abbey and helped with the fitting of the main west side stained glass window – The Queen and Prince Philip came down to inspect the work for an Abbey service. Richard put me on a stonemasonry course at Weymouth College, and from there, I went to work for St Blaise – something that I am still really proud of to this day. They were the biggest stonemasonry company in the country and the legendary Ian Constantinides was my boss. I learnt a lot from Ian. He was part of SPAB (Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings) and he used to put on talks and lectures about conservation – it’s where I gained a lot of knowledge regarding historic buildings. Ian believed that a building held all the answers about itself, and that you had to be really observant to look out for the little signs and clues that tell you the best way to repair it. He went on to TV work in the early 2000s with the BBC’s, Restoration programme – Sherborne House was one of the properties up for bids to restore it.

Following St Blaise, I worked on the Conduit again, with a company called Corinthian, my colleague Ziggy Searchfield and I won a Green Apple conservation award for tracery stone repairs and repointing with lime.

So far, it’s been lots of repair work on this project – and, touch wood, it’s been going well. I’m currently doing repairs on all the window surrounds. There has been lots of repair work done over the years and unfortunately, it’s not been done very well in some cases. I’m mostly doing mortar repairs and piecing in Hamstone. There are various lime putty mortars being used for jointing and stone repairs and a very fine

mortar to get into the small cracks.

When you are working with lime mortar you have to tend to it – every day – even on a Saturday and Sunday. I have to come in, spray it and keep a close eye on the wind, rain, or sunshine. Otherwise, everything you’ve worked on can be ruined and a complete waste of time. It’s really needy but satisfying and you don’t want to lose something you’ve worked so carefully on. Sometimes it’s tricky in places – you have to keep things in perfect conditions. If it dries out too quickly, it’ll crack into powder. That’s why each section completed needs to be covered in hessian and dampened. Sometimes you build it up in layers as part of the process – this is the kind of stuff I’ve been working on recently. If you do it right though, the repairs will last a long time – they will outlast me and my son, I expect.

I’m lucky because Sherborne has kept me selfemployed for the last 16 years, as there are so many beautiful old buildings to work on. I have had the pleasure for many years of doing work for Sherborne Castle Estates – beast figurine carvings, mullion repairs, and lathing balusters for example.

When it comes to old buildings, even the most solid stone crumbles as time goes by. It’s then a case of assessing the situation and deciding the best repair. I’ve got lots to keep me busy at Sherborne House and I can’t wait to see it all finished for when it reopens as The Sherborne. When the work of a stonemason goes unnoticed, you’ve done a good job.

TIMES OF NEED

SHERBORNE FOOD BANK John Crossman, Trustee

Ihope you all had a good Christmas! However, the festive period was a struggle for many, given the cost-of-living crisis. Sherborne Food Bank played its part, easing people’s food worries, and providing Christmas extras as well as good food to help our clients enjoy what should be a special time of year.

We have been busier than ever since September, as fuel, food and rent costs have rocketed. Our weekly number of recipients has soared to a record of over fifty addresses most weeks. So many people in and around Sherborne are struggling to feed themselves and their families now. We hear of children not eating between leaving school and arriving back there the next morning, and of lone parents and children having no food in at all.

Our main purpose is to supply good food, including bread, milk and vegetables to our clients, and we are also helping in new ways. We support the Vale Pantry in Sturminster Newton – a social supermarket where for £7 people from our area can get a weekly shop, which we subsidise. We support the Sherborne Community Kitchen (The Lunch Club) – to provide hot meals to those who cannot get out, and we work to support the Milborne Port Food Share scheme, where local people can drop in to collect food. In October we donated money to local schools and youth organisations to provide extra free breakfasts, lunches and snacks for the rest of the school year – freeing up funds to be spent on core education. Julie Plumley from Future Roots said, ‘We are delighted with the support we have had from Sherborne Food Bank and we are now able to provide extra food and milk to all our students.’

We are continually grateful for the immense generosity of local people even at this tough time. Last September saw our biggest-ever harvest collections and our picture here shows residents from Abbey View Care Home visiting the centre to make a festive donation just before Christmas.

We are delighted too that local solicitors Mogers Drewett are backing us, raising money and donations. Louise Kelly, their Head of Marketing said, ‘We really

want to support our community, and providing ongoing support to the Food Bank is a really good way to do this.’

Many others help too. Local shops, supermarkets, chemists and churches provide space for us to collect food. Many local people give regularly - everything from a tin of fruit in a collecting bin to a monthly cash donation. Every item helps and means we need to buy less. The generosity of our landlord means our overheads are low and we had a wonderful response to my last article with new trustees and a dozen new volunteers coming forward.

We rely totally on our body of 50+ wonderful volunteers, who give their time and effort freely so that everything runs smoothly. We have no paid staff at all, even our new co-ordinator is a volunteer and our trustees keep oversight and strategic direction – but also roll up their sleeves when needed.

On Mondays and Tuesdays of a typical week our teams collect and sort all the donations – making sure we send out only good food that is within its use-by date. On Wednesdays our administrator issues our weekly client list, so we can provide for the right numbers of adults and children and for those on special diets. On Thursdays the packers make up the parcels – 50 can take nearly three hours to pack - and then on Fridays these are delivered by our driver teams; no one has to collect their food.

The reasons for people needing to turn to Food Banks are many and complex and each client has their own story. Mainly in the past we have been there for people when something went wrong – a sudden loss of job, illness, planning the way out of debt, but increasingly now we help people who just simply do not have enough to live on, and have no savings as costs, including rents have shot up. In every case people are referred to us by agencies who work with their clients to give a wider package of advice, care, support and signposting to other services.

Sherborne Food Bank is its supporters and volunteers; all of us working to help out local people. I also pray that in 2023 we shall begin to deal with the systemic issues that must be addressed to reduce the need for our services. I would love to be writing to you sometime soon to say we were closing as we are no longer needed. Until that day, in partnership with our community and with your generous help we shall go on giving vital assistance to those who need us.

sherbornefoodbank.org

To play your part in this vital service please contact John Crossman on 07721 616003 or email john.crossman@btinternet.com

OUR MAN IN WESTMINSTER

Chris Loder MP, Member of Parliament for West Dorset

Ihope you have had a very enjoyable Christmas and can I wish you a very Happy New Year.

It is rare that there is a political divide that affects us in Sherborne so starkly as the new Labour Party policy that proposes to add Value Added Tax (VAT) on to the school fees of independent schools if we have a Labour Government after the next general election. The profile of this debate is increasing as to whether or not these school fees should be VAT-exempt and I would like to share with you some thoughts on this situation and what this policy will mean for towns like Sherborne if it were implemented.

Some from the opposition bench, including the Leader of the Opposition, have revelled in the rhetorical attacks on the independent school system, indulging in the pretence of class war rather than taking a full look at the system and the many benefits it can bring to many people, directly and indirectly.

I was not privately educated. In fact, as a son of a tenant farmer living through the worst of the BSE outbreak, disposable income was scarce. So much so, that university was out of the question and certainly nowhere near enough for private school education. I went to the Gryphon School, leaving there to sweep railway platforms and sell train tickets to bring the money in.

But while some are keen to point out the supposed disadvantages of independent schools, often ideological, we must think about the real and pragmatic consequences if we undermine their future by introducing heavy taxation which will, in my mind,

Image: Len Copland

undoubtedly put their future into question.

Sherborne is fortunate to have many independent schools within our community; Sherborne School, Sherborne Prep, Sherborne Girls and Leweston. These are by far the largest employers in town and further afield. Not just teachers but cleaners, caterers, admin staff and so on. The vast majority of whom are local people. And of course, there is a significant amount of business generated from students in and around Sherborne – barbers, bakers, coffee shops, stationers, printers and so on. Visiting families will also spend a lot in Sherborne’s many hotels, pubs and restaurants. It is no coincidence that Cheap Street in Sherborne is a comparatively thriving high street compared to Middle Street or the Quedam in Yeovil.

We have to consider the real impact of a VAT burden on this system. A substantial increase in school fees will leave schools with a choice, and that is to either pass this cost on to parents or absorb the increase themselves. Some schools may be able to do this, but this is highly unlikely as most do not have this option. I suspect the objective of this policy is an ideological one to pass the VAT cost on to parents who may or may not be able to afford it. But if it cannot be afforded, such a scheme will backfire, potentially closing local independent schools and putting a considerable burden on the state. Some 90% of Sherborne School’s pupils are from the UK and mainly from the South of England - it raises the question of what happens to the many young people who would have to find places in the mainstream system, which is already stretched.

Covid has hit West Dorset particularly hard. Around 18% of our local businesses in West Dorset alone were lost during the pandemic so our economy is already starting from a bad place. If our independent schools either close or significantly reduce which I believe they will from this plan, it will be all of us who suffer – Cheap Street shops and banks, coffee shops, family or friends who work in the sector and suppliers. Back in 2014, one of the considerable factors in keeping the police station open was the number of schools here.

I don’t think I have used this column before to criticise political policy. But this one could devastate this town like no other single policy and I think it is important to bring it to your attention.

When I went to the Gryphon in the 1990s, I found so many benefits from being in this town with independent schools here. That link is much stronger today than it was in the 1990s. The reality is that Labour’s proposals would ultimately mean that independent education would be negatively affected and considerably so. It would mean fewer students here and the state education system would have to foot the bill for necessary increases to its capacity. It would mean a decline in footfall from independent schools into the town centre precipitating a serious decline in local business and employment from which it would be difficult to recover.

Rather than encourage equality and social progression, I believe these proposals will further deepen economic and social division within our society, and for these reasons I am very much opposed to Labour’s policy.

WINTER CLEARANCE SALE

HUGE SAVINGS TO BE MADE Starts 10am Wednesday 28th December

Timeless clothes and effortless style in sizes 8 - 22 Open Monday - Saturday 10am - 5pm (and Sherborne Market Sundays)