When I first moved to West Dorset in 1982 as a newly-qualified journalist on the Bridport News, one of the stories that began to gather momentum was the development of Bridport Leisure Centre. The land at Skilling Hill Road was Read more »
Chalk grassland, with its colourful wildflowers and multitude of insects was once a common sight in a Dorset summer. It is the landscape defended by the Cerne Giant and where, in Far from the Madding Crowd, we first meet sheep Read more »
Recently my attention was drawn to a line of poetry about the Dog Rose which we may not often see in these days when hedgerows are cut back by equipment on a tractor, but was more common in my younger Read more »
Hurray—The circus is coming! Yes, the circus more or less as we know it was first created in 1768. Philip Astley a retired cavalryman and war hero was its creator and he marked out a ring on an abandoned piece Read more »
A visit to Somerset Rural Life Museum sends Margery Hookings on a nostalgic trip into the past, as it tells the story of how things used to be in the countryside. Many years ago, I visited Somerset Rural Life Read more »
It was a luminous spring morning in early May when I trekked up Hardown Hill in west Dorset. Hardown rises steeply above Morcombelake and the surrounding countryside affording fine views of the coast and of the Marshwood Vale. Compared with Read more »
It’s ‘make your mind up time’ as Bridport and the surrounding area maps out what the future might look like in the next eighteen years. Margery Hookings speaks to Phyllida Culpin about the Bridport Area Neighbourhood Plan, one of the Read more »
This phrase comes back to me from films of “Cowboys and Indians” and childhood comics and refers to the method of sending messages by smoke signals, used by the native Americans. However, we all need to send messages, some more Read more »
Margery Hookings finds out more about the local mental health charity, South Somerset Mind, and its project aimed at supporting young people, farmers in Somerset and North and West Dorset and women struggling with perinatal mental health. Approximately one in Read more »
This is the title of what grew to become a large company working in communications by either means. But it made me think of two unrelated local stories. Technology had to be established first to enable either means of communication Read more »