Archive for October, 2009
31/10/2009 No comments

Reynolds Stone exhibition in London: See why we know his work, if not his name

GOOD piece in The Times about Reynolds Stone (1909-1979), one of the greatest 20th century letter-cutters and engravers, who lived in the old rectory at Litton Cheney. He’s not so well known these days (I think the first time I ever heard his name was reporting at Bridport magistrates’ court in the mid-1990s, when somebody was up for stealing books from his library), but as The Times points out, most people in this country possess one of Stone’s works of art:

“The British passport, designed by Stone in 1955, bears his engraving of the royal coat of arms and his elegant lettering.”

There’s a centenary exhibition of Stone’s work coming up in London. Reynolds Stone: Lettering, Logos and Landscapes, runs from Nov 6-21, Tues-Fri, 11am-4pm, Sat 10.30am-6pm, at Schneideman Gallery, 331 Portobello Rd, London W10 (0208 354 7365).

You can read the piece in The Times by clicking on this link, or there’s a website run by Stone’s estate at www.reynoldsstone.co.uk 

Various Dorset connections continue: Stone’s son Humphrey, for example, designed the excellent Dovecote Press series Discover Dorset; while one of his disciples, the Bridport graphic designer and carver Michael Harvey, now publishes entertainingly unusual photographic books about subjects such as bicycles and fire hydrants…
24/10/2009 No comments

“A cruel twist”: Policeman urges drivers to slow down, then writes off police car

FROM PC Nigel Case’s column in the November edition of Eggardon & Colmer’s View. Note: Yellow Lane is one of the old Dorset hollow-ways, a drover’s track through steep banks of sandstone, strewn in the autumn with leaves, gravel and mud.

“Watch the roads: last year I went to two crashes in Yellow Lane, Loders, caused in part by drivers not taking the slippery conditions into account and being unable to stop in time before hitting another vehicle.

“After these crashes I placed an article in the local papers advising people to slow down a bit; in a cruel twist of irony a week later, I was involved in a crash in my police car along that same stretch of road and the car was written off as a result.

“I would like to add there was no fault on the part of the other driver concerned, but this does demonstrate the need to slow it down a bit in the autumn and winter months.”
23/10/2009 1 Comment

The tree you could drink beer inside, and other stories about Dorset’s oldest inhabitants

Review of The Great Trees of Dorset, by Andrew Pollard & Emma Brawn, with Photographs by Colin Varndell (Dovecote Press, £9.95 paperback, £16.95 hardback)

THERE ARE many things to stop and wonder at in The Great Trees of Dorset, including the fact that the huge yew tree in Broadwindsor churchyard may be more than 2,000 years old… Which would take us back to the Roman invasions of Dorset. Start thinking about that, and it’s impossible not also to start thinking about the yew as some kind of historic personage. The oldest living thing in Dorset, perhaps? If only it could speak! What changes it must have seen and felt! What stories it could tell!

The authors of this book definitely think in this way. Their words drift off towards personification, as if trees really were people. Discussing the changes wrought in the wake of the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s and the Civil War a century later, Pollard and Brawn (what a great muscular pair of names!) note: “There were certainly winners and losers for Dorset’s trees throughout this period…” and you think, what a genuinely charming idea it is, to tell the story of Dorset from the point of view of its trees, and, what a pity it is there aren’t more old trees left. Really old oaks, say, with large girths and mossy serpentine branches. Pollard and Brawn write: “We… probably have about 1000 veteran oaks, of whom [note that whom!] fewer than 200 are truly ancient. Even this may well be a hopeful estimate. This is an extremely low number and we should ask ourselves: how worried would we be if there were less than 200 individuals left of an orchid species?” One of the greatest individuals left is Billy Wilkins, who (they’ve got me at it now) lives in Melbury Park near Evershot, not far from the A37. His girth is 11.6 metres.

Great Trees cover web

 

It’s to celebrate trees like Billy, and to stimulate interest in the welfare of Dorset’s veteran trees, that The Great Trees has been published. Pollard and Brawn both work for the Dorset Wildlife Trust, and their book grows out of the extensive research they’ve done in recent years for the county’s Greenwood Trees Project. The aim of this project, supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund, is to understand, celebrate and conserve Dorset’s great trees (past, present and future). Poems, songs, and pictures by schoolchildren feature throughout the book and reflect public involvement in the Greenwood scheme. Hundreds of fibrous roots have fed the authors and it shows. Leaf through their book and memorable details abound.

Did you know, for example, that the first recorded reference to children playing conkers isn’t until 1848? Did children really not play conkers before then? (Maybe so, because the horse chestnut is not a native tree; it dates back in Dorset about 220 years…) Or that cider in Dorset is first mentioned Read more
22/10/2009 No comments

Trial of new “Crime Mapper” tool on Dorset Police website. Verdict: Crude

THE CRIME Mapper is meant to give you the chance to see how much crime there’s been where you live.

Move over a map and zoom in and out, and it will tell you the total number of crimes per month per area, and how that number compares with the same period last year. You can also break down crimes into four categories – burglary, robbery, violence and vehicle crime. Anti-social behaviour is on there too.

If you want to find out how your area compares with other parts of Dorset, or other parts of England and Wales, you can.

So, for example, in the area covered by the Marshwood Vale Safer Neighbourhood Team during August 2009, there were no robberies, and there were none in the same month the year before. In the tough Huyton district of Liverpool, there were 3 robberies in August 2009, and 7 in August the year before. (I chose part of Liverpool for a comparison, because I remember Bridport’s section commander Inspector Alan Jenkins once telling me what a contrast there was between crime rates in West Dorset and places like Liverpool, and how lucky people in West Dorset were – and he’s right of course, we are lucky…)

But what is the Crime Mapper actually like to use? There’s a link to it here if you want to have a go.

I’d say it’s slow and clunky, rather like a 1980s video game. You have to click on some things at least twice before they work, and – until you get used to it – move your mouse in a counter-intuitive way.

The maps showing Dorset broken down into policing sections are also disconcerting. They mis-spell places like “Uploaders” and “Wooton Fitzpaine”, and show some villages in weird geographical relation to others (West Milton is not a few miles slightly north-east of Uploders, I’m sure it’s not).

But the main problem is that the service doesn’t tell you enough. Once you’ve found out that (say) there were eight burglaries in the Marshwood Vale during August 2009, compared with three in August 2008, you want to know where they were, and when they were, and what was taken, and has anybody been arrested, and so on, and so on. Were the break-ins to farms or homes?

The service has been set up by the Government nationally so that people can, if they want to, hold their local police to account. But more detail and context is needed, as in the USA, where sites like everyblock.com tap into amazing sources of up-to-date information. You can famously find out if someone’s been arrested in your neighbourhood within the last hour. Choose any city, look under public records, then crimes: it’s a real eye-opener.

The Crime Mapper is interesting as far as it goes, but crude.
21/10/2009 No comments

Risk of bricks falling onto drivers forces closure of Beaminster Tunnel for five weeks

tunnelsign1THE HISTORIC Beaminster Tunnel on the A3066 north of Beaminster is being shut from Monday, October 26 to allow for repairs and improvements

Drivers will be forced to make significant diversions, so that work on the tunnel and its surroundings can be done as quickly and safely as possible.

The scheme is being carried out by Dorset County Council in partnership with its street lighting service provider, SEC Lighting Services. The scheduled completion date is Sunday 29 November.  Dorset County Council and SEC say they’ll try, whenever possible, to work at nights and weekends so as to minimize disruption to local people and road users.

Aim to stop cracked bricks damaging vehicles

 

Beaminster Tunnel cuts through Horn Hill, which is formed of wet and running Upper Greensand. Ever since the tunnel was opened in 1832, it’s suffered from problems with water trickling down from the Greensand through its semi-porous bricks. What happens if the water freezes? Brickwork cracks, and chunks of brick can drop down onto people’s heads… Dorset County Council took action in 1968, but now more needs to be done.

Council spokesman Michael Carhart-Harris explains: “In the 1960s, the inside of the tunnel was spray-coated with a cement mix known as gunite to prevent pieces of frost-damaged brick falling onto passing vehicles.

“Recently, the gunite lining has become detached from the tunnel’s brick lining.  In April this year, the extent of the attachment was assessed during a special inspection.  Specialists were brought in to inspect the tunnel and examine core samples taken from its arch vault.  As a result, it was decided that the lining should be reattached to the brickwork backing.

“The work by the county council will involve re-fixing the gunite lining to the brickwork using bolts before painting the lining.  The carriageway of the A3066 through the tunnel, as well as 100 metres to the north and 150 metres to the south, will be reconstructed to create a new road surface.  Routine maintenance will also be carried out to drainage systems and the tunnel’s stone portals.

“SEC will be replacing the tunnel’s lighting with a system designed to meet current British Standards.  This system will be the first in the UK to incorporate new technology that will improve day and night time safety, as well as reducing CO2 emissions by using energy more efficiently.

“The lighting upgrade is part of the county council and SEC’s ongoing private finance initiative (PFI) project that will replace 70 per cent of the council’s existing street lighting.”

SEC is also going to overhaul the tunnel’s electricity supply, and replace the street lighting columns on the approach roads to the tunnel.

Which way will I have to go instead?

 

These suggested alternative routes will be clearly signposted by Dorset County Council.

Vehicles weighing under 7.5 tonnes, wishing to get from the southern side of Beaminster Tunnel round to the north, will be asked to go from Prout Bridge in Beaminster up the B3163, out past Mapperton, up to the A356 Toller Down Gate crossroads, then down the A356 through Winyard’s Gap and South Perrott to Misterton in Somerset, where the A3066 would normally go. It’s vice-versa, obviously, for light vehicles on the north side of the tunnel wishing to go south.

Vehicles weighing over 7.5 tonnes, wishing to get from the southern side of Beaminster Tunnel to the north, will be directed southwards down the A3066 to Bridport, then sent along the A35 towards Dorchester, and from there pointed up the A37 and A356 towards Misterton Cross in Somerset. Again, obviously, it’s vice-versa for heavy vehicles on the north side of the tunnel wishing to go south.
17/10/2009 No comments

National Trust revives cider orchards

ciderpostcard2THE NATIONAL Trust is spending more than half a million pounds on restoring 30 cider orchards. One beneficiary is the Golden Cap estate between Bridport and Lyme Regis.

The Trust is going for traditional apple varieties such as Slack-ma-Girdle, Pig’s Snout and Hoary Morning. Beautiful evocative names, but there are problems with trying to recreate the past. I was talking about orchards the other day to Nick Poole, founder of the West Milton Cider Club and supremo of the now famous Powerstock Cider Festival, and he was objecting to old apples being planted just because they are old. One problem is, you can be left with a glut of a particular sort of apple (like Morgan Sweet, which makes an early, sweet cider; nice, but you want something else too).

A second problem is, some old apples don’t always make very good cider! It’s true! I’ve made cider with Nick in the past from apples with lovely names but not such an appealing taste. (We made some once that was only really drinkable when cut with something else). 

Also – though the pressing pictured above is an impressively compact operation - it’s not necessarily the case that farmers in the past always knew what they were doing. Historical records and odd surviving trees may show that landowners once grew certain apples in their orchards, but they don’t always prove that that they were wise to do so. What if they made mistakes? What if certain varieties failed to thrive in particular soils or micro-climates? Couldn’t that be a reason why some orchards declined? Is it sensible to insist – as Nick Poole says funding bodies do insist - on restocking orchards with the same old apples, when, actually, other sorts might do a bit better? And they’d still benefit wildlife and look pretty…

It’s worth thinking about. Although, in the end, the one thing everyone agrees on is that it’s better to have orchards restored than grubbed up. As the National Trust points outs, more than 60 per cent of traditional orchards have disappeared since the 1950s. Nick’s own blog (written with cider apple expert Liz Copas), about hunting for old varieties across Dorset,  laments what’s been lost. It’s linked to here. It’s a good read. I’ll quote you just part of one paragraph:

“On our travels we talked to people who once worked on the land, who made and drunk cider, and we began to realise that many village trees saw their last days in the 1960s when grants were offered to clear the land. Just a few useful cookers or eating apples were often the only survivors. The clearances made way for new buildings, village infill and sadly, the proliferation of road names like ‘Orchard Close’ and ‘Old Orchard Way’.

“Just tombstones where orchards once stood…”