So, as well as treacle tart and Palmers (still apostrophe-less) IPA I am rather keen on the painting of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. In fact, given half the chance and a wife who appreciates the finer things in life half as much as I do, I would plaster the walls of my home with his works.

Anyway, I was taking what we serious students of art describe as a gander at some of his stuff the other day when it struck me that one of his best-known works -Winter Landscape with a Bird Trap – looks really familiar.

Then it struck me – just like bout of flatulence during the evensong sermon –  Broadwindsor. There’s no getting away from it: way back in 1565 old Pete (as those of us who feel that we know him say) has got the village off to a tee.

Winter Landscape with a Bird Trap (1565) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Broadwindsor could become Bruegeland, suggests The Red Bladder.

He has really got the bleakness, the desolation and the misery of the place in winter exactly right.

Now, there are millions of art lovers around they world who, like me, love that picture and would almost give their eye teeth to be able to walk through the scene.

So come on Broadwindsor – cash in.

An artificial skating rink in the Square, glue a few rooks up in trees and invest in a couple of tons of artificial snow and you’ll have the tourists flocking in like bees to a glass of milk.

Bruegeland in Dorset could become one of the county’s premier tourist attractions. Just turn the whole place into a huge 16th Century Dutch Theme Park and you’ll have them queuing all the way from Orchard Mead to Fullers. Turnstiles at every entrance to the place with tickets at a fiver and a lavishly illustrated guide book at a tenner and, before long, the whole village will be able to retire.

Of course the residents would have to dress up a bit and get used to a spot of prancing and frolicking but that will soon all come naturally.

All it needs is a bit of imagination and application and the village could be in clover.

Next week The Red Bladder asks: ‘did Salway Ash inspire Jackson Pollock?’

Editor’s Note: The Red Bladder is a former national newspaper journalist (tabloid and broadsheet, since you ask). His own blog – recently awarded a One Lovely Blog Award by Maddie Grigg – is at http://theredbladder.blogspot.com/ 

On Twitter you should follow him (because it’s impossible to guess what he’ll come up with next) at http://www.twitter.com/theredbladder 

London-based creative studio Proboscis have been commissioned by the Dorset visual arts collective Big Picture to respond to the Jurassic Coast.

Proboscis describe themselves as “pioneers of pie in the sky – makers of mischief”.

They’re getting £6,500 and production costs of up to £1,500 to – in the words of the brief - ”engage with users of the Hive Beach Café at Burton Bradstock and explore the human story of the Jurassic coast, and how the physical and the social influence and impact upon each other.”

The cafe is described as “a real-time social networking site directly on the coast. Its clientele varies greatly through the year, which provides an interesting scope to foster engagement with and between different social groups who are interacting with the coast – influencing it and being influenced by it.”

Amateur and professional scientists are also expected to feature.

The Hive Beach Café, the nearby National Trust car park and the beach will be “the main site of activity”, but art could spread around Burton Bradstock, over to the Watch House Cafe at West Bay and into Bridport.

Hive Beach at Burton Bradstock, with the cafe and the car park to the right. Photograph by Eugene Birchall, reused under Creative Comons Licence.

More from the brief: “The commission managers Bridport Arts Centre and PVA MediaLab are interested in socially engaged artistic practice, engaging with a non-arts audience and presenting art in non-traditional spaces.

“Possible outcome and location suggestions include:

“Content for café surfaces [e.g. table menus], information spaces [menu boards, NT parking tickets etc] and packaging [food labelling]

“Projections in Bridport Arts Centre windows

“Audio-visual [live] performance on Bridport Arts Centre forecourt

“Possible Gallery exhibition after the main project time.”

That was the come-on. How might the project actually develop?

Carolyn Black, producer of the new Ex Lab (Exploratory Laboratory) project, said: “Proboscis will focus on the social science of the area and how people relate to this very particular place.

“They are inspired by the rich mix of physical and social history, folklore, scientific knowledge (amateur and professional) and contemporary stories unique to the area.”

The Hive Beach scheme looks to me like it will slot into a five-year programme called Public Goods, recently begun by Proboscis with the aim of “making and sharing tangible representations of the intangible things we feel are most precious about the places and communities we belong to, such as stories, skills, games, songs, techniques, memories, local lore and experiential knowledge of local environment and ecology.”

Personally, I’m looking forward to this very much indeed. Could it be like one of Common Ground’s old projects – I’ve always been a fan of Common Ground – but with more of an edge? Next summer, we’ll see.

(I’ve been idly wondering what the reaction might be if Proboscis turned out to be disciples of Mr Tourette, Master Signwriter, but that level of mischief seems extremely unlikely).

Anyway, more than 200 artists and organisations submitted proposals to Ex Lab.

Aside from Proboscis, four were successful.

Again in the words of Carolyn Black: “Portland Bill will engage artist Simon Ryder in an exciting challenge to address the variety and complexity of Portland, dealing with the many layers that coexists there – geological, historical, ecological, military.”

And: “Painter Simon Callery will work on a commission that links the geology inland with that visible on the coast. Simon will follow a geological journey from Sherborne to the sea, creating an artwork that reflects the experience of walking these landscapes and engaging with people who live along the route.”

The other two winners will be based in the eastern half of Dorset. Sculptor Mat Chivers plans to work with the National Trust on Purbeck to create art for Bournemouth town centre. Multi-material artist Zachary Eastwood-Bloom will collaborate with the Applied Science department at Bournemouth University on a project at Durlston Country Park that – according to Ex Lab – will explore “the diverse possibilities of using scientific data and instrumentation to stimulate form creation”.

All five Ex Labbers now intend to conduct research and development with scientists and the public.

Various events and activities will give people chance to follow what they are up to.

If you want to get involved, see www.bigpic.org.uk

Ex Lab is funded by Arts Council England, National Trust, Dorset County Council, West Dorset District Council and additionally supported by Bournemouth University, Exeter University, Aberystwyth University, Creative Coast 2012 and the Jurassic Coast Team.

Big Picture members are Artsreach, b-side, Bridport Arts Centre, Dorset Visual Arts, PVA MediaLab, Sherborne House Arts and Walford Mill Crafts. Their aim is to work with Dorset County Council “to sustain and develop vibrant visual arts in Dorset”.

Information about Ex Lab 2012 artists

(Details supplied by Ex Lab)

PROBOSCIS

The artists Proboscis (Alice Angus and Giles Lane) Gary Stewart, and Stefan Kueppers (designer and technologist) most often work outside galleries and like to work with local people and communities and in collaboration with scientists, technologists and architects. They blend craft with technology, video, sound and public art.

www.proboscis.org.uk

On Twitter @proboscisstudio

SIMON RYDER

Originally trained as a zoologist before turning to art, Simon Ryder’s work investigates how we interact with the places in which we live and work, and how they, in turn, shape us. He adopts ideas and methodologies drawn from science, art, natural history and geology in his work, often using one to transform another; so for one commission he turned birdsong into landscapes, and for another crystallized horsetail ferns as a form of keeping memory alive. Simon Ryder has produced work for a wide range of places, including Gloucester cathedral, Southmead Hospital, the National Wetlands Centre Wales, and is currently working in the UNESCO Biosphere Reserve North Devon and the Cotswold Water Park. People will be able to follow Simon’s progress on Portland through his blog which can be found at www.artnucleus.org

www.artnucleus.org

SIMON CALLERY

Simon Callery is a painter based in London. His work has been shown widely in the UK and internationally. Exhibitions include: Art Now 19, Tate Britain, Paper Assets, British Museum and Sensation, Royal Academy of Arts, London. He is currently included in Within/Beyond Borders, selected works from the European Investment Bank Collection, Luxembourg; at the Byzantine and Christian Museum, Athens and will be showing in a group painting show at Galerie B55, Budapest, in February 2012.

In developing new approaches to landscape based art Callery has worked in collaboration with archaeologists from Oxford Archaeology and the Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford, over a number of years. This has resulted in the development of new forms for contemporary painting, which aim to engage the viewer on a multi-sensory level, akin to our experience of the material landscape.

http://simoncallery.wimbledon.ac.uk/

MAT CHIVERS

Mat Chivers is a sculptor and visual artist who lives and works on Dartmoor in Devon. His work as an artist combines traditional approaches to making, like carving by hand in stone and drawing on paper, with contemporary digital and science based technologies to make normally invisible processes visible.

He has works in private and public collections nationally and internationally. Recent exhibitions include ‘Fascination’ a solo exhibition curated by James Putnam at Maddox Arts, London; ‘The Knowledge’ at the Gervasuti Foundation, 54^th Biennale di Venezia; ‘Eleventh Plateau’ at the Historical Archives Museum, Hydra and The Athens Biennale, Greece and ‘Biliteral’ at Pertwee Anderson & Gold, London. He will be showing work in ‘Material Matters’ at the Courtauld Institute, London in 2012 and is currently involved in an ongoing project with research scientists at The University of Bristol.

www.matchivers.com

ZACHARY EASTWOOD-BLOOM

Zachary Eastwood-Bloom is a multi-material artist working with and exploring materials such as concrete, ceramic, bronze, wood and resin. He combines both traditional and contemporary processes such as casting, CNC milling, 3D printing and laser cutting, making objects that question the delicate balance between the material and the digital. After discovering the possibilities of making and the three-dimensional form, Zachary went to study at Edinburgh College of Art where he began experimenting with 3D design software. He further explored digital processes and fabrication at the Royal College of Art graduating in 2010.

Zachary is a founding member of London-based Studio Manifold and has recently exhibited with British Ceramics Biennial, The V&A Museum and The Royal British Society of Sculptors and his piece ‘Information Ate My Table’ is currently touring with the Crafts Council’s Lab Craft exhibition.

www.zacharyeastwood-bloom.co.uk

It’s at www.eggardon-colmers-view.org.uk and has a lot of content, including a tremendous picture of Colmer’s Hill by Higher Eype photographer Andy White, one of the best images of this famous West Dorset landmark I’ve ever seen.

Colmer's Hill photographed by Andy White for the Eggardon & Colmer's View Advent Calendar 2011.

The photograph is being used for the new Eggardon & Colmer’s View Advent Calendar, one of the annual treats of West Dorset life. That’s why there’s the 24 numbers scattered across it, each one hiding another picture.

It’s many years since Eggardon & Colmer’s View last had a website and the new one is sure to be popular with many people living away from the Bridport area who just couldn’t get hard copies of the magazine. There is always something in it worth reading and knowing.

Anyway, recommendation over, here’s Eggardon & Colmer’s View Editor Margaret Morgan-Grenville to explain more.

Margaret Morgan-Grenville on the Eggardon & Colmer’s View website

“The latest edition of Eggardon & Colmer’s View can be viewed online, subject to a simple registration process.

“Not only will there be no more worries about where the latest copy of the magazine is, you can also find up to date information on all the village events and church services.

“Viewers will find plenty to interest them, whether they are local residents, potential visitors or just browsing from anywhere in the world. 

“Users will be able to see details of Church Services taking place in any of the Churches and Chapels of the Benefice with maps of each parish, a monthly Diary, and details of special events.

“Villages have their own section with brief historic and current outlines of each, details of all Schools, Village Halls and other meeting places, together with relevant links.

“The site is also interactive, with a Message Board which it is hoped will become a virtual meeting place.

“How this part of the site develops will very much depend on the users: just general conversation, definitely a For Sale & Wanted forum, maybe a barter forum if users are so inclined.

“Particularly exciting will be the Photo Gallery, where photos of local events that I receive and just can’t get into the magazine will be displayed in glorious colour!

“And that’s not all: if anyone wants to be involved with moderating the message boards or the administration, they are asked to contact the Webmaster through the website.

“We could do with some help!

“So don’t delay; just click on www.eggardon-colmers-view.org.uk, sit back and enjoy!”

Brian Wood at Palmers Brewery in Bridport. His lorry has done more than 1.5 million miles. Above Brian's head is the trapdoor that leads though into Palmers' malt loft.

THIRTY years ago one of the unsung heroes of British brewing began criss-crossing the country with sacks of malt.

Brian Wood started carrying malt for Hugh Baird and Sons at Station Maltings in Witham in Essex in the Autumn of 1981. When Baird’s got taken over in the mid-1990s, he set up on his own.

I’ve met him a couple of times at Palmers Brewery in Bridport, where he’s been delivering malt since the early 1980s.

He’s a fine man, as I hope comes through in the video that I made about him for the Palmers Brewery YouTube channel.

Here, also, is a link to a story written about Brian Wood and Palmers.

What that story doesn’t contain is a list of all the UK breweries that Brian has been to.

It’s an evocative litany, so here it is. Fifty-nine different brewers, 63 separate breweries, some of them now shut for many years. Morrells’ Lion Brewery, for example, was converted into ‘luxury apartments’. Julia Hanson’s in Dudley was knocked down to make way for a Netto supermarket, turned this summer into an Asda.

• Whitbread (Sheffield, Cheltenham, Salford)
• Boddingtons (Manchester)
• Joseph Holt (Manchester)
• JW Lees (Manchester)
• Timothy Taylor (Keighley)
• Samuel Smith (Tadcaster)
• Bass (Burton)
• McMullens (Hertford)
• Julia Hanson (Dudley)
• Banks (Wolverhampton)
• Hardy Hanson (Kimberley)
• Brains (Cardiff)
• Buckleys (Llanelli)
• Felinfoel (Dyfed)
• Wadworth (Devizes)
• Hall & Woodhouse (Blandford)
• Palmers Brewery (Bridport)
• Otter Brewery (Blackdown Hills)
• Butcombe (Blagdon)
• Smiles (Bristol)
• Hook Norton (Oxon)
• Morrells (Oxford)
• Fullers (Chiswick )
• Tring (Hertford)
• Adnams (Southwold)
• Tolly’s (Ipswich)
• Harveys (Lewes)
• Hepworths (Horsham)
• King & Barnes (Horsham)
• Hull Brewery
• Batemans (Wainfleet)
• Robinsons (Stockport))
• Thwaites (Blackburn)
• Jennings (Cockermouth)
• Moorhouse (Burnley)
• Higsons (Liverpool)
• Burtonwood Brewery
• Everards (Leicester and Burton on Trent)
• Marstons (Burton on Trent)
• Ind Coope (Burton on Trent)
• Castlemaine (Wrexham)
• Oldham Brewery
• Hart Brewery (Preston)
• Mitchells (Lancaster)
• Vaux (Sunderland & Sheffield)
• Federation (Newcastle)
• Courage (Bristol & Reading)
• Crouch Brewery (Essex)
• Gales (Horndean)
• Devenish (Redruth)
• St Austell (Cornwall)
• Halls (Oxford)
• Tisbury Brewery (Wiltshire)
• Ringwood Brewery (Hampshire)
• Shepherd Neame (Faversham)
• Trough Brewery (Idle)
• Brakspears (Henley on Thames)
• Pilgrim (Reigate)
• Mendip Brewery (Somerset)

Imagine going to the Trough Brewery at Idle for the first time! And seeing this, when you got there.

Nowadays Brian delivers mostly to Palmers in Dorset, Arkell’s in Swindon, Felinfoel near Llanelli, Harveys in Lewes, Elgood’s in Wisbech, Wadworth in Devizes and Fuller’s in Chiswick.

Good reason, I’d say, to favour those seven brewers.

Amanda Wallwork paints history. Her work examines time’s accretions, arranges the results in orderly patterns and puts them on display as if her pieces were true museum artefacts, impregnated with the significance of the past.

Ancient landscapes and archaeological remains have fascinated Wallwork since childhood. The marks that people leave behind on objects and places are proofs of existence that tell stories about their lives. Wallwork’s thoughtful pieces present fragments from histories whose original meaning has been reduced to a mood or gesture.

A curator’s impulse to collect and arrange is evident in Wallwork’s torn paper paintings, which are built up from layers of dense watercolour on heavyweight paper, then torn off and mounted onto a backing sheet. Smaller pieces are framed behind glass while larger ones are presented on deep-sided relief panels. The process of construction and method of display turn her works into three-dimensional relics; objects literally ripped from their original setting and re-contextualised as sacred symbols. Each offers a route into a potent and primitive past where people and animals are bound by their close relationship to the earth. Together, the images can be read as encoded stories whose fragmented mythic meanings are intended to awake instinctual longings.

Certain primitive marks and forms re-occur throughout, mostly rendered in strong colours that relate to a global range of influences. Wallwork’s iconography employs universal symbols common to many cultures at different times. Shapes are frequently derived from patterns in the landscape as shown by aerial views of ancient hillforts or field systems. These abstractions can be interpreted as maps of time rendered in a symbolic form.

Wallwork is currently engaged on a new series of work looking closer at the passage of time. Again, the method of construction is an essential element. She covers wooden blocks with plaster mixed with natural pigment and then paints them with a layer of domestic emulsion. She works over the surface, applying oil paint, gouging and scarifying the accumulated deposits. Often, she polishes the blocks until they retain a leathery gleam, revealing a history of time displayed in terms of archaeological layers. Without frames or glass, these pieces focus attention on the artefacts themselves. The museum cabinet walls have dissolved and we too are inside the display case with history.

Editor’s Note: The text above was first published in 2002 in a handsome little booklet produced as part of a project called TM1 (short for tenminusone). TM1 featured nine artists based in West Dorset, each of whom had a little essay written about them by Sara Hudston, although her name didn’t appear.

The scheme (as far as I can remember) had two aims. First, to try to promote the careers of individual artists. Second, to improve the economy of West Dorset by showing it to be an attractive, creative place – somewhere worth visiting and worth doing business.

The scheme was funded by West Dorset District Council, South West Arts, and the South West of England Regional Development Agency.

(Incidentally, not one of these organisations still exists in the form it did then; West Dorset District Council has merged with Weymouth & Portland Borough Council, the RDA is being abolished, South West Arts is now Arts Council England South West.)

Amanda Wallwork got an exhibition in Manchester following the publication of the booklet about her.

The whole project has now been almost entirely forgotten, and the TM1 booklets are extraordinarily rare pieces of printed ephemera.

Now, clearly I’m biased, as I’m married to Sara Hudston, but it’s long seemed to me that her short essays were excellent pieces of work that deserve to be re-published and read.

So here is the first. Jonathan Hudston

TM1 biographical note

Amanda Wallwork was brought up in a creative household surrounded by art and artists (her father is the ceramicist Alan Wallwork).

In 1966 the family moved to Dorset, whose ancient landscape rich in archaeology provided an early source of inspiration. Wallwork took a foundation course in art and design at Yeovil College followed by a BA Hons in graphic design and illustration at Brighton Polytechnic. She then worked as a freelance designer and illustrator, writing and illustrating many children’s picture books. Wallwork was a founder member of the regional artists’ group Sherborne Contemporary Arts and has curated many of its exhibitions.

Since 1996 she has been concentrating on developing and exhibiting new art work influenced by her childhood. She says: “Visits to dusty museums as a child stimulated my fascination for ancient artefacts and with the way they are displayed, the stories hinted at by those trapped moments in time stored behind glass.”

Note added 2011: Amanda Wallwork now lives in West Bay near Bridport. She’s got a show coming up at Bridport Arts Centre next year from 14 July until 11 August, featuring her latest work for the project ‘Mapping the Jurassic Coast‘. Jeremy Gardiner will also be exhibiting in the Allsop Gallery.

Abbotsbury Subtropical Gardens: a place of "great strangeness and beauty". Photograph of Kirengeshoma Palmata subs Koreana by Stephen Banks.

SIXTY years ago Picture Post had the bright idea of sending the novelist and critic Cyril Connolly to write about ‘The Tropical Gardens of England’, among them Abbotsbury.

The magazine possibly chose Connolly because of this famous line in the last issue of the literary magazine Horizon, which he edited throughout the 1940s

“It is closing time in the gardens of the West and from now on an artist will be judged only by the resonance of his solitude or the quality of his despair.”

This plangent note was picked up in Picture Post’s standfirst:

“In our western counties private owners have for generations challenged the sadness of our climate with sub-tropical gardens of great strangeness and beauty. Today taxation makes them more and more difficult to maintain.”

Most of Connolly’s piece – which appeared on 7 April, 1951- concerns Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, especially Tresco where he finds “an atmosphere of benign experiment and natural peace, as if we were the first to land in a warm temperate paradise where yet reigns a mysterious order”.

However, before he gets there:

“Abbotsbury, in Dorset, comes first: it is not the most exotic but it is one of the oldest and the nearest to London.

“Lord Ilchester’s house was burnt down and now only the gardens remain with their wind-break of ilex, their charnming stream and their inner walled precinct full of giant camellias where one can sit in the spring sunshine, smell the viburnum Burckwoodii and listen to the thunder of the surf on the Chesil Bank outside the wall.”

Rhododendron Calophytum inside the walled precinct of Abbotsbury Subtropical Gardens. Photograph by Stephen Banks.

So, where is the despair?

“All these gardens are uneconomical and understaffed; six gardeners instead of sixteen at Tresco, four instead of eight at Abbotsbury, one gardener only at Lanarth, Bosahan or Caerhays and more taxation ahead.

“It takes as long to make a great garden as to make a great house: the house can survive neglect, but the garden will go back to the jungle or the plough, nor will there ever be the labour or the money to restore it. Entrance fees help, and in 1949 one was charged for the first time at Tresco, but these Cornish gardens are somewhat inaccessible and visited only in summer.”

Connolly then suggests that the owners of certain outstanding gardens should be allowed to charge the wages of one gardener as tax-free expenses.

He concludes: “If the formal gardens in the grand manner be doomed, let us try to save these western arboretums which give both winter pleasure and opportunities to their owners from which our gardens can benefit.”

I quote these remarks because I found them just recently and because I like to think that West Dorset is the centre of the universe, where if you look hard enough you can find connections to anything and anybody.

But it is also good to reflect that gardens like Abbotsbury and Tresco have survived.

I don’t know how many gardeners Tresco has now, but Abbotsbury has five, one more than the early 1950s.

I’m told by Abbotsbury’s current curator Stephen Griffith that entrance fees to the subtropical gardens were first charged in the 1960s, through an honesty box.

These days, there’s a ticket office: but these days, the gardens have also been very finely  restored. So it’s probably true that “entrance fees help”.

Myself, I hope that Abbotsbury Subtropical Gardens continue to challenge “the sadness of our climate”.

Editor’s Note: The original article in Picture Post has photographs by Humphrey Spender, who I think was a brilliant photographer. There’s a particularly good one from Tresco of The Strangest Cottage Garden in Britain, with Canary Island palms and a cabbage tree from New Zealand. Unfortunately, I haven’t got permission to reproduce any of them, so if you want to see them you’ll have to look for an old copy of the magazine in a shop like Bridport Old Books (which has got a big pile at the moment) or go via a public library.

Chesil Beach, Dorset, looking towards the Isle of Portland - and roaring towards London. Photograph by Nigel Mykura, reused under Creative Commons Licence.

SO JUST where would you expect to hear the sound of waves crashing on stones along the Chesil Beach?

As questions go that might sound fairly daft. But there are two answers.

The one that might not immediately spring to the minds of Dorset residents is London’s Euston Road.

Yes, “the mighty roar of London’s traffic” is to be drowned out by the crashing of Dorset surf.

It is all the idea and work of one Bill Fontana, a ‘sound artist’. He has made a series of recordings of the incoming tide along the beach. He will then mix and edit these to be played through a series of speakers mounted on the building of the Wellcome Foundation in one of London’s busiest and noisiest thoroughfares.

This “experiment in perception” will show that “most people don’t pay any attention to the sounds around them,” explains Fontana. Who goes on to tell us that “to change the context in which you hear something, you change the meaning of it“.

Well, I would never argue with that – even if I understood it.

I suppose he might even consider the alternative.

Why not a string of speakers stretching from West Bexington to Portland carrying the sounds of heavy lorries rumbling, car horns tooting and motor bikes revving in a busy London street?

No, that would be silly!

Editor’s Note: The video is embedded – with thanks for making and sharing it – from WiredVideoUk’s channel on YouTube.

YOU'RE SO VANE: The weathervane on top of Bridport Town Hall, resplendent in its new coat of gold. Bridport artist Jemma Thompson is pictured right.

THE WEATHERVANE on top of Bridport Town Hall has been re-gilded – and very fine it looks too.

Bridport artist Jemma Thompson applied sheet gold in her studio on St Michael’s trading estate in the South West Quadrant.

The weathervane is much bigger – and heavier – than it looks from down on the ground.

It’s 2.4 metres long and is made from lead and copper, so it weighs around 100kg.

It took 10 men to get it back up on top of the Town Hall’s cupola.

Bob Gillis, clerk to Bridport Town Council, said: “The dome of the cupola has also been cleaned and the columns repainted. The clock face and surrounding slates are now being repaired and restored and as work is completed from the top down we will be lowering the scaffolding.” 

LACKLUSTRE: Bridport Town Hall weathervane and cupola before re-gilding and restoration.

Bridport Town Hall is being restored as part of a £1.2 million Heritage and Conservation Project funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, Bridport Town Council, Dorset County Council, and West Dorset District Council.

Weathervane was stuck in Somerset cart wheel hub

Bridport Town Hall is Grade 1 Listed but that doesn’t mean it was constructed with impeccable skills and materials first time round.

I was talking about it in The Loders Arms the other evening to structural engineer Simon Brody of Brody Forbes Partnership in West Bay.

He was saying that a key part of the structure supporting the weathervane (the bit the pole was stuck into, in very non-technical terms) had been found to be the hub of an old Somerset cart wheel. He knew it was Somerset because there was a name inscribed which he’d traced back as far as 1823.

Mr Brody wondered whether a cart had come down from somewhere like Taunton or Shepton Mallett and broken down and, rather than try to repair it, they’d salvaged the wheel hub for re-use.

And you have to say: it may have been improvised back in the 19th century, but no one could say that it hadn’t lasted, given that it’s now 2011.

Editor’s Note: Jemma Thompson also gilded the fine golden bull hanging outside The Bull Hotel in Bridport. Pretty cool to have two gold artefacts in Bridport town centre. I can only think of the King George III statue in (say) Weymouth. The statue’s mason, incidentally, was James Hamilton – who also worked on Bridport Town Hall…

West Dorset is the land of the un-smart phone, and nowhere is there an un-smarter phone than this.

This is the BT phone box in Leigh, a few miles from Sherborne.

It’s settled so much into the local landscape that it looks like it’s about to fall over and is only kept upright by the friendly hedge.

See this phone box for the first time, especially, and you wonder: why is it here in this exact spot? Did it fall off the side of a lorry and no one has ever bothered to collect it? Did the bloke who was installing it just think, sod it – here will do? (It’s a definite bloke thing, this box; no woman I know would leave something looking like this).

It’s actually not too far from houses in Leigh, but I have never seen anybody using it, or even looking like they were thinking of using it.

Personally, I like it very much. I think it’s a fascinating symbol of modern West Dorset life, but even I’ll concede that there may be squeamish sorts who are wary of going inside it – and touching it…

Nothing about the phone box in Leigh makes you think it’s a facility that British Telecom wish to maintain. In this respect, you can argue it’s a symbol of the indifference of large corporations and organisations to the needs and desires of Dorset villages. It’s part of the same trend as Post Office closures and the county council’s shutdown of libraries.

Or you might argue that it’s a sign of wilful neglect by villagers in Leigh, a mark of the failure of the so-called Big Society, an idea that Conservative Cabinet minister and West Dorset MP Oliver Letwin says is enshrined in West Dorset as nowhere else. Dr Letwin wants the rest of the country to be more like West Dorset.

In short, Leigh’s phone box offers a lot to look at and think about. That’s why it’s Number One in the new Real West Dorset guide to Things to See & Do.

How to get there

From the middle of Leigh, by the war memorial, take the road out towards Chetnole, and it’s down past the village hall.

It’s best seen in July and August before the verge is cut and the hedge is trimmed back a bit.

If you want to use it, you’ll need to take a card with you, or reverse charges. Otherwise, entrance is free. No smoking’s allowed.

I can’t guarantee that the snail will still be there.

Go soon – because I fear the box itself won’t be there forever. Not as it is now…

Embarrassed by Dorset Piddle? I think not. Eighteen-year-old Queen Victoria (bottom right) with ladies-in-waiting, pictured in 1837. As Princess Victoria, she'd visited West Dorset four years before.

LET’S review just one paragraph in The Little Book of Dorset, compiled by Emma Mansfield and newly published by Lovely Little Books of Cornwall (£5.99).

From page 34: “Whilst there’s little recorded evidence to prove it, legend has it that the villages of Puddletown and Briantspuddle, which used to contain the word ‘piddle’, changed their village titles to avoid embarrassing Queen Victoria whilst she was visiting.”

Why is there “little recorded evidence”? Because, it’s not true.

Having said that, it’s not easy to establish what did happen.

Jeremy James offered a nicely chatty account of the great Piddle Riddle in a BBC Man Alive programme about the South Dorset Hunt, which was broadcast in January 1973 (and wouldn’t it be fascinating to be able to see that whole programme again?)

Something Piddle or Piddle Something

Mr James ventured: “In the old days, practically all the the towns and villages round here were called either Something Piddle or Piddle Something.

“But in Victorian times, the names of the towns on the main road running from Dorchester to the east into London were all changed; they became places like Briantspuddle and Puddletown.

“And they were changed, according to the legend, to preserve the propriety of the Queen, who was on a visit to Dorchester.

“But Victoria only visited this part of the world once, in 1833, and then it was to go to Lyme Regis, and not Dorchester, and she was only a princess.

“When she became Queen, and prudery became respectable, then the names were changed.

“Not to spare the blushes of the Queen, but to spare the blushes of the girls who had just joined the GPO’s newest service, the telegraph service.”

A Victorian telegram machine.

Mr James went on to say that the only traditional Dorset names to have been retained are Piddletrenthide and Piddlehinton. And of course there’s the River Piddle itself. [Note: Dorset County Council sought in 1956 to change Puddletown to Piddletown, but residents objected].

However, Mr James does appear to have missed some elements.   

Princess Victoria’s Dorset visit

As luck would have it, the excellent Dorset Ancestors blog recently published a long account of 14-year-old Princess Victoria’s visit to Dorset and Devon in the summer of 1833.

She sailed with her mother from the Isle of Wight to Weymouth.

To quote Dorset Ancestors:

“The townspeople of Weymouth turned out and greeted their royal highnesses as illustrious visitors.  It seemed the whole population was proceeding from the King George III statue to the Quay. God Save the King was played as the royal party mounted the King’s Stairs used by King George III on his frequent holidays in the resort; they were then driven in carriages to the Royal Hotel facing the beach.

“The following day after an official reception the princess and duchess travelled in a carriage to Melbury House in north Dorset to be entertained there by the Earl of Ilchester. They were accompanied out of town by many of the inhabitants and a detachment of Lt.Col. Frampton’s Troop of Dorsetshire Yeomanry.

“Every prominent building in Dorchester was decorated with flowers, and there were flags waving and the sound of bells and cannons as horses were changed en route to Maiden Newton and Melbury, where according to Victoria’s diary they arrived at about 5 p.m.”

So Jeremy James was wrong. Princess Victoria did visit Dorchester, but she did not then go east. Instead, she visited Beaminster’s new tunnel and went to Bridport, Charmouth and Lyme Regis. From Lyme she sailed to Torquay and Plymouth.

On her way back, she travelled informally by coach, going via Bridport, Dorchester, Winfrith and Wareham. So, she may well have gone near the Piddle Somethings and the Something Piddles, but it’s impossible to believe that villages would suddenly change their names because of this.

The legend recounted in The Little Book of Dorset is not true, any more than it’s true to say in the same book (p.184) that John Fowles was born in Lyme Regis. He wasn’t.

I wonder if the girls of the GPO’s telegraph service did blush at the word Piddle? Or whether the people sending messages did? Or both?

I remember last year seeing someone delete a line on Twitter (the modern telegram service?) saying “I’m a Piddle drinker myself”. The woman I’m thinking of was referring to the Dorset Piddle Brewery.

At least, I’m pretty sure she was.