EIGHTY-FOUR YEARS after it first opened the Electric Palace in Bridport is returning to its original purpose: OPERA. Yes, opera. “The building was originally erected for dual use as a cinema and opera house for the Palmer brewing family, who wanted to bring opera to Dorset.” So reads the citation for the Grade II listing [...]

DORSET COUNTY Council is to press for Bridport’s Literary and Scientific Institute to be sold, says the Bridport Area Development Trust.

THE BEST SITE around Bridport for a new household recycling centre and waste transfer station is Broomhills, just off the A35. So concludes the final stage of an independent review of seven possible locations, published this week by Dorset County Council. THE MUNICIPAL SEVEN From west to east:  Miles Cross 1, Miles Cross 2, Eype Junction, Broomhills [...]

SO, WEST DORSET has a new artistic venue: Axen Farm outside Symondsbury. Probably just two miles from Bridport town centre, but it feels startlingly like another world, as you suddenly rock up towards the end of a narrow track and find yourself faced with the northern side of Colmers Hill, with just a fleck of Bridport visible eastwards. Dragonflies dart around the improvised car park and the [...]

IT IS not that long ago that I was wondering, on these very pages, just how long the old Liberal Hall in Barrack Street would remain empty. Well blow me down now it has been flogged. The purchasers are a theatrical group who also plan to carry out workshop activities. So new are this bunch [...]

THIS week’s Bridport News gives extensive coverage to the jungle of advertising A-boards that seem to be breeding along East Street. So it should. These things are a positive menace to drunks tottering their way home after a session of innocent boozing. Only the other evening, the Saturday of the beer festival, those of us [...]

CIDER made by award-winning West Dorset cider maker Nick Poole has gone on sale for the first time in shops and pubs. Unsurprisingly, it’s proving popular – a decade of hard and thoughtful work has gone into it. Mr Poole set up West Milton Cider Club near Bridport 10 years ago – the video above [...]

A NEW training centre could be set up for young people in West Dorset if a bid for European funding is successful. The aim is to get 16-25 year-olds developing business ideas that will improve the local environment. Ros Kayes, the director of Bridport Local Area Skills Training (BLAST) has asked the European Rural Development [...]

PLANS to rebuild Bridport’s Mountjoy School in Beaminster have been submitted by Dorset County Council. The county council wants to move the special school on to land next to Beaminster Technology College (BTC). A national schools adjudicator gave his approval for the idea last year, and last month county council cabinet members agreed a budget of [...]

NOVELIST Ioana Morpurgo is to lead a discussion of Romanian literature at Wild and Homeless Books in Bridport. Ms Morpurgo will focus on the ‘period of transition’ that followed the revolution in Romania in 1989. Ten years after the toppling of Ceaucescu, two young Romanian poets wrote a manifesto proclaiming that authenticity should primarily mean [...]