So concludes a recent reflective blog entry by Samuel Cooper, a research student at the University of Sussex, who lectured in February on ‘The Situationist International and its British Fallout’ at Marsh Barn just outside Bridport.

Situationism at Marsh Barn, Bridport: "Is there a fault with reality?"

Mr Cooper was, in short, giving one of the Lectures About Everything organised by Horatio and Ioana Morpurgo.

You can see why a D Phil student obsessed with ‘a forgotten period of avant-garde activity’ (British Situationism since 1967) would regard Marsh Barn as a surprising place to encounter people who were not only enthused by his overview of such subjects as the Angry Brigade and Punk but had themselves been engaged in ‘proximate activity’ (a 68er, a workplace activist, a wobbly, a trade unionist,  a road protestor and others). But that’s  the appeal of this part of the world…

A ‘wobbly’, incidentally, is Mr Cooper’s term: I have got no idea what it means. If I’d been there, I would have asked him, but I wasn’t and I’m sorry I missed it.

In return for Mr Cooper explaining to me what on earth a ‘wobbly’ is, I could have told him that the ex-Special Branch man who cracked the Angry Brigade now lives in Bridport. As I was saying, it is that kind of place…    

Anyway, if you too missed the lecture, and you want to read Mr Cooper’s notes, you can click on this link here; or if you want read his reflections on his Marsh Barn experience, you can click on this link here.

*Situationism began in 1958 as a radical French philosophy heavily influenced by Dadaism and Surrealism. It sought a “REVOLUTION of everyday life”, most famously through the events of May 1968 in Paris, immortalised in graffiti such as: “Do not adjust your mind, there is a fault with reality” and “Be realistic. Demand the impossible”.

A new branch of Travis Perkins, costing £2.3 million, is being constructed. Up next is Lidl

WHAT USED to be a pleasant and uplifting walk along St Andrew’s Road is rapidly being destroyed by the Philistines who are building the new builders’ merchants depot and grocer’s shop alongside the Co-op.

They are completely obliterating the wonderful view of the upper half of Jessop Avenue and all of Happy Island Way. No more will we be able to gaze in wonder at these architectural gems as they seem to roll down the hill and fill us with warmth and gratitude to the far-sighted developers who gave us these vital ingredients of our local heritage.

Each time I see the vista before me I hear a Pete Seeger tune playing in my mind and give mental thanks to the planning department of the local council for granting us such a blessing.

I am sure that no other town in this land of ours would even dream of allowing a much-loved treasure to be completely hidden by a building constructed with sole purpose of foisting tins of baked beans, rolls of toilet paper and bottles of Egyptian Hock off on a gullible public.

Is it too late to prevent this monstrosity being completed? If so we must act and we must act swiftly and decisively. This view is far too valuable to be destroyed. If we allow this boil on the buttocks of Bridport to be completed future generations will curse us for our sheer vandalism. I would beg you to think of Happy Island Way and complain to your local councillor before it is too late.

The artist Richard Harris has been commissioned to produce a permanent work of art in response to the construction of the Dorchester to Weymouth Relief Road. The Earthscapes exhibition at Bridport Arts Centre shows some initial ideas - and this is one

Some notes on the Earthscapes exhibition at Bridport Arts Centre, curated by Sherborne House Arts

Part 1: The Project straightforwardly Described

A SCALE MODEL of a sculpture to be sited either side of the new Dorchester to Weymouth Relief Road has gone on show for the first time.

It’s on display at Bridport Arts Centre as part of Sherborne House Arts’ Earthscapes exhibition.

The work by sculptor Richard Harris shows some 28 boulders gradually rising on steel poles reaching to 3m (10ft) above the Southdown Ridge.

All the rocks ­- weighing between one and eight tonnes ­- are sourced from the 1.6m tonnes of material moved from the site where work on the road has been taking place.

If it gets the go-ahead, the sculpture will be on both sides of the road and will curve off up the slopes of the cutting following the natural geological strata.

Lines of stones are to be mounted on poles close to where they were dug up

An aerial view of the proposed public art work along the sides of the Dorchester to Weymouth relief road

The poles will curve up the sides of the cuttings

The excavated rocks are between 160 and 65 million years old and started being formed in what would have been a tropical lagoon. The concretions are formed around small matter such as a leaf or a fossil and steadily build up over millions of years solidifying by chemical processes.

Mr Harris said: “I was asked to consider the landscape, context of the whole road and having worked on several proposals for different sites ­ this is the idea that I feel is the strongest and most appropriate. Some of the geology has been exposed by the cutting but will eventually become less visible as the grass grows.

“This proposal puts the geology back where it was ­ but visible­ continuing up above the hill indicating where it would have been before it was weathered away.”

Mr Harris said he had been involved with the project since January last year making many visits to the site and consulting with geologists.

As if an invisible car was driving through in mucky weather and spraying up stones

He said: “This idea came in the late summer and only came about when the work had started and the stones had been revealed.

“The heavier stones will rise up from the ground and will get progressively smaller as they run through the air to the top of the slope.

Big stone...

... Small stone (fascinatingly coloured and shaped)

“What I am trying to do is give an inspiring image as people come into Weymouth and to reveal the geology in a dramatic way.”

 The idea of incorporating art in relation to the road was initially proposed in the Weymouth and Portland Commissioning Plan for 2012.

It stated that public art could be used to make the £87m road ­ which is due to open in Spring next year – more attractive for drivers.

The work is being supported by Arts Council England, South West and Dorset County Council.

Mr Harris is now working with Skanska, the contractors, Dorset County Council and his own engineers to develop the project. 

Part 2: ‘Earthscapes’ as an exhibition title

THERE AREN’T many better words in the English language than ‘scape’. It means so much and is so capable of forming suggestive associations. Brickscape, prisonscape, cityscape, mudscape, hedgescape, landscape, moonscape, earthscape… It’s a brilliant word for conjuring up an external scene or, indeed, an externalised one – as in moodscape or mindscape.

Then there is the word ‘scape’ taken by itself. It’s long been used as a shortened form of ‘escape’ –  ‘scape’ breaks away and soon ends up leading an outlawry of meanings: a ‘scape’ is a fart; a transgression due to thoughtlessness; an outrageous sin; a slip of the tongue; a clerical error.

Shafted / Scaped

‘Scape’ can also be used to describe the shaft of a column, or the long stalk of a flower  rising directly out of its root.

The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins used ‘scape’ to denote an impression or reflection of the individual quality of a thing or an action; its quiddity, its real nature or essence.

So you can start to see why an exhibition called Earthscapes is always going to be appealing, even before we get started on that titular coinage.

Why earthscapes and not landscapes? Perhaps because ‘land’ speaks too much of ownership and class, of power and authority – whereas ‘earth’ still escapes from some of those human forms? The earth, physically and mentally, is a space that none of us can ever truly hope to control – not forever – and space of course is an anagram of scape. At which point – at the mention of anagram – your mind can start to run away with possibilities (yes, to scape), because earth is also an anagram of heart.

So you can have earthscapes as ‘heartscapes’ or ‘heartspaces’ or ‘hearts paces’; pluck out the word art and you get ‘she art scape’, or ‘he art scapes’; and so on and on…

Part 3: The Relief Road Art Work as a Work of Art

You might regard everything written above as rather wild, but it is all relevant to the Dorchester to Weymouth relief road, and to Richard Harris’s initial models.

They’re fiendishly difficult designs to photograph, and if you’re interested you should go to see them for yourself, but I hope for now the pictures here show roughly what’s on display.

So, scapes: relevant how?

Firstly: in the crudest way, there will be people who regard what’s proposed as arty-farty nonsense – and, remember, ‘to let a scape’ does mean to break wind…

But let’s chuff on.

Secondly: look at the way the stones are upheld on shafts / columns / stalks – call them what you will – they are all ‘scapes’ and there are many different ways of viewing their form and layout. The stones for the real art work will come from excavations along the route. They will – you could argue – look like the severed heads on poles that used to be stood at the entrances to towns and cities (Dorchester once used to be gristled with the rotting heads of Catholic Martyrs who’d been hung, drawn and quartered). From that perspective, the two lines of scapes, moving down either side of the road, represent a triumphal assertion of power by Dorset County Council and its contractors.

Look what we have done! We have disembowelled the earth! We have built this road and routed our enemies!

Thirdly: and for what?

The stones curve like a sabre tooth, or perhaps a tongue

Or in these daubs like antennae or paw prints?

More still to follow: writer is thinking (when he gets chance)!  

There’s a most interesting story behind it.

In 1978 the artist Laurence Whistler gave this bound manuscript of a poem, some 80 pages long, to the Lyme Regis Philpot Museum, where it is on display. The author John Fowles had at this point just started his ten-year stewardship at the Philpot  as Honorary Curator. From the outset he regarded The Lymiad as one of the museum’s most precious possessions – for its verve, wit, and satirical humour; its vivid evocation of the manners and pastimes of a small Regency resort; and above all for its acute observations of the town, its people, and their preoccupations.

 Sadly, John Fowles died in 2005, so he never saw his dream of The Lymiad’s publication brought to fruition. Now the Museum’s Trustees have re-visited the project, in consultation with Mrs Sarah Fowles, his widow, and plan to launch a new edition of the manuscript; not a facsimile of the original, but designed as it might have appeared had it been published in 1819 – some 200 pages, soft-back, but with stitched pages and card covers marbled in the Regency manner.

The Lymiad will come out looking finer than this. At least, it'd better do!

 The edition will contain:

• An essay by John Fowles on “Lyme in the early 1800s’, published in 2003 from his original introduction
• A general introduction and textual note by John Constable
• A transcription of the text
• Editorial notes by John Fowles, John Constable and Jo Draper, the former curatorial consultant at the Museum.
• Illustrations from the Museum’s rich collection

The cost of the entire project is estimated at £4000. Some funds have already been raised, and it is hoped to raise the balance by 100 individual subscriptions of £20, the names of all those subscribing to be recorded in the publication.

For further information on this fascinating project contact Mary Godwin, the Museum’s Curator, on 01297-443370, or e-mail curator@lymeregismuseum.co.uk

*In 1997 the manuscript caught the attention of Dr John Constable, then Professor of English Literature at Kyoto University. Over the next few years he checked and studied the transcript and wrote the introduction.

In his words:  “The Lymiad emerges as a highly political and a thoroughly Whig poem, with some leanings towards the left of that party though stopping short of Radicalism itself.”

In view of Lyme’s political history, some may be surprised that “it stopped short of Radicalism itself”!

FOR MORE than seven long years the Literary & Scientific Institute in Bridport town centre has stood empty. Now though, the Bridport Area Development Trust has been given a chance to seek new uses for a building erected in the early 1830s as a Mechanics Institute, whose purpose was to help Bridport’s working classes educate themselves. In 1855 it become a more middle-class Literary and Scientific Institute; in the late 19th century it was an art school; in the late 20th a Dorset County Council library.

About 25 people are due to look round inside to dream and to calculate what might be. The pictures shown here need little commentary, but you’ll find the occasional note of explanation and literary tag.

All pictures were taken by Vince O’ Farrell of Bridport Area Development Trust, with whose kind permission they are now reproduced.

“Classical, that’s it – it is calm and classical… No low beatings and knockings about” (Mrs Jarley in Dickens’ The Old Curiosty Shop).

One of the reasons we know that the Institute was built in the early 1830s is that a book about Baptist churches published in 1835 complained that it made the garden setting of the chapel right by it, pictured below, less attractive to visitors.

The same book (by one  J. Murch) commented nonetheless on what “a handsome and commodious edifice” the new Institute  was.

“The scene was the familiar one of grandeur and desolation” (The End, Samuel Beckett).

Old buildings “were scaffolding once / and workmen whistling” (Images, T E Hulme). 

“… And immediately

“Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:

“The sun-comprehending glass,

“And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows

“Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.”

(High Windows, Philip Larkin)

In the blue corner, the BN – 40p, published by Newsquest (owned by the giant American corporation Gannett), 64 pages (including 10 of the crucial property pages),  physically smaller than the VF.  

In the red corner, the VF, published by Lyme Media & Events Ltd (owned by a former St Albans publisher, who also owns the Mariners Hotel in Lyme Regis), 64 pages (including 10 of the crucial property pages), bigger pages than the BN.

First pages, first impressions

The BN has a new battlecry – YOUR TOWN, YOUR PAPER. Good and punchy, but what if you live in a village? Is the BN really going to focus just on Bridport? What about Beaminster? Or does it think that people will read “your town” as covering that?

BN Page 1: Big capitalised white-on-black negative headline: “WHAT A WASTE – Fury over £300,000 cost of finding new transfer site for rubbish”. Nice use of red to pick out the £300,000.

VF Page 1: Smaller lower-case “Leisure centre celebrates windfall”. This is about Bridport’s leisure centre getting a lottery grant of £315,000.

Odd how the two sums of money are so close, in this classic bad news / good news split (or hard news and soft news, depending on which terms you prefer).

At this stage, both papers are definitely looking like contenders. But which lead will appeal more to most local people in terms of their everyday lives? You must decide for yourself, but I’d be inclined to say the latter… 

However, there is also another way of looking at things - old news versus new news - and as my first correspondent has leapt in to say:

“The lottery award was on page 2 of the BN last week. The VF story is in more detail but the news is over a week old.

“VF still has an appalling masthead- far too busy, badly designed and looks cheap. It doesn’t need the bottom strap line announcing it to be Bridport’s very own community newspaper, ­ it’s meaningless and takes up a cm of space at the bottom.

“First round to the BN.”

Another email describes the BN’s lead story as “a move away from the sub-Jeremy Kyle style fodder we’ve been getting of late”.

But continues: “The Your Town, Your Paper thing is meaningless. What does it mean? If it was people’s paper they would already know. It’s like the 1980s, Maxwell’s Mirror, Forward with the people – and we know what happened to him.

“Where do the BN’s profits go? Not to the Bridport paper, not to Dorset, not even the UK….

“The VF still needs to tidy up its page 2. They have the telephone number of its offices in no less than three places.  And do we really need to have the number of the designers?

“It’s too featuresy – the 60 second interview should be moved further back.”          

And another – I ought to be charging Newsquest and Lyme Media for running this impromptu focus group. But do they want to hear what’s said, let alone pay me? (That’s a rhetorical question, not a hopeful plea, by the way).

“Interesting, the Bridport News’s splash is 1,300+ words long. Much longer than the previous few weeks. But clearly the investigating has been done by NOWTS not Bridport News staffers.

“Page 2 BN is ok, the stories are very long (round 2 to BN)

“Page 3 BN is a good story! But is in all the rivals and was covered by the VF, clearly a press release. Good headline though.

“Interesting 4/5 BN, rather like BN was a while back.

“Last week the page 6 BN story would have been the splash – have advertisers complained?

“BN’s page 7 is the VF’s page 3.

“Nice pic on page 8 of BN.

“The VF is still running pancake stories and far too much “charridee stuff” and as for the Axminster-based Summer Holiday it makes no sense for a so-called hyperlocal paper.

“The VF takes no account of design… the BN has a very good design sub and that saves the paper.

“Overall, the BN has it, although this may be because people still send it press releases and the View From needs to work harder on design.

“However, the VF has pushed its Ents coverage and it does look better than the BN’s. If the VF’s new owner cares about news the VF could be a real contender.

“There are still no words on the front of the BN indicating it’s stuck with the tabloid style of the Dorset Echo – which may be fine in Weymouth but not really in Bridport.

“Design aside, the big question is: Is there enough unique content to make the BN worth the 40p cost?

“The answer will be worth noting when the next circulation figures come out.”

Some more of my own thoughts, quickly.

I rather like the bustling feel of the VF’s masthead, although it is suffering by showing Woolworths still open. It closed in Bridport – what – a year ago?

The VF’s Entertainments section is better than the BN’s and should provide a strong basis for the VF’s new Friday online newspaper, the Dorset Weekender, starting in March. More could have been done with the Summer Holiday piece to make, for example, the links across West Dorset clearer. 

The interview on page 2 of the VF is always a good read, and you can make a case for it staying where it is, because it suggests that this is a paper about local people. The whole page devoted to a personal profile further into the paper reinforces this.   

The story about the comedian Reginald D. Hunter not showing up at the Electric Palace  because he was on was the BBC’s new programme The Bubble (VF, p3: BN, p7) is an indication of how so-called newspapers – both the BN and the VF – are being left behind. You could find out about this on Twitter days ago.  

There is indeed a lovely pic on p8 of the BN, by a member of the public (Shane Pym, former landlord of the Bottle Inn in Marshwood, and before that, if memory serves, once a lorry driver in Rwanda).

The pictures in We’re In The News in the BN (pages 26-27) are all taken by professional photographer Graham Hunt. What happened to the idea of people sending their own in? Have people given up already, or is it just a result of the publication day shifting to a Wednesday?

Expanding the Looking Back section in the BN is a good idea, and there’s a great selection of photos this week courtesy of local collector Keith Alner.  Running this kind of feature should allow more time for the BN’s staff to do more original reporting.

That would be good – because what would really make a difference, in all the 128 pages of the BN and VF combined, is more original reporting, more life, more sparkle, not just from the towns, but from the villages too.

Is that too much to ask for these days?

My favourite thing

I’ve spent too long today looking at, and thinking about, local newspapers. I’ve alternated between feelings of admiration for the often resourceful ways they keep on going (genuinely respectful feelings in the case of the VF) and fury – as the BN would doubtless have it – at the pitiful crumminess of some of their content. I can’t bring myself to write about the BN page 9 lead:  man – on Portland – complains about postal surcharge…    

So I’ll end this almost-certainly-never-to-be-repeated exercise with my favourite thing in this week’s BN; the last line of the letter by Geoff Yaxley, of Silver Street, Lyme Regis, about the working party being set up in Lyme Regis to discuss the future of the Three Cups Hotel. Mr Yaxley writes about hundreds of people voting for the compulsory purchase of the Three Cups, then concludes:

“I am the only person who views this new working party with scepticism.”

Good on you mate!      

Dorchester town centre redeveloped: an artist's impression of what new West Dorset District Council offices could look like

WEST DORSET District Council is making a big effort to win support for plans for the revamp of Dorchester town centre, and below – word for word – are two press releases issued today. Why word for word? Because on big issues like this, hours and hours of effort goes into producing press releases, and if you regard them as rhetorical rhumbas or peruse them as political poems, they can actually give a surprising amount of pleasure.

The first one, for example, starts with the word “the”? Why “the” and not “a”, when there have been a couple of other schemes before that failed to come to anything? That’s the reason. “The” sounds more planned and definite, whereas “a” would subliminally raise the possibility that this scheme too might never materialise.

But then whoever wrote this is also honest. That’s why “long-awaited” comes next. The council has been wanting for the best part of twenty years to get a scheme going on the Charles Street site, and the writer feels compelled to acknowledge this fact while at the same time seeking also to suggest that over the last two decades the people of Dorchester have been chafing for action… But have they? 

There are also points omitted. I’ll just pick out two for now, one good, one bad. The bad, but hardly surprising, point is that there’s no mention of the recent fine Simons was given for bid rigging. I’ve put what WDDC had to say about this last September at the bottom of this press release.

The good point is that there is no mention of the Olympics. I was told a while ago that Team Dorset wanted to include the Charles Street redevelopment as an Olympic legacy – think how the spending of £60 million could swell the benefits claimed – but thankfully the idea was squashed. It’s bad enough seeing the Dorchester to Weymouth Relief Road claimed as an Olympic legacy. But that’s another story… For now, seriously, enjoy what’s below.     

THE LONG-AWAITED £60 million redevelopment of Dorchester town centre will move one step closer if a planning application is submitted next month.

The redevelopment of the Charles Street car park in Dorchester is a key priority for the district council.

The planned redevelopment would provide a more vibrant county town with quality facilities including extra shopping, a new library and adult learning centre, affordable housing, 484 public car parking spaces, a 60-bedroom hotel and a new bus stop.

There will be a place to leave cycles and new public toilets are also planned.

Developers, Simons – whose work with West Oxfordshire District Council recently landed a Best Regeneration Partnership award in the Community Partnership Awards – intends to submit a planning application to the district council by April.

Some major retailers have already shown interest in occupying the anchor store.

Pedestrian walkways will link the development to South Walks, Tudor Arcade and Hardye Arcade, meaning that the whole of the town centre will benefit from the development.

New council offices are also planned, and Dorset County Council is looking at whether relocating Dorchester Library to the Charles Street development would meet service needs and provide value for money. A total of £500,000 has been provisionally set aside by the county council towards fitting-out costs if the move is given the go-ahead.

West Dorset District Council Chief Executive David Clarke said relocating the county council’s library and adult learning centre to the new complex would mean better access for local people to a wide range of public services in one place.

Council Leader Robert Gould said: “The public have been kept informed and been consulted for more than two years on the latest plans to develop this site. All the details can be found on www.charlesstreetproject.com

“When the planning application is submitted, there will be a three week period for people to have their say and let the council, as the planning authority, know what they think about the proposals.”

He added: “The new offices will provide a first phase to the important redevelopment of the Charles Street site.

“The development will bring significant private investment, a wider range of shops and facilities and more jobs to the county town.

“The redevelopment as a whole will help Dorchester and the surrounding area recover faster from the current recession.”

For more information visit dorsetforyou.com/charlesstreet

WDDC statement on Simons’ fine last September:

West Dorset District Council Chief Executive David Clarke said: “The district council was disappointed to learn that Simons is one of the 112 companies investigated by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) over cover pricing/bid rigging.

“The investigation relates to three contracts submitted by a local works office of Simons Construction Ltd outside of Dorset, over eight years ago. Simons cooperated fully with the OFT and as a result their fine was reduced by 40%.

“There is no connection between this investigation and the proposed development in Charles Street, Dorchester by Simons’ Developments Ltd who were not involved in the investigation.

“The OFT has advised that businesses that have been part of this investigation should not be excluded from future tenders and are expected to be more compliant with competition rules in the future. The council follows OFT’s recommendations and has specifically employed a leading firm of quantity surveyors to advise the council on the tender process.”

Editor’s Note: The second press release expands on that simple-looking clause in the first, which states that “New council offices are also planned”. The council’s proposed move to new offices is described as “a key boost” to the town centre redevelopment plans outlined above. 

Existing offices at Stratton House (which has, apparently, 17 different floors) are said to be “wholly unsuitable”: they prevent the council from working “effectively and efficiently as a single organisation”. It would be nice to know what the council is prepared to admit - aside from paying big bills for things like heating – that it is doing ineffectively and inefficiently at the moment.

It would also be nice to know how the council squares its future as “a single organisation” with the cost-cutting Pathfinder proposals for West Dorset, Weymouth & Portland and Purbeck all to operate under one supreme team of managers.

My feeling, for what it’s worth, is that people need to ask a lot of questions about this.

Why West Dorset District Council has to downsize

WEST DORSET District Council has launched a video to explain why it needs to downsize and move to modern new offices.

Its chief executive David Clarke is the face of the six-minute film telling people that:

• It’s cheaper for the council to move than to stay where it is
• New council offices and a possible library will mean better access for customers
• Public parking spaces in the town centre will be freed up, in addition to 484 car parking spaces remaining in Charles Street
• The council’s carbon footprint will be reduced
• The Old Crown Court would be developed as a heritage attraction

The video is available to view now on YouTube. Mr Clarke said: “As part of its continued search for savings the district council has decided that it makes no sense to continue to invest taxpayers’ money into the existing buildings which, when built, were never designed as offices.

“It is cheaper for us to downsize and move to modern and efficient offices than to stay. The new building will be less than half the size of current campus.

“Importantly, the new offices will reduce our carbon footprint and will save the taxpayers between £140,000 and £160,000 a year.

“The new offices will be better for customers because they will be able to access all services in one new convenient place rather than at the various different receptions we have now.

“As the first phase of the redevelopment, the offices will also be a key boost to secure the £60m private investment in the Charles Street retail, housing and hotel development.”

The costs of building the new offices will be around £10.7 million. The district council can fund this by selling the Stratton House complex, which it expects will fetch around £3.5 million. The authority has already built up £3 million in reserves to meet the high costs of maintaining Stratton House over the next few years. The council can afford to either use current reserves or borrow up to £4.2 million to fund the rest of the new building costs, because it will not be paying huge utility bills, cleaning and maintenance at Stratton House. The cost of borrowing for local authorities is at historically very low interest rates which can be fixed for the period of the loan.

The council will also ensure the continued use of the existing Stratton House site, made up of several historically important buildings. In particular, negotiations are ongoing with the National Trust about the future of the Old Crown Court and Cells, based in the Shire Hall part of the council offices.

West Dorset District Council’s Head of Corporate Resources and Health Adrian Stuart said: “Moving to new offices will help us improve efficiency and provide further savings to maintain front line services in the longer term.

“If the proposals get planning permission, we expect to move in to the new offices during early summer 2012.”

He added: “The council needs to move because the alternative is to make a significant investment in our current Stratton House site. 

“Even after making such an investment we would still be occupying buildings that are wholly unsuitable to their current use as offices, will cost more to maintain, clean, heat and light than is reasonable to expect, and prevent us from working effectively and efficiently as a single organisation.” 

Ten interested parties have been shown around the empty Institute in East Street, Bridport, by members of the Bridport Area Development Trust, which has got six months to find a modern purpose for the historic property.

“We’re still in the very early stages,” said Crystal Johnson of the Trust.

“We’re lucky in Bridport in that we’ve got a lot of other facilities and arrangements, and we don’t want to duplicate those, so we’ve got to have something that doesn’t put the building in competition with other venues, but complements what’s already happening.

“A lot of ideas have to do with training and providing courses, perhaps working with higher and further education institutions, which are looking to deliver more courses locally.”

The building was last occupied in 2002, which is also when the last structural survey was done. Another survey now needs doing.

The digital arts organisation PVA was one of the Institute's last tenants. PVA is now based in the old building at the back of the East Street car park

Ms Johnson said: “It’s not deteriorated significantly since then but of course the costs of things have changed.”

Everyone involved with the Trust is working on a voluntary basis; the organisation does not have a lot of money or capacity.

Ms Johnson continued: “We’re hoping that people will come forward with specialist skills, for example legal or property management, skills which will help us get some kind of business plan together for the building to be handed over to the community, and help us raise the initial capital that will be required and also develop further uses that bring funding with them.

“We’ve got to think quite long term about it.” 

The building’s history

The sign outside proclaiming it to be a Literary & Scientific Institute is a bit misleading. It was that, but not until 1855. Before then it had a very interesting history indeed; it encapsulates a period of class warfare and ambitions for cultural change. 

In 1830, Bridport formed a Mechanics Institute, one of the first Mechanics Institutes in the country. London had the very first, in 1824. Mechanics Institutes were mutual improvement societies, self-help organisations, part of a grass-roots working class struggle for education and advancement.

“The time has gone by,” as one former rope-maker put it, “for the selfish and bigoted possessors of wealth to confine the blessings of knowledge wholly within their own narrow circle, and by every despotic artifice to block up each cranny through which intellectual light might break out upon the multitude…”

Restraint on “sensual indulgence”

The aim of setting up a Mechanics Institute in Bridport was (take a deep breath!) to foster “the mental and moral advantage of the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, but especially of the young men of the working classes, by affording them the means of useful knowledge, and assisting such of the members as may be engaged in mechanical pursuits in attaining a scientific acquaintance with their respective arts – providing them with improving and interesting subjects for reflection and discussion, and thereby establishing a wholesome moral restraint on their amusements, keeping them from wasting their leisure time in vacancy of mind, or unprofitable conversation, or sensual indulgence; in fact enabling them to become more thinking, and therefore more rational beings, and more useful and respectable members of society.”

This explains the origin of the East Street building. Some of the language used here (“moral restraint”, etc) clearly shows middle-class involvement, but the Institute itself was explicitly built for the working classes, between 1830 and 1835, at a time of great political unrest, especially in Dorset. (This was the time, for example, when the Tolpuddle Martyrs were transported).  

The Institute’s building was paid for by Henry Warburton, the son of a Kent timber merchant. Warburton was a Radical reformer who was MP for Bridport from 1826 until 1841. By one account it cost him £16,000; that’s more than £1.3 million in today’s money.

“Fear God and Honour the King”

Anyway,the Institute began with fine hopes, but it failed. No one really knows quite why.

It might have been because employers simply made their workers do such long hours they didn’t have enough time left for proper meetings.

It might have been because power in Dorset then largely rested with Conservatives viciously hostile to working class aspirations. In 1838, for example, the Bridport Institute sent a petition up to London supporting proposals for educational funding to be freed from churches. This gesture was denounced in the Conservative Dorset County Chronicle, which wanted clergymen still to make the lower orders “Fear God and Honour the King”. Such attitudes would have made it harder for the Mechanics Institute to survive. 

Institutes generally were also vulnerable to economic downturns, internal squabbles, problems with getting reliable teachers, and so on. Whatever the reason was, the Mechanics Institute failed and only in 1855 was it reborn as the much more middle-class Literary & Scientific Institute.

So what next?

It’s difficult to draw conclusions, and it may well be that the largely forgotten history of working class struggle in Bridport is regarded by many people as, these days, a bad omen, or irrelevant. But is it?

One of the great themes of the forthcoming General Election is going to be “mutualisation” – both Labour and the Conservatives say they want to encourage all sorts of enterprises based upon this principle.

So even though there are going to be huge cuts in public spending, Bridport could perhaps be well placed to argue for an institution that embodies the idea of mutual help.

The Bridport Area Development Trust should be bold. It should seek a use for the Institute that’s as new now as the idea of the Mechanics Institute once was.

And wouldn’t it be fantastic if the Bridport’s current MP Oliver Letwin, who wants the Conservatives to be radical and reforming, could be persuaded to contribute towards the Institute in as generous a way as his predecessor in Parliament once did?

Editor’s Note: This piece draws on The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes by Jonathan Rose and the Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History & Archaeological Society.

The Institute is on the English Heritage register of buildings at risk. Click on this link to read more.  

The move is announced on the papers’ website but not (that I can see) in the papers themselves.

The shift means the two Newsquest publications will come out on the same morning as the free newspapers View From Bridport, View From Beaminster and View From Lyme Regis.

“The Bridport News and Lyme Regis News moving to Wednesday is purely for operational reasons relating to available press slots,” says Toby Granville, editor of the Dorset Echo, who also oversees the two weeklies.

View From editor Philip Evans comments (via Twitter): “@RealWestDorset By moving to a Wednesday publishing date they lose their only exclusive news day to the View. Great decision – for the View!”

Analysis

Myself, I think there are three things worth remarking on.

One: when the News did first move from Friday to Thursday that was done to compete more directly with View From titles and the Western Gazette (which comes out on Thursdays). Yet I know people who still dislike that shift intensely and refuse, as a matter of principle, to buy the News on a Thursday, because they believe it should still come out on a Friday. That’s a powerful testament to the strength of the connection that the News had with people, and to the force of habit. It’s Friday: it’s Bridport / Lyme Regis News day. Friday was a crucial part of the papers’ brand identity. Changing to a Thursday affected that, but perhaps moving to a Wednesday will not, particularly, because the first move was the one that showed the brand could be tampered with. Like ITV’s News at Ten; there are people who have never seen that in quite the same way since ITV began moving it around…

Another comment via Twitter: “oninbridders @RealWestDorset Bridport News belongs to Friday, a nice way to end the week, sort it out @Dorsetecho. Though at this rate it will loop back”

Two: it will interesting to see what effect it has, three editions of the View From and two editions of the News coming out on the same day, midweek. All sorts of permutations are possible. Good for the View because people might choose to pick up a free paper rather than pay for one that is now covering exactly the same last week? Good for the News because it’s got more pages at the moment than it’s had for years and people might think that a paid-for publication is always going to be superior to a free? Or good for them both because, if you’re in the shop, why not get them both? Neither is going to want to have exactly the same content as the other so they should (in theory) both get better and more various.

Three: and what of the 60p Western Gazette, which fewer people in West Dorset seem to care about these days, despite the best efforts of its local reporter Danielle Hoffman? (It was noticeable, for example, that she turned up for the recent South West Quadrant appeal hearing whereas no one from the News was seen – a situation that people commented upon.) Alas for the Western Gazette, it won’t have much of an “exclusive news day” to itself on Wednesdays because the deadline for its West Dorset edition is late on Tuesday. Oh well.

Postscript

View From Publications are now planning something for Fridays called the View Online Dorset Weekender – “a brand new weekly paper you’ll only be able to read online!”

Come to Bridport... We're having a Hat Festival

It could become the world’s biggest celebration of headwear and millinery, and it should provide an additional incentive for tourists to visit Dorset in the early autumn.

The plans are being backed by some of the industry’s biggest names.

The first Hatfest will run for three days from Friday, September 17 to Sunday, September 19. It will include themed talks, demonstrations, gigs, street theatre, workshops, exhibitions and competitions. There will also be a few surprises revealed nearer the time.

The festival will aim to teach us more about hats...

... and particularly to remind us how stylish they can be

The man behind the festival is Roger Snook whose West Street shop, T Snooks, attracts customers from around the globe, including many celebrities.

Roger said: “It is a project that I”ve been considering for a little while now. I think it’s something that would benefit the whole town.

“When I first started thinking about it I was convinced there must already be one already in existence somewhere in the UK ­ but there isn’t.

“Winchester has a hat festival but that’s for street entertainers, the only other ones are in France and Egypt.

“The Bridport Hat Festival is to be an annual event to remind people just how stylish wearing hats can be, and how stylish Bridport can be.

“This should be good for local traders, the town generally and the whole hat industry. There are so few hat shops left in the country, and it’s a real shame.

“I have hat aficionados coming to my shop from as far afield as Derby and Norwich. People that are serious about their hats go mad for them.

“And, apart from anything else, a hat festival would just be great fun. It will attract people to the town and be a great early autumn attraction.

Help fill in the details...

“If anyone has any more ideas than we’d love to hear from you.”

You can contact Roger at roger@rsnook.fsnet.co.uk or by calling 01308 458224.

Roger Snook, in his South Street shop, wearing his own Colonial Panama trimmed white