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”!

Technical hitches sorted out, and the British do what they still do in places like Broadwindsor: they form a queue.

VILLAGERS in West Dorset today saw Post Office services brought back to their community after an absence of more than two years.

Broadwindsor has not had a Post Office since December 2007, and the reintroduction of services now is mostly down to members of the local Women’s Institute.

Ruth Yarde of Broadwindsor WI said: “I missed it dreafully. I was very passionate about us having a Post Office again because a lot of people were having to travel elsewhere. But this brings people together. It’s a part of the community and living in a rural area that’s we want – that sense of community.

“I’m feeling very excited and positive, and it’s now down to the village and the surrounding areas to use it well.”

Apart from limited opening hours, there are few obstacles to the new PO outreach service in The Comrades Hall being used. Fellow WI campaigner Jean Frampton said: “There’s a mini-parking area and there’s easy access for people to walk because it’s flat.”

Between them, Mrs Yarde and Mrs Frampton probably put about 200 hours of effort into getting services reinstated.

One villager, who asked not to be named, praised the two women: “They worked tirelessly to find a solution, holding meetings with Oliver Letwin [West Dorset MP] and then later our local district councillor Jacqui Sewell.

“For some time they felt they were banging their heads against a brick wall. If it had not been for their terrier-like persistence, we would not be in the position we are now.

“It really was people power.

“The village hall committee is letting the parish council have the hall for a reduced fee and then the parish council is claiming it back through grant funding which has come via West Dorset District Council and Dorset Community Action.

“The village hall committee is also meeting the cost of a phone line in the hall.”

Broadwindsor parish council chairman Peter Hardwill said: “The benefit for the whole community of having this facility will be in bringing people out, meeting each other, talking.”   

Broadwindsor resident Wendy Shields agreed: “It’s absolutely marvellous.”

A full range of services will now be offered between 10am and 12.30am every Tuesday and Friday in the Comrades Hall. The new outreach service will be run from Bridport Post Office. Sub Postmaster Graham Burridge says he will be offering everything that the former Post Office offered and more, including postage, wrapping materials, financial services, foreign currency and a selection of stationery.

Tuesays and Fridays have been chosen because on those days The Comrades Hall is used by various groups. Coffee mornings are also planned and the local Police Community Support Officer will be holding his monthly surgeries at the hall to coincide with the Post Office service. The mobile library visits Broadwindsor every other Friday morning in the Square meaning that people using the library can then just walk up to the hall to use the Post Office services.

West Dorset District Council Leader Robert Gould said: “The situation in Broadwindsor has been less than ideal for the past two years. Some people without cars have had to go to Beaminster on the bus to visit the Post Office and there can be a wait of up to three hours for the return bus. I’m so pleased with what we have all achieved.”

Broadwindsor has shown how determination and joined up thinking can benefit local communities, said Cllr Gould.

Note: They might need the same sort of qualities in Portesham because the Dorset Echo today has a story saying the Post Office there may soon be closed, as the couple in charge at the moment are retiring.

In an article for The Guardian,  Billy Bragg explains that he’s withholding his taxes until the Chancellor of the Exchequer acts to curb bonus payments to investment bankers at the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). 

In the 2001 and 2005 General Elections, Billy Bragg set up an anti-Conservative internet-based vote-swapping scheme in West Dorset and South Dorset. The primary aim was to help Labour win South Dorset, but coming a very close second indeed was the desire to help the Liberal Democrats beat top Tory Oliver Letwin in West Dorset.

I was going to ring up Billy to ask what – if anything – he was planning to help Labour this year. But I don’t think I’ll bother for the moment. He ends his Guardian article by asking:

“What if everybody did this? Perhaps some form of anarchy would ensue. But if we are going to bring “what ifs” into the debate, then what if we lived in a society that heaped financial rewards on teachers and nurses and soldiers rather than bankers? What if we had a financial system that encouraged fairness rather than greed? Too utopian for you? Well how about this: what if we had a political party capable of winning power at the next election?”

It sounds to me like he’s given up on Labour, for now. Against this kind of backdrop, perhaps the Liberal Democrats are right to be confident that in South Dorset they will get more votes than Labour’s Jim Knight. That is certainly what West Dorset councillor Ros Kayes (the Lib Dems’ candidate in South Dorset) is aiming to achieve. And then, in her sights, is the Conservative Richard Drax…

In West Dorset, the Liberal Democrats are constantly trying to persuade the area’s stubborn rump of Labourites to vote for them instead. Could it finally happen?

Dr Sue Farrant with Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg

Dr Farrant, the Liberal Democrats’ contender for West Dorset at the forthcoming General Election, says she is unhappy with the way that Conservative-controlled West Dorset District Council (WDDC) has behaved over the issue of the South West Quadrant of Bridport, which includes St Michael’s Trading Estate.

WDDC was initially in league with landowners Haywards, until its own councillors rejected what was planned and Haywards then decided to appeal. The hearing will begin at West Bay on January 26.   

Dr Farrant says: “I entirely support the campaign by the Friends of St Michael’s Trading Estate against the current proposals to develop the South West Quadrant of Bridport.

“I believe that any regeneration plan must maintain both the community of small businesses and working artists and an adequately-sized public transport terminal, as well as include other essential community resources, notably the Trick Factory.

“I think the behaviour of West Dorset District Council (WDDC) over this issue has been extremely heavy-handed and it appears to me that a number of important issues which were raised by tenants and residents and by the Town Council have simply not been taken into account.

“I don’t make these comments lightly because I am all too well aware of the need for more housing in the area and the pressure on WDDC to meet government targets.

“However, the inclusion of 100 units in addition to the 70 in the Local Plan seems to me to fly in the face of WDDC’s wider responsiblity to promote the economic, environmental and social well being of the communities it serves. That means taking all factors into account rather than pursuing a single goal to the exclusion of all others.

“I am a great believer in local communities coming together to work out solutions to issues like these and in my experience that is the only way that sustainable outcomes can be achieved.”

For other stories on the South West Quadrant and the Trick Factory, look on this site in the Category called South West Quadrant.

THE late Gerard Morgan-Grenville lived at Milton Mill in West Milton near Bridport.

He was a charming and fascinating man who had an enviably vivid career in many different areas; the military, kitchenware, French barge holidays, luxury train journeys, Saharan treks, and – for a while – book publishing. In the days when I too used to publish books, I helped to edit his memoirs called Breaking Free.

That title gives a clue to another side of Gerard’s character. He was a very successful businessman, but also a radical and pioneering environmentalist. He founded the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales, and was active in the Protest and Survive anti-nuclear movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Locally, after he moved to West Milton in the mid-1990s, he was – among many other things – a founder member of the West Milton Cider Club, one of the most generous supporters of the Centre for Local Food in Bridport, and a campaigner against second homes. I remember him writing about the latter to Country Life, which certainly counts as taking the fight to the enemy’s heartland (if enemy you judge second home owners to be).  

Anyway, on BBC Wales tonight at 10.45pm, Gerard’s life and work is covered in a half-hour programme called How Green Was My Quarry. If you’ve got Sky, you can get BBC Wales on 972.

I have not seen the programme, but according to his widow Margaret it features archive film footage from nearly all parts of Gerard’s life, and Margaret also discloses rather shyly that it may even include excerpts from a recently filmed interview with her.

To quote, finally, the BBC’s own blurb: “David Williams goes on the trail of the late Gerard Morgan-Grenville, founder of the Centre for Alternative Technology near Machynlleth, in How Green Was My Quarry on Wednesday 16 December on BBC One Wales.

“The English aristocrat was a highly successful businessman who turned his back on high society to start a green revolution in an old slate quarry in North Wales.”

David Williams and Gerard first met many years ago in the aftermath of the mysterious death of the CND campaigner Hilda Murrell.

Note: You can read Gerard’s obituary in The Guardian – and it has a picture of him – by clicking on this link.

That is six years less to enjoy, for example, the pleasures of being with grandchildren – or having a nice bit of cake and a cup of tea in the WI café in Bridport on Saturday mornings – or playing short-mat bowls.

Is it fair that poor women should miss out on nearly 2,200 days of life compared with their wealthier counterparts?

Or is it just the way things are, the way things always have been and always will be?

People have to make their own minds up.

That’s the point of the Comprehensive Area Assessment of Dorset, published this morning. It’s a new kind of Government inspection that is supposed to tell people not just how an individual council is performing, but what an area is like to live in.

It is also meant to let people know how councils and other governmental bodies (like the police, and the fire and rescue service) are all working together to make a place better.

Local people, when they have digested all this information, are meant to hold local bodies to account and press for improvements. That’s the idea, anyway.

Clicking on this link will take you to the main overview page for Dorset.

A word of warning: CAA reports are written in a simple style that is supposed to make them more accessible.  Page after page is written in short sentences. Short sentences that are supposed to be easy to read. But these short sentences are all too alike. So these short sentences get on your nerves.

Nevertheless, there is a wealth of detail packed away in them.

Some interesting points

• Most jobs in Dorset are in the service sector, and over 90 per cent of firms have fewer than 25 staff.
• Dorset has more retired people than any other county.
• West Dorset is one of the most thinly populated parts of England. Its population is 97,200. Over half live in the towns – Beaminster, Bridport, Chickerell, Dorchester, Lyme Regis and Sherborne. The district’s population is expected to increase at a faster rate than other areas.  

Some good points

• More people in Dorset than any other English county are satisfied with the local area as a place to live.
• Crime rates are generally low and falling.
• Dorset is the seventh best county at recycling.
• It’s the second best county at reducing the amount of waste going into landfill sites.
• Dorset has been given a Green Flag for its Partnership for Older People Projects, through which more than 23,000 older people are helped to support both themselves and their communities. A Green Flag means other areas could learn from what is happening here.
• More than 83 per cent of people in West Dorset say they have been treated with respect by their local public services, which is well above the national average.

Some bad points

• Wages are low and house prices are very high. That makes staying in Dorset more difficult for young people. Dorset overall has been given a Red Flag over housing quality and affordable housing. A Red Flag means action is needed.
• The number of young people who are not in education, employment or training has gone up.
• Dorset is not doing as well as many other parts of the country in improving road safety. The number of people being killed or seriously injured in road accidents is going down, but too slowly.  
• Satisfaction with bus services is amongst the lowest in the country.
• Some local people in rural areas have serious problems getting the services they need.

Some talking points

From the organisational assessment of West Dorset District Council:

“House building has slowed down because of the recession. And big building schemes to make local towns attractive to people have not gone to plan. But the Council did well in deciding most people’s planning applications quickly and the quality of its decisions improved.”

Could there be a reference in here to the South West Quadrant scheme proposed for Bridport – or two? Is the SWQ scheme officially supposed to be making Bridport “attractive” to people? Or was turning it down – twice – a sign of improved quality decision- making? Probably not the latter, in the official mind; the main quality indicator is almost certainly the number and outcome of appeals. Though another section does state: “Local councillors are particularly strong at challenging decisions and considering different ways of doing things”.

From the organisational assessment of Dorset County Council:

“The Council worked well with its district council partners and others to help local people and businesses cope in the recession. A fund was set up to help, but this was not needed.”

Who decided it was “not needed”? What has happened to this fund now? West Dorset generally lags 12-18 months behind the rest of the country in recessions. I can’t name them – it wouldn’t be fair – but I can think of several retailers who’ve only recently been hit by bad unpaid debts. So a later assessor’s remark may be truer:

“The Council knows that worse may yet to be come…”         

The time and the place of the appeal hearing into the South West Quadrant has not yet been officially confirmed by the Planning Inspectorate but it looks likely it is going to be held in the hall at the caravan park in West Bay on January 26 – 28, 2010.

Disclosure: Since this piece was first published, I have started to work part-time as Secretary to the Board of Local Food Links Limited, which supplies meals to local primary schools from its base at the Centre for Local Food on St Michael’s Trading Estate, on the South West Quadrant. However, I have not discussed the future of the South West Quadrant with anybody at Local Food Links, nor have I heard it spoken about it by anybody else. It is also worth noting that my job as Secretary is not to contribute towards the formation of any policy that Local Food Links might develop about this issue; that is the directors’ job.

MORE than 200 jobs will result from the regeneration of the South West Quadrant in Bridport.

That’s the controversial conclusion reached by consultants working for Haywards and West Dorset District Council, who both own land in and around the St Michael’s Trading Estate – and who both want to see it redeveloped. Objectors argue that any benefits could be significantly less than those claimed by Haywards and WDDC.  

Plans for new business opportunities and for 175 new homes (114 open-market, 61 “affordable”) have twice been rejected by councillors unhappy about what might happen to the people and buildings of a historic part of Bridport.

An appeal against the plans’ refusal will be heard by a planning inspector next year (in a three-day hearing currently due to start on January 26). Objectors are seeking funds to hire a lawyer; supporters are arguing for the scheme’s benefits and defending their motives in pressing ahead with it.

What could the benefits be?

Consultants at Goadsby Town Planning estimate “that the net number of direct and indirect jobs derived from the development will be 206.

“By applying the average wage in the District of £24,000 to the total number of direct and indirect jobs, it can be estimated that £5 million will be generated per annum in income upon completion of the development.

“Much of this will be spent within the local economy, along with the spending generated through those 175 households occupying the dwellings on the development.”

Consultants reckon that 175 households could mean 383 residents (2.19 per household). They add: “Taking the average district income of just over £24,000, the combined income (assuming one average wage per household) of those living on the development could be £4.2 million. After mortgage, rent, tax and other essential outgoings, a significant amount of additional spend will occur in the town.”

Goadsby’s report also estimates that between 70 and 95 construction workers will be employed for five years on the Quadrant redevelopment in Bridport.

Objections

One of the reasons protestors want to hire an expert is to probe calculations like those put forward by Goadsby. The consultants’ sums are based on approved methods for working out impacts on matters like jobs (for example, they use English Partnerships’ Standard Approach to Assessing the Additional Impact of Projects Method Statement, Second Edition, 2004) but objectors say that guidelines can obscure practical matters of fact.

Figures given to Goadbsy by architects Morgan Carey suggest there are 112 people working on the South West Quadrant. If you include them in the suggested total of 206 jobs, isn’t the actual total of new jobs 206 minus 112, that is 94? And 94 times the average wage of £24,000 is £2,256,000, not £5 million.

More questions. Would those 112 people actually be able to carry on working on the St Michael’s Trading Estate? If not, would they be able to go elsewhere? If there isn’t anywhere else, what then?   

Kit Glaisyer, one of the 25 artists currently based in St Michael’s Studios, says: “If this goes ahead I will be thrown out of my studio.”

He doesn’t know where else he could go. St Michael’s Studios could be partly converted into 11 live-work units, but Mr Glaisyer says they’d just be “nice apartments, really”. Studio space would be reduced to a quarter of what it is now. “You can’t squeeze 25 artists into a quarter of the space there was. It’s a nonsense.”

Mr Glaisyer argues that the SW Quadrant is already an entrepreneurial area, offering small businesses “affordable incubation units”. Introduce 175 new households, and that spirit will go.  

“As soon as you bring residential units onto an industrial estate, you’ve lost it for ever.”     

Will West Dorset District Council make money from developing its South West Quadrant land?

In the past, the district council has made money from developing land for sale. Gore Cross Business Park, on the northern edge of Bridport, was established in the mid-1990s in partnership with Dorset County Council and the Rural Development Commission (since absorbed into the South West Regional Development Agency). The council’s main aims were to provide space for local businesses to expand and to generate returns to keep council tax levels down.

The last unoccupied plot at Gore Cross was sold last year to Top Gear for a new £250,000 headquarters. Top Gear is moving from the South West Quadrant. The company’s boss was concerned about what might happen there in the future.

The district council insists it will not make any money from the redevelopment of the South West Quadrant. David Evans, director of planning and community services, says: “There has been a huge amount of consultation on the principle of developing this site.

“The vast majority of people who took part in the consultation thought this was a good idea.

“West Dorset District Council will not gain financially from this development if it goes ahead. In fact it will require substantial public subsidy to bring this development forward.

“This part of Bridport has immense significance in terms of heritage and history as a centre for rope and net making. Some of the buildings are decaying and need sensitive repair.

“This scheme would achieve  this, safeguard local employment and deliver about 60 affordable homes.

“Affordable housing is always mentioned by local people whenever we ask them what their top priorities are.

“However, the decision will now be made by an independent planning inspector.”

The level of public subsidy required is estimated to be at least £2 million.

MILLIONS of tons of carbon dioxide could be stored deep underground Dorset to help combat climate change.

Only a few parts of Britain have the geology suitable for implementing such a radical plan and Dorset is one of them, says Dr Nick Riley, head of science policy at the British Geological Survey, who advises the Government on carbon storage.

The idea of carbon storage is that carbon should be captured as it’s emitted from major sources like coal-fired power stations, then stopped from getting into the atmosphere by being pumped into the ground – and kept there.

The Government is aiming to set up four demonstration projects. Former gas and oil fields in the North Sea look the places most likely to be used, but onshore schemes do have some advantages.

Dr Riley told a briefing at the Department for Energy and Climate Change in London: “Onshore storage can be much cheaper because you don’t have the transport costs or the problem of building long pipelines, but then you have to persuade people it is safe.”

Schemes in Germany and Holland are currently being opposed by local residents.

“The worst-case scenario would be a situation where people were unaware there had been a leak,” said Dr Riley. “In particular weather conditions or in confined spaces, those people could suffer asphyxiation.”

The Government accepts that British schemes would, for safety’s sake, need monitoring and alarm systems.

Is this an area in which Dorset could lead the way and make money?

Portland Gas, remember, is already spending £450 million on an underground gas storage scheme. A new pipeline is to run from the national gas transmission system near Mappowder in Dorset to 14 huge caverns due to be hollowed-out inside a thick layer of rock salt, deep below the old Higher Osprey site inside Portland Port.

So Portland Gas has got what’s probably the best site for underground gas storage in the western half of Dorset. There are even thicker layers of suitable geology underneath the middle of Weymouth but getting consent to undertake a scheme in such an urban area might prove complicated.

But then if Dorset is one of the few areas that’s suitable, could it perhaps be a case of needs must? Dr Riley again: “You cannot have local communities saying ‘why can’t you put it somewhere else’ if there is no geology where it can be put. I understand the concerns people have about storage but, speaking as a scientist, I can say they are not necessarily valid concerns.”

Dorset has led the way before with new energy schemes. Leaving aside for a moment the rights and wrongs of nuclear power (and the costs of construction and clean-up), it’s often forgotten that the reactors built at Winfrith in the late 1950s and 1960s generated lessons for scientists across the world.

Scientists now want the Government to get on with carbon storage. Stuart Hazeldine, professor of geology at Edinburgh University, was recently quoted in The Guardian as saying: “”We’re doing the usual British thing of being faint-hearted when it comes to making a business out of something. It was the same with nuclear and wind power. We are in a world-beating position and must not lose the plot.” Prof Hazeldine’s focus is on the North Sea, where he believes selling storage space to other European countries could bring in £5 billion a year by 2030, but the Committee on Climate Change report Meeting Carbon Budgets – The need for a step change, published on 12 October, 2009, calls on the Government to develop a more general carbon capture and storage infrastructure. 

At the moment, Prof Hazeldine believes, only Scottish Power has the will and the ability to meet the Government’s target date for demonstration schemes of 2014. 

But beyond that? In the eastern half of Dorset, BP’s Wytch Farm oil field could be a prime contender for the future. In the western half, it will be interesting to see whether any opportunities are pursued by big businesses, and local and regional authorities, or whether local people are put off by talk of possible asphyxiation.

THE SOUTH WEST QUADRANT of Bridport is the old quarter of town roughly bounded by the River Brit to the west, West Street to the north, South Street to the east and St Mary’s church to the south. Precise definitions vary.

The area began to be developed in the late 18th century. It continued to expand up until the middle of the 20th century. It encapsulates a major part of Bridport’s industrial history, as Mike Williams writes in the English Heritage book Bridport and West Bay: The Buildings of the Flax and Hemp Industry (2006):

“In spite of extensive demolition and alteration, intact examples of all the building types of the local flax and hemp industry still survive in the area, including open and covered walks, warehousing, workshops, mills and housing.

“The South West Quadrant is one of the earliest industrial suburbs in the country and is now the best illustration of the distinctive townscapes created by the expansion of Bridport from the late 18th century.” 

West Dorset District Council, which owns part of the Quadrant, has long wanted to redevelop the area for new commercial uses and for housing. A planning application, made jointly with another major landowner, was turned down in August 2009. An appeal against this decision has been lodged.

Objectors – and there are many – want to continue their so-far successful fight against what’s proposed by raising funds for a lawyer to fight at the appeal hearing next year.

Now read on…      

An Open Letter from the Friends of St Michael’s Trading Estate (on the SW Quadrant)

IT HAS become evident that our district council, as co-owner of the SW Quadrant, is determined to impose an urban development on Bridport without the usual regulations, consideration for heritage, or community, or involvement from anyone in Bridport. Consequently we believe it is essential to attain legal representation, which is estimated to cost £1,500.

You Can Help

Please help preserve the character of Bridport by donating. There are collection boxes at Leakers bakery, Bridport Arts Centre, Fruits of the Earth and Cornucopia Vintage. Cheques can be made payable to Friends of St Michael’s Trading Estate.

Your donation may help to prevent:

• Even less parking than at present
• More traffic congestion in town
• 5-storey blocks of flats
• Coaches redirected out of town
• A reduced bus station
• The demolition of Historic buildings
• The loss of St Michael’s Community of tradesmen, retailers, craftsmen, artists, designers, the South West’s only indoor skate arena, etc, etc…

Urgent

To help prevent the high impact development in Bridport’s SW Quandrant please write down your objections and send three copies, by the 17th November 2009, to:

The Planning Inspectorate,
Room 3 / 19a Temple Quay House,
2 The Square,
Temple Quay,
BRISTOL
BS1 6PN

and quote ref APP/F1230/A/09/2113294, and WDDC ref 1/D/08/000574

For each person that registered support for the Quadrant development in May there were 43 who registered opposition (131 against and three in support).

At the second development control meeting in August, more than thirty Bridport residents spoke against the proposal to a packed hall (while many were not permitted to speak), with only two in support. More than 1,500 people have signed a petition demanding that the development should be restricted to 80 dwellings (as was the recommended quantity for this site), and that the existing trading community should be preserved.

Local plan policy DA5 states that new buildings should not detract from the character of the surrounding area, and views of local landmarks or hills should not be significantly infringed

If the demolition or refurbishment of premises does not succeed in killing off established businesses, then the allocation of just one parking space for each business certainly should do the job.

The district council, who can in this case process their own proposal, have chosen to circumnavigate all normal regulations in order to cram in as many flats as possible into a convenient brown field site in the heart of Bridport. WDDC officers, who are happy to destroy our local businesses and our heritage just to fix short-term quotas, without a care for a town of exceptional character, are making a big mistake.

Anyone can see that if you prevent the arrival of coaches to a town centre and also reduce parking facilities and traffic flow you cannot claim to be ‘regenerating’ anything other than the flow charts of the district council and developers’ rear pockets. Housing is needed in West Dorset yes, but the scale of this development shows no consideration for the impact on Bridport, its past or its future.

There is, additionally, growing concern for the hundreds of teenagers who currently enjoy and are developing skills at the only indoor BMX arena in the South West here in Bridport:  an example of how a historic net-making warehouse can be used to the benefit of the whole community. This historic building, the ‘Stover’, has been targeted for demolition to make way for a 5-storey block of flats.

Help preserve the character of Bridport!

Thank you – Friends of St Michael’s Trading Estate

(Editor’s Note: This letter has been lightly edited to ensure greater consistency with the stylistic rules of this website. The sense of the words has not been altered).

That far fatal shore in chains we shall see

Although we are taken, do not be mistaken

As brothers in union we shall be free

They can bring down our wages

Starve all our children

In chains they can bind us, steal all our land

They can mock our religion

From our family divide us

But they can’t break the oath of a Tolpuddle man

THE OPENING verse and chorus of Tolpuddle Man by Graham Moore, the Weymouth-born singer-songwriter who’ll be appearing on Wednesday, October 21 at Bridport Town Hall.

Keith Hatch, of Bridport Museum, which is organizing the event, said: “Recently Graham has been touring in Australia as well as playing at Tolpuddle anniversary events in London and Dorset, so the evening will be a great chance to catch him in an intimate venue.

“For this Bridport Museum concert, Graham will include a wide range of subjects from our amazing local history including the Captain Swing Riots, The Tolpuddle Martyrs’ Oath and the feared invasion of Napoleon Bonaparte.”

The Tolpuddle Martyrs were sentenced to transportation from 1830s Dorset for forming a union.

Graham Moore is also expected to recount stories of witchcraft, crime and punishment, the workhouse and “the Bridport dagger” (the hangman’s noose).

Bridport Town Hall doors open at 7pm on October 21. Tickets cost £8 in advance, £10 on the door, £6 for Friends of the Museum. Buy from Bridport Local History Centre 01308-458703 or Bridport Music 01308-425707.