KEEPERS at Longleat are celebrating the success of their pancake tortoise breeding programme. No fewer than five critically endangered baby pancake tortoises have been born at the safari park in the last year. The eldest of the quintet, Syrup, celebrated his first birthday, appropriately on Pancake Day (Shrove Tuesday). He was joined by siblings Banana,…
FUNDING from the Culture Recovery Fund for Heritage has helped South Somerset District Council appoint three rangers who will help keep Ham Hill Country Park and its heritage protected and in tip-top shape for wildlife to thrive and visitors to enjoy. The funding is a rescue package to safeguard cultural and heritage organisations across England…
CRANBORNE Chase Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty is one of the finest areas in the country to see the stars. The AONB became a Dark Sky Reserve last year, and this year’s Starfest will be the first since that important designation. The Dark Skies Festival will take place over the February half term, with most of…
HISTORIAN, poet and cider-maker James Crowden gives the first of a series of “lockdown lectures,” organised by the South West Heritage Trust. The lecture, by Zoom, on Wednesday 3rd February at 7.30pm, focuses on Literary Somerset. The programme runs throughout February and March with speakers covering topics that also include landscape, the Romans in the…
THE Gillingham & Shaftesbury Show will be back this year, helping to reunite the rural community safely, over two days in 2021, on Wednesday 18th and Thursday 19th August. It will be the first time that the long-established one-day show has been held over two days, and will help to ensure its safe return during…
THE Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall visited Salisbury Cathedral to attend a service to celebrate the 800th anniversary of the foundation of the cathedral, and unveiled an engraved stone, carved in the cathedral work yard to mark the occasion. The commemorative stone, made of 150-million-year-old Upper Jurassic Limestone, was extracted from the…
SOUTH Somerset’s Ham Hill Country Park was one of 445 heritage organisations in England to receive a lifeline cash grant from the government’s £1.57bn Culture Recovery Fund The grant of £50,500 has been made to support a winter season of works at the scheduled monument to protect the heritage site is protected and ensure that…
WINDROSE, the rural media charity, has set up an innovative project that combines live singing and old films, provided by internet technology for people in Wiltshire who are living with Alzheimer’s and dementia. Folk singer and song collector Amanda Boyd worked with Alzheimer’s Support Wiltshire to deliver interactive Zoom sessions, which included fascinating old footage…
SOUTH Somerset District Council has announced steps that have been taken to comply with the government’s new lockdown which is due to run until Wednesday 2nd December. The council’s actions are intended to ensure public safety in line with the new guidelines. The website will be continually updated with any actions as further details around…
RURAL touring arts charities, including Dorset’s Artsreach and Cornwall’s Carn to Cove, have got together to create a film that captures the images, words, music and sounds that make up our rural landscape from the south west to Northumberland At a time of isolation, with no possibility of live events in venues, rural touring schemes…