Dorset MPs are calling for answers after Leweston School – a 135-year-old private school near Sherborne – shut without warning, leaving staff unpaid, hundreds of children with nowhere to go after half term, and questions over a loan taken out against the company only months ago. In a move described by local MP Edward Morello […]
Actor, writer and director Christopher Byram Jury has spent a lifetime in front of and behind the camera. Best known as teenage assistant Eric Catchpole in the BBC series Lovejoy, Chris has written for the likes of The Bill, Casualty and Holby City and spent a decade directing EastEnders. Now semi-retired, Chris has a new […]
Halloween in Weymouth is under way, with a week of trails, parades and family fun taking over the town until November 1. A Spooks by the Sea parade and Trunk ’n’ Treat on Friday, October 30 will feature a Halloween parade, led by spooky stilt-walkers and a ghost shop, starting outside The Range at 5pm, […]
People lucky enough to have tickets to marvel at the Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum will see a Norman knight who held Rampisham in West Dorset. According to a local antiquarian journal published over a century ago, Wadard of Bayeux was one of the most faithful servants of William the Conqueror’s half-brother, Bishop Odo. […]
A new novel by former newspaper editor Margery Hookings was launched at Washingpool Farm Shop on Saturday, October 10. Plashy Fen by Maddie Grigg Published under the pen name Maddie Grigg, Plashy Fen is set in an imagined Dorset village by the sea. Margery was editor of the Bridport & Lyme Regis News from 1999 […]
A year after opening in South Street, Dorchester, Olive & Wilde Studios is about to become a gallery for the first time. When Laura Delage-Pandeli launched the studio on October 1 last year, it was a design practice and a co-working space in a Georgian townhouse at the South Walks end of South Street. A […]
There must be something in the water in West Dorset – there’s a mighty army of OAPs who keep on working and refuse to hang up their boots, working past retirement age. With those in their 50s and early 60s now looking down the barrel of retirement at 67 and 68, maybe this is less […]
A military researcher wants to hear from readers of The West Dorset Magazine if they have an Anzac soldier in their family tree, and especially anyone with wedding photos from that era. Charlie Owen is researching the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, who went through Weymouth during the First World War. Between 1915 and […]
A campaign has been launched to save Weymouth’s landmark Riviera Hotel, after a couple who married there grew increasingly concerned about its future. Tess and Des Shepherd married at the Bowleaze Cove hotel in 2018, having decided it would do just as well as a venue abroad with its breathtaking setting and sweeping views of […]
We are Bird Media – two experienced journalists who have decided to break free and launch
their own news publication The West Dorset Magazine.
Editor Miranda Robertson has worked for a number of local papers, including the Dorset Echo, Salisbury Journal and The New Blackmore Vale. She lives in Maiden Newton with her husband Peter, son Robert, jug PugsieMfanwy, pug Hugo and the ginger ninja Kitten Mitten.
Karen Bate has worked for the Salisbury Journal, Wiltshire Living Magazine, Bournemouth Echo and The New Blackmore Vale. She lives with husband Stuart, daughter Florence, dogs Sir Alfred Sticks and Buddy and cat Milton. There’s also a bonkers horse called Mars in her menagerie.
