Clay Pigeon Raceway, the West Dorset karting track which helped to launch the careers of world champions Lando Norris and Jensen Button, is to be closed and turned into a holiday park. Dorset councillors approved plans to demolish the circuit near Dorchester, along with a static caravan park and a disused clay pigeon shooting ground, […]
The first planning application of a scheme dubbed ‘Norchester’ that will change the shape of ‘Hardy country’ forever has been submitted. The outline planning application launching the North Dorchester Garden Community has been described as “nothing more than cultural vandalism”. The plan for up to 500 houses, a new London Road junction and green space […]
A writer has traced the stories behind 43 names listed on a Weymouth war memorial. Charlie Owen asked readers of The West Dorset Magazine to help locate family members of the fallen from both world wars and the Falklands. They were commemorated on a monument built over 100 years ago in the graveyard of St […]
A developer hoping to build 82 homes on 21 acres of his 131-acre estate has told a national newspaper he is being treated like “the Antichrist”. James Perkins, who bought fire-ravaged Parnham House near Beaminster with the intention of restoring it, told The Times he intended to spend £25million on the Grade 1-listed Elizabethan manor, […]
By Alison Smith of Rural Ranges in Bridport In a world of constant choice, a bombardment of noise, social media and advertising, how do you cut through the facade and ensure you choose the real deal? What to look for from your Aga company or independent engineer: Breadth and depth of expertise – an expert […]
KAREN BROAD shares her savoury scones recipe The field above us has been cut, and the scent of drying grass hangs heavy in the air –warm, sweet and intense, with a trace of honey. It is a deeply nostalgic scent, one that seems to carry the weight of time. After May’s unseasonably chilly spell only a […]
The ghosts of Portland Fair are to be evoked as the island’s b-side festival returns this September. The annual celebration of creativity is this year looking to embrace the island’s oddness, and otherness under the title of That Other Place. Eleven artists have been commissioned to conjure up a parallel Portland, familiar but off kilter, […]
For hundreds of years, he’s been standing proud, waving his enormous club whilst keeping watch over the sleepy village at his feet. Now, re-chalking of the Cerne Abbas Giant is underway, with National Trust rangers, volunteers and members of the public working together on the steep chalk hillside to restore his distinctive white outline. The […]
By MARY CLEGG, Churchwarden: Tucked away in the timeless landscape of the Halstock Vale stands St Juthware Church, a small rural church with a story that stretches back to the fifth century – and a very present-day crisis in its roof. Today, rainwater is finding its way through a huge hole in the roof, threatening […]
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.
