We are right in the heart of our British summer, with Wimbledon season in full swing, and sparkling wine and strawberries as far as the eye can see. As I am writing this, the sun is shining, my twitter feed is glowing with the promise of high temperatures and my garden is ablaze with all kinds of colour … I really hope that that is still the case come July! If you are looking for a bottle of English wine, Dorset hosts a number of sparkling wine producers, thanks mostly to our favourable weather, and I recommend seeking out a bottle of some of our finest. Not only can you visit places like Langham Wine Estate and Bride Valley for a vineyard tour, you can also stop in at your nearest wine shop for some local wisdom on the best tipple to match your occasion – like the award-winning Vineyards in Sherborne which recently celebrated their 17th birthday. Heather x
Image: Heather Brown
Ingredients
For the Cake
8oz/225g butter
8oz/225g soft brown sugar
4 eggs
8oz/225g self raising flour
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 punnet (usually 450g) of fresh strawberries or raspberries
strawberry or raspberry jam
For the icing
4oz/110g softened butter
10oz/285g icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
Heather Brown is on the committee of the Guild of Food Writers; a home economist with a passion for Dorset’s brilliant foodie scene. She runs Dorset Foodie Feed, championing Dorset’s food and drink businesses, as well as working with her food industry clients.
Smear some butter around the base and sides of two eight inch round baking tins, then line the bottoms with greaseproof paper. Preheat the oven to GM 5 or 170º fan.
Wash and dry your strawberries, remove the green stalks and cut into quarters.
Either in a stand mixer, with an electric whisk or with a wooden spoon, beat together the butter, sugar and vanilla in a bowl really well. The mixture will change to be light and fluffy and the colour will turn pale.
Add in the eggs one at a time, beating well between each egg. If the mixture curdles slightly, you can add one spoonful of the flour and then beat well.
Slowly stir in the flour. Take care not to beat hard and knock out all of the air that you have just worked into the mix.
Using a spoon, gently fold half of the strawberries into the cake batter until just mixed.
Spoon the mixture evenly into the prepared tins and gently level the tops so they are mostly flat. Bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes. The cakes will be done when they have come away slightly from the edges of the tins and the top is springy to the touch.
Leave the cakes to cool.
Remove the sponges from the baking tins.
Make a simple buttercream icing by combining the butter with the icing sugar and vanilla extract in a stand mixer or bowl and beat well together. At this stage the mixture will be too stiff. Add a few of the remaining fresh berries in and keep mixing gently – the juice from the berries will loosen the icing. If the mixture becomes too soft you can just add some more icing sugar.
Place one sponge onto a large plate. Spoon on some jam and smooth over. Then add a little of the buttercream and smooth over. Place the next sponge on top. Add the remaining buttercream onto the top of the cake and smooth over. Finish with the remaining fresh berries.
On Monday 11th July, at 3pm, we are lucky to be welcoming best-selling author (and former Sherborne school girl) Santa Montefiore back to Sherborne for an afternoon tea at the beautiful Butterfly Rooms in Castle Gardens, where she will be talking about her new book. Give us a call on 01935 816128 to buy tickets. Wayne
New York, 1979. It is Thanksgiving and Evelina has her close family and beloved friends gathered around, her heart weighted with gratitude for what she has and regret for what she has given up. She has lived in America for more than 30 years, but she is still Italian in her soul.
Northern Italy, 1934. Evelina leads a sheltered life with her parents and siblings in a villa of fading grandeur. When her elder sister Benedetta marries a banker, to suit her father’s wishes rather than her own, Evelina swears that she will never marry out of duty. She knows nothing of romantic love, but when she meets Ezra, son of the local dressmaker, her heart recognises it like an old friend. Evelina wants these carefree days to last forever. She wants to bask in sunshine, beauty and love and pay no heed to the grey clouds gathering on the horizon. But nothing lasts forever. The shadows of war are darkening over Europe and precious lives are under threat …
In 2022 Winstone’s celebrates ten years as Sherborne’s independent bookseller. Winstone’s has won the British Book Awards South West Bookseller of the Year four times and was winner of the Independent Bookseller of the Year national award in 2016. Owner Wayne Winstone was previously one of the three judges for the Costa Prize for Fiction, and in 2018 Wayne was selected as one of the top 100 people in the Bookseller’s Most Influential Figures listing.
The right to peaceful protest is a cornerstone of liberal democracy, says Labour’s Pat Osborne
Labour Pat Osborne
Last month I wrote about the inadequacy of the government’s response to a cost-of-living crisis caused largely by 12 years of Tory economic policy – designed to deliver super-profits for millionaires at the expense of ordinary working people. On the 18 June I joined tens of thousands of trade unionists from up and down the country at the TUC’s march and rally in London to demand better. Despite a justifiable underlying anger towards a Government that is clearly letting us down, the protest was conducted peacefully and in a carnival-like atmosphere. Protestors showed their solidarity with other working people devastated by the cost-of-living crisis by adding to a soundscape of drums, whistles, music and chants as we marched two miles from Portland Place to Parliament Square. Just 10 days later, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act came into effect, effectively banning ‘noisy protest’. Within 10 hours, anti-Brexit protestor Steve Bray was the Act’s first scalp when police swooped to confiscate his speakers. Whether or not we agree with Mr Bray’s King Canute-like position on Brexit is beside the point. Peaceful protest is a cornerstone of any liberal democracy and Mr Bray should have the right to engage in it. It is worrying therefore – though entirely foreseeable – that the police should move so quickly to enforce Priti Patel’s hard line anti-protest laws in such a heavy-handed way. With the promise of a summer of discontent ahead of us, it is likely that these draconian powers and other anti-trade union instruments will be exercised repeatedly in order to mute a growing choir of dissenting voices. By Autumn this could reveal a country with more in common with Putin’s autocratic Russia than the liberal democracies of Western Europe.
Workplaces have moved on from archaic trade union power, forging a more productive way to work together, says North Dorset Lib Dems’ Mike Chapman
Mike Chapman Lib Dems
The second amendment to the US Constitution dates from 1791. It was about preventing central government wielding excessive power: people might bear arms to be equipped to stop those in authority from exceeding themselves. Fortunately, we have developed the more modern approach – with less collateral damage – of the ballot box plus a wholly independent judiciary. This government is over-reaching, over-reacting and bullying. What mandate is there for tearing up the Northern Ireland protocol? The migrant export deal with Rwanda? For acknowledging the European Court of Human Rights only when convenient, and for their mission to dumb down and commercialise the BBC? What is to be done with a government whose response to the crisis on the railways has been a resounding “bring it on, if you are hard enough”? It is earnestly to be hoped that our education system, the very essence – and already undervalued – of our future prosperity, does not end up in a similar stand-off. These strikes are ridiculous and wholly contrary to individual, corporate and societal best interests. The best performing enterprises work as partnerships; together, for mutual benefit. Us v Them, Theory X (more stick than carrot) and other such confrontational practices went out with the ark. Trade Union membership has become a marginal factor outside the public sector. Employee share-ownership is growing strongly. Today, modern organisational imperatives and internal cultures are directed towards balancing the interests of all stakeholders; boards are supported by non-executives specifically there to find balanced positions; employee engagement in continuous improvement is becoming the norm. I note our campaign in Tiverton and Honiton was dubbed the coming of the ‘The Yellow Peril’. If that means old orders, old school ties and out-dated, self-centred attitudes, left and right, are under threat from people with the passion, standards, experience and up-to-date understanding to make a better fist of it, then caveat Boris. Let Boris and all who ride with him beware. Now is a good time to join in, to bring your own understanding to bear, to make your own positive, constructive voice be heard. Thank goodness we don’t have the 2nd Amendment here.
The Tory byelection defeat had everything to do with Mr Johnson, says North Dorset Green Party’s Ken Huggins
Boris Johnson has just claimed that his government’s record is ‘exceptional’. He has never spoken a truer word. He blames the crushing Tory defeats in the Wakefield and Tiverton/Honiton byelections on the media, for focussing more on his personal conduct than on his policies. That he considers his personal conduct to be of no consequence says it all. There has been plenty of media focus on his policies, many of which do not stand up to close scrutiny. And whilst Government spokespeople take every opportunity to remind us of the speed of the vaccine rollout, they deliberately ignore the massive failings elsewhere in dealing with the covid pandemic. For example, the Government claim that a ‘protective ring’ had been thrown around care homes. Not true. My mother caught covid in Yeovil hospital, but was promptly discharged right back into her care home. Tens of thousands of vulnerable care home residents caught covid and died. Then there was the debacle of PPE procurement, with eye watering profits, commissions being paid without proper scrutiny and billions spent on unusable items. Wasted taxpayers’ money that could have been profitably used to increase supplies of renewable energy, and reduce energy consumption by insulating homes. For us to have such a Prime Minister at this time is more than just an embarrassment, it’s a disaster. With the enormity and urgency of the environmental crisis ever more apparent, now more than ever we need strong, compassionate and caring leadership, with recognition that we are all in the same boat. Accepting that everyone has to be taken care of, regardless of which school they went to, or how wealthy they may be. For any conservatives pondering their next steps, as an ex Conservative voter myself I can confirm the warm welcome that awaits in the Green Party.
The kitchen’s open! A beautiful Elizabethan kitchen has been revealed at Athelhampton House, hidden and forgotten despite the room’s continuous use for half a millennia.
The revealed Elizabethan kitchen range at Athelhampton House. Image: Courtenay Hitchcock
Giles Keating, owner of Athelhampton, today invited Chris Loder MP to formally open the ‘new’ kitchen in the famous Tudor house. It is believed to be one of the oldest kitchens in the country in continuous use — for the last 500 years. Over time the Elizabethan origins were hidden behind thick white paint, substantial brickwork and plaster, and a range of rough modern cabinets.
How the Athelhampton kitchen looked until recently, with the top of the filled-in arch apparent. Image: Giles Keating
“The ‘cabinets’ were awful – when we took off the rather nice doors we revealed a really rough DIY 3”x2” framework, clearly homemade, with barely a shelf inside!” said Giles “We knew there was probably something there because we could see the shape of it. But of course, we had no idea what sort of condition it was in, or what was underneath. So we stripped off the modern surfacing, and revealed that beautiful arch. But there was also a vast amount of more modern brickwork which had been used to fill it in, almost entirely, with just a central space left for the Aga, and a gap to one side. We’re not sure why that was left, possibly because the builders were aware of the presence of the bread oven behind, and left access to it. “We were keen to find the fireplace behind all the brickwork, but we were genuinely worried the whole building would fall down! So we had to put structural underpinning in place first, and then knock out the modern brickwork piece by piece.”
“They used the biggest drill bit I had ever seen!” Giles described the work to support the wide Elizabethan arch. “Originally the arch would have been self-supporting, of course, but at that time there weren’t two floors above it. We presume it was filled in and supported at the time those extra floors were created. Removing those supports would have been dangerous without the structural engineering work” Matthew Ellis, head of Ellis & Co, specialists in conserving and repairing historic buildings, explained “The arch had been supported by brick pillars, so we needed to use cintec anchors: a long hole was drilled through the arch itself from the outside walls on each end, filled with a special ‘sock’ (a porous fabric sleeve) into which non-shrink cementitious grout was injected under controlled pressure. The result is invisible from inside the kitchen, but provides the necessary arch support and allowed the more modern ‘filler’ brickwork to be removed”
This bread oven had been entirely covered and hidden by a sink – forgotten and unknown to the Athelhampton team until the restoration works began. Image: Courtenay Hitchcock
The team slowly revealed a stunning Elizabethan fireplace and bread oven, complete with soot-blackened bricks. The removal of the modern kitchen units and sink also revealed an unkown bread oven hidden in the wall – now revealed and restored, too.
The archway is wide enough for perhaps a dozen cooks to work at simultaneously (provided the outside ones ducked their heads!), and on the opposite wall is ‘an Elizabethan hob’ – a stone platform with holes to allow pots to be placed over the fires beneath; effectively allowing Tudor ‘hob cooking’ away from the naked flame in the main fireplace under the arch. With an eye on modern standards, however, there are now electric hotplates hidden inside the stonework – a testament to Athelhampton’s drive towards the removal of all fossil fuels on site, and the estate’s aim to become carbon neutral.
Chris Loder MP and Athelhampton owner Giles Keating celebrate the cutting of the ribbon and the official opening of the kitchen. Image: Courtenay Hitchcock
Athelhampton House and its 29 acres of formal and informal gardens was built by the Martyn family – the ending of the Martyn male line in 1596 is marked by a tombstone in the Athelhampton chapel of St Mary Magdalene at Puddletown, in an inscription of brutal – but amusing – honesty: ‘Nicholas the First and Martyn the Last,/Good night, Nicholas!’
Thomas Hardy, who lived at nearby Bockhampton, loved Athelhampton, and thinly disguised it as Athelhall in his short story The Waiting Supper, and in the poems The Dame of Athelhall and The Children and Sir Nameless.
From L-R Matthew Ellis, head of Ellis & Co in charge of the restoration project, with his foreman, Chris Loder MP, Giles Keating owner of Athelhampton, project surveyor Stefan Pitman of SPASE Design, Owen Davies, head of the commercial team at Athelhampton and Claire Poulter, specialist decorator
The Tudor kitchens have not been open to visitors previously, as they were part of the private living apartments within the house; Giles Keating in fact still uses them to enjoy his breakfast. However he explained that they will now form an essential part of the visitor experience, with regular demonstrations, and a large living history re-enactment already planned for October.
Both Giles Keating and Chris Loder were quick to praise the team of craftsmen who have removed all trace of the modern facings and revealed the beautiful Tudor bones of the building.
The panelling restoration – of the two biggest panels above, the left hand one is original oak, the one on the right is a more modern pine replacement, painted by Claire Poulter. Around the window itself, work is still underway. Image: Laura Hitchcock
Thanks to Ellis & Co, Claire Poulter has also been working to restore the panelling in the adjacent dining room “Honestly, I’ve even been dreaming in squares for months. There are over 1,100 of them in here – and I’ve sanded back every single one!” Claire has worked to repair the original oak panelling, and when the stripping revealed that some of the panels were in fact pine and marine ply, she used her specialist decorator skills to paint it – “It’s a bit like stage dressing – hopefully a casual visitor would be hard-pressed to spot the difference.”
The complete Elizabethan cooking range under the arch, complete with a new spit from a local blacksmith
MP Chris Loder, cutting the ribbon at the official opening ceremony, explained why he was keen to be part of the project: “It’s no secret that the economy of rural Dorset has a huge dependency on tourism. The work Giles has done at Athelhampton brings people into the area and money into the local economy, which is absolutely vital. I’ve been coming to Athelhampton for over eight years. I have actually eaten in this very kitchen – not realising that behind the aga was this wonderful arch, which is so beautiful to see.”
The revealed Elizabethan range, with serving hatch through to the dining room where the panelling has also been restored. Juliet Ferguson is a living historian with a specialism in the Tudor period. Image: Courtenay Hitchcock
He added “We have recently had an issue with Thomas Hardy being removed from University syllabus. I am aware that Nadim Zahawi – former education secretary, now chancellor – perhaps wants to be Prime Minister. I shall be very clear that I’m open to negotiation, and if he wants my support then we’ll have to sort out the Thomas Hardy issue … “I’d like to congratulate the whole team who have achieved this today – it’s terrific to see the work come to fruition. Thank you all.”
Athelhampton House & Gardens has summer opening hours until 8th October: 10am to 5pm, Sunday-Friday (CLOSED on Saturdays). The House opens 11am daily, last admissions at 4pm
The disconnect between comsumers and the food on their plates has arguably never been wider – Andrew Livingston suggests that social media can help
One of the free-range Westleaze hens. Image: Andrew Livingston
Twenty years ago, if someone had had said that social media would be a vital tool for farmers, quite honestly, you would have thought they were mad. Farmer Giles down the road really wasn’t updating his Myspace or Bebo pages. Today, however, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok are all useful and engaging platforms for farmers. I’m not saying your average farmer needs to know how to do an Instagram story to be a good stockman, or that a decent TikTok will help them know about their cereals. But it really does help in other ways. When I started at Westleaze Farm, I was quick to set up Facebook and Instagram pages for our farms in both Beaminster and Weymouth. I wouldn’t call myself an influencer, but social media has undoubtedly helped us engage and sell our produce to our local communities.
It’s an education But the real reason that farmers need to be on the socials is education – people outside farming need to learn about what’s really happening on-farm. After LEAF (Linking Environment and Farming) Open Farm Sundays, social media is the best way to try to educate the public about the truth about farming – because they currently have no idea. Recently, in Weymouth, we had new birds placed for our next flock of free range layer hens and, as we always do, we put out a post promoting the girls. With the post, we published pictures inside the shed (opposite) – a rare and moderately brave thing for a chicken farm to do, as it always opens you up for scrutiny from those who seem to have no conception of where their food really comes from. The Facebook post was swiftly deluged with comments, mostly untrue and misinformed, as the people of Weymouth decided to tell us that actually our birds weren’t free-range – “These aren’t free-range then,” and “Poor hens locked inside.” One user did respond and put it perfectly: “I swear we’re so out of touch with where our food comes from … You can drive past this particular farm and see the hens out in the field.” You can see the other side of that shed wall in the video above.
Inside the hen shed Image: Andrew Livingston
Eco-aware generations I don’t blame the public for having no idea where their food comes from. Frankly, they have never been taught the truth. I wouldn’t advocate for agriculture and the environment being a compulsory subject in schools, but kids do need to be taught at a young age what has to happen for their turkey dinosaurs to reach their plate. Unfortunately, Countryfile and similar programmes don’t show what true farming is like – lambing season isn’t always in warm, perfectly lit barns. For smaller farms, it’s a case of chasing the lambing ewes in the middle of the night across open fields through sideways rain. Millennials, Gen Y and Gen Z are all growing up with a greater understanding of the environment and of their own carbon footprint. Farmers need to fight to teach these eco-aware generations that farming is more than just a methane statistic. Apparenmtly the mainstream news media isn’t interested in showing farming in a good light, but thankfully for us the new generations don’t watch old news media – they scroll on phones and watch silly dances. And with that comes the opportunity to get seen and teach them something new.
Where the hens spend their days Image: Andrew Livingston
At Wells Cathedral School and Little Wellies Nursery, we think that even with our smallest pupils, we need to remember to focus on the bigger picture. Our school values of Creativity, Aspiration, Responsibility and Endeavour are at the heart of all that we do. These four values – which appropriately also spell the word “CARE” – inspire us as teachers to nurture and develop these qualities in our pupils, with the aim of assisting them in becoming amazing young people that leave school with huge potential for life’s successes.
Why do we put such emphasis on these values? Simply put, it is these qualities – alongside our Learning Powers of resilience, motivation, curiosity, careful thinking and resourcefulness – that are so often the strong predictors of success in life. These are skills that run through every year of our educational journey from Nursery all the way up to eighteen. They grow and develop, and increase in complexity and maturity as the children work their way through school and then into their adult lives. When our children are faced with challenges or things get tough – as has been the case for so many of us in recent years – it is these qualities that will get them through.
Reach for the Stars At our school assemblies, we delve into what these, for a little child, rather big words mean! It is our job in Pre-Prep to turn these large, somewhat generic words into things that really mean something to our children. A recent focus for us has been ‘Aspiration’. We started assembly by playing the song ‘Reach for the Stars’, and explaining to the children that this means to believe in oneself and reach high. Children need to be shown how high they can reach.
Having established this idea, we couldn’t think of any better way to show this than to let our Nursery and Pre-Prep children observe the older children in the School. We chose to focus on the performing arts, and let our children enjoy a whole host of opportunities, devised and delivered by pupils from our Junior School and Senior School. One particularly memorable occasion was when our Senior School musicians put on an inspiring workshop, playing popular Disney songs on a whole host of instruments. This inspired the children in Pre-Prep to come back exclaiming that they want to play every instrument under the sun!
More recently, our Pre-Prep children also had the wonderful experience of watching a dress rehearsal for our Junior School production of Shrek, featuring pupils from Year 3 to Year 6. Our youngest children could not have been more inspired. They could not believe that underneath those costumes and all that make-up were some of the older children that they actually know! These opportunities make our children feel like anything is possible if they work for it. Our children are of course incredibly fortunate to be surrounded by such inspiring role models, and we as teachers feel just as fortunate to work with them. So while we aim to inspire them, they also amaze, delight and inspire us, creating a cycle of aspiration where we’re all helping each other achieve our own personal success. We’re all reaching for the stars together! John Fosbrook Director of Admissions
Crushing costs and a difficult labour market are potentially tempered by the positivity of busy order books, says Dorset Chamber CEO Ian Girling
shutterstock
A really warm welcome to my column and I hope this finds you well. This month I’d like to reflect on the economy and talk about some of the challenges we are facing as consumers and businesses. Considering what we’ve been through with Brexit, Covid and now a war in Ukraine, it’s little wonder the economy has taken a hammering. We are all obviously concerned about rising costs and the resulting decrease in the standard of living. As consumers, we are facing increasing food costs (and indeed many supermarket shelves are often empty), the cost of running our cars is spiralling and heating costs are going through the roof. This all has a real impact on standards of living and unsurprisingly, many employers are facing upwards wage pressure from their staff.
The stress circle With a record number of vacancies, employers are having to do all they can to keep staff – with many consequently seeing wage bills increase as they fight to retain their staff. This is on top of hugely increased transport and distribution costs, increasing costs of raw materials (especially steel, wood and construction supplies) and, of course, escalating energy costs. All of this is hugely eating at margins, yet many businesses are concerned at passing on these costs in the form of price increases when consumers are already so squeezed. This then leads us into what feels like a never-ending downard spiral – reflected in the latest inflation figures and comments from the British Chambers of Commerce and other business groups.
It’s not all doom But interestingly, the high number of vacancies is the complete opposite of the nationwide unemployment situation that was expected after the pandemic. Many employers are currently facing real recruitment challenges and it really is an employee market. Businesses are identifying this as a real barrier to growth at the moment and this in turn is also pushing up wage costs, simply to recruit and retain talent. What may also be surprising is that many businesses are reporting strong demand for products and services and order books are busy – indeed, many businesses I speak to are reporting record growth despite the current economic climate.
The need to plan As I say, given the last five years or so, it’s clearly going to take some time for the economy to settle and it’s fair to say we face a challenging time. However, it’s important for businesses to maintain a clear focus on their plans, look after their teams, invest in technology and, essentially, look after cash flow – the life blood of any business. Should you need any help or support, don’t hesitate to contact us here at Dorset Chamber. Until next time, Ian
