Summer Strevens

WASSAILING is a very ancient tradition which involves drinking to the health of the apple tree, a ritual gulp of hot, mulled punch from a communal 'wassailing bowl', intended to ensure a good cider apple harvest the following year.

MANY visitors and residents to Dorset are stumped when it comes to knowing which Thomas Hardy the Hardy Monument commemorates.

FEW writers' works are as suffused with their native landscape as Thomas Hardy’s, his literature immeasurably drawn from his ‘Wessex’ origins.

IN the 18th century, before the advent of ‘Turnpiking’ whereby travellers paid tolls financing the upkeep of the roads, the highways were invariably not fit for purpose, especially in the winter months.