A pre Christmas treat

With dimmed lights and festive dress they began with O Come all ye faithful accompanied by a brass sextet.

They followed this with a haunting rendition of In The Deep Midwinter and a thoroughly modern arrangement of Away In A Manger.

To show off their extensive repertoire they then did a calypso version of the carol See Him Lying On A Bed Of Straw, and then a slow blues number Good Enough For Him.

They finished with the old favourite, White Christmas.

Mention must go to a solo performance by Liz Evans, Ruth and Robert Eshelby who sang a selection of Gershwin, Robbie Bowering singing Luck Be A Lady tonight and Phil Williams excellent piano playing.

Mulled wine, mince pies and merry banter sealed the two halves.

For those who went along it was a wonderful start to the festive season.

• OVER a dozen members of the Littlemoor Strollers took time out to enjoy an excellent Christmas lunch at the Upwey Wishing Well on Friday 12th December.

They met at their regular time of 10.30am outside the Somerfield supermarket on Littlemoor and took a leisurely stroll across the Dorchester Road to Mill Street and on to Upwey.

Some less fit members travelled by car, so the group met up in the beautiful little church nearby, before lunch.

Everyone was very impressed by the home-made food, beautifully presented and representing excellent value for money.

After a leisurely meal some of the group even walked back to Littlemoor again!

Most of the group’s walks do not take them so far from home, so if anyone would like to discover the local countryside by joining them, meet up with them on Fridays at 10.30am or get in touch with the group leader, Ray Rolfe on 01305 814552.

• TWO local people were recently invited to visit the main area under investigation by archaeologists prior to the construction of the new Weymouth Relief Road.

Wendy and Malcolm Beeson met up with Harry Burden, the county councillor for Littlemoor, Broadwey and Upwey.

They were taken to the site at the top of the Ridgeway by archaeologists from Oxford Archaeology who are undertaking the investigations on behalf of Dorset County Council.

As can be seen from the Dorchester Road, several acres of topsoil have been stripped by machine on the field on the right at the top of the Ridgeway.

Just behind the hedge beside the pineapple pillars on the summit they were shown a series of graves that had been dug down into the underlying chalk.

Mystifyingly, these had never been used for burials.

Elsewhere there were several other pits both round and rectangular.

Many had contained human burials or cremation remains.

Many of these excavations had been dug in the Bronze Age (2400 - 700 BC), although the archaeologists have also found several Roman burials (2,000 years old) and traces of Neolithic (New Stone Age – about 4,000 - 2,400 BC) and medieval trackways.

The archaeologists have excavated a barrow that had been ploughed down to ground level but which had been identified by earlier surveys.

The team also discovered traces of a small building that had been used by the Victorian engineers who built the railway.

Their work is helping them to understand how Brunel’s engineers constructed the railway tunnel, as well as revealing some of the older secrets that had been lost in time on the crest of the Ridgeway.

All of the findings from the site, including human remains and flint tools, have been removed to Oxford for study.

Later they will be presented to a suitable museum.

Wendy and Malcolm Beeson have a close and active involvement in local archaeology work.

Throughout the early summer they both worked as volunteers on a project managed by the University of Bournemouth at Bronkham Hill, just east of Hardy’s Monument.

They undertook a geomagnetic survey of the areas around several of the Bronze-Age barrows searching for the sites of cremation pyres associated with the burials.

They are still awaiting final analysis of the results, which must be approved by English Heritage before they can be published.

Malcolm is also chairman of the Littlemoor Community Action Group.