Artwork that hung for centuries at St John’s Almshouse in Sherborne will be sold to raise funds for social housing
“The blessing of the Lord brings wealth, and He adds no sorrow with it,” so says the Bible, Proverbs 10:22.
On Friday, a church almshouse was counting its blessings after discovering that a triptych painting that has hung in the chapel for centuries is a 15th-century Flemish masterpiece worth £3.5m.
Continue reading...National Trust-owned painting will be exhibited with a meditation option for art lovers to take a long, lingering look
The impulse to race around a gallery and take in as many wonderful paintings as possible can be hard to resist.
But art enthusiasts are being urged to slow down and take a lingering, meditative look at one of the great self-portraits when it is taken on an unhurried tour of England.
Continue reading...Officers step up patrols for Bournemouth’s Jewish community after teenage boy shot with air rifle
Dorset police have launched an investigation and stepped up patrols for Bournemouth’s Jewish community after a wave of antisemitic hate crimes in the seaside town.
Over the weekend, a teenage boy was shot with an air rifle and injured, and swastika graffiti appeared on buildings, police said.
Continue reading...Conservationists flag dangers of human interaction after ‘Reggie’ filmed playing with family
The public has been warned to keep away from an injured dolphin that was filmed dancing and playing with swimmers off the coast of Dorset earlier this month.
The Marine Management Organisation (MMO), a government-backed agency responsible for England’s seas, said it was “increasingly concerned about a lone dolphin spotted in Lyme Bay, Dorset, following multiple potential marine wildlife disturbance offences observed online and shared on social media”.
Continue reading...Visitors lament ‘tremendous shame’ as notice withdrawing public access appears after £30m sale of Bridehead Estate
For decades the lake and waterfall on the Bridehead Estate in Dorset have brought joy to visitors who used the permissive path to access a scene of pastoral loveliness that could have come straight from the pages of a Thomas Hardy novel.
But there was melancholy – and anger – among the hundreds, possibly thousands, who made final pilgrimages to the village of Littlebredy this week after it was announced that access to the public was being halted from 2 June.
Continue reading...A National Trust viewing platform at Corfe Castle offers visitors a glimpse into the king’s royal quarters in Dorset
A luxurious suite of “rooms with a view”, built for the son of William the Conquerer but partly destroyed in the English Civil War, has become accessible to visitors for the first time in almost 400 years, thanks to a new viewing platform at one of England’s most dramatically situated castles.
The King’s Tower was built in 1107 for William’s son Henry I at Corfe castle, which sits on top of a steep hill on the Purbeck peninsula near Wareham in Dorset. Constructed from gleaming white limestone inside the imposing fortification, the 23-metre tower was Henry’s personal penthouse, built to the highest standards of luxury and including an “appearance door” from which he could be seen by his subjects far below.
Continue reading...Most claims from 400 men on vessel moored in Portland, Dorset have been processed, with majority accepted
The final asylum seekers housed on the Bibby Stockholm barge left the boat on Tuesday and crew members are set to leave on Wednesday, with the controversial vessel’s final day in port expected to be 8 January.
The accommodation on the barge, moored in Portland, Dorset, will now be dismantled after the Labour government decided to discontinue the previous government’s contract to house asylum seekers on the vessel.
Continue reading...Police confirm ‘possible carbon monoxide poisoning’ is main line of inquiry after fatalities at care home in Swanage
A 60-year-old woman has been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter by detectives investigating the deaths of three people at a care home in Dorset.
Officers are still treating the deaths at the Gainsborough care home in Swanage as unexplained and have confirmed that “possible carbon monoxide poisoning” is the primary line of inquiry. Seven other residents were taken to hospital.
Continue reading...Hitachi digger tracked down to town of Pruchnik, with arrangements made to reunite it with its owner
A digger stolen from a development site in Dorset has been found five months later and 1,200 miles away in a rural town in south-eastern Poland.
Dorset police received a report on 1 April that a Hitachi digger and a JCB digger had been stolen in the small town of Ferndown, near Bournemouth.
Continue reading...Enclosure older than Salisbury monument found under late novelist’s garden is given heritage protection
When the author Thomas Hardy was writing Tess of the D’Urbervilles in 1891, he chose to set the novel’s dramatic conclusion at Stonehenge, where Tess sleeps on one of the stones the night before she is arrested for murder.
What the author did not know, as he wrote in the study of his home, Max Gate in Dorchester, was that he was sitting right in the heart of a large henge-like enclosure that was even older than the famous monument on Salisbury Plain.
Continue reading...Layton Richards, 29, sentenced to eight months in prison for string of thefts in Dorset, Hampshire and West Sussex
A thief has been jailed for eight months after being found guilty of shoplifting almost 800 Cadbury Creme Eggs over a three-month period.
Layton Richards, 29, had been charged with 24 shoplifting offences between 6 January and 18 April this year, with Hampshire and Isle of Wight constabulary accusing him of stealing as many as 798 of the confectionery items.
Continue reading...MP says trade in remains is ‘gross violation of human dignity’, as skulls from Pitt Rivers collection removed
An auction house has withdrawn 18 ancient Egyptian human skulls from sale after an MP said selling them would perpetuate the atrocities of colonialism.
Bell Ribeiro-Addy, the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Afrikan reparations, believes the sale of human remains for any purposes should be outlawed, adding that the trade was “a gross violation of human dignity”.
Continue reading...Intervention by conservationists halts sale of 1530s roundel from Grade-I listed manor, created to celebrate king’s union with Anne Boleyn
The fate of precious Tudor stained glass marking the union of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn is in dispute after its last-minute withdrawal from a private auction, the Observer has learned.
Urgent intervention by conservationists prevented the sale of English glasswork “of exceptional importance”, including a window made in the 1530s as well as older medieval glass. The windows were hanging in a 16th-century Dorset manor and were destined for a private contents auction until spotted listed alongside vintage furniture and china.
Continue reading...‘Closed quasi-detention conditions’ mean death of Leonard Farruku should be examined, lawyers say
The family of Leonard Farruku is calling for an independent inquiry into his death on the Bibby Stockholm barge, the Guardian has learned.
The Albanian asylum seeker, 27, was found dead on the barge, moored in Portland, Dorset, on 12 December last year, after a suspected suicide.
Continue reading...Georgina Mansergh, 24, reacted to sesame oil in a tahini sauce in the meal and collapsed at the Angel Inn in Ferndown
A student died after suffering an allergic reaction to sesame seed oil in a mushroom risotto she ate at a family dinner in a Dorset pub, an inquest has heard.
Georgina Mansergh, 24, was visiting the Angel Inn in Ferndown with her family on 11 February when she suffered the reaction to the oil used in the tahini sauce included in the dish. She was studying for her masters degree.
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