Category: Dorset

Dedicated volunteers are embarking on an ambitious £150,000 refurbishment of Swanage station’s 1930s canopy – 40 years after it came close to being demolished and replaced by a supermarket, hotel, public house and car park.
When the ambitious 12-week scheme is complete, it is expected the 254-feet long metal and wood platform canopy covering 5,000 square feet – and made up of 350 separate panes of glass – will not require further attention for another 50 years.

The malls of Bournemouth’s Castlepoint Shopping Park reverberated with the stirring sound of bag pipes to celebrate Burns Night.  As piper Jeremy Martin played favourite strathspeys, reels and jigs in honour of the Scottish bard, a cooking demonstration was provided by Brockenhurst College’s New Forest Cookery School, showing how to cook and serve haggis, either…

Bournemouth is investing in improving the lives of looked after children by expanding its adoption and fostering services. The council is growing its children’s social care services with the addition of a number of new social work posts for fostering, adoption, and child care social work. One of the key aims of the expanding service will be to recruit more adoptive parents and more foster carers from Bournemouth and the surrounding local areas to care for looked after children.

In February, local disability charity Diverse Abilities Plus, is hosting two events entitled ‘Gift for Life’ to benefit parents and carers of children with disabilities of any age. The sessions are in conjunction with legal firm Rawlins Davy, and will provide advice and information on writing a Will and lasting powers of attorney, helping families ensure that their loved ones are provided for in the future.

The Pancake Race around the Minster will be on Shrove Tuesday, 12 February at 11am. In its 16th year since its revival in 1998, it starts at 11am outside the main entrance to the minster. Competitors should report to the north porch by 10.30am to enrol, complete with frying pan and ready cooked pancake. There…

Hedgehog numbers in Britain are declining by three to five per cent each year in towns and in the rural landscape, with the loss most apparent in the South West, South East and Eastern regions of England, according to the results of a 10-year trend analysis by the People’s Trust for Endangered Species (PTES). Between 2001 and…

This year’s annual fund raising concert for the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra’s benevolent fund will take place at Lighthouse, Poole on Sunday, 26 May, at 3pm. Dynamic Welsh conductor Owain Arwel Hughes will unite the orchestra and Bournemouth Symphony Chorus. The programme will include the rarely performed choral version of Brahms’s ‘Academic Festival Overture’ and the…

Annette Brooke, MP for Mid Dorset and North Poole, welcomed the announcement this week by the Health Minister, Dr Dan Poulter MP, that Poole Hospital would be one of 100 hospitals around the country to benefit from a new £25million maternity unit fund. Poole Hospital will receive a £40,000 grant to fund for additional birthing…

A Dorset company is celebrating its 50th year by giving away “50 things” to a charity or good cause each month. The Wessex Group has begun 2013 by donating 50 sensory toys to Poole-based charity Diverse Abilities, which gives opportunities to children with severe disabilities.

Dorset and Somerset Air Ambulance is encouraging supporters to sign up now for its Coast to Coast (C2C) Cycle Challenge.