Here is a quote.

Mark Shucksmith, professor of planning at Newcastle University, said spiralling house prices in some rural communities were driving poorer people out of the countryside.

Affordable rural housing was essential to the vitality and sustainability of rural areas and was crucial for less prosperous members of rural societies to thrive, he warned.

Worth a read by country dwellers rich and poor.

Level crossing at Chard Junction

  © Copyright Sarah Charlesworth and
licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

Glancing to my right I thought where is the signal box? I looked again and there it wasn’t! It had disappeared, just the concrete base remained.

A Google when I got home revealed this story “End of an era at Chard Junction“. It seems signaling on this stretch of line has transferred to a modern centralised location at Basingstoke, so I suppose with no further use for the box it has been knocked down.

No more will those in the know be able to see if another train is due by looking at the signalman (or often signalwoman). If they came to the corner of the box straight after the train had passed they were raising the barriers, if they stayed where they were you were stuck there until the train waiting to travel along the single track in the opposite direction had gone through.

There is a better picture of the box and more information on it at trainweb.org.

I came across one piece from 1954 that shows outworkers making nets in a rural setting outside Bridport.

Click the image below to go to the Pathe web site to view the short film. Is that a Gundrys van they show collecting the finished nets?

The subject of the previous occupants of the building, solicitors firm Milne & Lyall, came up, and he said have you read the SRA (The Solicitors Regulation Authority) report on them. I hadn’t but I have since searched it out online and it makes interesting reading.

It is available at http://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/solicitor-check/105486.article, take a look and see what you think.

The final cover

Over the years I’ve enjoyed collecting my free copy from various pubs in the region and it’s been a great way for those pubs to publicise their upcoming gigs.

It will be sad to see it go. The owner had been trying to sell it for ages and had already published one final edition before reviving it, this time I suspect it really has gone for good.

The Taunton edition isn’t affected and will continue to be available.

They still seem to have some in stock online so why not get one and when the authorities try to prosecute you say that nice Mr Maude said it was ok!

I wasn’t too impressed by the market so I popped into the Red Lion where my eye was caught by the Sunday roast carvery they were serving. I couldn’t resist trying it, and very nice it was too. Good value at £7.95, I will be back to sample another soon.

There is a large stone trough with an inscription that is now being used as a large flower tub. The plaque in the picture below is mounted on the wall of the building behind the trough.