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Good morning, Mendips! Glastonbury gets an album party from Ozric Tentacles on Friday, Shepton Mallet hosts the Dairy Show on Wednesday, and a rescue dog has landed the top job at Clarks Village. We also look at whether Shepton's old brewery really made Britain's first lager.
🎸 Featured Event — Ozric Tentacles album party in Glastonbury
📰 Hot News - Mendips Style — Buckley the dog CEO · Free coat exchange · Stoberry Park nursery plan · Street skate park path
🔠 Uxbridge English Dictionary — today's entry
🍺 Britain's First Lager? Shepton's Beer Mystery — the evidence, examined
📅 What's On This Week — across the Mendips
🌡️ Weather — Wells BA5 forecast
Featured Event: Ozric Tentacles 'Harmonic Mind' Album Release Party
Friday night belongs to the Assembly Rooms in Glastonbury, where psychedelic favourites Ozric Tentacles are celebrating their new studio album, Harmonic Mind, which came out on 18 September. The party runs from 7pm until 1am, so this is a proper night out.
The headline slot is an Ozric Tentacles electronic set, performed by Ed and Silas. Also on the bill are Temple of Ra, making their live improvisational concert debut, and MantisMash, who add live bansuri flute to the mix. The night is hosted by Hotep-Ra.
Tickets are £22.22 and are sold online through the Hotep-Ra event page, so book ahead. It's one for fans of long, swirling instrumental electronica, and for anyone curious to hear new music in one of Glastonbury's best-known venues.
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🐶 Rescue Dog Buckley Crowned New CEO Of Clarks Village
Buckley, a Kokoni cross rescued from a pound in Cyprus, is the new Canine Executive Officer of Clarks Village in Street. He won a public vote during the Pawsome Pooch weekend, beating more than 360 entries and collecting over 2,000 votes. His duties include inspecting water bowls, taste-testing treats and greeting VIP guests, and his owners Nadine and Chris Percival say they are overwhelmed.
🧥 Free Coat Exchange Returns To Glastonbury, Street And Shepton Mallet Libraries
Somerset Council's Winter Coat Exchange is back for a fourth year at 16 libraries, including Glastonbury, Street and Shepton Mallet. You can take a coat without donating one, or donate without taking. Clean, good-quality coats for adults and children are welcome, and donations go straight to library staff. Any surplus goes to Refugee Aid From Taunton.
🧸 Stoberry Park School Eyes A Nursery For Up To 40 Toddlers
Stoberry Park School in Wells wants to lower its age range from four to two by adding an on-site nursery for up to 40 children, opening in September 2027 if approved. The Academies for Character and Excellence Trust says Reception places would not be reduced. The consultation closed on 2 October, and the school and trust will now decide whether to apply to the Department for Education.
🛹 Street Skate Park Path Earmarked For £10,000 Replacement
Street Parish Council is seeking a contractor to replace the tarmac path at Street Skate Park with new concrete edging and a 100mm surface, at an estimated cost of £10,000. Bids close on 30 October and work is pencilled in for 1 November to 11 December. The council will weigh price, quality, guarantees and references, and the job covers the path only, not the ramps.
Our Donkeys Out-Earn Westminster
What did you think when you heard of the recent £72m in donations to Reform UK? Before this extraordinary turn of events, the total of funding of all the UK’s seven major parties together only reached £47m in 2025.
However, according to BBC Radio 4’s programme “More or Less” another west country organisation racked up significantly more in donations than the whole of Westminster last year. The Donkey Sanctuary in Sidmouth took in £52 million.
Rachel and I are official “Donkey Guardians”, which means the boys Oscar and Jenkin are on permanent loan to us for as long as we outlive them. £36 million of the Sanctuary's money came from legacies, so we're aware the business model favours the donkeys.
Still, the donkeys have never sent us a leaflet, promised a bypass or asked for our vote. When the programme asked why people give more to donkeys than to politicians, its reporter said “it's because they're cuter”. Having met both, we can confirm.
Paul
English Lessons from the
Uxbridge English Dictionary
M
Minion
A tiny shallot.
Mirth
A French moth.
Monogamy
Celebrating New Year in Scotland by yourself.
Monkey
A bit like a monk.
Mutilate
Up all night meowing.
Mutant
An ant who's lost his voice.
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Britain's First Lager? Shepton's Beer Mystery
Drive out of Shepton Mallet towards Wells and you pass a grand limestone building, four storeys high, with a five-storey tower at each end. It looks more like an Italian palazzo than a warehouse. It's the old Anglo-Bavarian Brewery, and for years Shepton has been proud of a claim about it: this is where Britain's first lager was brewed.
It's a great story, so let's have a look at the evidence.
The brewery opened in 1864 as the Shepton Mallet Pale Ale Brewery, on a six-acre greenfield site beside the new road to Wells. In 1871 it was bought by Hill, Garton and Company of Southampton, who expanded it, and in 1872 they renamed it the Anglo-Bavarian Brewery.
According to the usual telling, that's when Bavarian brewers came over and started making German-style lager in Somerset. The name certainly suggests it, and the brewery's advertising talked up beers combining "high class English Ales" with "the lighter beers brewed upon the Bavarian lines".
That's where the case starts to wobble. Advertisements from the mid-1870s list pale ale, mild ale, strong ale, porter, stout and amber ale, with no lager among them. The beer writer Alfred Barnard toured the brewery in 1890 and wrote about its "running" ale and stock ale, but never mentioned lager, and he would surely have noticed. A collector who owned more than 50 of the company's labels didn't find lager on any of them. In 2020 a researcher found an 1886 advertisement in a Sydney newspaper that described Shepton's export beer plainly as ale.
The verdict from beer historians is "not proven", and more likely not true. "Bavarian" seems to have been a fashionable name for a lighter English beer, not a promise of lager.
The ales themselves were a real success. By 1890 they were sold across England and shipped to Australia, New Zealand, India, South Africa, South America and the West Indies.
The German-sounding name then caused trouble. When war broke out in 1914, "Bavarian" was dropped and the beer was sold simply as Anglo. Anti-German feeling, a post-war slump and the temperance movement all hit the business, and in 1921 its machinery went to auction. A Bristol brewer revived it for a while, the Air Ministry took it over as a stores depot in 1939, and since 1947 it has been the Anglo Trading Estate.
So it probably wasn't Britain's first lager brewery. It's still one of the best-looking breweries Britain ever built, and it's still standing on the road to Wells.
Over to you: Did you or your family work at the Anglo, or the Air Ministry depot? Do you have an old bottle or label at home? Hit reply and tell us. We'd especially love to see a label that says "lager".
All week (Tuesday 6 – Saturday 10 October)
Roots, Routes and Resilience — from 10am, Shoemakers Museum, Street. Exhibition marking the 90th anniversary of Emperor Haile Selassie's exile in Britain, running to 15 November. Included with museum entry. More info
Tom Winter — The Bishop's Palace, Wells. Exhibition of work by an artist who reached the final of Sky Arts' Landscape Artist of the Year, running to 21 November. More info
Tuesday, 6 October
Wells Cathedral School Soloist Showcase — 7:30pm, St Mary's Church, Wedmore. Six young musicians from the school's specialist music department, part of the Wedmore Festival. Adults £12, under-16s £6. Booking
Tom McRae – Live At The Tree House — 7pm, Cheese & Grain, Frome. Booking
Somerset Follies (talk by Jonathan Holt) — 7:30pm, Chilcompton Village Hall. Bygone Days local history talk. £5. More info
Wednesday, 7 October
The Dairy Show — from 8:30am, Bath & West Showground, Shepton Mallet. Trade stands, livestock competitions and forums. Adults £22 advance or £26 on the gate, students £15, under-15s free, free parking. Booking
In Conversation with Ras Benji — 11am–12:15pm, Shoemakers Museum, Street. Historian Ras Benji on the history of Fairfield House and Haile Selassie's Somerset connections. Check the museum for ticket details. Booking
Guided Glastonbury Abbey Tree Walk with Matt Witt — 11am, Glastonbury Abbey, Glastonbury. Included with admission, free for members. More info
The Songwriting Life – 6-Week Course — 10am, Abbey House, Glastonbury Abbey. Wednesday sessions running to 14 October. Ticketed. More info
Fun Dance Class — 5:30pm, Chewton Mendip Village Hall. £10 drop-in. More info
Tantalising Tulips Talk — 7pm, West Pennard Village Hall. West Pennard Gardening Club welcomes horticulturist Bella Given on planting and caring for tulips. £5.
Adult Performance Company — 7:30pm, Chew Magna Baptist Hall. Free, booking required. More info
Armed Forces Outreach Service — Mind, 57c High Street, Shepton Mallet. Outreach sessions offering support to forces families. More info
Thursday, 8 October
Sherlock Bones — 10am–4pm, Shoemakers Museum, Street. Hands-on forensic facial reconstruction workshop with forensic anthropologist Sherlock Bone. 30 places, £30 per person, booked through Sherlock Bone's own site. Booking
Monks, Maladies, and Medieval Medicine: Health and Hygiene at the Abbey — 7pm (doors 6:30pm), Abbey House, Glastonbury Abbey. Talk by Dr Mark Hutchinson. £6, 40 places. Booking
Walk Towards Your Own Horizon — 2:30pm, Glastonbury Town Hall. Glastonbury Women's Friendship Group hosts Ursula Franklin on "Mission Penguin", her project to photograph every penguin species. Call 01458 446643. More info
Walk & Wine Thursday — 6pm, Wells Market Place, meet near the Penniless Porch. Free. More info
Friday, 9 October
Ozric Tentacles 'Harmonic Mind' Album Release Party — 7pm, The Assembly Rooms, Glastonbury. An Ozric Tentacles electronic set plus Temple of Ra and MantisMash. £22.22. Full write-up in the Featured Event above. Booking
Opening the Word: Tyndale, Translation and Transformation — 9am–5pm, Wells Cathedral. Symposium marking 500 years since William Tyndale's New Testament translation, with seven scholars of Bible translation and Reformation history. Optional Tyndale-themed Evensong at 5:15pm. More info
Mendip Swing — 7:30pm, Bishop Sutton Village Hall. North Somerset big band playing classic swing from Basie, Ellington and Buddy Rich to musical theatre and Latin rhythms. Ticketed via Valley Arts, age 14+. Booking
Under Milk Wood — 7:30pm, Westbury-sub-Mendip Village Hall. Westbury Footlights perform the Dylan Thomas "Play for Voices" with a cast of 17 taking 69 parts. Also Saturday 10 October. £10 from the village shop. More info
Free Kitchen Garden Open Day — 10am–4pm, Asterion & Co., The Old Vicarage, Leigh-on-Mendip. Free, no booking. Garden tours and talks, heritage seeds, plants and refreshments. No on-site parking. More info
Little Seedlings Parent & Toddler Group — 10am, forest school site, Shepton Mallet. Friday sessions running to 23 October. £8 per session, plus £3 per extra toddler. More info
Country & Western Evening — doors 6pm, music 7pm, The Victoria Club, Street. Free entry. More info
One Night in Nashville — 7pm, Cheese & Grain, Frome. Booking
Black Water County – Live At The Tree House — 7pm, Cheese & Grain, Frome. Booking
Saturday, 10 October
Wells Art Contemporary — opens 9am, Wells Cathedral. Annual international contemporary art competition and exhibition on the theme "For what is time?", running to 7 November. Open Monday to Saturday 9am–4:30pm and Sunday 11am–3pm. Free to Bath & Wells diocese residents. More info
Glastonbury Abbey & Town Guided Tour — 11am–1pm, Glastonbury Abbey, starting at the Abbey Museum. Explores the surprising links between the abbey and the town. Abbey members £5, non-members £15 including admission. Booking essential. Booking
An Evening of Movie & Show Tunes — 7:30pm, Gurney Slade & Binegar Memorial Hall. Shepton Mallet Big Band play movie and show tunes, with dancing and a licensed bar. £10. Booking
Under Milk Wood — 7:30pm, Westbury-sub-Mendip Village Hall. Second night of the Westbury Footlights production. £10. More info
Kavus Torabi Record Release Show and Party — The King Arthur, Glastonbury. More info
psyRANDOM Psytrance Party — Assembly Rooms, Glastonbury. A few pounds on the door, with all proceeds going towards restoration of the Assembly Rooms. More info
Rising Stars Recital Series – Nurry Lee — Cedars Hall, Wells. More info
RNLI Mendip Folk Concert: Harbottle & Jonas — St James' Church Centre, Winscombe. More info
Sheppey Live Music: Riki Buckingham & Amir Mojazzer — The Sheppey, Lower Godney. More info
Greg Agar — 8:30pm, Bluebird Cafe & Bar, Wedmore. Free entry, table reservation recommended. More info
🎬 This Week at Wells Film Centre
Digger [15] — Tue–Thu 3pm and 7:30pm
Verity [15] — Tue–Thu 3pm and 7:30pm
Sense And Sensibility [U] — Tue 3pm, Wed 7pm, Thu 3pm
Pressure [12A] — Tue 7pm, Wed 3pm, Thu 7pm
Listings run to Thursday 8 October; Friday's screenings are published later in the week.
🌡️ Wells BA5 Weather — Week of 6 October
Cloudy and mild on Tuesday with highs near 18°C, then fresher on Wednesday and Thursday at around 14°C. Heavy rain is forecast for Friday, so keep a brolly handy for those evening plans, and Saturday looks mixed. Sunday is expected to turn brighter for the Wells Food Festival.
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Paul Branston, Editor
Hi, I'm Paul Branston and I publish the Mendiplodocus every morning, Monday to Friday. Each issue goes out to a growing base of thousands of local residents who want to keep up to date with events and local news. If you have events or news to share or you have a local business to promote, please get in touch.
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