Issue #15 | Wednesday 8 July 2026

Good morning, Mendips! The Priddy Folk Festival takes over the hills this Friday for a weekend of music, giants and general good cheer — and it's just one of a stack of big weekends colliding across the Mendips, from WOWFest's grand finale in Wells to Somerstock down in Somerton. Read on for the full rundown, plus a well-earned civic honour for a much-loved town crier and a scorcher of a forecast.

🎪 Priddy Folk Festival 2026 - Today's featured event
📅 What's On This Week — across the Mendips
Wells honours town crier Len with Freedom of the City
Giant Flea Market returns to Bath & West Showground
SWTA: ELEVATE lights up Strode Theatre
WOWFest's grand finale weekend arrives in Wells
🌡️ Weather — Wells BA5 forecast

The Priddy Folk Festival returns to the top of the Mendip Hills this Friday, running from 10 to 12 July. Billed as the friendliest folk festival in the UK, it fills the village green and surrounding fields with seven stages, a mix of free and ticketed shows, and the relaxed, all-ages atmosphere that's kept people coming back for decades.

This year's line-up includes Dervish, Melrose Quartet, Dallahan, Kasai Masai, Malin Lewis and Henry Girls, alongside a 30-piece Brazilian youth orchestra and the ever-popular Fringe Tent on the Market Field, which offers free music all weekend. New for 2026, the festival is welcoming a Giant to the village — a striking addition to Sunday's procession alongside the Lost Giants of Cornwall.

It's a proper community effort — Priddy Folk Festival is run entirely by volunteers as a registered charity, with camping on site for those making a full weekend of it. Tickets for individual days and the full weekend are still available, so there's still time to get yourself up the hill.

→ Full programme and tickets at priddyfolk.org

→ Full listings and booking at Wells Film Centre

On summer evenings, when the light softens over the water, and the swifts are working the reed beds, the drive south along the B3114 between Bishop Sutton and West Harptree is one of the prettiest few miles in Somerset. It is not, on the face of it, a road on which you would expect to meet a ghost.

And yet, on the evening of 5 June 1999, at least nine people did.

The best-known witness is a Blagdon man named Chris Pugh, driving home with his partner Wendy Gunning and his daughter Sam. Near Herons Green, a woman stepped into the road. Pugh braked, swerved, and missed her — but all three saw the same thing: a young woman in a long old-fashioned dress, her hair wet and hanging loose, walking calmly across the tarmac as if the twentieth century had never happened. He pulled into the nearest pub and rang the police. Over the following days, eight other motorists came forward with almost identical accounts.

The most persistent candidate for her identity is a fourteen-year-old girl called Catherine Brown, who lived at the turn of the twentieth century in Moreton, the little Domesday village that now lies somewhere beneath the deepest part of the lake. Catherine, so the story goes, had rather protective parents and a growing habit of coming home late. One night, she did not come home at all. Her father joined the search parties; her mother waited at the cottage until, in the small hours, she heard the front door open and Catherine walk in, dripping wet. The girl said nothing, climbed the stairs, and shut herself in the bathroom.

At dawn, when her parents went up to check, the bathroom was empty. Catherine's body was found that morning in the moat of Stratford Mill, less than a mile away. The coroner concluded she had already been dead for at least twenty-four hours.

Half a century later, the Chew Valley was flooded to give Bristol its drinking water. Moreton disappeared, along with the Brown family's cottage and Catherine's grave. Stratford Mill itself was carefully dismantled and re-erected sixteen miles north at Blaise Castle, where it still stands. Every physical trace of Catherine is now either underwater or somewhere else, which leaves her, if she is looking for a way home, with only the road that runs above where the village used to be. The B3114.

Sceptics point out that no parish register has yet coughed up a Catherine Brown, and the tale may owe more to one mid-century local history book than to hard evidence. Fair enough. But nine people saw something that June night, and when the light goes coppery over Herons Green on a warm summer evening, it does no harm to check the verges. She has, after all, been walking that road for a very long time.

Former Wells Town Crier Len Sweales is set to receive the Freedom of the City on Saturday, 18 July, in recognition of more than 25 years of service. Len became one of the best-known faces in Wells, representing the city at countless local, regional and national events and supporting a wide range of charities along the way. He gave his final cry in the Market Place back in May, and this rare civic honour formally recognises everything he's done for the city since.

Read full story → (Wells Nub News)

One of the region's biggest bric-a-brac days is back at the Bath & West Showground in Shepton Mallet this Sunday, 12 July. Doors open at 9.30am on over 250 indoor and outdoor stalls selling everything from retro furniture and vintage clothing to books, toys, jewellery and garden statuary. There's a restaurant, café and outdoor food court on site, and dogs are welcome on a lead.

Read full story → (Bath & West Showground)

South West Theatre Arts brings its whole-school showcase ELEVATE to Strode Theatre in Street this Saturday and Sunday, with performances at 2pm and 7pm both days. Pupils aged 4 to 18 take to the stage across ballet, tap, modern, contemporary, musical theatre, acro, commercial and singing, in a show the school promises will be full of magical costumes and plenty of heart.

Read full story → (Strode Theatre)

WOWFest, the Wells Orchestral Weekend, reaches its main event this week as international youth orchestras, choirs and bands descend on England's smallest city. Friday's opening ceremony at Cedars Hall kicks off a packed programme, building to Saturday's headline performance of Carmina Burana with full symphony orchestra inside Wells Cathedral. Fringe concerts continue for free around the city all week.

Read full story → (WOWFest)

🌡️ Wells BA5 Weather — Week of 8 July 2026

It's shaping up to be a proper scorcher across the Mendips this week — dry, sunny and building steadily hotter, with Friday set to be the hottest day at around 32°C (90°F). Saturday brings a bit more breeze to take the edge off, before things ease back towards the low twenties by Sunday. Perfect weather for a weekend of festivals — just don't forget the sun cream and plenty of water.

→ Full 7-day forecast on BBC Weather

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