Issue #34 | Thursday 30 July 2026

Good morning, Mendips! Tonight's the night 10cc legend Graham Gouldman brings Heart Full of Songs to Cheese & Grain in Frome, and Wells Beer Festival taps into its third year from tomorrow. Elsewhere, Glastonbury's historic Baily's Buildings have reopened after a £7m restoration, and a much-loved Wells shop celebrates 90 years behind the counter.

🎸 10cc's Graham Gouldman & Heart Full of Songs - Today's featured event

📅 What's On This Week — across the Mendips

Village Spotlight - Wedmore

🔨 Wells Ironmongers Marks 90 Years On The High Street

🏭 Glastonbury's Historic Baily's Buildings Reopen After £7m Restoration

🗺️ Somerset Local Plan Consultation Deadline Extended To 9 August

👻 Ghost Walk Returns To Wells Streets Tonight

🌡️ Weather — Wells BA5 forecast

Graham Gouldman, the 10cc co-founder and songwriter behind some of the most enduring hits of the 1960s and 70s, brings his band Heart Full of Songs to Cheese & Grain in Frome tonight from 7pm. Tickets are £32.

What began as a low-key acoustic project supporting 10cc shows has grown into a full semi-acoustic/electric four-piece, built purely for the pleasure of playing Gouldman's songs in their simplest form. The set draws on a genuinely remarkable back catalogue: 10cc's I'm Not In Love and Dreadlock Holiday; The Hollies' Bus Stop and Look Through Any Window; The Yardbirds' For Your Love and Heart Full of Soul; Herman's Hermits' No Milk Today; and Bridge To Your Heart from his time in Wax with the late Andrew Gold.

It's part of a bumper few days for live music in the Mendips — Led Zeppelin tribute act Coda plays the same venue on Saturday, while Wells Beer Festival brings its own stage of local acts to The Sheep & Penguin from tomorrow. Frome's Cheese & Grain remains one of the region's best bets for a big night out, easily reached from Wells, Glastonbury and Shepton Mallet.

→ Full details and tickets at cheeseandgrain.com

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If you want proof that England's history hinges on strange bedfellows, look no further than Wedmore. In 878, King Alfred the Great — fresh from thrashing the Viking warlord Guthrum at Ethandun — didn't execute his enemy. He baptised him, then threw him a twelve-day party at his Wedmore manor, standing as the Viking's godfather in the process. Could modern day politicians take a lesson in how to destroy your enemies by making them your friends?

Historians are quick to point out that no actual document called the "Treaty of Wedmore" survives — the whole thing rests on a monk's biography of Alfred — but why let a missing paper trail spoil a genuinely great story?

Wedmore has form when it comes to being ahead of its time. In the 17th century, local physician Dr John Westover ran what's believed to be England's first private mental asylum right here and, was remarkably humane for the era. Instead of chaining his paitients to the walls he let them play cards and smoke tobacco. Three hundred years before "patient wellbeing" became a buzzword, Wedmore was quietly getting there first.

Fast forward past the Domesday Book, the Saxon coin hoards, and the 120-odd listed buildings clustered around the 15th-century Church of St Mary, and you land on today's Wedmore: a village regularly crowned one of Somerset's most desirable addresses, with average house prices hovering around £613,000. It has three pubs, a butcher, a pharmacy in a converted Italianate villa, and enough festivals — an Arts Festival, a Real Ale Festival, a Christmas "Lamplight" fair and an amateur opera company that's staged 60-odd shows since 1988.

And yet, for all its genteel credentials, Wedmore's proudest modern export is the gloriously silly “Turnip Prize”, held at the end of each year at The New Inn. This parody of the more famous Turner Prize (which some would say is a parody itself) celebrates the worst "art" imaginable — usually a vegetable pun, assembled with the minimum conceivable effort. It's the antidote to conceptual art, and it has won frequent national press coverage itself.

More recent notable resididents have included England cricketer Jos Buttler (who grew up here) and Booker-winning novelist Penelope Fitzgerald. Wedmore is a village that refuses to be defined by just one claim to fame. Long may the turnips reign.

→ Full listings and booking at Wells Film Centre

Whiting and Son has celebrated 90 years of trading on Wells High Street, marking the milestone with a specially made fruit cake for customers. Founded in 1936 by JA Whiting after he settled in Wells following the First World War, the shop has grown through the decades and is now run by fourth-generation family members.

Read full story → (Wells Nub News)

Glastonbury's historic Baily's Buildings on Beckery Old Road have reopened following a £7m town deal-backed restoration, with tenants already moving into the first two phases of office space. The site, once a tannery and glove-maker whose boxing gloves were worn by Muhammad Ali and Henry Cooper, drew more than 100 residents and dignitaries to its official opening.

Read full story → (Glastonbury Nub News)

Somerset Council has extended its Local Plan consultation deadline to 9 August, giving residents more than double the government's recommended notice period to have their say on how towns, villages and countryside across the county — including the Mendips — should change over the next 20 years. This first phase focuses on the overall vision and issues to address, rather than specific development sites.

Read full story → (Somerset Council)

Wells' fortnightly Ghost Walk sets off again this evening, taking small groups on a guided tour through the city's lesser-known history, local folklore and reports of unexplained activity. It's a thoughtful, immersive evening rather than a scripted scare show, with optional hands-on paranormal investigation for those who fancy it — advance booking required.

Read full story → (Wells Ghost Walk)

🌡️ Wells BA5 Weather — Week of 30 July 2026

Wells is enjoying a warm, dry spell, with today's temperatures sitting in the mid-to-high twenties — perfect weather for Wells Beer Festival's beer garden or an evening Ghost Walk. Pack the sun cream for daytime plans and keep an eye on the forecast for any late changes over the weekend.

→ Full 7-day forecast on BBC Weather

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