Issue #36 | Monday 3 August 2026

Good morning, Mendips! Wells councillors have knocked back 73 homes on the hillside above the city, Somerset's recycling centres are rationing fridges and freezers, and the A361 at Burrowbridge is shut until September. Plus New Orleans brass hits Frome on Thursday, and five days of what's on across the Mendips.

📅 Featured Event — Hot 8 Brass Band at Cheese & Grain

🔤 Uxbridge English Dictionary — today's entry

📰 Hot News - Mendips Style — Wells hillside homes refused · Recycling centre fridge limit · A361 Burrowbridge shut · Glastonbury house prices fall

The Myth of Burrington Coombe

📆 What's On This Week — across the Mendips

🌡️ Weather — Wells BA5 forecast

Grammy-winning New Orleans outfit Hot 8 Brass Band roll into Frome this Thursday as part of their 30th anniversary tour, bringing a full-throttle mix of jazz, funk, hip-hop and bounce to Cheese & Grain. Expect trombones, saxophones and a battery of drums powering through originals alongside brass-band reworkings of Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder and Snoop Dogg.

The band draw on New Orleans' street brass tradition while pushing it somewhere funkier and more hip-hop-inflected — their feature on Jon Batiste's Grammy-winning Album of the Year and multiple sell-out shows at London's Roundhouse and Brighton's Dome have built a serious live reputation. It's an all-standing show, doors for a 7pm start, with a minimum age of 10 (under-16s need an adult with them).

→ Full details and tickets (£28 advance)

Plans for 73 homes on green fields off Orchard Lea, on the edge of the Mendip Hills national landscape, have been refused. Somerset Council cited "substantial harm" to the landscape, insufficient protection for bats and other wildlife, a failure to prove the required 10% biodiversity net gain, unresolved drainage risks, unsuitable access roads and the lack of a legal agreement to fund affordable housing and infrastructure. Of the 73 homes, 28 would have been affordable; developer Rubix Land Ltd has not said whether it will appeal.

Read full story → (Wells Nub News)

Somerset's 16 council-run recycling centres are limiting households to one fridge, freezer or other cooling appliance per visit throughout August. Somerset Council and site operator Biffa say the temporary cap follows a national shortage of specialist reprocessing capacity, driven partly by a fire and other outages at treatment facilities. Commercial users won't be accepted at all, and the limit could run beyond August if the national picture doesn't improve.

Read full story → (The Somerset Leveller)

Land Registry figures show average house prices in BA6 Glastonbury fell 6.06% in the year to April 2026, down to £315,858.60, while BA16 Street dropped 2.15% to £283,933.80 and BA4 Shepton Mallet fell 7.92% to £326,543.80. Wells bucked the trend, with BA5 prices up 4.33% to an average of £384,235.50. The figures reflect completed sales only and aren't a guide to where prices go next.

Read full story → (Glastonbury and Street Nub News)

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If you’ve heard the story of “Rock of Ages,” it probably comes with thunder, lightning and a brave curate in the Mendips.

The legend says in the late 18th century Rev Augustus Toplady was walking near Burrington Combe when a sudden storm blew in. He supposedly dived into a cleft in the rock for shelter, felt the safety of the stone around him, and right there the words “Rock of Ages, cleft for me” came to mind.

It’s a brilliant picture: real landscape, real danger, instant inspiration - and probably a real myth!

Burrington Combe even has a plaque on the rock today, proudly claiming to be the very spot.

When you look at the evidence, though, the storm story starts to wobble.

There’s no letter from Toplady describing a Mendip thunderstorm, no diary entry, and no mention of Burrington Combe in early printings of the hymn.

What we can trace is this:

Recent writers and local historians now treat the storm tale as just that – a legend that grew up around a popular hymn, not a documented event.

The language of the hymn itself seems to owe more to Bible texts and earlier devotional writing (including Wesleyan material that uses similar “rock” imagery) than to one wet afternoon in the gorge.

In other words, the real origin of “Rock of Ages” is probably a pen and a polemical article, not a scramble into a crack in the cliff.

Burrington Combe is a natural storyteller’s dream: a steep limestone ravine on the north side of the Mendips, full of caves, rocky outcrops and sudden turns in the path.

Over the years it’s picked up tales of smugglers, travellers sheltering from weather, hidden cattle and mysterious goings‑on in the side caves – exactly the sort of place where local imaginations plant dramatic moments.

Whether or not Toplady was ever there in the rain, Burrington Combe now plays host to the story – part history, part folklore, and very firmly rooted in the Mendip landscape.

→ Full listings and booking at Wells Film Centre

🌡️ Wells BA5 Weather — Week of 3 August

A hot, humid start with sunny spells and highs near 30°C on Monday, before things turn changeable — sunny spells and showers, some heavy and possibly thundery, especially on Tuesday. It settles and cools closer to average from Wednesday, with highs in the low-to-mid 20s through to Friday.

→ Full 7-day forecast on BBC Weather

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