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Issue #40 | Friday 7 August 2026

Good morning, Mendips! It's Friday — new bakes on the Market Place, a pride parade taking over Sadler Street tomorrow, and a whole weekend of gigs, exhibitions and family fun ahead. Here's your look at the news and what's on.

📅 Weekend Planner — what shall we do for the weekend?

🔤 Uxbridge English Dictionary — today's entry

📰 Hot News - Mendips Style — Cornish Bakery opens · Wells Pride marches · Amulet's comeback bid

The Ghosts of Shepton Mallet Prison

📆 What's On This Week — across the Mendips

🌡️ Weather — Wells BA5 forecast

Friday afternoon through Sunday, the Mendips are packed with colour — a pride parade in Wells, a candlelit film-score concert in Glastonbury, and gigs, art and family fun besides. Here's where to be.

🦅 Birds of Prey — Friday, Somerset Rural Life Museum, Glastonbury
Kick the weekend off with a proper close-up: Pitcombe Rock Falconry bring their birds in for a family session as part of the museum's summer holiday programme. Included with normal museum admission — good for little ones fresh out of school for the break. → More info

🏳️‍🌈 Wells Pride 2026 — Saturday, Wells city centre
Wells Pride is back for its third year, and its biggest yet — the first with its own road closure. Brunch at The White Hart from 10am, the march gathers on Cathedral Green at noon and heads down Sadler Street and the High Street to the bandstand on the Recreation Ground, where dancing, singing and speeches carry on through the afternoon. Free, and open to all. → More info

☮️ Hiroshima Exhibition — Saturday, Wells Cathedral Green
Eighty-one years on from the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this free exhibition on Cathedral Green marks the anniversary with a message of peace and remembrance — a quieter, thoughtful stop to build into a day out in the city.

🎻 A Hans Zimmer Candlelight Experience — Saturday, St John the Baptist's Church, Glastonbury
Touring outfit Lumos perform Zimmer's best-loved film scores — Gladiator, Interstellar, The Lion King, Pirates of the Caribbean — on strings, entirely by candlelight. Atmospheric doesn't begin to cover it. Tiered pricing, Bronze to Platinum. → Booking

🥁 Ratrace + One Chord Wonders — Saturday, Cheese & Grain, Frome
A proper live music night over in Frome, with headliners Ratrace joined by support from One Chord Wonders — worth the short drive out of the Mendips for anyone missing a decent gig. → Booking

🤠 The Americana & Country Experience — Sunday, The King Arthur, Glastonbury
Wind the weekend down with a four-piece tribute show running through the Allman Brothers, the Eagles, Chris Stapleton, John Mayer and Fleetwood Mac, with support from local band September Son. A relaxed Sunday night out. → More info

However you spend it, get out and enjoy it — see you Monday, Mendips!

Wells Pride returns for its third year on Saturday, with brunch at The White Hart from 10am before the parade gathers on Cathedral Green at noon and heads down Sadler Street and High Street to the bandstand. This year brings the event's first-ever road closure, with dancing, live music and speeches continuing at the Recreation Ground into the afternoon.

Read full story → (Wells Nub News)

Shepton Mallet's brutalist 1975 theatre — built as The Centre, later renamed after a Roman relic that turned out to be a Victorian fake — is the focus of a fresh push to bring the building back to life. Volunteers who ran a pop-up cinema and events season there last summer are now collecting memories, photos and memorabilia to support the next stage of the project.

Read full story → (Shepton Mallet Nub News)

Plans to let the Esso station on Bath Road open 24 hours a day have been thrown out by Somerset councillors, who said late-night trade would draw people who are "predominantly high or drunk" to a residential street. Neighbours told the planning committee that forecourt lighting and noise already disturb their sleep, and the plan was refused by ten votes to one.

Read full story → (Somerset Live)

Riders In The Sky is calling on local businesses to help make this year's RITS Day, at Tor Leisure in Glastonbury on 30 August, bigger than ever. The charity ride and family fun day raises money for Dorset and Somerset Air Ambulance in memory of Lee Baker, and organisers are appealing for marshal vests, raffle prizes and auction donations ahead of the big day.

Read full story → (Glastonbury Nub News)

Shepton Mallet Prison has spent 400 years collecting two things in equal measure: history, and ghost stories. Opened in 1625 as Cornhill House of Correction, it went on to become Britain's oldest working prison before closing to the public in 2013 — and somewhere along the way, it picked up a reputation as one of the most haunted buildings in the world

Its most famous resident spirit is the White Lady, said to be a woman convicted of murdering her fiancé in the late 1700s. Awaiting execution, she made one final request: to wear her wedding dress. It was granted, and on the morning she was due to hang, guards found her already dead in her cell, still in the gown, with no mark on her — a broken heart, everyone agreed, being the only sensible explanation.

She's since been credited with the cold draughts, the drifting scent of perfume, and enough unsettling sightings on the stairs of A Wing that, in the 1970s, the Home Office was called in to investigate. After three days, they left with no conclusions, and the prison kept its reputation.

The prison's wartime history adds its own, more sobering, chapter of hauntings. Between 1942 and 1945, when the site was run by the US military, 18 American servicemen were executed there — 16 hanged, two shot by firing squad.

One frequently mentioned presence is Private Lee Davis, hanged in 1943; a former tour guide once described feeling a sudden, sharp pain in his hand while telling Davis's story, only to find a fresh scar afterwards — oddly fitting, given Davis was said to be a heavy smoker.

Not every story here is grim. Staff have spoken of a night watchman blamed for tormenting officers on the overnight shift, unexplained laughter echoing from a locked, empty office, and a shadowy gentleman in a top hat spotted in the old Hard Labour Yard — and, in a rare moment of comic relief, a resident spirit nicknamed "Lofty," a wartime lifeguard fondly remembered for startling children with his whistle from his poolside chair.

Whether or not you believe a single word of it, there's no arguing with the weight of what actually happened within those walls — centuries of hardship, executions, and lives cut short. The ghost stories may be for entertainment, but they're built on real graves, still unmarked, still within the prison grounds today.

→ Full listings and booking at Wells Film Centre

🌡️ Wells BA5 Weather — Week of Friday 7 August

A bright, warm weekend is on the cards for the Mendips: sunny intervals and highs of 23°C today, climbing to 25°C for Saturday and Sunday, with mild nights. Good weather for Wells Pride, a Weekend Planner pick, or just a walk up on the Mendip Hills.

→ Full 7-day forecast on BBC Weather

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