Mendiplodocus Daily — Issue #45 — Friday 14 August 2026
Issue #45 | Friday 14 August 2026
Good morning, Mendips! It's a Friday to savour — cooler weather, but still sunny is on the way for the weekend. We've got a bumper Weekend Planner running from a Depeche Mode tribute in Frome to a vintage kilo sale in Glastonbury, and we dust off the story of the night Fleetwood Mac played Glastonbury Town Hall.
📅 What Shall We Do For The Weekend? — Friday to Sunday highlights
🔤 Uxbridge English Dictionary — today's entry
📰 Hot News - Mendips Style — The Mendip Divide · Fleetwood Mac at the Town Hall · more
The mystery of Stanton Drew
📆 What's On This Week — across the Mendips
🌡️ Weather — Wells BA5 forecast
What Shall We Do For The Weekend?
The heatwave's easing off and the sun's sticking around for one more warm, comfortable weekend — here's where we'd point you, from Friday evening through Sunday.
🎸 The Devout — Depeche Mode Tribute — Saturday, Cheese & Grain, Frome, 7pm. Frome's biggest live music room turns black and moody for the night as tribute act The Devout bring the synths and the eyeliner. A proper night out if you fancy a drive over the Mendips for it. More info/Booking →
🐴 Shire Horses — Saturday, 10am–2pm, Somerset Rural Life Museum, Glastonbury. Lunar the Shire horse from Waterfall Shires visits for the day alongside the museum's usual family activities — a gentle, free-feeling day out for younger ones (normal museum admission applies). More info/Booking →
Lunar visits Glastonbury
🎶 The Jam'd Live — Saturday, 8pm, Studio 24, Wells. The UK's leading tribute to The Jam bring the Rickenbackers and the mod suits to Wells for a proper Saturday night knees-up. More info/Booking →
🏛️ Bishop's Palace Summer Late Openings — Friday, 6–8pm (last entry 7.30pm), Wells. Pack a picnic and while away a summer evening in the moated gardens after the day-trippers have gone home — one of the last of these late Friday openings before autumn. More info/Booking →
💃 Historical Dance Display — Saturday, 11.30am–12.30pm, Glastonbury Abbey. The Abbey's volunteer dance team demonstrate Tudor and Elizabethan courtly dances among the ruins, with onlookers welcome to join in — included with normal admission. More info/Booking →
👗 Glastonbury's Best Vintage Thrift Event & Kilo Sale — Sunday, from 11am, Glastonbury Town Hall. Rummage for a bargain by weight at this ever-popular vintage and thrift sale — a great one to round off the weekend. More info/Booking →
Whatever you choose, get out there and make the most of it — see you Monday, Mendips!
📰 Hot News - Mendips Style
📉 The Mendip Divide: Why Glastonbury And Shepton Are Being Left Behind
Glastonbury’s van dwellers
New figures show parts of Glastonbury and Shepton Mallet now rank among Somerset's most deprived neighbourhoods, with housing pressure, weak transport links and lower-paid work driving a widening gap with Wells and Street. Vehicle dwellers in Glastonbury have risen from around 45 in 2018 to about 300 in 2024 — one of the highest concentrations in the country.
🎸 When Fleetwood Mac Rocked Glastonbury Town Hall
Long before the stadiums and the Hollywood Walk of Fame star, Fleetwood Mac played a gig at Glastonbury Town Hall in 1968 as part of Westside Promotions' legendary teenage dances. The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and Jethro Tull also graced that same small stage before the dances folded for good in 1969.
🍕 Foodie Quiz Night Kicks Off The Weekend At Wells Touring Park
Wells Touring Park hosts a pub-classics and food-themed quiz tonight from 7pm, with pizza from The Hot Box and drinks from the 1413 Lounge up for grabs alongside a prize for the winning team. A relaxed way to kick the weekend off if you fancy testing your trivia.
🎨 Catch Glastonbury's 'The Unfurling' Before It Closes Tuesday
Leanne Ta'iki Anawa's exhibition The Unfurling, exploring myth, nature and personal transformation through evocative paintings, wraps up its run at Glastonbury Galleries on Tuesday. Entry is free and the gallery is open daily 11am–5pm for one last look.
English Lessons from the
Uxbridge English Dictionary
Peruse
The place Paddington Bear came from.
Crudity
A sea shanty.
Pinafore
A method of signalling with aprons.
Tangent
Dale Winton.
Twist
Yorkshire card game.
Trump
Favourite Yorkshire steak.
Faux pas
He's not your dad.
Stanton Drew: The Wedding Party That Never Ended
Just a short drive from Chew Magna sits one of Britain's most impressive prehistoric monuments — and one of its least visited. Stanton Drew's stone circles form the third-largest collection of standing stones in England, yet unlike Stonehenge or Avebury, most people have never heard of them.
The star of the show is the Great Circle, a colossal ring 113 metres across, originally made up of around 30 massive stones, of which 27 survive today. That makes it the second-largest stone circle in Britain after Avebury, and by some measurements of sheer diameter and area, it actually beats Avebury's inner circle outright, making it arguably the biggest true stone circle Neolithic Britain ever built.
The legend
More colourful than the pure history is the legend of the cursed wedding.
The story is that a wedding party once danced too late into Saturday night, straight through into the Sabbath. When the fiddler downed his instrument in protest, the Devil himself appeared in disguise and struck up a tune so irresistible that the revellers danced until dawn — at which point the whole lot, bride, groom, parson and all, were turned to stone as punishment.
The Cove is said to be the terrified bride, groom and vicar caught mid-escape, while the circles are the wedding guests, still frozen mid-jig nearly five thousand years later.
A bonus superstition warns that counting the stones is impossible and cursed; one enterprising baker reportedly tried marking each stone with a loaf of bread just to keep track.
How Stanton Drew may have looked
The real story, though, is arguably even stranger. In 1997, a geophysical survey revealed that the Great Circle once enclosed nine concentric rings of buried postholes, evidence of a colossal timber monument, probably built around 3000 BC, that was even larger than Stonehenge itself, making it briefly billed by archaeologists as "a rival to Stonehenge".
So while Stonehenge draws the coach parties and Avebury gets the World Heritage plaque, quiet little Stanton Drew may have once hosted the single largest prehistoric ceremonial site in the entire country, hiding in a field behind the pub car park all along.
All week (14–18 August)
Wookey Uncovered — Wookey Hole Caves. Guided tours of the ancient caves and Victorian papermill continue all summer. More info
Harry Brockway: Ways With Wood Exhibition — Somerset Rural Life Museum, Glastonbury. Wood engravings, woodcuts and sculpture, Tue–Sun 10am–5pm, until 2 September. More info
Mythical Creatures Trail — Wells Cathedral. Family trail included with standard admission, daily until 1 September. More info
Summer Fun on the Farm — Somerset Rural Life Museum, Glastonbury. Family activities daily, running until 4 September.
School Summer Holidays at The Bishop's Palace — Wells. Extra family activities through the school holidays, until 2 September. More info
Friday, 14 August
Foodie Quiz Night — 7pm, Wells Touring Park. See today's Hot News feature above. More info
Bishop's Palace Summer Late Openings — 6–8pm, Wells. See Weekend Planner above.
Mini Beast Hunts — 2–4pm, Main Abbey, Glastonbury Abbey. Drop-in family mini beast hunt session. More info
Beats 'n' Bites — 5.30–10pm, The Island, outside the Town Hall, Midsomer Norton. Live music and community feasting — bring your own takeaway food and drink from local businesses.
Saturday, 15 August
The Devout — Depeche Mode Tribute — 7pm, Cheese & Grain, Frome. See Weekend Planner above.
Shire Horses — 10am–2pm, Somerset Rural Life Museum, Glastonbury. See Weekend Planner above.
The Jam'd Live — 8pm, Studio 24, Wells. See Weekend Planner above.
Historical Dance Display — 11.30am–12.30pm, Glastonbury Abbey. See Weekend Planner above.
Glastonbury Repair Cafe — 10am–12noon, Scout Hut, Benedict Street, Glastonbury. Free community repair cafe — bring broken items along for volunteer repairers to try to fix.
Governing Glastonbury: Monks, Management and Manuscripts — Walk and Talk — 11am–12.30pm, Glastonbury Abbey. Guided walk with Dr Tim Hopkinson-Ball exploring how the monastery functioned. More info
Street House Mafia — 8pm, Glastonbury Assembly Rooms. Live music night. More info
The Tamiya Takeover 2026 — Jadlam Racing Models, Glastonbury. Free family fun day as Tamiya takes over the store. More info
Glastonbury Plant-Based Market — 10am–4pm, Glastonbury. Plant-based food and producers market. More info
Sunday, 16 August
Glastonbury's Best Vintage Thrift Event & Kilo Sale — from 11am, Glastonbury Town Hall. See Weekend Planner above.
Summer Sundays at Wells & Mendip Museum — 10am–4pm, 8 Cathedral Green, Wells. Open every Sunday through the school holidays; adults £6, family ticket £12. More info
The Unfurling — Art Exhibition — 11am–5pm, Glastonbury Galleries. Last full weekend before it closes Tuesday — see today's Hot News feature above.
Monday, 17 August
Summer Stay and Make — 11am–1pm, Yeast Scrapstore, Unit 7 Dyehouse Lane, Glastonbury. Drop-in art and craft session using recycled materials, donations from £5 per family. More info
The Abbey at Night: Discovering Bats (August) — 8–10pm, Abbey House, Glastonbury Abbey. Rare after-hours chance to learn about and observe bats in the Abbey grounds. More info
Tuesday, 18 August
The Unfurling — Art Exhibition — 11am–5pm, Glastonbury Galleries. Final day to catch this one before it closes. More info
🗓️ Coming Up
Meet the Sikhs — Cathedral Green, Wells. Saturday 22 August, noon–4pm. Free intercultural festival of Bhangra drumming and dancing, food and charity info from Wells Rotary and Khalsa Aid.
Street Repair Cafe & Men's Shed Bird Box Workshop — Quaker Meeting House, Street. Saturday 22 August, 10am–12noon.
Kinda Dusty Presents: Meatloaf by Candlelight and The Toasters — Live at the Tree House — both Friday 28 August (The Toasters at Cheese & Grain, Frome).
Glastonbury Last Saturday Market — Market Place, Glastonbury. Saturday 29 August.
History Alive: Bowlore Medieval — Bishop's Palace, Wells. 29–31 August.
🎬 This Week at Wells Film Centre
Spider-Man: Brand New Day [12A]
Sunny Dancer [15] — new this week
PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie [U]
Toy Story 5 [U]
Minions & Monsters [U]
Moana (live-action) [PG]
Showtimes vary by day — check the website for exact times and to book.
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🌡️ Wells BA5 Weather — Week of 14 August 2026
Expect a gentler, more comfortable weekend after this week's heatwave — Friday brings sunny intervals and a high of 26°C, easing to a fresher 24–25°C from Saturday through Monday with plenty of sunshine and just a light breeze. Still very much shorts-and-sunscreen weather, just without Thursday's 32°C scorcher.
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Contact Mendy the Mendiplodocus
Paul Branston, Editor
Hi, I'm Paul Branston and I publish the Mendiplodocus every morning, Monday to Saturday. 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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