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Mendiplodocus Daily — Issue #46 — Monday 17 August 2026
Issue #46 | Monday 17 August 2026
Good morning, Mendips! We open the week looking ahead to the 3 Wishes Fairy Festival's 20th birthday bash at Garslade Farm, catch up on a witness appeal at Shepton Mallet's old prison, marvellous A-Level results at The Blue School, and a good-news save for Glastonbury's Brewers Fayre, plus your full day-by-day guide to what's on across the Mendips this week.
⛺ Featured Event — 3 Wishes Fairy Festival turns 20
🔤 Uxbridge English Dictionary — today's entry
📰 Hot News - Mendips Style — Wells Festival · Shepton Prison Appeal · Glastonbury's Brewers Fayre · Blue School Results
📆 What's On This Week — across the Mendips
🌡️ Weather — Wells BA5 forecast
3 Wishes Fairy Festival
This Friday sees the return of the 3 Wishes Fairy Festival at Garslade Farm, just outside Wells — and this year's the big one, marking its 20th anniversary. Running Friday 21 to Sunday 23 August, the three-day family festival fills the caravan site's fields with live music, drumming circles, craft workshops and storytelling, with campers and day visitors alike turning up in wings and flower crowns for the occasion.
Headlining the music line-up are folk-punk favourites 3 Daft Monkeys, taking to the stage on Friday evening, with a full weekend of bands, workshops and children's activities to follow. What began as a modest gathering two decades ago has grown into one of the best-loved small festivals on the Mendips calendar, prized for its friendly, unpretentious atmosphere.
Early Bird tickets covering the full three days are still available, with day tickets also on offer for anyone who just fancies a Friday evening or a Saturday wander through the stalls — and camping is available on site for the whole weekend.
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📰 Hot News - Mendips Style
🔭 Sky At Night's Maggie Aderin To Close Wells Festival Of Literature
Budding astronomers inspired by last week's partial solar eclipse have more stargazing to look forward to this autumn. Maggie Aderin, space scientist and presenter of BBC's The Sky at Night, will close the nine-day Wells Festival of Literature on Saturday 24 October with the story of how her love of the night sky began. The festival brochure is out now in shops and online, with booking opening Monday 24 August.
⚖️ Solicitor Appeals For Witnesses Over Shepton Mallet Prison Asbestos Claim
A solicitor acting for the family of the late Keith Lusty, a former Prison Service Officer diagnosed with mesothelioma at 71, is appealing for witnesses with information about asbestos exposure at Shepton Mallet Prison. Mr Lusty recalled damaged, lagged pipework and dusty conditions in the prison's basement areas, and separately worked at Court Ash House in Yeovil during its refurbishment. Solicitor Helen Grady of Amicus Law is asking anyone who worked at either site to come forward in confidence.
🍽️ Glastonbury's Brewers Fayre Understood To Be Saved After Buyout
The Brewers Fayre in Glastonbury, which was set to close as part of Whitbread's nationwide cull of 261 sites, is understood to be among roughly 53 restaurants saved after a buyout by the Queensway Hospitality Group. The Morland Road site, next to the Premier Inn, is expected to reopen under the new owner's planned line of 'value pubs', though full details haven't yet been confirmed.
🎓 'Marvellous' A-Level Results Celebrated At The Blue Schoo
Some of The Blue School’s high flyers
Students at The Blue School in Wells are celebrating a "marvellous" set of A-Level and BTEC results, with 60% of entries graded A*-B and almost 90% at grade C or above. Headteacher Mark Woodlock praised the cohort as "an exemplar group of role models" after a secondary education marked by pandemic disruption and building issues, with most students now heading to their first-choice university or straight into careers spanning law, engineering and biochemistry.
English Lessons from the
Uxbridge English Dictionary
D
Depend
Opposite the shallow end.
Detailed
A boxer dog.
Dialogue
An awful piece of wood.
Dialysis
To ring your sister.
Diatom
A welsh male cat.
Dictaphone
Your sister's boyfriend.
Did Winston Churchill have Mendip roots?
There is a small village at the north-western edge of the Mendips called Churchill. There is also, as you may have heard, a rather famous man of the same name. It would be very tidy if Britain's wartime Prime Minister had rolled off the slope below Dolebury Warren, and for the best part of a century a lot of people have been quietly hoping it were true.
You can see the temptation. Add Winston to a village that already sits under Hannah More's schools and Locke's baptismal font, and North Somerset practically owns the Enlightenment.
Winston’s less familiar persona - the artist
The story people wanted to tell
The genealogists have done their best. The traditional line traces the surname to a Norman knight, Roger de Courcil, granted lands in Somerset after 1066. Over the following century "Curcelle" was gently anglicised, and by the 1200s the family was being recorded as "de Curichil" of Churchill. A Richard de Churchulle duly turns up in the Hundred Rolls of 1273.
Better still, there is a house. Churchill Court, still standing in the parish, was owned in the 17th century by Richard Jennings, whose daughter Sarah married John Churchill, later 1st Duke of Marlborough. When Jennings hit hard times he sold the house in 1652 to Sir John Churchill — Royalist lawyer, Master of the Rolls, and a cousin of the Duke.
Sir John was buried in the village. Marlborough went on to be given Blenheim Palace by a grateful Queen Anne, and it was at Blenheim, generations later, that the infant Winston made his appearance in 1874.
Cousins, court, palace, Prime Minister. What could go wrong?
The bit that goes wrong
By the time Winston was born, his own line had spent the best part of three centuries somewhere else. The stellar Churchills descend from Roger Churchill (c.1522–79), a blacksmith at Bradford Peverell in Dorset, and it was there, at Minterne House, that the first Sir Winston Churchill (1620–1688), father of Marlborough, actually lived (Nick Churchill). The Somerset village gave the family its name, but not its address, and hadn't done so for a very long time.
Winston's own verdict
None of this stopped the enthusiasm. When Churchill became Prime Minister in 1940, the villagers cheerfully cabled Churchill, Nevada, about their common name. Winston, characteristically, reached for the blue pencil. In a draft response he crossed out the phrase describing Churchill, Somerset, as "the village from which my family came".
He was happy to be a Marlborough, an Oxfordshire man, a Blenheim baby — but not, on the evidence, a son of the Mendips.
All week (17-21 August)
Wookey Uncovered — Wookey Hole. Summer-long trail and exhibition, running through 30 September.
Harry Brockway: Ways With Wood Exhibition — Glastonbury. Runs through 2 September. More info
Mythical Creatures Trail — Wells Cathedral. Family trail through 1 September, with themed craft workshops most days this week (see below). More info
Summer Fun on the Farm — Somerset Rural Life Museum, Glastonbury. Runs through 4 September.
School Summer Holidays at The Bishop's Palace — Wells. Family activities through 2 September. More info
Monday, 17 August
The Abbey at Night: Discovering Bats (August) — 8pm-10pm, Glastonbury Abbey (Abbey House). A rare after-hours chance to learn about and watch the bats living in the abbey grounds. More info
Summer Stay and Make — Yeast Scrapstore, Glastonbury. Weekly Monday craft drop-in.
Tuesday, 18 August
Mythical Creatures Trail: Make A Dragon Puppet — 9.30am, Wells Cathedral. Family craft workshop as part of the summer trail. More info
Family Activity: CD Wind Spinners — 11am-1pm, Glastonbury Abbey Museum. Make wind spinners from recycled compact discs. More info
The Unfurling — Art Exhibition by Leanne Ta'iki Anawa — Glastonbury Galleries. Final day — last chance to catch it. More info
Wednesday, 19 August
Magique — Magic and Illusions Show — 5.30pm, The Mill, High St, Wells. Family magic show. More info
Mythical Creatures Trail: Be A Bookmaker — 9.30am, Wells Cathedral. More info
Wild Wednesdays — Somerset Earth Science Centre, Stoke St Michael. Weekly family science session. More info
Mini Beast Hunts — 2pm-4pm, Glastonbury Abbey. Twice-weekly bug hunting for young explorers. More info
Thursday, 20 August
St John's Church, Glastonbury — Lunchtime Concert — 1pm, free entry (donations welcome). Sarah Curtis Music gives a short acoustic concert. More info
Mythical Creatures Trail: Singing Serpents Workshop — 10.30am, Wells Cathedral. More info
Family Activity: Puppet Theatre — 11am-1pm, Glastonbury Abbey Museum. More info
Walk & Wine Thursday — Wells. Weekly evening walk finishing with a glass of wine.
Badger Walks at Glastonbury Abbey — 7pm-9pm. After-hours walk through the abbey grounds. More info
Stories, Myths & Magic! — Yeast Scrapstore, Glastonbury. Weekly storytelling session with Rainbow Roots CIC.
Friday, 21 August
3 Wishes Fairy Festival — Garslade Farm. The 20th anniversary three-day festival opens today — see Featured Event above for the full story.
Open Mic Night — 6.30pm, Cheese & Grain, Frome. All welcome to get up and play. More info
80's Night (All Over 80s Live) — 8pm, The King Arthur, Glastonbury. Live 80s covers band. More info
Beats 'n' Bites — 5.30pm-10pm, The Island, outside the Town Hall, Midsomer Norton. Live music and bring-your-own community feasting.
Bishop's Palace Summer Late Openings — Wells. Selected Friday evening opening through summer. More info
Day Trip to SLiMBRIDGE — Shepton Mallet community coach trip. More info
Mini Beast Hunts — 2pm-4pm, Glastonbury Abbey. Second weekly session. More info
🗓️ Coming Up
Alys Williams "The Light House" — Croscombe Village Hall. Sunday 6 September, 7.30pm.
The Toasters — Cheese & Grain, Frome. Friday 28 August.
Truckfest South West 2026 — Bath & West Showground, Shepton Mallet. Friday 28 to Sunday 30 August.
BROCK Live — The Waldegrave Arms, East Harptree. Free live blues/Americana/rock. Saturday 19 September.
🎬 This Week at Wells Film Centre
This week's full listing wasn't available from the Wells Film Centre site at time of going to press — please check the link below for up-to-date showtimes and to book.
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🌡️ Wells BA5 Weather — Week of 17 August
It's a mixed start to the week, with drizzle and light rain settling in from Monday through Thursday and highs easing from 23°C down to a cooler 19°C by Thursday. Friday brings a welcome improvement — sunny intervals and a lighter breeze, with the best of the week's weather due to arrive at the weekend.
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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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