Real stories, real people, real West Country
Tucked behind a market town high street in Somerset, a working letterpress studio is doing something quietly radical — teaching young creatives to slow down. We visited the printer who's spent three decades refusing to let moveable type become a museum piece.
In a cluttered studio on the edge of Dartmoor, textile artist Rachel Penhaligon is doing something quietly radical — turning scraps of forgotten industrial cloth and centuries-old weaving traditions into art that stops people dead in their tracks. Her work isn't just beautiful. It's a rescue mission.
In a yard tucked behind a Purbeck village, master stonemason Ray Holbrook is doing something quietly radical — teaching a new generation to read the grain of stone the way their great-grandparents once did. His apprenticeship scheme is small, unhurried, and possibly one of the most important things happening in the West Country right now.
Somewhere between 'dreckly' and 'proper job' lies a whole world of language that's quietly slipping away. One former Devon schoolteacher has made it her mission to capture it before it's gone for good — one crackling recording at a time.
From the craggy headlands of Cornwall to the windswept shores of Devon, a dwindling band of keepers and community campaigners are fighting tooth and nail to preserve the West Country's beloved lighthouse towers. Automation may have silenced the keeper's lamp-room routine decades ago, but these coastal sentinels are far from finished — not if their guardians have anything to say about it.
Down on the Cornish coast, where the mornings smell of diesel and brine, one fisherman is quietly waging a personal war against the industrial tide. Mick Treloar still fishes the way his grandfather taught him — and he's determined to pass it on before the knowledge disappears entirely.
In a cluttered workshop on the edge of Dartmoor, Rob Trevithick is doing something almost nobody else in England still does — and doing it properly. We spent a morning with Devon's last working tinsmith to find out why a trade older than the Industrial Revolution is quietly finding its feet again.
Long before craft beverages became a marketing buzzword, the Hatchwell family of Somerset were pressing apples the way their great-great-grandparents taught them. We spent a morning in their orchard to find out how one family has quietly outlasted empires, supermarkets, and the rise of alcopops.