Portesham Park, Portesham’s premier theme park, was open to the public for one day only at Portesham Primary school recently.

This was the culmination of lots of hard work done by Key Stage One children in their learning dimension project “Doyouthinkhesaurus?”!

Parts of the school and playground were unrecognisable as mini dinosaurs roamed around and visitors got the chance to see and feed them before visiting the lab. The tour then stopped at the gift shop where lots of dinosaur related goodies were on offer.

Photos can be seen on the school’s website at www.portesham.dorset.sch.uk.

The project raised over £200 which the children have donated to POPS as a thank you for funding trips for the whole school this year. Well done everyone.

The Portesham WI monthly meeting held on 12th July was well attended for the talk by Mrs Elizabeth Gale on “Women in Agriculture and the Land Army”. Mrs Gale has been involved in agriculture for many years and connected with the Melplash Show for 30 years.

The talk covered the labouring of women on the land since the Iron Age, working in the fields in long dresses, petticoats and bonnets. This continued until WW1 when women were allowed to wear trousers.

Working in the fields in all weathers was really tough work with very little payment, but it helped to earn money to add to their husband’s meagre wages when families with 9 plus children to feed were not uncommon. During the First World War the wives very often took over the running of farms when their husbands were killed in action.

The Women’s Land Army, which had a membership of 23,000 by 1918, was initially disbanded, but reformed again in WW2. By 1943 there were nearly 80,000 land girls.

Lady Denman became the leader of the Women’s Land Army and gave up her home for training recruits and was made Honorary Director. The Queen Mother (Queen at the time) took over as patron and employed 80 women on the Sandringham Estate.

The next meeting will take place at Portesham village hall on Monday, 12 September with speaker Peter Hammond giving a talk on “The joy of water colour painting”.

The annual cake and produce stall will be held in the King’s Arms garden, (village hall foyer if wet) on Saturday, 20 August at 10am. Members are asked to bring cakes, preserves, plants and produce to the table before 9.30am for selling.

It has been decided that the WI will make and design a wall hanging to be hung in the village hall to celebrate the Queen’s Jubilee next year. This will be made at the Craft Group meetings and if you are interested in being included, please attend the first meeting of the group on Thursday,15 September at 2pm.