Culture
Midsomer Norton's railway station has been memorialised, along with many other stations, in a famous song associated with railway closures, Slow Train, lyrics by Michael Flanders, music by Donald Swann:-
| “ | No more will I go to Blandford Forum and Mortehoe, on the slow train from Midsomer Norton and Munby Road
No churns, no porter, no cat on a seat, at Chorlton-cum-Hardy or Chester-le-Street We won't be meeting you, on the slow train … |
” |
Children's author Roald Dahl, prior to his writing fame, used to sell kerosene in Midsomer Norton and the surrounding area in the 1930s. He described the experience vividly in his autobiographical work Boy: Tales of Childhood (published 1984):
| “ | My kerosene motor-tanker had a tap at the back and when I rolled into Shepton Mallet or Midsomer Norton or Peasedown St John or Huish Champflower, the old girls and the young maidens would hear the roar of my motor and would come out of their cottages with jugs and buckets to buy a gallon of kerosene for their lamps and their heaters. It is fun for a young man to do that sort of thing. Nobody gets a nervous breakdown or a heart attack from selling kerosene to gentle country folk from the back of a tanker in Somerset on a fine summer's day. | ” |
The Waugh family connection with Midsomer Norton began when Dr Alexander Waugh, father of Arthur Waugh and grandfather of Evelyn Waugh and Alec Waugh moved to Island House, which had been built in the early 18th century, in The Island in the centre of the town in 1865. The family later moved to a house in Silver Street. As a boy, Evelyn Waugh spent his summer holidays in Midsomer Norton with his maiden aunts. He later described his visits there: "I suppose that in fact I never spent longer than two months there in any year, but the place captivated my imagination as my true home never did".
The Palladium cinema was opened as the Empire in 1913 in a building which had previously been a brewery. It closed in 1993 and attempts have been made to turn it into a club and shops.
Midsomer Norton hosts the only unofficial carnival on the West Country Carnival circuit, usually on the second Thursday in November. At one time, floats travelled through the main High Street but road improvements put paid to the larger vehicles. Nowadays, the procession is held on the main Fosseway through Westfield.
The local University of the Third Age was founded in the 1990s. Regular Speaker Meetings are held in the Somer Centre. There are a number of interest groups who also arrange outings to shows and the occasional continental holiday.
The town's free newspaper is the Midsomer Norton, Radstock & District Journal. The other local weekly paper is the Somerset Guardian, which is part of the Daily Mail and General Trust. The monthly magazine, the Mendip Times, also includes local features. Somer Valley FM (97.5FM and online) is the Community Radio for the district. There is also a community website where residents can discuss local issues called Midsomer Norton People.
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Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil,—to regard man as an inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than as a member of society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization: the minister and the school committee and every one of you will take care of that.”
—Henry David David (1817–1862)
“The purpose of education is to keep a culture from being drowned in senseless repetitions, each of which claims to offer a new insight.”
—Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978)
“Ours is a culture based on excess, on overproduction; the result is a steady loss of sharpness in our sensory experience. All the conditions of modern life—its material plenitude, its sheer crowdedness—conjoin to dull our sensory faculties.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)