Visitors to Gold Hill Museum from Monday 27 June are promised a free visual and cultural spectacle as Tibetan monks from Tashi Lhunpo Monastery create a Sand Mandala in the Anna McDowell Garden Room. Using millions of grains of coloured sand, the monks draw intricate designs representing a fabulous palace into which they invite the Buddha as part of a traditional meditation. After a dedication and blessing the Mandala will be ceremonially destroyed and dispersed at noon on Monday 04 July.

Tickets for an evening performance of masked dance and sacred chant in Shaftesbury Town Hall at 7.00p.m. on 04 July are available from Nature’s Treasures at 15A High Street and on line at www.eventbrite.com.

Following last year’s successful Photographic Exhibition held over a holiday weekend, Shaftesbury Camera Club are returning to the Anna McDowell Garden Room at Gold Hill Museum for a week long show. The Exhibition of top quality prints will run from Saturday 30 April until Friday 06 May, 10.30a.m to 4.30p.m. Entry is free to both the Exhibition and the Museum. The image of Swanage Pier was kindly provided by David Lampard of the Camera Club.

A new exhibition for 2016 created by Librarian and Archivist Ray Simpson tells the story of two local workhouses. In 1834 Parliament was keen to cut the welfare bill and the Poor Law Amendment Act abolished the practice of giving outdoor relief to the able-bodied poor. Recipients of welfare now had to enter the workhouse, where conditions were made deliberately unpleasant to discourage claimants. Ray’s fascinating exhibition couples extracts from letters and documents detailing the foundation of the new workhouses in Shaftesbury and Tisbury with episodes in the lives of unfortunate inmates: Martha Street and Eliza Tucker, jailed in 1869 for “fighting, quarrelling and making use of most obscene and profane language”; the Tisbury vagrant punished in 1907 for refusing to break stones for fear of losing his one good eye. This display is outside the Museum Library on the first floor and will run until October.

Gold Hill Museum re-opens on Saturday 19 March with many new items on display. The main temporary exhibition features a selection of breathtakingly beautiful Ladies’ Fans from the 19th and early 20th centuries. The history of their use is explained, together with their secret language. It could be that Sheena Commons (left) and Margaret Baxter are signalling “Follow me” or “I’d like to make your acquaintance.” Also involved in the preparation of this stunning exhibition were Maureen Bottom, Lesley Frost and Gill Hutchings, who are all delighted that a previously unseen part of the Museum Collection is on public view. An A4 poster “The Language of the Fan” is available in the Museum Shop.

Over 30 Dorset Mayors and their consorts visited Gold Hill Museum on the afternoon of Sunday 21 February. They were the guests of Shaftesbury Mayor and Mayoress Richard and Karen Tippins during their Civic Day, and had previously visited Swan’s Yard, the Arts Centre, Trinity Grounds, and the Heritage Snowdrop Collection at the Abbey Museum. Newly appointed Chairman of The Shaftesbury & District Historical Society, David Silverside [centre], was delighted to greet the assembled civic dignitaries, who were also addressed by The S&DHS President Jo Rutter. Jo gratefully acknowledged the part played by the Town Hall in housing the Museum in its early days, before it moved to various premises on Gold Hill.