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Melbury Abbas - 'Village of the Jammed'

1,122 views · Published 15 May 2017 · 6:57 · Indexed 23 September 2026

Channel: Jeff Taylor · 2017 · News & Politics

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Today I joined a group of people on Christy’s Lane in Shaftesbury demonstrating against the recent and persistent push by Dorset County Council and the Highway Authority to push Heavy Goods traffic through the narrow and winding road that goes through Melbury Abbas, a small village just to the south of Shaftesbury in Dorset, instead of letting the lorries use the more suitable A350 route a few miles to the West.

The traffic situation has now grown so bad in Melbury Abbas that the national press is interested and The Sun newspaper recently dubbed it ‘The Village of the Jammed’, a sound byte that the villagers are all too willing to use.

The residents of the small village have grown increasingly angry over what they see as a gradual erosion of their way of life as well as the physical damage they experience to their immediate environment and even their property. All this is well documented on their Facebook page - Save Dinah’s Hollow - I will put the link at the end of the video.

All this was brought to a head when a sign appeared on Christy’s Lane a couple of weeks ago that instructed HGVs travelling south towards Poole to take the B3081 on to the C13 through Dinah’s Hollow and Melbury Abbas.

The residents of Melbury Abbas feel let down after engaging with the county council and making their concerns known but getting nowhere. So they have decided that a public protest is the only way left for them to make their point.

At the protest were William Kenealy, the chairman of the Melbury Abbas and Cann Parish Council as well as the Mayor of Shaftesbury John Lewer.

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