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HARRY
HORROBIN
Born:
Portsmouth,
Hampshire, 1912
Lived:
Minehead,
Bridgetown, Roadwater
Recording made: 2001
Length of recording: 2 hrs 58 mins
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Harry Horrobin learnt blacksmithing as a boy, in the Midlands. He joined the airforce at 16 as a trainee armourer and left it a pacifist, some 28 years later. His last posting was to Doniford. He says that when he arrived in Somerset he thought 'this is the place I want to be.' He bought the blacksmithing business in Bridgetown in the mid-50s, his son Jim joining him later as an apprentice. Then they moved to Roadwater.
By now an atheist, pacifist and vegetarian, he started the Roadwater Peace Group. He and his wife went on demonstrations, painting shadows in Minehead on Hiroshima day and carrying out symbolic wire cutting. They were arrested and his wife gave the policeman a daffodil.
He plays the violin, in a quartet which meets every week in their front room, and has done for years. He made violins, and furniture, and pottery, before his eyesight started to fail. He often dreams about making things, he says.