Lived: Wheddon Cross, Winsford
Recording made: 1996
Length of recording: 3 hrs 51 mins
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WALTER BARWICK
Born:
Wheddon Cross,
Somerset, 1916
Lived:
Wheddon Cross,
Winsford
Recording made: 1996
Length of recording:
3 hrs 51 mins
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Walter Barwick's parents lived at Ashwell, outside Wheddon Cross. On Saturday mornings one of the children would be posted at the landing window to watch for the butcher's cart on the road below, so their mother could take a plate down and select the Sunday joint. He and his sister used to go for holidays to Winsford, where their grandfather was a mason.
He was working as a gardener for Squire Everard when he married Maud Vesey, the Winsford post mistress. While she looked after the post office he did the post round, carrying medicine and tobacco, and messages, from farm to farm. At Christmas time it was nothing for them to have seven or eight parcel bags full of poultry.
He sang in the choir at Wheddon Cross and has always loved performing. He says he still cooks himself a Sunday joint, putting it in the rayburn before he goes to church.
postscript - Walter Barwick died in November 2000