CD1

(73 mins)
 

1/1

BORN MINEHEAD 1930 / CONNECTIONS WITH EXFORD / FAMILY BACKGROUND / FATHER'S GROCERY BUSINESS / POST-WAR DIFFICULTIES / EXFORD SHOP / UNCLE'S DEATH

PB was born in Minehead but his father was born in Exford back in 1898. His father [PB's grandfather] had the shop here, Exford Stores. By the time PB was born his uncle had taken over the shop in Exford. It was often said that PB was more at home in Exford than he was in Minehead. His original stay in Exford was when he was about 3, his father was seriously ill and PB's aunt and uncle kindly looked after him for several weeks while his mother tried to cope with his father and cope with the business as well. That was really the foundation of his connections with Exford.

PB was born in Minehead in 1930. His father had moved there from Exford in 1904 when he was about 6 or 8. They had the grocery business, first in Holloway Street where the Chinese restaurant is now, and then moved across the parade opposite the town clock where The Alliance and Leicester is now. In those days the rulings were rather different, he left school at 12½, and he retired eventually when he was 79 so he did 67½ [66½] years in the business. [laughs]

The business in Minehead was an extra-high class grocery business. Some people used to say if you couldn't get it in there you'd have to go to Fortnum & Masons. He used to do a lot of speciality things there wasn't the usual demand for; delicacies, both the provisions side and the grocery side. They included tongues in glasses and special cheeses. One time he had 26 different cheeses n cut. Supplies came from London and there were a lot of local cheeses that he got from Wells. He always bought his Stiltons in September and kept them in a proper cellar place until the following [year's] Christmas some 15 months in advance; rather different from present day supermarkets. His father used to cook his own hams and anything that was different from the usual run of things he liked to stock. When a traveller came he lectured him because the traveller said you ought to stock so-and-so-and so-and-so because he'd just sold it to the other grocer down the road who was going to have so much. His father would say why, if he's got it, he didn't want it, he wanted something to sell that the other grocer hadn't got! That was his attitude to it.

His father was quite successful but then came the time after the war, which was a very difficult period, obviously, for him; after the war that sort of trade didn't really pick up. When the supermarkets and that started with all the cut priced stuff the sales of the ordinary sort of stuff went down so much he had difficulty then in making a decent living. His brother was in [the business] with him and he didn't want to carry on so he sold the premises and closed the business. He'd had a pretty good spell at it. That was in the late-70s, when PB would have been the best part of 30, he supposes.[

PB's father had been about 6 when they moved to Minehead when his father [PB's grandfather] ran the shop before his father. They sold their shop in Exford and they bought it back again when PB's grandfather died, which was before he [PB] was born so he's never had a grandfather. PB's uncle took over the shop in Exford and Father stayed in Minehead.

The shop in Exford was different from the shop in Minehead. The shop in Exford sold ordinary run-of-the-mill stuff. Any customers he got that wanted something special he would get it through; they worked together to a certain extent, they passed things to-and-fro.

When Uncle retired, partly through ill health, in the late 50s, PB's father helped out his brother. Then he [his father's brother] died unfortunately. He had cancer of the spine, had a very painful time and died two or three weeks before he was 65. PB's father went on and lived 'til he was 92. The Exford shop was out of the family for about 20 or 25 years. Then Uncle came back and he had it for the best part of 30 years; he had fairly strong connections with Exford. [Back to top]
 

1/2

FAMILY BACKGROUND

Both PB's grandfathers died before he was born. He had [knew] two grandmothers and one great-grandmother. His grandmother had the bungalow across the road here where Mick Steer [son of Peter Steer, another contributor to the archive] lives. Just round behind the village hall opposite. He used to stop there with her sometimes; most school holidays.

So while PB's father and grandfather [who he didn't know] were in Minehead; was his grandfather's wife in Exford? He supposes that they lived in Minehead and when he died and they reorganised the family as it were, she came out here and lived in the bungalow over there.

PB's grandmother, like most in those days was more strait-laced. What used to worry him as a child, and he can her now [in his mind's eye], how she wore a hat in those days with these huge hat pins and he could never understand how painful it was pinning her hat onto her head. [laughs] . He can't remember what kind of hat but she always used to wear a hat with these great pins "in through her head". He supposes that after a while he realised that it didn't go into her head.

Whilst staying with his grandmother he would potter about and play about down in the river. In those days children were free to play without fears. When he stopped with his uncle and auntie he did various odd jobs and perhaps would go out in the van with them delivering odd things round the village. He remembers going over to Steer's blacksmith shop to pump the bellows for him. He was always on the move; never a studious child. Pumping the bellows would have been for Peter Steer's uncle. They've done it up into a cottage now with an arched window. No doubt Peter Steer has told more about that. Being only a little chap then he doesn't remember much about the wheelwright side of it.

When the war started PB was only 9 or 9½ and by the time he was 10½ his dad had lost several of his staff who'd gone in the army and PB did a lot in the shop. From that age onward he didn't have so much, well wouldn't say he didn't have so much fun exactly, but helped a lot in the shop. Whether that put him off he doesn't know but he never "took for it" and always preferred outside life.

PB had an older brother and younger sister who weren't interested in the shop at that time. His sister didn't do so much to it as she was five years younger and not much more than a toddler while the war was on. His brother did his spell in the army and then started "going into" architecture but couldn't make the grade. He then got married and had difficulty finding anywhere to live so came back to Minehead and joined his father in the job [shop]. They got on very well for a good many years. PB can't remember exactly when John came back to join his father. PB took to the outside life and started to work at Bratton Court Farm.

There was no pressure for PB to join his father's business. His father would have liked him to go in but he didn't pressurise him at all and [his father] thinks he saw too much of it at it's most problematical time during the war and all the rationing. He thinks that probably put him off. Whether that's the case PB isn't sure and they didn't consciously put him off.

As for his other grandmother, they came from Birmingham PB thinks. His grandfather, his mother's father, and her [his mother's] grandfather worked for Doulton's China as designers. It was odd in that PB's grandmother was one of four girls. One didn't marry, one married and had no children and the other two married, each having a daughter, and both were widowed by the time the daughter was a year old which was a most unusual, odd recollection. So his mother didn't know her father at all. After a while, doesn't know how many years, hasn't the history of it, his grandmother remarried. He was a civil servant and they lived in Cardiff then for a while when PB's mother was a girl. She came to Minehead when he thinks she was 13. After she left school she went to work for his grandfather and ended up marrying the boss's son. If Dad had lived another month they would have had their 68^th anniversary, which was quite an achievement.

PB can't remember how the two grandmothers got on or how much contact they had with one another. Grandmother on mother's side had a house down in Summerland Avenue down below where the car park is now. She used to take in visitors; sometimes she had lodgers there. She had a bank manager or a bank clerk there for some years. Latterly she let the house; was it partners they used to do in those days? Then the war came and they felt then that this was getting a bit much for her so she moved out and went into a, it wasn't an old peoples' home, but to a place where someone had got a couple of rooms they let to elderly people in Minehead. Then they let the house furnished.

When she died that was an opportunity for his brother to come back and he went and lived in what was his grandmother's house. He's not still there; a couple of years ago he moved out to Spring Gardens and sold that house [in Summerland avenue]. When PB's mother died the estate was sorted out; they're on the next generation now. He looks in the paper now and sees people they went to school with passing away and things like that. [rueful laugh] If they follow the trend; Dad was 92 and his mum was nearly 92; so if they follow the trend PB should be around for a few years yet; but there's no knowing is there? [Back to top]
 

1/3

SCHOOL / UNIFORM / ILLNESSES / WEAKLY CHILDHOOD / DOCTOR'S FEES

PB was the middle of three children. His brother is 2½ years older than he and his sister's 5 years younger than he.

He went to school in Minehead; to St Teresa's, a private school for juniors to start with, and then went to what was then the County School and which while he was there was changed to the Grammar School and which since then has been changed to the Middle School. The one in Ponsford road at any rate.

He wouldn't say he wasn't good at it; he wasn't interested in school; it wasn't that he particularly disliked it; he just wasn't greatly interested. He did quite well in some subjects; but in those days it was "School Certificate" and you had to get 5 passes to get any certificate at all. He had three credits and one pass but he had nothing to show for it. He's not all that "thick", [laughs] but he supposes if he'd really worked at it he'd probably have got on better. His favourite subject? maths was the best one, maths and geography he used to like but he was no good at languages. Physics was "passable".

There were pretty well 400 at the school in those days but he has no idea how many there are now because it's completely altered with different age groups. Class sizes were about 30 or 32, something like that. In those days they had say 4a and 4alpha, they were supposed to be the same but the "a" class were always the little bit brighter ones. But in those days there were very few people stayed on doing what they now call "A" levels; or it used to be Higher School Certificate, that was it. Out of those 400 there were only a dozen or 15 at the most in the Sixth Form; whereas now it's rare for anybody to finish school at 16 isn't it? PB left school at 16.

He can't remember much about junior school. In those days they were much stricter about uniforms. He doesn't think they had much in the way of bad behaviour. [laughs]

They had blazers, and he wonders did he start in short trousers? He thinks you had to be 12 or some sort of age before you were allowed to wear long trousers. Now they have them at 5 years old don't they? [laughs] You had a blazer and cap and tie and if you had any part of your school uniform on you had to have your cap on. If you went home walking with your cap in your pocket you could get reported. So you had to go home and take off anything to do with your school uniform and change. Now you seem to see them slouching about in anything don't you?

At the time PB lived in Alexandra Road which was walking distance, about a quarter of a mile. They lived above the shop to start with until he was 5. It was a very traumatic two or three years then. His father was ill and nearly died of pneumonia because in those days it was a dreadful thing. That was 1933 he supposes and in 1935 PB had appendicitis and peritonitis and nearly died and was just rescued from that. His sister was born earlier in the year, in February, and he was ill in the summertime in hospital nearly passing out with peritonitis and his brother had scarlet fever and was sent to the isolation hospital, in those days, at Tivington. Mum was sort of desperate to do something and they rented this house down the road.

PB only remembers the peritonitis very vaguely. He's got the one operation scar there [indicates] and the other one in the middle and he remembers going in and out and having the huge piece of elastoplast pulled off and the rubber tube for the poison to drain out of himself; out of his stomach. Now he supposes you'd have a shot of penicillin and that would be the end of it. Pretty critical days.

PB was quite a weakling most of his childhood, he was at the point of death for a while and it took him years to pick up. It was Minehead hospital that he went to.

He doesn't know how they paid for this [treatment]. He remembers the doctor used to come in and see Dad twice a day apparently for a while. He was very good and PB thinks he waived some of his fees.

PB remembers his mum told him that the doctor came up and saw them and said that PB had this peritonitis and they had to give permission for another operation; a second one; he had to have it in 5 days. His mum said he didn't give them much option because he said he didn't know if it would be successful or not but if they didn't operate he would die; so they said they'd better operate. He had his appendix out first then peritonitis set in. Anyway he survives.

It was fully 12 months before he was anything like normal. In those days medical science wasn't quite what it is now. [laughs] He can't remember any special convalescence or whether there was any special feed or more nourishing food. He missed a whole term at school. He went back to school again but when it came to sports and anything like that he was very much behind the others. He doesn't think it affected his friendships, he can't remember it particularly affecting them. When he left school and went out to work, that sort of strengthened him up. [Back to top]
 

1/4

MOTHER / CHILDREN'S SOCIETY / FAMILY LIKENESSES

PB's mother was quite strait-laced, with strong moral principles. He knows a relation of their's who got divorced while PB was still a youngster at school. It was all talked about in hushed tones. They [the children] were not supposed to know about it. Now it's gone all the other way hasn't it? They were always strong church-goers and they were brought up as, well, he refers to himself as a cradle Christian inasmuch as he was taken to church when he was about a fortnight old and [he's] been going ever since.

Mum and Dad did quite a lot for the church in Minehead and for many years she was secretary of the Children's Society. This used to be "Waifs and Strays" then it became the "Church of England Children's Society" and now it's just "The Children's Society". They raised funds to look after orphaned children. Now they seem to have gone more for giving aid to older children. They've got places up in London where children that leave home and fall out with their parents [go]. They help and care for them. They didn't care for children in their own house or anything like that.

She [his mum] was a shorter woman, always on the slightly overweight side whereas his father was thin and wiry. They had some old photos of her when she was a bit more than a schoolgirl, probably 14 or 15, during the first war when her uncle was in the army living in Canada, when he was over here and he came and saw her. There was a photograph of her and her uncle, he was in uniform, and you can see quite a likeness in PB's niece to her. There's something about her face that's been passed on to her daughter. It's strange, some of these genetic traits, because his father-in-law, PB's second son is very much like him. PB's older son's second son is very much like him. It seems that the genes have followed through. PB thinks he [himself] is a bit more like his father but is a bit heavier built than dad was but he is more like him than his brother is like him. There's no outstanding likeness at any rate.

His mother worked in the shop. She did a lot of work all through her life. They had help in the house and she would work in the shop a lot of her time. She worked in the business with Dad it wasn't just left to him; but his father ran it. They got on, it was a very good marriage. As Janette [his wife] used to say you never heard them falling out. [pause while clock chimes] [Back to top]
 

1/5

MINEHEAD SHOP / DELIVERIES / OTHER GROCERY SHOPS

Listen to an audio clip from this track by clicking wma or mp3.
(Click here for information about downloading audio clips)

His impression of the shop as a child was that it was a fairly large shop with a marble floor, a black and white marble floor, and on the side were the provisions, you'd call them. The cheese and bacon were in glass cases with sliding doors and from there down to the cash desk in the corner was a long marble slab with shelving above that. On the other side he had tables with display stands and you could write on them taking orders and then a counter across the top. On the other side there was a counter with all vegetarian stuff and a counter with the bacon machine and that. Of course there were chairs then for madam to sit down while you took the order.

Madam would come in, you'd take the order and if she wanted to take the goods with her you'd box the stuff up and take it out to the car for her or else she would give the order to be delivered later in the day or week or whatever. Sometimes they would bring in a written order and sometimes they'd sit there and say what they want. It was so different in those days; it's very rare you find a shop with a chair in it nowadays, do you? All the staff were the same; you always walked to the door you never let the customer open the door for herself [laughs] when she went out. Some men came in but it was 95% ladies did their shopping. No so much did the men have the door opened for them but they would be treated the same.

They used to have a system, before even PB was involved in it at all, when they used to do business down to Porlock and the surrounding country. Then Dad used to go down to Selworthy and Allerford and on to Porlock in the motorbike and sidecar taking the orders. He would meet the Blue Motors bus at Porlock and give the driver the book of orders. When the driver got back in Minehead, someone would go from the shop across from the bus when it stopped outside the Town Hall, collect the book, put up the orders; by which time Dad had gone the other side of the road and done West Luccombe, Luccombe and Tivington and come back. By the time he got back to the shop the first load of orders had been put up ready for him to do.[laughs] Some businesses are so different now aren't they? He would take the order and deliver it the same day and then the other side [Luccombe etc] perhaps deliver the next morning.

When PB knew the business he [Dad] had got vans and the staff'd go out in the vans and do the same sort of routine. During the war things had to alter a bit and they used to deliver that week's goods and take the order for next week. There used to be Porlock on one side and Dunster and Timberscome and Carhampton and Washford, like that. There again times gradually altered that people came in, so there wasn't so much. People in the country had cars and they used to come in and there wasn't so much van work.

It was a big patch because there were not many grocery shops around. There was something at Watchet and Williton but nothing much before you got to Williton. Dunster was only little and there were village shops around but nothing of any size. Newcombes were the other main grocery but whether they did so much in the way of country rounds PB is uncertain. When PB's dad went with his sidecar he delivered back with his sidecar. Then, he doesn't know what date exactly, on the letter-heading and adverts it said they had their own motor van which was a big deal. [laughs] Whether that was before or after the 1914-18 war he doesn't know. With the sidecar his father used to go weekly and [they would] order for the week. [Back to top]
 

1/6

SHOP REFRIGERATOR / DEEP FREEZE / VEGETARIAN COUNTER / WARTIME YEARS IN SHOP / BACON SLICER ACCIDENT / APPRENTICES

It was with the marble floor and marble slab that things were kept cold. PB remembers his father had a refrigerator but it was no bigger than what he has himself [at home]. That was all they had. In fact, when he was at school, 11 or 12, at the middle or county school, and they were doing science, they wanted ice and he was the only one who could produce a block of ice. He was the only person who had contact with a refrigerator.[laughs] It was so different. Whether things can alter so much in a lifetime in the future he doesn't know. He can remember it without a refrigerator, without one at home, it was quite late years before his mother had a refrigerator. As time went on Dad had a bigger one in the shop and then he had the first deep freeze west of Taunton. Then he got two or three deep freezes for storage besides the show one. He had a refrigerator for bacon and stuff built in at the yard at the back of the shop; one you could step inside but that was many years after.

Talking about things altering, when his parents had their diamond wedding, which was '82, just a little family party, PB said a few words as you might say, and his brother said a few words when they were fifty [years married] PB had been doing a little research. The weekend they were married the Wright brothers had just managed to fly across the Atlantic and land in a bog in Ireland. By the time they had their diamond wedding you could have breakfast in London, dinner in New York and supper in London again. [laughs] You don't realise how things have altered in someone's lifetime and whether things are going faster now than they did.

They were the first to have a deep freeze and when people came into the shop and bought something from a deep freeze they would have to eat it right away. They would come in and buy the peas before dinner. You'd got nowhere to keep them at home. One of the first things they had was frozen peas. There was excitement when you could have peas for Christmas dinner and that sort of thing. Peas and ice cream were about the first things they had. It gradually developed. Processed food? Yes, but that was fresh peas. Birds-Eye peas was one of the first things that was available to the general public on deep freeze. Then they used to do ice cream and frozen sponges. But what is now an ordinary common every-day thing was then a real speciality, something unheard of.

There was a vegetarian counter but there wasn't very much in. There again there used to be all sorts of what they classed as odd sorts of things and various spreads and fruit cakes, dandelion coffee and anything like that which to a person like himself who is a meat-eater they all seemed rather weird. You get plenty of vegetarian people now but in those days he doesn't think there was much demand for it like there is now. He thinks there's more people against eating meat now than what the percentage was in those days. There were some who came into the shop because it was one of the few places you could get that sort of stuff. PB is not sure what kind of person in particular was a vegetarian but they looked quite ordinary and behaved quite ordinary. It was more principles rather than diet but there again some of them might have been [on diets].

[BJ asks how old he was when he worked at the shop.] Well, he was 9½ when the war started and it would have been another year before Dad lost most of his staff, then some of the wives came and there was a mixture of ladies and part-timers. He missed quite a bit of schooling, he had to stay home because Dad couldn't get any staff and he used to have various discussions with the headmaster. He didn't have any trouble with the authorities because he was missing school; in those days they just accepted the fact that this was a sort of a war effort.

PB accepted working in the shop as a child, he just sort of took to it and did it. He didn't have any great hardship. He could just about see over the counter. [laughs] He wore a white apron when the shop was open. He did a certain amount with the customers but he did more in the line of filling up and putting up orders and re-stocking it in the warehouse was more a part of it. Putting up orders meant putting them in boxes. Of course it was more cardboard boxes then there weren't any of this plastic, what do they say, shrink wrap stuff. There were plenty of boxes then. Then they had the vans, you see, and he used to go out delivering on the vans.

As he got a bit older he could handle the knives. He hasn't done it, of course, for several years, but he used to be able to bone a side of bacon as well as anybody else. He can't remember anything serious in the way of accidents. His father lost two fingers in a bacon machine back years ago, but that was before they had guards and things on them. He's got two stump fingers; two fingers and two half fingers. That was when he was about 17 or so. He was doing his apprenticeship. Although his father had the shop he still went away to be apprenticed somewhere else. For his apprenticeship he went somewhere up to Weston-super-Mare. PB doesn't know how long he was there. Of course there again it was before the war and after the war all that sort of thing changed. You used to have apprentice boys in the shop, you'd do three years and learn the trade. Nowadays there isn't such a thing as the grocery trade is there? As long as you can stack tins on the shelf that's all that matters. The customers coming in weren't put off by him having lost a couple of fingers in the bacon machine. [Back to top]
 

1/7

EXFORD SHOP / WAR YEARS / AMERICAN TANKS / EVACUEES / RATIONING

PB was off school odd days during the war; he didn't miss complete schooling. Days missing this week and other days another week.

The Exford shop was much smaller than the Minehead shop. As he said they did sell slightly different things. It was more just the run-of-the-mill stuff. They had bacon although of course a lot of country people in those days killed pigs and that sort of thing. [The Exford shop] had a marble floor, he thinks they've still got it there. A smaller one. Of course the Gables when they were there, they altered the shop a lot so it was almost double the size. They took in what was the sitting room and passage. The shop is still in the same place. It was called The Exmoor Stores. It was always known as 'Batchelors' rather than Exmoor Stores. The Minehead [shop] was 'Batchelors'

[BJ asks about his memories of the war years.] The rationing was very difficult no doubt for the housewives but he didn't think many people went short of food. Mum used to make hotpots for them; she got a bit of meat and would stir it around and [you'd] dig down to the bottom to see if you could find any meat.

The most fun for them as lads was the army [who] had the North Hill training range with the tanks and they [the lads] were always fascinated and [there was] great excitement when the tanks came in, they came in by rail. They used to watch them unloading at the station driving off these tank carriers. And all along the sea front they used to tear the road all to pieces all the way up to the hill. To lads of ten, twelve, fourteen that was quite good fun. They went part way up to North Hill but it was out of bounds further on. It was like living in a war zone because of them firing up there all the time. It wasn't deafening like the bombing but you could hear the gunfire going off and you took no notice of it because it was all part and parcel of life. It was a training range, a tank training range. You didn't see anything of them really from down [in] the town: it was when they were bringing in new ones or one contingent'd go out and another one'd come in. It was quite fun to watch them travelling up.

PB doesn't think the shop made a great lot of difference [to the military], it wasn't as if they had any married quarters around or anything like that. They commandeered the hotels and that: the Wellington Hotel, and the Beach Hotel was all army.

Apart from watching the tanks there were just the usual schoolboy activities.

They didn't have any evacuees living with them but there were a number of evacuees. The Regent Street 'Polytechnic' was evacuated in Minehead en bloc and they took over the school and then, he doesn't know for how many years it was, he had school in the morning and they had the school in the afternoon, in the building. They had half day school as it were but of course they had work to do to make up for it as it were. They didn't get an easy life as a result and the Polytechnic had the use of the buildings in the afternoon. PB can't remember how long that went on for. They were aware of aircraft going over but not a lot. Being boys they used to spot on them and try and recognise whether they were Spitfires or Hurricanes, that sort of thing.

When the war ended they gradually got back to normal but it was a long time after the war before all the rationing finished and that sort of thing. They didn't sort of finish the war and within the month they were back to normal. The war ended in '45 and PB left school in '46 and went out to work then and they gradually altered.

In the shop, rationing made it much more difficult with all the fuss with the coupons and counting the coupons and all that sort of thing. People complaining they couldn't get this and they couldn't get that and if there was a chance of something that people had been lacking and it came in well then you had about a dozen tins or something you had to share between all the customers: so, you let Mrs So-and-So have it but don't say anything about it. [laughs]

They struggled on and the majority of people accepted it; never any real trouble he doesn't think. He doesn't think there was anything like a black market, but they just tried to be kind to anybody they knew were having hard times or were ill or anything like that. If you could do anything for them you did. [Back to top]
 

1/8

LEAVING SCHOOL / FARM WORK AT BRATTON COURT / BRISTOL / HONEYMEAD / BRATTON

When he left school PB started work on the farm he'd always wanted to do at Bratton Court which is just outside of Minehead. He used to cycle out there. He was there 4 years and then he went to work at Bristol for a short while but that didn't turn out very satisfactory. Some people they knew had a farm on the other side of Bristol and he worked there. That didn't work out very well, with the farm manager. He was there about, well not much more than twelve months actually. He left Bratton because he felt he wanted a change, a different sort of farm, so he finished up the other side of Bristol and then came back and went to work at Honeymead. That was when he got back into Exmoor proper then.

In his first farming job at Bratton he worked in the dairy to start with, for six months, and then they changed about and he helped with the pig section but it was just the general farm work. He did a lot of [coughs], they had some sheep down there and he did lambing there and that; and shearing and then, it wasn't any full time sheep work or anything like that, just the general farm work as well; all the harvesting, they used to grow quite a bit of corn; and used to do the hedging.

There was one old chap there who was very good, very skilled at hedging and walling, he learned quite a lot off him. He was old Sid; he was a Porlock man, he'd always done labouring jobs; he'd done quarry work and done timber work and that sort of thing. Sid Hawkins. He was up in his seventies when PB was there. He was a very tough strong chap and used to like his cider. Sometimes he had too much. He had too much cider and he was useless. [laughs] Give him enough cider he'd work like a, he was a tremendous worker. Altogether working there, including the gardener and the handyman who used to come out and do odd woodworking jobs, there were about 14 of them then there.

Bratton Court had about 400 acres. It belonged to, what's the name, over at Culbone, Lord Lytton. In those days he was Viscount Knebworth wasn't he? Lady Wentworth was his mother was it? He's not sure, those names sort of follow through. PB knows that when his mother or father died he changed his name and moved up to Viscount.

Hosegood and Stevenson rented the farm you see; and Hosegood died before PB went there to work; he was a farmer. Stevenson had put some money to it, he was a businessman, an oil and shipping business, and when Hosegood died he took over the Hosegood share. They used to say he lost money on it, it was just something to spend his money on. Then when he died Lord Lytton took back the farm and now PB thinks there's only a couple there working now. He's got a manager in, you see.

It's still 400 acres but they altered it a lot. They bulldozed a lot of hedges down and made bigger fields. They made it a well run general farm.

He got the job because he just enquired and one thing and another, that sort of thing. He went out and saw him and that was all right, he said he'd take PB on. As he says he stayed there quite happily for 4 years. PB had had no previous farming experience. His father had some relations, cousins or second cousins or something, down in Dorset. He went down there and stopped for a few days, he quite liked it and always sort of fancied doing it. He spent near enough half his working life on farms. They'd been in Exford there living in 1960 for 3 years. They had a small farm themselves when they first got married and everything went wrong there and they had to give up that. They'd come to Exford and he went 3 years jobbing. Then there was the winter of 1963 and he couldn't get any work then, he didn't do anything for several weeks, and that was real financial trouble. Then they heard, if he could get up there, they wanted some help up at Gupworthy, up with the Normans. So he went up there, he managed to get there [through the snow], helped out for a while, then went on with him and he asked if he could stay with him so PB stayed with him there and he put up the bungalow. They were up there 7 years and then when his [Leslie Norman's] two boys left school there wasn't so much work for PB to do and he didn't have any overtime work.

Anyhow he looked for something else and heard of this Miss Reed and Miss Fitt out over at Lower Thorne. So he came out there. They had a certain amount of farm work and gardening in the summer; you know, gardener/handyman. In the wintertime, well he used to go out on the farm and do hedging and that. [Back to top]
 

1/9

COTSWOLDS / HONEYMEAD / FRED RAWLE / COMBE SYDENHAM

[BJ suggests they go back and fill in the gap.] PB went up to Bristol for a year, just about a year he was up there. Going out of the area, it was quite different. He found it quite different and he didn't seem to take to it quite so much. He was up to Marshfield, in Wiltshire really, up on the Cotswolds. There were very few hedges there, it was all this stone walling and that. He didn't somehow take to it and he didn't get on particularly well with the farm manager fellow. He decided he would try and come back this way again. He supposes that you get connected with an area and you don't seem to settle somewhere else.

When he first came back he did help Dad in the shop, only for a short while, a matter of two or three months perhaps, and then through his uncle out here [Exford] he heard he could go out to Honeymead. So he went out there and worked for a while. He supposes he was about 21 when he started out at Honeymead. He was out there living at Lower Newland lodging with Mrs Curtis, before he was married this was. [BJ asks if there is a connection with Stan Curtis.] Not Stan Curtis' mother, he doesn't know if that's the same Curtis or not, he doesn't think it was  Cyril Curtis. She was a Rawle, sister to Fred Rawle, Tom Rawle and those. PB was out working at Honeymead when the Lynmouth Flood came through.

At Honeymead PB was working, not for Matthew Waley-Cohen, but for Bernard or he supposes it was Robert that was there then before he died. Yes it was Sir Robert Waley-Cohen at Honeymead then. PB thinks Stan Curtis worked at Honeymead but he can't remember if he worked there at the same time. He can't visualise him there anyway.

PB worked there not more than 12 months then he wanted to go shepherding more. He was along with Fred Rawle. Fred Rawle was shepherd there for some years at Honeymead. PB had pretty good tuition under him. Then when they'd finished most of the sheep work, by the time they'd finished lambing, docking and shearing and all that, PB went and helped outside on the general farm more and did very little to the sheep after that. He felt that that wasn't what he went there for so he had another move again and he went to Combe Sydenham. [Back to top]
 

1/10

LYNMOUTH FLOOD AT SIMONSBATH AND EXFORD

PB was working at Honeymead at the time of the Lynmouth flood. He was living at Lower Newland. He had a motorbike then and someone had borrowed it and was going to bring it back that evening but didn't. So Mrs. Curtis said 'Oh I'll take you up in the car to start work.' He forgets what time they started, could have been half past seven, but any rate whatever time it was, off they went. Then there was  something in the road. It turned out that was the coping stones of the little bridge at Newland, that had been washed in. [They said] Whatever's happened? This was the morning after you see. They got further up the road to Gypsy Lane and found the road was washed out; in a terrible state. Anyway they started to get to Honeymead and didn't know what to do. They started to trying to clear up some of the mud and stuff that had been washed down. Then Joe Perry the manager, bailiff, he came back after having then come to Exford. He said 'you'd better go down and help Uncle, he's in a hell of a mess down there. You go down and help him out.' This is on the Saturday morning, see? His uncle had the shop down there. So PB came down there. Didn't know where to start, sort of thing, at the shop in Exford. [Back to top]