Back this afternoon . . .

Crab apple tree in the New Forest.



I am spending the morning tidying the garden, and am about to process my New Forest Wildings apples and Crab Apples (long overdue) into jellies and wine; then windfall apple chutney with some fruit from our 7 apple trees; then the first part of an experiment into making American sour-dough bread . . . Watch this space. Wildings, by the way, are apple trees grown from an apple core chucked out of a car window or from someone walking across - in this case - the New Forest. They are usually smaller but sometimes still a recognisable type.

Back later with more photos from the Rural Life Museum.

Breamore Museum of Rural Life

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Finally I have returned to the Museum. I took so many photographs there, for there was a lot to interest us.

The first photo shows some Forest-made beeskeps and hives. To the right is a "hackle" which was a portable waterproof covering for one of the small beeskeps. This one was one of several made for a production of Thomas Hardy's The Woodlanders.



Below are various tools and implements used in the water systems in watermeadows - once a very common site in Hampshire and Wiltshire. Flooding (then draining) the watermeadows would produce an early flush of grass for cattle and sheep.


A shop typical of those once found in villages throughout the area (Candy is a Forest and Hampshire name too). It sold everything from tea to bluebag; from sugar to tinned sardines; from starch to peppermints.


An old school room. I used to be the Ink Monitor at junior school (about as high a position of importance as I ever got!!)


Tools at the Wheelrights' or Coopers' premises.


A domestic laundry.

The Market Gig and an early petrol-driven lawnmower.


This wooden "ladder" was used for carrying the family pig once it had been killed and bled.
I can imagine Antique Shops sell these under a completely different guise . . .


An excellent collection of garden tools.


You will have to forgive the limited descriptions but I have the latest family "bug" and am struggling to stay awake, let alone muster coherent thoughts!

The right side of the hedge

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Below is a quaint cottage in Downton, a village on the Hampshire/Wiltshire border. I loved the very steep pitch to the roof.


This was the title of a book my husband bought for me today at our local car boot sale, where we were selling some of our ephemera. He knows me well, for the book, by Chris Chapman, is exactly what I would choose for myself. It is subtitled "Country Life Today" and is full of wonderfully atmospheric black and white photographs taken in the 1970s, although they could easily have been taken in the two previous decades. It appeals to me because the photos are about country living - then and now - they are timeless. The title comes from the most wonderful quotation from 88 year old no-nonsense Ernie Worth: "Well Mr Someone, these people come down here and take us all to be fools. They come down here to forget what they created elsewhere and do exactly the same. They can keep their money and their fancy ways. I believe I'm living on the right side of the hedge. and no one can tell me different."

Wise words. I may be an incomer myself (though now we've lived here nearly 21 years we were described as "nearly locals" by a neighbour recently!) but I hate to see town folk buy up an old cottage or farmhouse and then proceed to "modernize" it and make it look like it belongs in the stockbroker belt . . . We did the opposite with our old farmhouse, and returned it to as it was before the entirely cosmetic 1970s modernisation, when they blocked in the inglenook and fireplaces, and covered the beams with tongue-and-groove, leaving the rest of the house to suffer the predations of wet rot, a leaking roof, and derelict rooms which were home to bat, rat and death watch beetle.

I think that moving to the countryside, being it downsizing, fulfilling a dream - or for those with the moolah, "just because you can" - means about fitting in with the local community, walking to the beat of the same drum. Not moving somewhere new and making waves - living exactly as you did in the town, and complaining bitterly about the lack of this or that, and talking disparagingly about the "locals". So often you read of people buying a house in the country to "put their own stamp on it", which nearly always spells disaster for the house in question, with every vestige of its architectural integrity wiped out. Old farmhouses and cottages were made to be cluttered, homely places - not bare and minimalist. I have a PhD in Clutter, so I should know!

Anyway, enough moaning. The New Forest crab apples and wildings I picked are calling loudly now - time for wine-making and jelly making . . .

Later today it's back to the Rural Life Museum at Breamore.

Day out in Hay-on-Wye . . . and a few new-to-us books!

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How about this view from the car park (at Hay-on-Wye)? That's where my husband and I went
yesterday, partly taking advantage of the good weather, and partly because our recently "holiday" in Devon turned out to be of the there and back again variety, due to the problems with Itsy and bringing her home. We thought we had at least earned ourselves a day out in the bookshops of Hay-on-Wye. This time we actually bought several books. Sometimes, despite there being a million or so books there, nothing that you really HAVE to have will appear. We bought three each yesterday. I bought A Countryman's Day Book by C N French, which is full of wonderful snippets about the weather and country living, gleaned from Thomas Tusser, Maison Rustique (?!), Poor Robin's Almanac, and suchlike. For example, the entry for today reads:

Saint Matthewe Brings on the cold dew.

Geese now at atheir prime are,
which if well roasted are good fare.
Poor Robin's Almanack.
The stone that is rouling can gather no mosse,
who often remooveth is sure of losse.
The rich it compelleth to paie for his pride;
The poore it undooeth on everie side.
Thomas Tusser.

I also bought a book by T C Lethbridge on Gogmagog - The Buried Gods (excellent reading); another antiquarian horse book for my collection; and Sabine Baring-Gould's A Book of the West (Cornwall). OH got two super books on folk lore - one of the Isle of Man and the other of Whitby (OH has connections with both) and a book on the Vikings.

Of course, there aren't ONLY bookshops in Hay. There is a good selection of ironmongers, greengrocers, clothes shops, a big shop selling jigsaws, food shops and little eateries, a chipshop, charity shops, oh - and did I mention bookshops?


If you take the left fork in front of the white house, it will take you down across the river Wye to Clyro, where my literary hero the Rev. Francis Kilvert once lived.

Here is the pub where we sometimes have lunch. The deep red tones of the Virginia Creeper leaves blended well with the pink of the Geraniums.

This is one of my favourite bookshops, but alas, there was nothing there to take our fancy this time.

There are antique shops too. Isn't this a lovely building? We lingered here for a while.


This window is the shop front for a warren of individual "shops" within the building, with a fascinating cornucopia of antiques and collectables. I bought just one thing - something I recognized as a log headcollar block. Horses tied up in stalls would have their headcollar rope passed through a tie-ring on the manger and then through the polished circular wooden "log" and secured with a quick release knot. It reminded me of my childhood days at Testwood Riding Stables.

This one's for GTM. You can deal with MEGA quantities of green beans with this bean slicing machine!

This is a lovely home-made wash board. A lot of work went into this and it is quite unique.

We will go again in another 6 months or so. Meanwhile, I'm going to make the most of the sunshine and give myself half an hour off with my new books . . .

Breamore House, ghosties & Museum of Rural Life (I)

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I'm afraid I was a bit naughty - photos weren't allowed to be taken in the house, but as there were no paintings to damage by flash down in the kitchen, I waited until the Guide had left the room and took a sneaky one! The barrel on wheels held beer, for the servants, and was filled twice a day. It says "Rest and be merry" around the middle!




Breamore House is an absolute delight and stands on a little rise of land, overlooking a beautiful Hampshire valley (that of the River Avon), midway between Salisbury and Fordingbridge. It was built by the Dodington family and completed in 1583, five years before the Spanish Armada. It is built in the shape of an E, to honour Queen Elizabeth I. It belongs to the descendants of Sir Edward Hulse, who was a Physician at the Courts of Queen Anne, George I and II. Apparently it was the film set for "Children of the New Forest."

There is supposed to be a ghost. Well, we never actually saw one, but good grief, the atmosphere in the first Elizabethan bedroom we were shown round was truly unwelcoming and I had to leave as I had an instant tension headache (which didn't shift for a couple of hours after that). Then in the next bedroom, the supposedly haunted one, I felt a distinct chill in one corner of the room and was more than a little perturbed when it grew icier and then followed me! Eeek! If that was the ghost, then I noticed it (and so did Tricia).

Somewhere on the estate is the Medieval Mismaze, which we tried riding to once when I was living in the Salisbury area, but we never did find it! It is cut into the turf and monks used to do penance by negotiating it on their knees.

The Museum of Rural Life has been greatly extended over the years, and Tricia and I spent some 2 hours exploring it. Within the large barns are reconstructions of an old saddler's shop, a general store, a dairy, a blacksmith's forge, a cartwright's, a cobbler's shed, a baker's, a laundry, an old garage, plus big displays of old farm machinery and tractors.

Here are photos from just one exhibit, which was the estate worker's cottage. I am old enough to remember most of the things inside it! I think this was my FAVOURITE part. This would have been called the scullery - we had a scullery at home when I was growing up - mum never called it the kitchen. Behind the mangle is the corner where the "copper" lived, which was set in brick to retain the heat I believe, and a small fire was lit beneath the boiler. It was heated to boiling and the whites washed first, descending through the washing in order of heat-tolerence, down to woollies last.

The hand punp (cold water only) reminds me of the scullery in my ex-husband's great-aunty's cottage in Dorset. I like the enamel saucepan stack but I'm not sure if they were stacked that way for cooking on one ring? Quite possibly. I hadn't come across these before, although I used to have a saucepan which was in three triangular sections so you could cook different vegetables in each.

A harmonium in one corner of the main room, and a hoop on the other side of the door by the trombone. I think they had a little metal piece which was attached and used to "bowl" it along the road.

Note the little fronting of curtain material over the fireplace mantleshelf, and the farm worker's gun (doubtless for rabbits). Oil lamps were used in rural areas until the introduction of electricity. Here in our part of Wales, that was as late as the 1950s.

A neat little dresser with some blue and white china, and the baby in the pram in the corner. It was very quiet when we were there!


An old sewing machine - essential when mother had to make all the clothes,curtains and repair and alter everything too.

I believe this holds the vinegar mother. The "bulb" on the top is to allow the gases which form to expand and then evaporate. Of course, I could be completely and utterly wrong - if I am, please let me know!!! I must go consult Dorothy Hartley's "Food in England" again . . .


A splendid much-loved Teddy Edward was sat up at table. Isn't he gorgeous?

Cricket Camp and meeting "Yarrow"

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One of our native shrubs - the Guelder Rose. The berries can be eaten, but not raw - when cooked they are said to resemble the American Cranberry, and indeed their American name is the European Cranberry (Viburnum opulus). We saw this on our walk around Cricket Camp - oops, sorry - Manor Farm Country Park.

Before I go onto the epic entries about Breamore Rural Life Museum (I took about 100 photos!), I would like to mention my meeting with fellow Creative Living forum friend Kim (aka Yarrow). We met up in the Windhover Roundabout Tesco car park . . . as you do . . . and hit it off immediately - it was just like carrying on a conversation, as we have known one another for about 2 years on CL. http://creativeliving.10.forumer.com

Kim's interesting blog is here: http://oakmoon.blogspot.com/ where you can see a photo of us together (I'm the short, stout person in red!)

Kim's sister came along too, and we all got on like a house on fire. We drove to nearby Manor Farm Country Park, which I know as Cricket Camp. During the War it was used to house troops for the D-Day Landings http://www.lhi.org.uk/projects_directory/projects_by_region/south_east/hampshire/hms_cricketcricket_camp_heritage_initiative/index.html
and after the war, my parents lived there (I was in utero at the time) with my aunty Mary and my grandparents, as did many other demobbed and also displaced (bombed out) persons, waiting for alternative accommodation. It has happy memories for me as I used to ride there as a child and teenager, and the pony my schoolfriend rode (dear old Snowy who belonged to Desiree Waterman from Botany Bay Road) was kept at the smallholding belonging to the Snooks - who lived in one of the wooden pre-war houses on their land. I say house - it was single story, but not a bungalow in that sense - the word "shack" almost fits best! All long gone now, needless to say, and grand 4 and 5 bedroom modern houses now front the land and I dare say the Snooks are no longer remembered in the area.

The Park is named after Manor Farm which is on the far side of Cricket Camp, the Botley end, adjacent to St Bartholomew's Church, of which more later. We took advantage of the small restaurant by Manor Farm and drank tea and chatted for a long while before exploring the outside of the farm, and having a circular walk nearby. I had been around the farm before when our eldest daughter was still in a push-chair, (when mum was still living in So'ton) and it had been free then. We weren't inclined to pay £5.50 a head for the privilege to do so that day.


Inside the Blacksmith's forge at Manor Farm.

Lift up thine eyes . . . a lovely Gothic window high up above the wheelright's workshop.

Ducky-daddles on the pond.

The old-fashioned farmyard at Manor Farm, with various rare breed animals.

Some Indian Runner ducks.

We also went down to the tiny and ancient St Bartholomew's Church, which was mentioned in the Domesday Book, when Botley had been spelt "Boteleigh". From my Archaeology lectures in Medieval landscapes, I can remember that there were lots of different "botes" peasants were allowed to take depending on whether it was for house building, fence building, and the like. "Hedgebote" was the commoner's right to use the hedgerows for fuel and animal feed. "Cartbote" was the right to take timber from manorial commons or wastes to maintain and repair carts. "Firebote" allowed commoners to collect wood for house fuel - I think no bigger than the wrist, or am I confusing it with modern Forestry Commission rules? "Housebote" allowed commoners to collect timber to repair their houses. "Ploughbote" allowed them to take timber to maintain or make ploughs - you are getting the picture now I expect!

People have worshipped at this tiny church for about 900 years, although it was originally much bigger and could house 500 people before a poplar tree fell on it and destroyed much of the building. What remains had formerly been just the Chancel of the original building. Over the doorway is an early Norman zig-zag arch. In 1835 a new church was built and consecrated in the small town of Botley which had grown up around the mill. Townsfolk had grown increasingly reluctant to walk across the fields to the old church and there had also been a notable number joining the ranks of the Dissenters' Church in Winchester Street.


St Bartholomew's Church, Botley (or Boteleigh).


Some information about the Church.

The early Norman (I think) zigzag frieze above the doorway.

Little interesting snippets from the parish records made fascinating reading.

Inside the tiny church.

This stone was in the churchyard. It may be a marker stone, in which case it probably dates back to the earliest days of the church or even before that. Or, possibly, it could be the stump of a small standing stone which was subsequently broken off. There is a similar sized one in the churchyard at Abergwili just outside of Carmarthen.

It is a lovely country park now, with miles of walks to explore, through the woods or along the River Hamble. If you are in the area, check it out.

Fordingbridge and Breamore House

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My friend Tricia and I had a lovely day out at Breamore House last Thursday, and spent over three hours exploring - it was lovely to have a dry day and not have to hurry anywhere. We had a stroll around Fordingbridge first, which is a lovely little Forest town on the River Avon. In the past, bricks, pottery and textiles were made here, doubtless being taken in and out of the town over the Medieval stone bridge. It was also a smugglers' haunt and the infamous 'Captain Diamond' frequented its inns and taverns.

A corner of Fordingbridge. We had a stroll around the shops and then discovered there was a Museum, which was right up our street. It had a fabulous HUGE dollshouse - but you couldn't take photos of it so I had to be content with two over-priced postcards . . . However, photos of the rest of the exhibits were permitted.

This corner was the contents of a bootmaker's shop.

An eclectic collection of ephemera including some Pub stuff, and a tray which announced "It's Gay to Drink Gaymer's" (cider). How words have altered in meaning over the years . . .

What a lovely way to dress a pretty little window.

One corner was devoted to the Bohemian artist Augustus John, who was born in Tenby (Wales) but spent the last 30 or so years of his life living in the Fordingbridge area. His portraits of his children were especially good.

This contraption is a rat trap . . .

A corner of the air-raid shelter (fortunately you can't hear the sirens warning of approaching bombers).

A domestic corner. My ex-husband's aunty had only cold water in her cottage, pumped into the sink by a pump just like the one you can see in this picture. That would have been the 1970s too . . .

The huge mangle on the left would once have been in every household (though domestic ones were normally smaller).

In front of the mangle was an early "washing machine" - you turned a handle to operate it. The tin bath to the left of that is just like the one I used to have a bath in on winter nights when it was too cold to go up to the bathroom. The coal fire was of course lit, and mum would set up the clothes horse (for airing clothes) around the bath, with blankets over to keep out the draughts. Those were the days - I wouldn't fit in it now!