The Stuff We Can't Fit In Somewhere Else in West Buckland, Devon*

The things which can't be categorised

You can tell us more about West Buckland.

• The person that wrote the nice story about finding a house in devon, and being in the film industry appears to be saying that the School motto is " To Serve Them All My Days" RUBBISH ! The school motto is " READ and REAP ", and to the best of my knowledge ( I went to school there for eight years ) always has been. Has this person ever been to the school, or just passed it in their car.
• West Buckland is a tiny village close to Kingsbridge, just up the valley from Bantham. I can not see why it is on this website! It has no shops, but used to have an excellent butcher (closed in the mid 1980s). Certainly no clubs or surfing shops. Mostly quaint holiday cottages, some thatched. I used to spend my summers in one, but have now moved to Bantham which has one shop (opens at the whim of the proprietor, but is a sub-postoffice) and an excellent pub (The Sloop Inn) which has a few hotel rooms and self catering flats. The beach is a good surfing area in southwesterly winds, and great for evening strolls.
• My brother and I went to school in the village in 1940-42. Long time eh?! Anyway, I went to the British Legion building made of corragated iron (when it rained it rattled) and my younger brother went just a little way down the road at the village school. We lived at Upcott Farm with Mr. and Mrs Witheridge and their son Charley. Every day we walked to school, summer and winter. Sometimes, we would catch a bus ride with the pupils of that rather high class school outside of the village at the insistence of the shrill voiced Mrs. Witheridge, we found it embarrassing at that early age.
  My brother and I were evacuees which I forgot to mention and were always considered to be those contemptable 'townees'. The other son of our empressed hosts was a red haired chap called John Ridd. He had a wife called 'Nurse' since she had apparently been one in the past. I remember that she had no qualms about squashing little mice between her thumb and forefinger. Quite a gal that one. One of the evacuees stayed in the village or nearby after the war. His name was Marcus (can't remember his surname).
• Evacuees at west Buckland 1940-42
  In his book 'London at War', Philip Ziegler remarks that in June of 1940, 180 special trains departed from London in six days carrying over 100,000 children to be safety in the country away from the forthcoming blitz on the city. A further 4000 followed on July 3rd.
  It is likely that my brother and I were among those evacuees. If so, then I was just eight years old at the time and my brother was three months short of five. I remember so well the time of departure. My mother took us around to the school that my brother and I attended and we found waiting several red London Transport double decker buses. I remember the scene so well because seeing these vehicles anywhere other than on the usual bus routes was a unique and thrilling sight. On this occasion the whole school population boarded those buses complete with the parents, mostly the mothers.
  There is a cartoonist in Toronto called Ben Wicks who wrote a book a few years ago. In it he describes the evacuation of children from London, he having been an evacuee himself. The photos used as illustrations were taken on the platforms of some of the main railway station platforms and show the evacuees waiting to be shipped off to their various destinations in the countryside of England's pleasant pastures. When I look at those photos I am persuaded to believe that my brother and I are in them.
  We were taken in the red buses to Paddington Station, the then main terminus in London of the GWR (Great Western Railway). I vaguely remember waving goodbye to my Mother, who was probably fighting back tears, if not openly weeping. No doubt many of the other mums were so doing at the time. At our respective ages, I doubt if my brother and I knew that we were undergoing a mildly traumatic experience and just as well too.
  The journey itself I cannot remember. It was some 240 miles from London to where we finally disembarked at a village called Fileigh, not far from South Molton in Devonshire. On arrival, we were herded into a village hall where waited quite a number of local people, some waiting to know who they would receive as charges, and those officials who were to make the assignments as to where the evacuees would be lodged.
  Peter and I were assigned to a farmer and his wife, who led us out with our meager belongings to a two wheeled horse drawn conveyance that we came to know as 'The Jingle'. I recall the ride, although it must have been late in the evening. There was still enough light to notice the beauty of the countryside, a miniature hilly terrain of fields and copses, and for a while on the journey, a forest of fir trees.
  The farmer and his wife were the Witheridges. He was called Jack, but I never did find out what his wife's name was, even though as the two years that we were there rolled on, we had far more chance of finding out, because we were with Mrs. Witheridge some 80% of the time compared with her husband.
  Mr. Witheridge was a man of few words. He was not one who smiled too often, but then he may have done, but that facial attribute could well have been hidden by the rather large mustache that drooped over his lips. He had his own tea cup that had an appendage in the rim to prevent the mustache from being soaked in tea at every refreshing pause. I don't know what age he would have been at the time; to us he was old, but then, through the eyes of an eight year old boy every one who is older is old!. It seems to me that when he sat down, got up, or exerted himself in any way, he always sighed as an accompaniment to the exertion. That is why I thought he was old. Perhaps he was. The picture that I have in mind is that he always wore a jacket and baggy trousers, a band tied around the legs just below the knees. His shirt was one of those that requires a separate collar to be fastened to it by a brass stud. Since he did not wear a tie each day for his work, the shirt had no collar, and too then, since he worked every day, I very rarely saw him with a tie.
  Even though he was a man of few words, it is evident that he was a compassionate person. One of the dogs, a mongrel, was called Flo and it was Jack Witheridge's own dog. I remember it as a dark coated canine, a rather scruffy little dog and unfriendly. Strange to say, this dog was friendly with my brother Peter, animals are sensitive to human sentiments and Flo would cuddle up to my Peter but nobody else. A crisis emerged when Flo started to bite sheep and one day we were told that she had been put down. I asked Charlie how this was done and he said that she was tied to a tree and Jack Witheridge shot her. What is significant in all of this is that he wept after having carried out the execution. Humans don't like to see men shed tears, especially stoic Brits, but this experience does say something complimentary about Uncle Witheridge.
  His wife, Mrs. Witheridge, unlike her husband was not a person of very few words. On the contrary, she spoke often, rapidly and with a shrill voice. She was a dynamo, never walking slowly but giving the illusion of flying every where, the epitome of perpetual motion. She was an industrious women, handling the regular multitude of farmhouse chores with dexterity and zeal. She wore her graying hair tied in a bun at the back covered by a lack hat that appeared as a permanent fixture on her head. This hat had a shape that resembled the cocked hat that Errol Flynn wore when he depicted Robin Hood. Whatever apparel she wore is obscured in my memory by the vision of a flowered apron which seems to have been as permanent as her black hat. I can still hear the scuffling of her feet as she flitted back and forth across the stone floor of the large kitchen - living room.
  At mealtimes, particularly in the evenings when all would be present, she would go out of the back door and call out to her husband or son Charlie by a single syllable word in her high pitched voice for them to come in. It would not be diplomatic to ignore these very audible calls to come and attend the meal. As previously stated, Mrs. Witheridge was far more vociferous than her husband.
  To us, that is my brother and I, Mrs. Witheridge became Aunty Witheridge. Aunty Witheridge tried hard to kill us with kindness. We were fed royally with the wholesome farm food, which in times of national rationing certainly surpassed the quality and quantities that were available to the general population in those early days of the war.
  Aunty was a disciplinarian. While I was not terrified of her, I knew better than to disobey her orders or to contradict her opinions, which were uttered as edicts giving no credence to alternatives. She considered us as 'Townies', as evacuees were called by the locals, and Townies really had no knowledge or ability to fit into the country life. For this reason, our opinions and habits were not generally accepted with any credibility by her or most of the local people. Evacuees were to some extent considered as a necessary evil, or at least a nuisance according the measure of tolerance found among individuals on the farms and in the villages round about. When I look back now however, I realize that Aunty Witheridge was fulfilling her government sponsored obligation to care for us, and this she did with a good conscience.
  The other member of the immediate family was Charlie, at that time a young man of perhaps twenty-five. He is still living now and supposing his age to have been twenty-five in 1940, he would by around eighty. In this however I could be mistaken because my estimation of his age when I was only eight myself carries no weight at all. He was a just a young man.
  Charlie was the one person in the family that one felt at ease with and we could relate to him more than we could to his parents. He was the nearest one who could be deemed a friend and. When circumstance required it, something of an ally. Perhaps his view of Townies was not so strongly etched as with the older generation. My brother and I slept in a double bed in Charlie's room at night. It was a long room and he was at the end which even now seems to have been in an obscure location. Our bed was nearest the door and Charlie was the farthest distance from it.
  Charlie had a pony of his own. At some point in those two years he enlisted in the Home Guard. Since we were not far from Exmoor, (although it did seem a long way off at the time judging by the view we had of it from the field when looking in that direction) Charlie sometimes rode off on his pony on a Sunday to participate in whatever drills were carried on there. He had a standard army tunic, his own jodhpurs and riding boots. On his head was perched precariously one of those little army hats that when not on the head, was a flat affair that slid through the shoulder lapel On his back, bandit fashion, was slung a rifle, probably a .303 Lee Enfield, which my brother tells me was a relic from the Boer War. How he can state this fact so categorically is hard for me to understand, although I have no way of denying it or substantiating it. It must have been a relic of some sort because in those days of the war, Britain was struggling to obtain supplies of everything.
  What I remember about Charlie particularly was his manner of reacting to a question which required a yes as response. He would draw breath in through his mouth with his lips nearly closed . The sound produced would therefore be like an inverted 'fff', and would be an established part of his vocabulary meaning simply 'yes'. Another mannerism that could only be recognized by seeing him again was his gait. The last time I saw him in 1977, this unique characteristic was brought back to me as he approached me in the farmyard.
  Charlie was completely adept at all the necessary technology of running the farm, sowing ,reaping, feeding pigs and killing them too, shepherding sheep, castrating sheep etc. etc. There was also the hunting of rabbits with the twelve bore gun or catching them by putting one of his vicious little stoats down the hole, and snaring the rabbit when it fled from the warren at the other end. He would catch the animal in a net stretched over the hole. Handling the stoat was the operation that had to be executed with great care as they were completely unfriendly and apt to bite one severely. One law laid down by Charlie, was not to in any way try to befriend these mean spirited little creatures.
  Charlie's other personal property was his whippet. This elegant dog was used for chasing rabbits at harvest time, a far more sporting arrangement than that of putting the stoats in the rabbit warren. As the horse drawn reaper would gradually cut down the oats, barley or wheat in a field, it would be done by starting at the outside and cutting towards the center of the field in ever decreasing rectangles. The result of this operation gave rise eventually to sudden dash for survival by the rabbit population that was hidden in the uncut part of the growth. At this time the dogs would come into their own there being besides the whippet two of three mongrels on the farm. The harvest of rabbits would give rise to pies on the tables at supper times for a while, these pies containing six rabbits.
  Upcott farm was a sprawling collection of old buildings, at that time about 70 years old. The house if I recall correctly had 1870 marked over the front door. The front door was always closed. The back door seemed to be permanently open. The latter was on the lane side of the house, while the front door had no use really except that houses usually have a front door. This door was in the centre of the front wall and opened into a small lobby from which the stairs ascended directly therefrom. A right turn would bring one into the kitchen where all the living was done and a left turn gave entry into the front parlour, a room used just about as much as the front door. This room was crowded with furniture, it smelled musty and damp. I think was used once a year but I cannot be certain about that.
  Mounting the stairs brought one to a sort of corridor running at right angles to them, a left turn would lead to one door which was our bedroom and a right turn to the bedroom of the Witheridges. I have no recall of any other room upstairs although I am sure that two bedrooms did not constitute the limit of the upper floor space. Directly opposite the stairs though there was a door which I never saw opened in the two years at the farm and had to wait until 1977 to find out where it lead to.
  As mentioned previously, the kitchen, a large square shaped room was the centre of activity. A door on the back wall at the corner lead to two other room that were for food preparation. These were cool rooms, unheated and were ideal for their intended use. The back door lead first into a sort of small anti-room and then outside. In that room there was a door that I never saw opened. It was a door that had coloured glass in the upper halve, perhaps it was only some coloured paper stuck on the other side of the panel. When visiting the farm in 1977, I finally saw that door open and of course it opened to the stairs that lead to the other door that had been a mystery for two years.
  The kitchen had a wonderful open fireplace. At that time in the war there was no Rayburn cooker installed, just big hooks to hang big black pots on and cast iron grating to sit other cooking utensils on. I used to love to sit right in the alcove of that fireplace in the evenings, the dim light of the oil lamps creating a warm secure ambiance in the house. There were of course cockroaches in that fireplace, a common sight and nothing to be shocked at all. One evening while sitting in my little alcove, I felt a tickling in my neck. I must have reacted quite noticeably since Aunty asked me what the matter was. I replied that I was sure that something had gone down my neck. "No, 'tis only your fancy" said Aunty categorically, and I was not going to argue with her as was my normal exercise in discretion. On going to bed however, around about midnight, I felt that tickle again on my neck and reacted swiftly to remove the offending something and to throw it with a mixture of disgust and fear in the gloomy depths of the bedroom. There was a musical note as the object struck something hollow that would produce that a pleasant sound when being struck. The next morning there was a cockroach floating in the chamber pot.
  Speaking of chamber pots, since there was no indoor plumbing, one would have to walk outside and down the garden path to the outhouse which sat conveniently over a gurgling stream. I cannot remember where that stream came from but we could follow it down the valley at the front of the house where it would eventually pass into the domain of the neighbouring farm of the Dallyns. It passed also in front of the beautiful forest of fir trees belong to Lord Fortesque , pronounced generally as 'Fortyscew' which now, having lived among the French for thirty-two years in Quebec I would not be understood pronouncing the word like that! On the Internet I have learned that all the land of this nobleman after his demise was sold off to someone who then sold it off again to the farmers at reasonable prices.
  It was on the first morning of our stay on the farm that Jack Witheridge took us outside the house, at the kitchen end. He pointed up to the roof gables and sternly warned, Peter and I, never to disturb the birds. The expanse of wall was large, a stucco painted gray. Under the gables , the swallows had built their nests of mud and there was an extensive colony of those diligent fliers. They were protected, and that warning had it's effect. We never threw stones at those nests, something that was assumed that little boys would to do. When you think about the matter, those swallows had been there a lot longer than the human residents had been when considering family descendants, they came back every year to the same place, generation after generation. I wonder if they are still there now. In my memory, Uncle Jack Witheridge never said anything else that would resemble a disciplinary statement, exhortations were left in the capable hands of Aunty.
  Most fields in the 240 acre farm were called by appropriate names. I can remember 'Front field' and 'Back Field', their names coming from their geographical locations with respect to the farm proper. Others were called 'Longmead' 'Shortmead and various other 'meads" according to some location or quality they possessed. The hedgerows roound those fields were a delight for us boys. The tops of the earthworks were wide enough for us to walk along and make little campsites in the bushes and trees that grew thereon. Trees bearing Hazel nuts were often to be found on these hedgerows. The field always offered to the young mind a certain mystery. It was as though we could expect to find something interesting in one of those fields, the further away from the house that we wandered, the more unfamiliar and mysterious the field would become.
  Many of the pastures grew very healthy thistles. It was difficult to walk through a field and not have ones leg scratched by them, there were that many. I remember remarks being made by someone in the family, that Mr. Tipper, the evacuee male teacher, took a group of the youngsters into the field used as a playground next to the school, and tried to cut down all these thistles with short sticks. As was predicted somewhat derisively by the by the Witheridges, this was a totally ineffective method of cutting down thistles, a sickle or scythe were the proper tools. Such an operation was doomed to failure. My brother and I went out into the 'Back field' one day armed with sickles reluctantly lent us by Jack Witheridge, and we tried cutting all the thistles down. We did not last too long, that was a big field and we little boys had big ideas, but lacked completely in the energy required to complete the job. We, after all, we were Townies.
  From a field which had an elevation as high as the roof of the farmhouse we could see Exmoor. We would walk to the end of the farmyard, climb up some flat stone steps embedded in the vertical bank ,and there we were in the field. Exmoor was always engaging to gaze at. Along the top there were bumps, which now I would call barrows, having been informed of this fact in my adulthood. In the near distance we could see the church spire at Charles Top. From there the lane descended steeply into the valley in which sat the Dallyn Farm, although we could not see it. The lane turned at Dallyns farm and went on in the left-hand direction with respect to Upcott farm and would finally join the main road that ran past Upcott, but at the end of the long lane leading to it.
  Another part of the property was at Forty Beeches. Going up the narrow lane from the farm and turning right after closing the gate at the end, we would eventually arrive at the main road that went to Barnstable to the left and Brayford to the right. Just before that 'T' junction however the road passed between two rows of Beech trees there was a farm in the vicinity of these trees and the Witheridges rented about forty acres of fields from the proprietor. In the first field, there were two or three barrows. It was said at the time that interested people had actually dug into these huge mounds but nothing had been found.
  Having mentioned Charles Top (Charles Bottom no doubt was on the other side of the crossroads where the church spire was situated), it is appropriate to mention the question of communication and news passed on by the rare interaction between the local population. The radio was a battery powered model, a vintage affair probably dating from the mid thirties. The wet battery, a should have lasted a long time since it was only switched on a news time and promptly switched off as soon as the transmission had ended. No music was listened to, no debates, no documentary, just the news with Alvar Liddell reading it. All other news received came by local contact and the dimensions of its value was of small consequence compared with the World War raging in far off North Africa and in London where the Blitz was on in full force.
  The Witheridges actually had two sons, Charlie and John. The latter was the eldest. I wont attempt to explain why his name was John Ridd, a rather Devonshire sounding identity. He was tall, upright and had red hair. His voice was rich enough for him to have played a role in Shakespeare. He had children, quite young mothered in strict fashion by his wife who was called 'Nurse'. This lady looked as though she had Italian ancestors or even French Canadian. There is much Indian blood in the French Canadian. She had black hat drawn back on her head, sharp, dark, piercing eyes and a sharp tongue. While John had a dignified commanding bearing, his wife was someone who was the essence of strictness. What I remember about her was her execution of baby mice. She would simply squeeze them to death by squashing their tiny stomachs between her thumb and forefinger. This did not impress me favorably and frankly, I would have had more fear of her than of Aunty Witheridge.
  We never saw much of John Ridd; we first made his acquaintance having been taken there by Charlie. There were two fellow evacuees staying with them, two brothers called Welling, Roy and Peter. I do not think that they stayed two years as my brother and I did. Perhaps 'Nurse' was a bit much for them. Whereas Aunty had a shrill voice, Nurse had a cutting edge to hers. If indeed she had been a nurse, she was no doubt most effective and would have been readily obeyed by the patients. During our two year stay the Ridds moved from one farm to another, from one side of West Buckland to the other.
  I have mentioned the Dallyn Farm down in the valley and on the road that rose up the hill to Charles Top. I think that there were two brothers, and one of them was called George. He was a hired hand from time to time at Upcott. He was often to be found all alone in the shed where two or three carts were kept. I don't know why I only remember him there, perhaps it is because he was there often. Today we would call that 'hanging out'. Peter and I loved to play in the fine dust on the floor of the shed. We would make extraordinary roads for whatever model cars that we had. George would seat himself on the shafts of a cart and smoke. His noticeable characteristic was that he groaned a lot, even when there was no exertion involved. Obviously he did not run the Dallyn farm, probably his brother did. Charlie would be able to say who George Dallyn was and what he was like.
  Life was lived in a very small world in those parts of the country. Everywhere else was a long way away. There was no telephone, at the time there was no car, so places like Brayford, Challacombe, South Molton , North Molton and even Charles Top were in other world. Now of course these places would seem to be so near to eachother. Recalling distances now I realize how close the neighbouring villages and towns were. One day, Charlie arrived at the back door in the jingle. Aunty got us to climb up into it and off we went to Ilfracombe. There Peter and I were left to our own devices for a little while during which time Aunty went off to shop of visit someone she knew there. Later on, Charlie returned to though pick us up and take us back to Upcott. If he had time to do that trip twice in that day and work in the meantime, how close Ilfracombe must have been!
  There were things that seemed not so pleasant although by no means harmful; the chicken soup that Aunty Witheridge would furnish for breakfast, and because of it being too hot to eat before having to leaving for school on time, would douse with milk to cool it down. She repeated this process several times by taking spoonfuls from my bowl giving them a noisy slurp test and then adding milk as required. That did frustrate me because the soup was delightful without the milk and. the milk put me off from finishing my wholesome breakfast.
  The most delicious food made at Upcott by Aunty was what would be called Haggis in other parts of the British Isles. This only appeared on the table when a pig and been slaughtered. The intestines were used to produce huge sausages filled with cereal and meat. The taste was unforgettable, slightly tangy but not hot. We were never informed of the fact of there having been a pig slaughtered. We were of course Townies and they were quite right if they thought that our stomachs would not accept this gory event too well. Also, and perhaps more importantly, 'Careless talk costs lives!' as the warning in London bus windows at the time reminded us. Little boys, little townie boys especially, carrying knowledge of an animal being killed for consumption by the residents on a farm was a dangerous matter. Such clandestine acts of lawlessness would not to be countenanced by the Ministry of Food in wartime England.
  There was one act of killing that I saw often enough, that of chickens. Jack Witheridge would tie string around the legs of the condemned fowl and hang it from the clothes line. With his pocket knife he then poked around in its throat for what seemed a significant amount of time, then it was left hanging there until it was dead through having bled to death. This did not bother me then, although I cannot imagine myself killing a chicken by any means now, except perhaps if were a danger to my own life and limb.
  Observing the castration of sheep was something that we took for granted. Charlie did this for the most part with a pair of pinchers of some sort, but I imagine that they were a little more sophisticated than that. You might say that we were being educated into the normal farm life at that time, and had we stayed there we would have become like the rest of the country folk themselves.
  One of the evacuees did stay there when all of the others had gravitated back to London even during the war. His name was Marcus Beresford. He even adopted the rich Devonshire accent as his own. It would be interesting to find out if he stayed permanently.
  I know that after finishing these recollections, more flashes of memory will come to mind too late for registration, because that is what the foregoing, has been, a collection of little vignettes tucked away in my memory, faint now, but not forgotten. Living in Canada for 41 years and mostly in suburbs, I have always gravitated longingly to the countryside of New England, the smells and sights are yet familiar to me because of the absorbed experience of those early days of my life in Devonshire - in Old England. I can still hear the strange singing of the telephone wires, the buzzing of insects, the furtive movements of lizards in the hedgerows as Pete and I walked our two miles to the school in West Buckland. On the way and in season, we would have our fill of Blackberries abundantly provided along the way.
  I can still hear Charlie calling in the cows for milking , "Cohowo, cohowoh" and wait by the gate as the docile beasts slowly ambled into the cowshed so obediently. I can still see Charlie with his cap on backwards, milking the cows, and drawing breath in through his teeth to say "yes" to a little boy asking a 'Townie' question.
  How could I ever forget the magnificent Rabbit Pies on the huge living room table at harvest time, when the hired hands enjoyed the fine fellowship available at Upcott Farm after a days work tying the sheaves of oats and piling them six to a neatly made stack.? How could I not recall Uncle Jack Witheridge slurping his tea through the quaint appendage in the rim of his cup? Then too, so often, the shrill yell of Aunty Witheridge at the back door crying out "Char, Char" to call out to her son that supper was ready, still rings in my ears after over 55 years.
  Such memories are fond ones, and as my brother wrote recently to Charlie, rather poignantly I think, that he never went back to see Upcott Farm in all the years since our stay there, because he did want not to spoil his memories of the place as he had known it. All I know is that I would not object to walking down that country lane again to West Buckland, not to the school that has probably rusted away by now, but to the pub and have a pint of Scrumpy - with Charlie and Peter maybe.. [Alan Mead: 25th April 1997.]
• New Heading: Magnificent Obsessions about: In 1982 I had just acquired a VCR and I experimented with it by recording the episodes of a repeat of the BBC TV 13 part drama "To Serve Them All My Days". Now I am not an obsessive person. I know that the people in TV soaps are not real and I don't send flowers if any of the characters die. However I absolutely adored "To Serve Them All MY Days" ("TSTAMD") I recorded all 13 episodes and kept them. I re-ran all 13 episodes at least once a year, sometimes two and three times. I knew nothing about the author, or any of the background to the story, but some instinct told me that this drama was based in fact. That the writer must have experience this public school in the West Country of England. In 1992, our family was outgrowing our house in Hertfordshire (near London) and we were determined to move to deep country to buy a house that we could afford. The available places were Scotland, Yorkshire, North and South Wales and Cornwall and Devon. One by one we illiminated the options, finally going on a short holiday in Cornwall to see if we liked it. We did not. So my wife and I drove up to North Devon and fell in love with it straight away. So, our plan was to rent a house in the area during the school holidays, the only time we could move the children's schools. I called an agent in the town of Barnstaple and asked them to rent us a 4 bedroomed house within driving distance of Barnstaple. We'd leave it up to them. After all, we were only renting a house until we found one to buy! We moved down in the Summer as planned.The house was pleasant enough in a tiny hamlet next to a church. My eldest son was 16 and had to do one more year at school. About a half mile from the house I passed an imposing school. It was obviously private, but it occurred to me that I could probably afford one year there for my son. I made an appointment to see the headmaster. Before entering the main door, I pointed to a stone cross memorial, commenting to my wife "Look, a stone cross, like the one in "To Serve...". My wife was used to me constantly referring to the programme, and had become quite bored with it. Inside the lobby the first thing that caught my eye was the school emblem on the wall with its motto underneath: "To Serve Them All My Days". I was stunned. What did this mean? On meeting the headmaster, he informed me when asked that his school, West Buckland School, was indeed the subject of the famous TV drama, and RF Deldefield its author had been a pupil there. As if this wasn't stretching coincidence a little too far, when we got back to the house and took a stroll in the churchyard, we found the grave of Arnold Harries and his wife Elizabeth (Algy Herries and Ellie in the drama)This within 20 yards of the house which we had had no part in choosing! You can imagine that Delderfield and West Buckland have become even more important to me since that time. I am in the Film business and I plan to produce a remake of the story and a documentary on Deldefield and his time at the school.

Search Knowhere for something else:

Credits

Last updated: 2008-10-14