Broadwindsor WI Diary 1978
“This is Broadwindsor Women’s Institute’s golden* jubilee year and we thought it would be interesting to keep a diary of changes and events in the village in 1978”, said our President Miss Marie Haslam. “What we need is someone to write it.” There followed several moments silence. Rashly I raised my hand. “I will do it” I volunteered foolishly. “Oh thank you Mrs Walford” smiled a relieved Miss Haslam, and that was that.
Now it is the beginning of February, so with the promise of nothing scurrilous or libellous, I begin a year’s work. I will try to be diligent in my news gathering, I hope to please any future readers.
This may be a historic year for Broadwindsor. Our Vicar Bob Vincent has just announced that the Bishop has asked him to move on. We should be lucky to find a successor who would work so hard or so devotedly, but I fear we should be lucky to have any replacement to call our own. Our population is relatively small, and although spread over five villages, we shall probably find that a new priest will be in charge of even more. It has also been suggested that Broadwindsor Vicarage should be sold, for it is a large rambling house and expensive to run. If only the world would stop still for more than a moment.
The centre of the village has also seen a change. Glyn, Robert, Hannah and Willie Ronald have moved from The Lodge to Bridport. In their stead have come the Humes from Brighton, and their two-and-a-half-year-old daughter Victoria.
The familiar figure of Mr Ted Bartlett with his bag and his gun on his shoulder and his dogs at his heels, has been missing from the lanes and fields lately. He has been confined to barracks with leg ulcers. Mrs Olive Studley is home from hospital after the first of her hip operations and is regaining her normal healthy glow not least because of her daily visit to Yeovil Hospital’s pool where the water temperature is high. Even further up Hursey Lane where the writer of this screed lives, early morning activities have been far earlier since Mrs Walford has taken to breakfasting alone at 7.50 am. Now she shouts less at the children, they shout less at her and the school run proceeds at 8.25 am in a much more relaxed fashion.
At the other end of the lane at West Hill House, disaster struck the Fox’s in the shape of foxes. Fifteen of Mr and Mrs Fox’s chickens were accidentally sacrificed when their house door was inadvertently left open one night.
*query Diamond?
FEBRUARY
This month will live forever in the annals of Broadwindsor’s history. On the weekend of the 19th, blizzards raged for two nights leaving drifts of to 20 feet deep of snow and all but cutting us off from the world. What shocked the village more, however, was the very sudden death of Bob Vincent.
He died of a heart attack on the 17th after shovelling snow at the Vicarage. What a blow for Dorothy Vincent, not just the awful wrench of losing a husband, but a time when she was re-adjusting to a new life in several different ways, as a foster mother to a 3-year-old and an 8-year-old girl, to a new home and to not having any of her own family permanently at home anymore. She has been extremely courageous. Thank heavens the Diocese are to help her find a new home.
The great snowstorm began on Wednesday the 15th after two weeks of very severe frosts which made vegetable digging impossible. The weather turned a little warmer on the Wednesday then down came 3” of snow. Thursday night brought another 3” and Friday was a glitteringly bright day. The country looked like Switzerland with the snow hanging on trees and hedges all day, turning them into beautiful shapes all sparkling against a clear, pale blue sky.
Saturday was dull and blowy, in the evening the wind rose and the blizzard began in earnest, the next day the writer of this diary opened her front door onto a wall of snow. The wind had blown it up to the top of the door inside the porch, and a snow drift almost 5’ high blocked the yard outside. Generally the snow was knee deep.
On Sunday evening after a cold, calm day, the second blizzard began. It took Mr Giles Frampton, who farms at Courtwood Dairy, five hours to get a tractor and muck trailer from his farm to the Chard Road and back. By the time they returned at 8.30pm, the snow was blowing so hard that as fast as they shovelled away at the snow down his lane, it simply filled in again. So the vehicles were abandoned and he and his assistants returned home on foot with icicles on their eyebrows.
On Monday morning, surprisingly, only six inches had been added to the snow generally with a foot or two on drifts. A snow drift 15 ft high blocked Hursey Lane at the brown of the hill past Lloyd Curtis’s bungalow. Over the other side of it were some 20 cows belonging to Mr Giles Frampton which were very hungry. Mr Fox volunteered to try and reach them and it took him 3 hours to get 4 bales over the drift and into the field on the other side on a sledge.
The Salway Ash Road was blocked by a drift which touched the roof of Shepherd’s House Cottage. The deep cutting down Hollis Hill was filled up with snow and the Beaminster Road was impassable. The centre of Broadwindsor looked as if it was under siege, for days, with great piles of snow standing round the square like fortifications. On Tuesday, the water was off all day for most of the village and some were reduced to melting snow to use instead, and Mr and Mrs Elliot from Trusthams walked into Beaminster and back again to collect vital medicines for people who were running out. The water troubles were due to a pump failure at Hoon, the replacement for which had to be flown in by helicopter.
Thanks largely to Mr Norman Case of Burstock, who is the keeper of the local snow plough for the local authority, Broadwindsor was able to resume traffic movement by the Wednesday- with caution. The snow began to thaw slowly on the Monday and continued slowly, but the snow hung around everywhere for at least a week and the drifts lasted until the end of the month. Mr Case wore out the bottom of the snow plough and a set of tractor tyres.
Despite difficulties however, farmers seem luckily to have lost little livestock and many avoided the horror of having to pour their milk down the drain. There was no post for almost a week but Mr Lower at the Post Office valiantly battled into Crewkerne for supplies to re-stock his shop. Telephoning was also difficult for a week or so.
Mr Bartlett, happily almost recovered, had to cancel his annual hunt ball and the W.I. had to cancel their meeting too.
MARCH
It was extraordinary how all that snow hung about. Despite muggy warm days and sunshine, it took ages to melt away. On March 1st, twelve days after the first snow, Hursey Lane was still blocked, waist high drifts remained well into the latter part of the month between Stoke Knapp and Broadwindsor, and the writer found to her disbelief a muddy lump of ice in a lane near Blackdown as late as Easter Sunday which fell this year as early as March 26th.
The latter part of March has been cold and miserable and not in the least bit springlike. There were very few daffodils out for Easter although a day or two’s sun encouraged sufficient primroses to open to decorate the church with customary gaiety. The clock has gone back but summer seems an age away.
The Vicar’s funeral was simple and stirring. The hymns, one of which was played at the Vincent’s wedding, were rousing and the church resounded to the voices of some 500 people including 5 bishops. There was standing room only with some of the congregation standing on the front steps.
The remaining clergy are doing a splendid job in keeping services going. There is talk of a priest returning from Africa coming to look at the parish and Mrs Vincent is hoping to live nearby for a while as her youngest son has another year at Beaminster School.
The W.I. Sale on March 11th at Comrades hall was a great success. It took £ (left blank) and made a profit of (left blank). There was a remarkable amount on sale which as the opener the Rev. Norman Sutcliffe commented, represented a lot of hard work. The handiwork group which had worked throughout the winter to stock a stall, produced some beautiful things, so did the cake stall including intriguing “Easter hats”.
The cubs have a new assistant leader with Mrs Vincent relinquishing the reins. Mrs. Brown takes over as chief and Mrs B Copp comes in as her assistant. This thriving pack now has some 16 members and a waiting list.
The annual parish meeting comes next month.
APRIL
Spring is remarkably reluctant to get really underway this year. What a dull and leaden month it has been. The month ended with a beautiful, warm, sunny weekend, but until then it was largely cold and sunless.
It seemed extra magical to see the swallows back - they arrived in Hursey on the 26th but did not begin twittering until the sun came out two days later. How incredible it is that Broadwindsor is known about in the skies of Africa -directly a pair of swallows arrived, they dived into the barn where they nested last year. Further sightings were as follows:
April 15th- Mosquitoes felt in village!
April 16th- Cuckoo heard
April 20th- red legged partridge sighted in Nethercroft garden
April 21st- Baby pheasants seen in Hursey
Mrs Studley has had her other hip operated on and it is a success. She has, also, to be in bed for three weeks to ensure its proper healing, then on to South Petherton for convalescence, after which she should be striding around Broadwindsor again like Mrs Wakely.
The annual Parish Meeting was addressed by Chief Inspector Stone who spoke about the history of the police force. The meeting also voted for a weekly instead of fortnightly refuse collection, so it will not be so easy to remember the mobile library day now! Until now it has been dustbin collections one week and the mobile library calling the next!
On a personal note, potty training of the youngest member of the Walford family at Hursey is going well!
MAY
This has been a bitterly cold month. Everything in the garden is behind, held up by numbing northerly winds. The bluebells began to open in the first week and at last one felt that summer must really be arriving soon.
I spoke to Mr Wakely at the garage the other day about collecting news for the diary. “I hope you will keep me informed of anything exciting up this end of the village,” I asked hopefully. “Well I can’t think of anything at the moment”, he replied, “but then nothing ever does really, that’s the beauty of village life”, which sums it up nicely. While the giddy world rushes by, life revolves relatively quietly in Broadwindsor.
May was a historical month, however, for Burstock Parish Council. After 83 years of life, it ceased to function as a separate body, on May 13th it became part of Broadwindsor Group Parish Council. It is interesting to note that two of the members of the 1978 Burstock Parish Council bore the same names as 2 of the original council members of 1895 who included William Curtis and Thomas Hardy. Messrs Curtis and Colbourne now represent Burstock on the new body.
School honours go to two Broadwindsor girls - Sandra Hill is Beaminster School’s new head girl and Penny Glidewell her deputy.
Mr Vincent’s thanksgiving fund was presented to Mrs Vincent this month, £667 in all as a token of thanks for all their hard work for the village.
JUNE
This month began somewhat hazily for the author. After a week of flu, she developed pneumonia and found herself suddenly in Yeovil District Hospital. The overall effect was to leave her weak for weeks. She also found that her friends and neighbours proved very kind in such a moment of crisis, in short, they were indispensible.
Certainly, it sometimes never rains but it pours, for in the same month Mr Walford had flu and took up farming, Rebecca Walford had tonsillitis and a stitch in her head after falling over in the playground at school. Victoria Walford fell up two stone steps and chipped off and loosened two front teeth and the Walford ducks, Nancy and Felicity, hatched 21 ducklings between them!
Broadwindsor has been lucky to find another incumbent quickly. He is Stephen Griffiths who will come to the village with his wife Louise in the autumn. He comes from Calne where he is at present Curate, and is a friend of Timothy Biles, Vicar of Beaminster, with whom he will be working as part of a team ministry.
Mrs Vincent has found a council house in Mosterton to move to and will thus happily, I believe, be still part of the parish of Broadwindsor- by a yard or two. It has been decided to build a new Vicarage on the old grass tennis court in the Vicarage garden. This will detract from the selling price of the present Vicarage, but it is cheaper than buying land for a new one and in any case, no site could be found. It is good to know the new Vicarage will be in the heart of the village still and close to the church.
The W.I. play was its usual success, a final triumph for producer Mrs Barbara Burgess who has alas moved to Bristol. Happily though, the village will not lose its own source of entertainment. Mrs Wakely has gallantly stepped into the shoes of Mrs Burgess and if her producing skills match those of her acting, the company should keep up its excellent standard.
The Christian Aid week in this area raised £117 this year.
Broadwindsor Mother’s Union members attended a Beaminster Deanery service at Corscombe this month and the Cubs have been dashing around the countryside too. They spent an action-packed afternoon in the Bride Valley on the 17th cooking sausages, bivouac building and boat blowing amongst other things. Then on the 24th they saw Warbonnet Indian Dancers from the USA at Colfox School and ended up taking part in the display.
JULY
The weather, oh, the wretched English weather. How we long for some real warm summer weather. All we have had are a few days of hot sun with much cold and wet weather in between. The result is that coughs, colds and horrible virus of varying revolting kinds are dogging all and sundry. The pests are rampant in the garden, slugs in the most alarming quantities are everywhere, including 5 feet above ground on top of the blackcurrant bushes, and log fires are lit in our houses to ward off the cold rainy air. Perhaps we shall get an Indian summer, one can but hope.
Being now a farmer’s wife, I have never sky watched so anxiously in my life. We await fair weather to get in the corn. Luck, however was with the horse show organisers this month. It was a perfect sunny day for its usual setting on Mr Doble’s field, this year complete with a small roundabout for tiny children. It was a record show.
On the other side of the farm however, the bulldozer, or rather digger, bit into the field for the entrance to the new estate to be built there. It had to stop soon after it started due to the boggy conditions. More building has also begun behind Mr Giles, a telephone exchange and maisonettes, squeezed into a tiny patch.
Mrs Large has at last had her hip operated on and has appeared 3 weeks later walking without pain. What an outstanding example of successful modern surgery Broadwindsor offers!
Up here at Hursey we have seen the return of our native Elizabeth Studley after another 2½ year stay in Australia. We are also due for a population increase in December when Alison and Lloyd Curtis are expecting their first born to arrive.
Last, but not least to be reported, the most important event of this Broadwindsor W.I. year- the jubilee tea party. It was a splendid jolly affair despite being rained off from its original venue at Broadwindsor House and into the parish hall. There was a sumptuous cream tea on the menu, home made hats to gladden the eye, scrap books from past years to add interest and former members to recall old times.
Some seventy people attended the event including Mrs Harlane’s nieces from far flung Scotland. Former president Mrs Lilian Smith came down from Kimpton near Andover, bringing with her another former president Mrs Holden from Sherbourne, Mrs Dommett was there too and so was Mrs Doble. There were competitions for amusement and County Chairman Mrs Mulliner and Mrs Hayler won the naming of flowers. Altogether it was great fun.
AUGUST
At last the sun. Halfway through this month our summer began at last. The combine harvester rolled into action and the grain, golden despite the shortage of sun, began to refill the silos.
The combination of a wet start to the month followed by 2 weeks of sunny warm weather provided ideal conditions for garden produce. Consequently, the bank holiday produce show attracted a magnificent crop of vegetables, fruit and flowers, not to mention crafts and cakes etc. Mrs Whitehead opened the show as she had done 18 years ago, and Mrs Ros Colbourne gave away the prizes. Beeny Walford won the first prize of her life in the competition for the picnic drawing and was delighted to find herself the winner of 25p which she bore away happily in a hot sticky hand!
How blissful for mothers of school age children to have no school times to rush for, or miss, without such terrible deadlines, summer holidays almost recapture those of one’s youth when August was a month of tireless days of pleasure stretching far ahead.
SEPTEMBER
The season of mists was ushered in by gale force winds and, as usual, while they lash Broadwindsor from all sides, the neighbouring Beaminster dwells calmly in her dell with hardly a breeze to rustle her.
This was the month of the Walford holiday, spent as for the past 4 years in sunny Salcombe. This Devon village is the most southerly part of Britain and we were lucky to have only a few days of bad weather.
Farmer Tim had just a week and a weekend, so his wife and 2 daughters had to set off for the holiday flat alone. How we managed to get off I shall never know, by the time we had picked fruit and vegetables and fed and watered all the fowl and packed the car, we were about 2 hours behind schedule. Without Mrs Elliiot’s help, I don’t think we should ever have started out.
We came back with measles! Victoria came out in spots for the last 3 days of our holiday having caught it 2 weeks previously from Willie Ronald. Neither children had been jabbed against it, whereas both their sisters had and neither of them caught it.
The swallows and martins left Hursey House in the middle of the month and were almost all gone from the village by the end of the month. They did not wait for our first and heavy frost, or the clouds of midges and spiders.
Still we have had no rain. It has been dry since the beginning of August and the farmers are waiting. Over in the heavy Long Sotton clays, they still wait for rain to begin ploughing.
The garden is still full of flowers and the trees green as early summer. The last few days are balmy and summery. Looking across the valley it could be almost July.
Our WI meeting this month was most interesting but also very amusing. The films about leather tanning were informative but old and sometimes hilariously amateurish.
OCTOBER
We have this month enjoyed a real Indian summer. The first half was certainly warmer than the first half of August, and the roses are blooming everywhere as I write. The Walfords took to having tea on the lawn again as the temperature soared into the seventies on October 12th, and at 7.30 that evening the thermometer registered 62ºF outside. As I took the washing in off the line, it was dry and warm, the breeze was balmy and smelt the sweet smell of Uburnham Fragrans hung on the air.
The following day I had to change from the heat of a summer dress into shorts and a sun top, the temperature was 72ºF in the shade! The figs are still ripening and Mr. Crabb’s tomatoes are turning red at last! Glad to hear that even the experts fail with tomatoes round here.
Blackberries began to ripen at last and plump out a bit but they have had little flavour. There is, however, a great glut of apples, everywhere trees have been laden and now at the end of the month Victoria has learned to say “apples” instead of “accles” which is rather a shame.
I took Rebecca to the hairdressers in the beginning of the month and her hair was curled on the end with hot tongs to her great delight. On the way home I heard a cross voice from the back of the car. “Don’t do that Victoria, you will disturb my curls”.
Most important this month for the W.I. was our 60th anniversary buffet supper at Broadwindsor House. It was great fun with a most delicious spread of cold meats, flans and salmon mousse, followed by enormous helpings of luscious puddings. Mrs Glynne Ronald and Mrs Burgess were among the guests. We were reluctant to part and the author has to confess that she could not resist the temptation of removing the pair of leather boots sitting so neatly in the porch and placing them up on the sundial. My apologies to the owner for any inconvenience caused, but I did turn them upside down in case it rained. I can also testify with witnesses, that nothing other than water passed my lips that evening.
Most important this month for Broadwindsor was the institution of our new Vicar, or rather priest-in-charge, Stephen Griffith and his wife Louise. The church was full of flowers for the service and how lucky we are to have someone so young and enthusiastic to look after us.
For the second time this year a new pope has been elected, this time a man keen on canoeing and rock climbing lets hope he is enlightened enough to advise birth control more widely.
Evening classes started this month, the Walford family goes into Beaminster for welding on a Tuesday and Bridport for classical guitar on a Monday - Julian Bream you have nothing to fear!
Dark nights again. The clocks are turned back and how silly it seems to be dark at 5pm when the nights are so warm and mild.
NOVEMBER
November came in with a drought. No substantial rain had fallen here since August and water table levels were lower in places than in the droughts of our recent hot summers. It was uncommonly warm and fresh strawberries – uncloched - fruited in Hursey. Mushrooms shot up, though without their customary delicacy of flavour and often affected with a big yellow weevil.
November went out with snow. In the last week a hard frost froze all water troughs to a depth of about 4 inches, and when it got warmer it snowed. There was ½” over Broadwindsor for half a day, though down in Beaminster it did not settle.
Bonfire night fell on a Sunday and Stephen Griffiths had his congregation chuckling in the aisles with his scout directed sermon on rockets and bangers. It was followed by a bonfire and goodies at the Vicarage for the scouts. A youth club has also begun in the village hall on Sunday evenings.
The new houses on Redlands Farm go on apace and according to the estates agents ads, have sold- all but one. The first roof tiles have been fixed on the most advanced property.
The Broadwindsor W.I. had a change of leadership this month. After three years of hard work, Miss Haslam resigned her presidency and handed over the reins to Hursey’s Patricia Mowlam. There is also a new committee of Mrs Bishop, Mrs Butterworth, Mrs Jackson, Mrs McKay, Mrs Oak, Mrs Rodgers, Mrs Salt, Mrs Sheldren and Mrs Shiner.
Mr Crabb began teaching the ropes this month to a group of aspiring bell ringers. It included Mrs. Walford who began without a care in her head but who became extremely nervous after badly burning her hands on the ropes! “Don’t whatever you do let go of the rope” explained Mr Crabb to his pupil as she stood in the bell ringing chamber with her astonished two-year-old gazing on at the scene, “but if you feel yourself being lifted off the ground, let go before you reach the ceiling or you will break your neck.” Somehow the whole thing seemed suddenly less of a game! However, press on. Among the other ringers are Clare Woodley and Liz Studley both of whom seem horribly more able than the writer.
DECEMBER
Thunder storms, floods and snow - at least it was not a dull month. “Chill December brings the sleet, blazing fire and Christmas treat”. It was certainly a treat for the Walfords Junior, Rebecca’s favourite rhyme lived up to its promise in full, there could not have been a shinier pair of eyes than hers in the Christmas week. What with school plays and pantomimes and constant shrieks from the back of the car whenever “Shistmas” trees were spotted, Christmas in upper Hursey was as hectic as anywhere.
One young lady came fresh to the scene a week earlier than expected but not quite in time for Christmas. Miss Sonia Elizabeth Curtis arrived without ceremony at Yeovil Hospital just before the snow came down at the end of the month. For several days her father was unable to reach her because of the road conditions and she came out of the warm maternity ward into a snowy world a day early as the weather forecasters expected more bad weather.
Certainly the old year went out with a bang. Thunder and lightning accompanied snow and high winds on December 30th, it was that old familiar feeling of being snowed in again. Salway Ash and Hursey and the Tunnel Road at Beaminster were all filled in again. Minus 10ºc temperatures at night and strong icy winds made it seem colder than last year.
The petrol tanker drivers went on strike this month. Mr Wakely ran right out of petrol at one stage and was open to local customers only for some time.
The W.I. Christmas meeting was a great success with hot ginger punch and mince pies to sustain members while they sung carols by candlelight. Two Australian visitors staying with Miss Haslam and Miss Salt joined in and were to achieve their wish of seeing Britain in the snow by being snowed in! Having been here earlier in the month and witnessed heavy rain and 50 mph gales which made 200 people homeless in Portland, they can at least claim to have tasted something of our weather.
Such were the weather conditions on New Year ’s Eve that only 4 ringers turned up at the church, so for the first time in 50 years, the bells remained silent as the old year slipped away.
Silence, however, and tranquillity, have not been the feature of the first month of 1979. So far, the lorry drivers, the hospital workers, dustmen, water authority employees and ambulance men have all been on strike, and British Leyland workers are threatening the same.
Another year but the same old story.
In 1978 we saw an old pope die, a new one elected and die and a third elected. China has opened its doors to the West and is showing signs of capitalism. Racial troubles have intensified in Rhodesia.
It would have been interesting for future readers to have noted such major events throughout the year, but it occurred too late to the author. Perhaps the next diaryist may consider it.
So here is a badly written in places, near illegible diary, as promised, with many apologies to those who could read it.
Janet Walford
“This is Broadwindsor Women’s Institute’s golden* jubilee year and we thought it would be interesting to keep a diary of changes and events in the village in 1978”, said our President Miss Marie Haslam. “What we need is someone to write it.” There followed several moments silence. Rashly I raised my hand. “I will do it” I volunteered foolishly. “Oh thank you Mrs Walford” smiled a relieved Miss Haslam, and that was that.
Now it is the beginning of February, so with the promise of nothing scurrilous or libellous, I begin a year’s work. I will try to be diligent in my news gathering, I hope to please any future readers.
This may be a historic year for Broadwindsor. Our Vicar Bob Vincent has just announced that the Bishop has asked him to move on. We should be lucky to find a successor who would work so hard or so devotedly, but I fear we should be lucky to have any replacement to call our own. Our population is relatively small, and although spread over five villages, we shall probably find that a new priest will be in charge of even more. It has also been suggested that Broadwindsor Vicarage should be sold, for it is a large rambling house and expensive to run. If only the world would stop still for more than a moment.
The centre of the village has also seen a change. Glyn, Robert, Hannah and Willie Ronald have moved from The Lodge to Bridport. In their stead have come the Humes from Brighton, and their two-and-a-half-year-old daughter Victoria.
The familiar figure of Mr Ted Bartlett with his bag and his gun on his shoulder and his dogs at his heels, has been missing from the lanes and fields lately. He has been confined to barracks with leg ulcers. Mrs Olive Studley is home from hospital after the first of her hip operations and is regaining her normal healthy glow not least because of her daily visit to Yeovil Hospital’s pool where the water temperature is high. Even further up Hursey Lane where the writer of this screed lives, early morning activities have been far earlier since Mrs Walford has taken to breakfasting alone at 7.50 am. Now she shouts less at the children, they shout less at her and the school run proceeds at 8.25 am in a much more relaxed fashion.
At the other end of the lane at West Hill House, disaster struck the Fox’s in the shape of foxes. Fifteen of Mr and Mrs Fox’s chickens were accidentally sacrificed when their house door was inadvertently left open one night.
*query Diamond?
FEBRUARY
This month will live forever in the annals of Broadwindsor’s history. On the weekend of the 19th, blizzards raged for two nights leaving drifts of to 20 feet deep of snow and all but cutting us off from the world. What shocked the village more, however, was the very sudden death of Bob Vincent.
He died of a heart attack on the 17th after shovelling snow at the Vicarage. What a blow for Dorothy Vincent, not just the awful wrench of losing a husband, but a time when she was re-adjusting to a new life in several different ways, as a foster mother to a 3-year-old and an 8-year-old girl, to a new home and to not having any of her own family permanently at home anymore. She has been extremely courageous. Thank heavens the Diocese are to help her find a new home.
The great snowstorm began on Wednesday the 15th after two weeks of very severe frosts which made vegetable digging impossible. The weather turned a little warmer on the Wednesday then down came 3” of snow. Thursday night brought another 3” and Friday was a glitteringly bright day. The country looked like Switzerland with the snow hanging on trees and hedges all day, turning them into beautiful shapes all sparkling against a clear, pale blue sky.
Saturday was dull and blowy, in the evening the wind rose and the blizzard began in earnest, the next day the writer of this diary opened her front door onto a wall of snow. The wind had blown it up to the top of the door inside the porch, and a snow drift almost 5’ high blocked the yard outside. Generally the snow was knee deep.
On Sunday evening after a cold, calm day, the second blizzard began. It took Mr Giles Frampton, who farms at Courtwood Dairy, five hours to get a tractor and muck trailer from his farm to the Chard Road and back. By the time they returned at 8.30pm, the snow was blowing so hard that as fast as they shovelled away at the snow down his lane, it simply filled in again. So the vehicles were abandoned and he and his assistants returned home on foot with icicles on their eyebrows.
On Monday morning, surprisingly, only six inches had been added to the snow generally with a foot or two on drifts. A snow drift 15 ft high blocked Hursey Lane at the brown of the hill past Lloyd Curtis’s bungalow. Over the other side of it were some 20 cows belonging to Mr Giles Frampton which were very hungry. Mr Fox volunteered to try and reach them and it took him 3 hours to get 4 bales over the drift and into the field on the other side on a sledge.
The Salway Ash Road was blocked by a drift which touched the roof of Shepherd’s House Cottage. The deep cutting down Hollis Hill was filled up with snow and the Beaminster Road was impassable. The centre of Broadwindsor looked as if it was under siege, for days, with great piles of snow standing round the square like fortifications. On Tuesday, the water was off all day for most of the village and some were reduced to melting snow to use instead, and Mr and Mrs Elliot from Trusthams walked into Beaminster and back again to collect vital medicines for people who were running out. The water troubles were due to a pump failure at Hoon, the replacement for which had to be flown in by helicopter.
Thanks largely to Mr Norman Case of Burstock, who is the keeper of the local snow plough for the local authority, Broadwindsor was able to resume traffic movement by the Wednesday- with caution. The snow began to thaw slowly on the Monday and continued slowly, but the snow hung around everywhere for at least a week and the drifts lasted until the end of the month. Mr Case wore out the bottom of the snow plough and a set of tractor tyres.
Despite difficulties however, farmers seem luckily to have lost little livestock and many avoided the horror of having to pour their milk down the drain. There was no post for almost a week but Mr Lower at the Post Office valiantly battled into Crewkerne for supplies to re-stock his shop. Telephoning was also difficult for a week or so.
Mr Bartlett, happily almost recovered, had to cancel his annual hunt ball and the W.I. had to cancel their meeting too.
MARCH
It was extraordinary how all that snow hung about. Despite muggy warm days and sunshine, it took ages to melt away. On March 1st, twelve days after the first snow, Hursey Lane was still blocked, waist high drifts remained well into the latter part of the month between Stoke Knapp and Broadwindsor, and the writer found to her disbelief a muddy lump of ice in a lane near Blackdown as late as Easter Sunday which fell this year as early as March 26th.
The latter part of March has been cold and miserable and not in the least bit springlike. There were very few daffodils out for Easter although a day or two’s sun encouraged sufficient primroses to open to decorate the church with customary gaiety. The clock has gone back but summer seems an age away.
The Vicar’s funeral was simple and stirring. The hymns, one of which was played at the Vincent’s wedding, were rousing and the church resounded to the voices of some 500 people including 5 bishops. There was standing room only with some of the congregation standing on the front steps.
The remaining clergy are doing a splendid job in keeping services going. There is talk of a priest returning from Africa coming to look at the parish and Mrs Vincent is hoping to live nearby for a while as her youngest son has another year at Beaminster School.
The W.I. Sale on March 11th at Comrades hall was a great success. It took £ (left blank) and made a profit of (left blank). There was a remarkable amount on sale which as the opener the Rev. Norman Sutcliffe commented, represented a lot of hard work. The handiwork group which had worked throughout the winter to stock a stall, produced some beautiful things, so did the cake stall including intriguing “Easter hats”.
The cubs have a new assistant leader with Mrs Vincent relinquishing the reins. Mrs. Brown takes over as chief and Mrs B Copp comes in as her assistant. This thriving pack now has some 16 members and a waiting list.
The annual parish meeting comes next month.
APRIL
Spring is remarkably reluctant to get really underway this year. What a dull and leaden month it has been. The month ended with a beautiful, warm, sunny weekend, but until then it was largely cold and sunless.
It seemed extra magical to see the swallows back - they arrived in Hursey on the 26th but did not begin twittering until the sun came out two days later. How incredible it is that Broadwindsor is known about in the skies of Africa -directly a pair of swallows arrived, they dived into the barn where they nested last year. Further sightings were as follows:
April 15th- Mosquitoes felt in village!
April 16th- Cuckoo heard
April 20th- red legged partridge sighted in Nethercroft garden
April 21st- Baby pheasants seen in Hursey
Mrs Studley has had her other hip operated on and it is a success. She has, also, to be in bed for three weeks to ensure its proper healing, then on to South Petherton for convalescence, after which she should be striding around Broadwindsor again like Mrs Wakely.
The annual Parish Meeting was addressed by Chief Inspector Stone who spoke about the history of the police force. The meeting also voted for a weekly instead of fortnightly refuse collection, so it will not be so easy to remember the mobile library day now! Until now it has been dustbin collections one week and the mobile library calling the next!
On a personal note, potty training of the youngest member of the Walford family at Hursey is going well!
MAY
This has been a bitterly cold month. Everything in the garden is behind, held up by numbing northerly winds. The bluebells began to open in the first week and at last one felt that summer must really be arriving soon.
I spoke to Mr Wakely at the garage the other day about collecting news for the diary. “I hope you will keep me informed of anything exciting up this end of the village,” I asked hopefully. “Well I can’t think of anything at the moment”, he replied, “but then nothing ever does really, that’s the beauty of village life”, which sums it up nicely. While the giddy world rushes by, life revolves relatively quietly in Broadwindsor.
May was a historical month, however, for Burstock Parish Council. After 83 years of life, it ceased to function as a separate body, on May 13th it became part of Broadwindsor Group Parish Council. It is interesting to note that two of the members of the 1978 Burstock Parish Council bore the same names as 2 of the original council members of 1895 who included William Curtis and Thomas Hardy. Messrs Curtis and Colbourne now represent Burstock on the new body.
School honours go to two Broadwindsor girls - Sandra Hill is Beaminster School’s new head girl and Penny Glidewell her deputy.
Mr Vincent’s thanksgiving fund was presented to Mrs Vincent this month, £667 in all as a token of thanks for all their hard work for the village.
JUNE
This month began somewhat hazily for the author. After a week of flu, she developed pneumonia and found herself suddenly in Yeovil District Hospital. The overall effect was to leave her weak for weeks. She also found that her friends and neighbours proved very kind in such a moment of crisis, in short, they were indispensible.
Certainly, it sometimes never rains but it pours, for in the same month Mr Walford had flu and took up farming, Rebecca Walford had tonsillitis and a stitch in her head after falling over in the playground at school. Victoria Walford fell up two stone steps and chipped off and loosened two front teeth and the Walford ducks, Nancy and Felicity, hatched 21 ducklings between them!
Broadwindsor has been lucky to find another incumbent quickly. He is Stephen Griffiths who will come to the village with his wife Louise in the autumn. He comes from Calne where he is at present Curate, and is a friend of Timothy Biles, Vicar of Beaminster, with whom he will be working as part of a team ministry.
Mrs Vincent has found a council house in Mosterton to move to and will thus happily, I believe, be still part of the parish of Broadwindsor- by a yard or two. It has been decided to build a new Vicarage on the old grass tennis court in the Vicarage garden. This will detract from the selling price of the present Vicarage, but it is cheaper than buying land for a new one and in any case, no site could be found. It is good to know the new Vicarage will be in the heart of the village still and close to the church.
The W.I. play was its usual success, a final triumph for producer Mrs Barbara Burgess who has alas moved to Bristol. Happily though, the village will not lose its own source of entertainment. Mrs Wakely has gallantly stepped into the shoes of Mrs Burgess and if her producing skills match those of her acting, the company should keep up its excellent standard.
The Christian Aid week in this area raised £117 this year.
Broadwindsor Mother’s Union members attended a Beaminster Deanery service at Corscombe this month and the Cubs have been dashing around the countryside too. They spent an action-packed afternoon in the Bride Valley on the 17th cooking sausages, bivouac building and boat blowing amongst other things. Then on the 24th they saw Warbonnet Indian Dancers from the USA at Colfox School and ended up taking part in the display.
JULY
The weather, oh, the wretched English weather. How we long for some real warm summer weather. All we have had are a few days of hot sun with much cold and wet weather in between. The result is that coughs, colds and horrible virus of varying revolting kinds are dogging all and sundry. The pests are rampant in the garden, slugs in the most alarming quantities are everywhere, including 5 feet above ground on top of the blackcurrant bushes, and log fires are lit in our houses to ward off the cold rainy air. Perhaps we shall get an Indian summer, one can but hope.
Being now a farmer’s wife, I have never sky watched so anxiously in my life. We await fair weather to get in the corn. Luck, however was with the horse show organisers this month. It was a perfect sunny day for its usual setting on Mr Doble’s field, this year complete with a small roundabout for tiny children. It was a record show.
On the other side of the farm however, the bulldozer, or rather digger, bit into the field for the entrance to the new estate to be built there. It had to stop soon after it started due to the boggy conditions. More building has also begun behind Mr Giles, a telephone exchange and maisonettes, squeezed into a tiny patch.
Mrs Large has at last had her hip operated on and has appeared 3 weeks later walking without pain. What an outstanding example of successful modern surgery Broadwindsor offers!
Up here at Hursey we have seen the return of our native Elizabeth Studley after another 2½ year stay in Australia. We are also due for a population increase in December when Alison and Lloyd Curtis are expecting their first born to arrive.
Last, but not least to be reported, the most important event of this Broadwindsor W.I. year- the jubilee tea party. It was a splendid jolly affair despite being rained off from its original venue at Broadwindsor House and into the parish hall. There was a sumptuous cream tea on the menu, home made hats to gladden the eye, scrap books from past years to add interest and former members to recall old times.
Some seventy people attended the event including Mrs Harlane’s nieces from far flung Scotland. Former president Mrs Lilian Smith came down from Kimpton near Andover, bringing with her another former president Mrs Holden from Sherbourne, Mrs Dommett was there too and so was Mrs Doble. There were competitions for amusement and County Chairman Mrs Mulliner and Mrs Hayler won the naming of flowers. Altogether it was great fun.
AUGUST
At last the sun. Halfway through this month our summer began at last. The combine harvester rolled into action and the grain, golden despite the shortage of sun, began to refill the silos.
The combination of a wet start to the month followed by 2 weeks of sunny warm weather provided ideal conditions for garden produce. Consequently, the bank holiday produce show attracted a magnificent crop of vegetables, fruit and flowers, not to mention crafts and cakes etc. Mrs Whitehead opened the show as she had done 18 years ago, and Mrs Ros Colbourne gave away the prizes. Beeny Walford won the first prize of her life in the competition for the picnic drawing and was delighted to find herself the winner of 25p which she bore away happily in a hot sticky hand!
How blissful for mothers of school age children to have no school times to rush for, or miss, without such terrible deadlines, summer holidays almost recapture those of one’s youth when August was a month of tireless days of pleasure stretching far ahead.
SEPTEMBER
The season of mists was ushered in by gale force winds and, as usual, while they lash Broadwindsor from all sides, the neighbouring Beaminster dwells calmly in her dell with hardly a breeze to rustle her.
This was the month of the Walford holiday, spent as for the past 4 years in sunny Salcombe. This Devon village is the most southerly part of Britain and we were lucky to have only a few days of bad weather.
Farmer Tim had just a week and a weekend, so his wife and 2 daughters had to set off for the holiday flat alone. How we managed to get off I shall never know, by the time we had picked fruit and vegetables and fed and watered all the fowl and packed the car, we were about 2 hours behind schedule. Without Mrs Elliiot’s help, I don’t think we should ever have started out.
We came back with measles! Victoria came out in spots for the last 3 days of our holiday having caught it 2 weeks previously from Willie Ronald. Neither children had been jabbed against it, whereas both their sisters had and neither of them caught it.
The swallows and martins left Hursey House in the middle of the month and were almost all gone from the village by the end of the month. They did not wait for our first and heavy frost, or the clouds of midges and spiders.
Still we have had no rain. It has been dry since the beginning of August and the farmers are waiting. Over in the heavy Long Sotton clays, they still wait for rain to begin ploughing.
The garden is still full of flowers and the trees green as early summer. The last few days are balmy and summery. Looking across the valley it could be almost July.
Our WI meeting this month was most interesting but also very amusing. The films about leather tanning were informative but old and sometimes hilariously amateurish.
OCTOBER
We have this month enjoyed a real Indian summer. The first half was certainly warmer than the first half of August, and the roses are blooming everywhere as I write. The Walfords took to having tea on the lawn again as the temperature soared into the seventies on October 12th, and at 7.30 that evening the thermometer registered 62ºF outside. As I took the washing in off the line, it was dry and warm, the breeze was balmy and smelt the sweet smell of Uburnham Fragrans hung on the air.
The following day I had to change from the heat of a summer dress into shorts and a sun top, the temperature was 72ºF in the shade! The figs are still ripening and Mr. Crabb’s tomatoes are turning red at last! Glad to hear that even the experts fail with tomatoes round here.
Blackberries began to ripen at last and plump out a bit but they have had little flavour. There is, however, a great glut of apples, everywhere trees have been laden and now at the end of the month Victoria has learned to say “apples” instead of “accles” which is rather a shame.
I took Rebecca to the hairdressers in the beginning of the month and her hair was curled on the end with hot tongs to her great delight. On the way home I heard a cross voice from the back of the car. “Don’t do that Victoria, you will disturb my curls”.
Most important this month for the W.I. was our 60th anniversary buffet supper at Broadwindsor House. It was great fun with a most delicious spread of cold meats, flans and salmon mousse, followed by enormous helpings of luscious puddings. Mrs Glynne Ronald and Mrs Burgess were among the guests. We were reluctant to part and the author has to confess that she could not resist the temptation of removing the pair of leather boots sitting so neatly in the porch and placing them up on the sundial. My apologies to the owner for any inconvenience caused, but I did turn them upside down in case it rained. I can also testify with witnesses, that nothing other than water passed my lips that evening.
Most important this month for Broadwindsor was the institution of our new Vicar, or rather priest-in-charge, Stephen Griffith and his wife Louise. The church was full of flowers for the service and how lucky we are to have someone so young and enthusiastic to look after us.
For the second time this year a new pope has been elected, this time a man keen on canoeing and rock climbing lets hope he is enlightened enough to advise birth control more widely.
Evening classes started this month, the Walford family goes into Beaminster for welding on a Tuesday and Bridport for classical guitar on a Monday - Julian Bream you have nothing to fear!
Dark nights again. The clocks are turned back and how silly it seems to be dark at 5pm when the nights are so warm and mild.
NOVEMBER
November came in with a drought. No substantial rain had fallen here since August and water table levels were lower in places than in the droughts of our recent hot summers. It was uncommonly warm and fresh strawberries – uncloched - fruited in Hursey. Mushrooms shot up, though without their customary delicacy of flavour and often affected with a big yellow weevil.
November went out with snow. In the last week a hard frost froze all water troughs to a depth of about 4 inches, and when it got warmer it snowed. There was ½” over Broadwindsor for half a day, though down in Beaminster it did not settle.
Bonfire night fell on a Sunday and Stephen Griffiths had his congregation chuckling in the aisles with his scout directed sermon on rockets and bangers. It was followed by a bonfire and goodies at the Vicarage for the scouts. A youth club has also begun in the village hall on Sunday evenings.
The new houses on Redlands Farm go on apace and according to the estates agents ads, have sold- all but one. The first roof tiles have been fixed on the most advanced property.
The Broadwindsor W.I. had a change of leadership this month. After three years of hard work, Miss Haslam resigned her presidency and handed over the reins to Hursey’s Patricia Mowlam. There is also a new committee of Mrs Bishop, Mrs Butterworth, Mrs Jackson, Mrs McKay, Mrs Oak, Mrs Rodgers, Mrs Salt, Mrs Sheldren and Mrs Shiner.
Mr Crabb began teaching the ropes this month to a group of aspiring bell ringers. It included Mrs. Walford who began without a care in her head but who became extremely nervous after badly burning her hands on the ropes! “Don’t whatever you do let go of the rope” explained Mr Crabb to his pupil as she stood in the bell ringing chamber with her astonished two-year-old gazing on at the scene, “but if you feel yourself being lifted off the ground, let go before you reach the ceiling or you will break your neck.” Somehow the whole thing seemed suddenly less of a game! However, press on. Among the other ringers are Clare Woodley and Liz Studley both of whom seem horribly more able than the writer.
DECEMBER
Thunder storms, floods and snow - at least it was not a dull month. “Chill December brings the sleet, blazing fire and Christmas treat”. It was certainly a treat for the Walfords Junior, Rebecca’s favourite rhyme lived up to its promise in full, there could not have been a shinier pair of eyes than hers in the Christmas week. What with school plays and pantomimes and constant shrieks from the back of the car whenever “Shistmas” trees were spotted, Christmas in upper Hursey was as hectic as anywhere.
One young lady came fresh to the scene a week earlier than expected but not quite in time for Christmas. Miss Sonia Elizabeth Curtis arrived without ceremony at Yeovil Hospital just before the snow came down at the end of the month. For several days her father was unable to reach her because of the road conditions and she came out of the warm maternity ward into a snowy world a day early as the weather forecasters expected more bad weather.
Certainly the old year went out with a bang. Thunder and lightning accompanied snow and high winds on December 30th, it was that old familiar feeling of being snowed in again. Salway Ash and Hursey and the Tunnel Road at Beaminster were all filled in again. Minus 10ºc temperatures at night and strong icy winds made it seem colder than last year.
The petrol tanker drivers went on strike this month. Mr Wakely ran right out of petrol at one stage and was open to local customers only for some time.
The W.I. Christmas meeting was a great success with hot ginger punch and mince pies to sustain members while they sung carols by candlelight. Two Australian visitors staying with Miss Haslam and Miss Salt joined in and were to achieve their wish of seeing Britain in the snow by being snowed in! Having been here earlier in the month and witnessed heavy rain and 50 mph gales which made 200 people homeless in Portland, they can at least claim to have tasted something of our weather.
Such were the weather conditions on New Year ’s Eve that only 4 ringers turned up at the church, so for the first time in 50 years, the bells remained silent as the old year slipped away.
Silence, however, and tranquillity, have not been the feature of the first month of 1979. So far, the lorry drivers, the hospital workers, dustmen, water authority employees and ambulance men have all been on strike, and British Leyland workers are threatening the same.
Another year but the same old story.
In 1978 we saw an old pope die, a new one elected and die and a third elected. China has opened its doors to the West and is showing signs of capitalism. Racial troubles have intensified in Rhodesia.
It would have been interesting for future readers to have noted such major events throughout the year, but it occurred too late to the author. Perhaps the next diaryist may consider it.
So here is a badly written in places, near illegible diary, as promised, with many apologies to those who could read it.
Janet Walford