Fred Long |  |
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Fred Long, 1914-1996, farmed at Westover, Park Place and Hillis farms. Colin Fairweather and I recorded a long interview with Fred in 1984, a natural story teller with an infectious laugh. For most of his working life he was working under his father who gave him his working orders everyday. What did he have to do? "You had to do anything what you was told to do! Oh yeah! When you had your orders from him in the morning, you'd ‘a’ thought some days he was going away for a week!.... My only regret was that me dad never bought Westover when it come up for sale - £6000, in 1956. We'd ‘a’ been there and made the farm... I'd ‘a’ done 23 years there and I reckon I throwed me life away... That was my lifetime thrown away. All me best years. We never stayed to reap the benefit of it...”
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 Locks Green School: “Yeah, the teachers at Locks Green were typical old schoolmarms. You know. Seemed to me they had a grudge against nippers. Because a lot of ‘em, see, it was just after the war and they'd ‘a’ lost their boyfriends and that, in the war and they had a grudge against you.” |  Park Place Farm : “Park Place was Swainston Estate then, as were all the farm's through there and, well, you didn't pay as much rent in those days for a 200 acre farm as what people pays for a modern bungalow now. Cheap rent because nobody wanted farms. Not then.” |
 Westover Farm: "Better bread they days! There's only one decent bread now, Wray's. That stuff what they makes down Island Bakeries, well, I dunno what you call that... When we was at Westover it was Whillier's, Lower Mill, Calbourne. That was baked with wood and the old crust was lovely. Somebody said to me one day, ‘You wants to get one of they loaves from Lower Mill. So we got one of these things. Well, I thought it was a lump of concrete." | |