Bill Bowditch By Ron Frampton - Sept 2005

Images of everyday life Compiled by Ron Frampton in September 2005

Abraham (Bill) Bowditch, photograph by Ron Frampton

FOR this issue of Images of everyday life, Ron met Abraham Bowditch (Bill) at his home near Axminster. This is Bill’s story:

“I was born ninety years ago, at Holscroft Farm, on the edge of the Marshwood Vale in Dorset. A wild and remote place – and still is. My family have farmed in this area for hundreds of years. There are still a lot of people here with the name Bowditch, probably all related, and many live to a good old age. I’ve been lucky too.

In summer, I work six days a week and my church on Sundays is a car boot sale. I’ve never smoked and I don’t drink, apart from a drop of farm cider that I make myself. I didn’t get married, but I’ve always had good friends. I help look after a neighbour’s four-acre garden as well as doing my own. I keep about twenty hens and grow a lot of vegetables; I’ve got three green houses and lots of good tomatoes this year.

When I was young, I went to town with a horse and cart, now I drive a car and trailer. I work with a biggish ride-on mower, petrol hedge cutters, strimmers, rotivators and a chainsaw. I’ve made a high top and drop-down

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back for my trailer, and quite a few gates lately—I like working with timber, always have.

My car’s getting on a bit now, and starting to rust - I decided to buy a new one: drove a hard bargain with the man in the Honiton showroom. I wanted something that would last me for a good few years—I’ve never had any luck with second hand things.

Once a year I drive down to Holscroft Farm, where I was born. Memories come back: some of the old trees are still in the apple orchard; the cider house hasn’t changed, but the old cider press has gone. The outside yard, where we used to milk about 20 cows by hand, is still there. I remember the old field names: Halter Path, Higher and Lower Shave, Dog Hill, Longmead and Plot.

On warm Sunday evenings my aunts, uncles and cousins would walk over from Stonebarrow Farm, at Hawkchurch. Here my grandfather’s brother, Amos Bowditch, was a yeoman farmer. We were a close family, I was the youngest of four children: Clair, Edward and Anna. My father, Abraham, was born in 1870. He married my mother, Sarah Anna Willmott Greening, a school teacher from Washingpool, in the spring of 1901. I’m told my (5x) great grandfather, Robert Bowditch, married Sarah Loring, at Hawkchurch in April 1769. Many of our family had biblical names; some were born in the adjoining parish of Whitchurch Canonicorum—a place of pilgrimage to the holy shrine.

At Holscroft we were a family of six. Our farm house had no running water, electricity or telephone. All water had to be pumped by hand from a thirty-foot well outside. We walked to Marshwood school in all winds and weathers, well over an hour’s walking a day.

As a young man, one of the summer highlights was Lambert’s Castle Races, on the old hill fort, with fairground rides and horseracing. I heard the band playing, so I wandered from our farm up through the footpaths into the fairground. As I walked over the top, two policemen came into the crowd and caught me. They marched me, one each side, to the entry gate—I had to pay a shilling.

Dad, and my mum, died in 1944; we buried them in January and May, at Marshwood. I was left on my own in the farmhouse; the rest of the family had married. My brother Ed and his wife Meg lived up the lane at Holscroft Lodge. One morning they got up, looked out, and the cows were still out in the field. I hadn’t brought them in for milking. Meg came down, shouting that if I couldn’t get up in the morning I should come and live with them at the lodge. We all got on very well together so I jumped at the chance. I lived with them until the end of their lives.

In the late 1940s we applied to the ministry for one of the new rubber-tyred tractors. Rubber was still rationed. Most tractors at that time had iron wheels, which couldn’t be driven on the roads. A man came down to look at the farm, issued a permit, and we bought a new David Brown.

We ran a mixed farm of about 130 acres, mostly owned, part-rented. We kept horses on to the 1950s - you can talk to a horse; you can’t talk to a tractor. Dad said one of our farm horses was taken by the army to pull a gun-carriage in World War One. Terrible, to go from a Dorset farm to being shot at on the battlefields. Seventy years ago I worked with a lovely horse called Topsy. I still have one of her shoes; it’s unusual, with studs inserted for using on the road. Our last horse, Doll, was bought from the inn-keeper at Hunters Lodge near Axminster. In those days most pubs had a holding of thirty or forty acres.

When you get older, you have to keep going as long as you can. Today I’ve been cutting grass, the trailer is loaded, and I’m off down to John Ody, at Forest Farm.”

Wild swimmers to feature in new book

Alocal entrepreneur has captured his local wild swimming community in a book to celebrate their passion for sea swimming.

Simon Jordan of West Bay, Bridport was swimming early each morning as lockdown began to ease and started to see regular faces at the Bay. People of all ages from 35 to 76 were meeting up between 6 and 8 am to take a dip in the sea—in all weathers.

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‘I was struck by how happy, energised and refreshed everyone was after swimming in the sea’ said Simon. He decided to capture the swimmers by photographing them as they emerged from the sea. ‘It was so wonderful to be allowed to photograph the spirit of these early morning swimmers. I wanted to document this time during the pandemic and to celebrate our little community and the joy the sea gave us all’.

The book shows each person and explains why they swim, with most saying that it’s for wellbeing and it makes them feel alive. ‘We have swimmers who’ve had hip replacements and some others new knees, but it hasn’t stopped them taking their morning dip.’

Simon also remarked on diversity of the group. ‘We’ve even got a small group of NHS nurses who come down for a dip before work and some who’d never swam before. And we all agree that its life affirming. Chatting to them and listening to their stories was wonderful’ he said. ‘We didn’t know each other at first but the sea brought us all together.’

Simon decided that the book should also benefit others, so he has decided that all profits are going to a local mental health charity in Bridport.

To see a video of the book and to find out more visit www.WildSwimmingBook.com

One man’s personal reaction to climate change has inspired him to publish a short book of peoms he has written over the last fifty years.

East Devon’s David Simpson, a former mental health worker and conservationist has self published The Living Planet is Personal in an effort to help others become more aware of the delicate state of our planet. ‘Our greatest moral duty as a species’ he says in the introduction, ‘is to address the damage we have caused. Without a living planet there would be no basis for our moral duties to individuals of our own species.’

Calling it a ‘Poetry Odyssey’ spanning some 50 years, David explained that it takes the reader through the author’s direct experiences of climate change and damage to the natural environment. ‘My hope’ he says ‘is that it will help the reader to accept, as does the author, an urgent change of attitude, a humility requiring that in reality we are all just another animal.

I call the process of changing this fundamental human attitude, as “The Rewilding of the Mind”’. There are also topical poems on climate warming, damage to the rural countryside and the downside of over-tourism and flying. David believes the poem The Market in particular may be an emotional shock to the system. It refers to the origins of the Coronavirus and how our unwillingness to embrace our being part of the living planet has led to this avoidable ‘catastrophe’. Apart from his family, David has dedicated much of his life to the conservation of ‘wildlife’ species and habitats, as well as being an enthusiastic horticulturalist.

He hopes that his poems will inspire a ‘re-wilding of the human mind’ through a proper understanding of the basis for it’s history and culture.

The Living Planet is Personal is printed by Axminster Printing and available at £5.99 from Archway Bookshop in Axminster and Paragon Bookshop in Sidmouth.