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Long Bredy memories

Here are memories of Long Bredy and the local area. You can start now: Add your own Memory of Long Bredy or a Long Bredy photo.

School Experience

We moved from Weymouth to Kingston Russel just after have taken the 11+ exam at St. John's school.
When I started at Long Bredy school I only remember one classroom and one teacher. Hand bells and country dancing stick in my memory as things that we did there. And the teacher taught me how to build a model glider from a kit.
I was very struck by the dialect of my new school friends who used words that were like a foreign language, thick and tharn being just two.
I had a great time and ran over the hills back home when I stayed late.

Memories of Dorset

Childhood In Powerstock And Eggardon

Powerstock was my local village from 1951 to 1963. We lived at Kings House Farm at the foot of Eggardon Hill. My father Eddie Whitaker farmed (the hill rented and his 13 acres) for 12 or so years before moving to Somerset. I have visited with my family several times over the years and stayed at the Three Horse Shoes pub on one occasion, there I met one of my peers from school and caught up on people and places from the past. These visits ignihted fond memories of the past together with periods of acute anguish as only can be felt most keenly in the childhood experience. I remember cycling to school - always late! - and flying down the steep hill from Kings spurred on by brotherly challenge not to touch the brakes until the very last bend at the bottom (Wetley). It is now obvious, with the wisdom of years, that we were preserved from harm by the grace of God, because with narrow single track roads... Read more

Emigrant Ancestor Baptised There Christmas Day 1773

St Mary's Church 1906
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George Coombs was born in Maiden Newton in 1773. He later took a soldier's grant of 200 acres in Ontario - where we still live.

Riversdale House, Maiden Newton

I lived here as a child of nine in 1950-1. We rented it from the owner, the delightful Sylvia Townsend Warner, author, who lived there with her partner, Valentine Ackland. The house literally stands with one wall in the river Frome. Paintings which hung about the house by "John Crask" must have had a special significance for the couple. You could sit in the library and watch the rabbits on the opposite bank and herons would sometimes come there too. There was a music room with a grand piano overlooking the river (middle of the house). In 1951 the Frome flooded, turning the house into an effective island. Today, the place looks much the same but the corrugated cladding has disappeared from the walls.

Haywards of Loders

The Village 1903
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John (1813) moved to Berkshire.  Thomas (1787), Robert (1759) and John(1738) are all connected to Loders by being born, baptised, married and buried here, or in surrounding villages.  Their ancestral home one might say.  Still tracing them further via Dorset OPC and BT records.  Collecting any photos related to these ancestors of mine and where they lived.  Photos bring back happy memories and are good records of events.

Haywards of Loders

St Mary Magdelene Church 1903
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Wondering if anyone knows of Hayward family, buried in the churchyard surrounds, that farmed in the Loders area back to at least 1750 or further back.  Any info for family tree welcome.

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