Keepers Cottage

A Memory of Spetchley.

My father was the gamekeeper at Spetchley Estate for Captain Berkeley for about 14 years until my father at 55 had a heart attack one night after they had been duck shooting at the bottom lake in the deer park. My father,mother and brother moved over to The Mount until my dad passed away 4 weeks into his 57 birthday. This was July 1980
My father had a way about him which made people want to be around him. He was always happy and laughing and would tell wonderful stories about his life living on the moss in Shropshire.
The tiny cottage which was only 2 bedrooms then was always full of people dropping in for a piece of cake and a drink. Many would bring their home made wines with them, which you had to be care full of drinking to much as it was very strong.
We had a tiny front room which the tv lived in and you only ever went in there to watch tv. If my dad was going to watch the final of the football or any other sport he would tell ever one weeks before because they all knew that once in that room no talking was allowed and dad would not be coming out until it finish. The police would come to watch the football final,they would quickly turn on their radios and turn them off again in case they were wanted.
The was still a blacksmith shop and a school which me and my brother went to until we went all the way to Pershore, when the was a school 3 miles away but it was out of Wychavon in Worcester.

Down in the deer park lived Mrs Mole in a house which she had lived in with her family. My dad got her a collie dog,the day she died the dog howl all day. Her daughter would come once a week to take her bread etc,her daughter had to walk from the church were the bus stop all the way down the deer park which was about 2 miles in all weather and all the way back. Mrs Mole son killed his father in the front room of the house before we came to live at Spetchley with the fireplace poke. I cannot remember why but i think it was because he knock his wife around.
Also many years before a local huntsman had been eaten by his hounds because one night they were fighting, so he got up and went out to them with out his grown on (which is brown in colour) and whip.
Up the lanae to Keepers Cottage was the house where the vicar use to live.
It was a big place with a tunnel which went under ground from the middle room. The tunnel was found when the inside was being done up,but no one would go down it because it was hard to tell how safe it was but we think it came out on the close which was a long field which had daffodils on in the spring,along side the garden. Mum would not move into the house from the Keepers cottage because at some time a lady had been killed there, and it was said that now and again she would appear to people.
In the wood behind Keepers Cottage was a big house were relation of the big house lived many years before but when we were there they rented out. Yet again sorrow came to Spetchley when the man of the house (in the wood) was outside digging in the garden, when he drop down dead at the age of 50.
One summers evening of the workers was up at our place having a drink and a laugh with some other works when a police car came up. He took him away on to the lane, then the man came back and ask if our dad would go with him. When dad came back he was in a state of shock. The man's wife and daughter had been killed on the motorway when they stop to help someone who had broken down. A lorry driver fell asleep, the lorry hit the mini van which they were in,parked on the hard shoulder and killed both of them.
When mum would not move into the house next door they moved some people in who wish to rent it. Well she was lovely but her other half had been a solicitor and he knew how to get out of paying for things. The was always people knocking at her door but he was away in Worcester at college having fun. When his wife younger sister came over, they would go for long walks hand in hand in the woods. His wife never ever said anything against him,he never worked and after a few years they moved on when no one would supply them with coal or food on the knock.
My mother lived in a estate house in Spetchley until 2009 when she moved into a home.
They were good times,happy times.

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