Living At Manor Farm

A Memory of Teversham.

My family and I lived at Manor Farm from the early 1970s into the 1980s. My father worked on the White family farm and the farmhouse came with the job. Although I felt isolated at times, it was a magical place to grow up, steeped in history and close to nature. I could fill a book with my memories of growing up there so I will just mention a few of my favourite things.
The trees had a special place in my heart, but particularly the old and large horse chestnut close to the house in the front meadow. We spent many days collecting conkers from the ground beneath it, and managed to grow many new trees from them which we planted in our back garden. I would love to know if any of these have survived. It was also wonderful to have a moat behind the house, and my siblings and I loved to play in and around it, swinging across it on vines or playing explorers in it when it was dried out. There were owls in the old barns and trees which we would come upon unexpectedly every now and then. We shared the place with rats, bats, rabbits, hares and more.
When we lived there the house was in need of much repair, and was cold and draughty. The chimney smoked so badly that I would have to lie on the floor for air when watching tv in the evening. Since then the house has been done up and I might not recognise it. It was certainly spooky and I imagined ghosts when lying in bed, half asleep. The house had an old cellar which we used to like to set up as a haunted house and make my mum walk through it! I was mistaken by someone for a ghost when I used to go jogging around the meadows and fields nearest the house, taking shortcuts by squeezing though the hedgerows.
I think that will do for now, but I can come back with more stories if anyone is interested.

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