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Westbrook
Westbrook maps
Historic maps of Westbrook and the local area, hand-drawn by Ordnance Survey and Samuel Lewis. View all Westbrook maps
Westbrook photos
We have no photos of Westbrook, although we do have photos of these nearby places:
Gillingham| Cucklington| Zeals| Marnhull| Mere| Wincanton| Yenston| Templecombe| Shaftesbury| Stourhead| East Knoyle| Compton Abbas| Fontmell Magna| Sutton Waldron
Westbrook area books
Displaying 1 of 18 books about Westbrook and the local area. View all books for this area
You can read extracts and browse photos from these books.
Memories of Westbrook
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Dorset memories
Childhood
I was brought up in the village from the age of two years until I left at the age of 16 years, we lived at 16 Quarry Close. I went to school at Woodville. I came from a large family we was poor, didn't have much and lived in a three bed house where Mum and Dad slept in the sitting room, as we were after all a family of ten. My dad worked as a labourer but worked his garden in his spare time growing veg, rearing chickens, rabbits etc. He even had an allotment which is now the 'rec. In the summer we used to ride on the back of the silage tractor and trailor, hide behind the hay bales ect. There was a gang of us, the Hunt boys, Christine Weadon, my family. The village fete was held at the vicarage where we did morris dancing, regular events included fox meeting in the village with the hounds and having a drink before setting off. Our gang... Read more
Stour Row
My family were friends of the Vowles who lived in Green Lane. We stayed with them in 1935, I have a photo of them and me as a baby. My memory is of staying with them in the war years and going to school in the village, I seem to remember carrying a plate to school each day for my dinner.
Going to School
I well remember going to the Catholic church as between 1948 and 1954 I attended St Mary's Roman Catholic School. When I first went to the school it was the old school and in 1953 a new one was opened close to the church and we all thought it was great as we had inside toilets and everything was new. The Head mistess was Miss Read.
Marnhull
I remember Marnhull, but can't remember the Catholic church there. I think I know you, I think you knew my sister Linda Bright, now Conway.
Marnhull, Roman Catholic Church
Miss Read was my aunt (she died in 1998) and I attended both the old school and the new one. Fr. Gallagher was the parish priest. The only Pamela I can remember was Pamela Wilson. Could that be Pamela Phillips?
Hovis Hill
This is the hill that appeared in the Hovis television adverts - supposedly in a northern town, but in reality in deepest Dorset! At the top it is about 700 feet above sea level. It is now the scene of the once a year Gold Hill Festival in July.
Shaftesbury's Bad Reputation!
Shaftesbury's position high on a hilltop with only a meagre water supply meant that water had to be brought up to the town from wells at the bottom of the steep slopes, usually by horses and donkeys carrying barrels. Water sellers then went round the town's houses selling water by the bucketful. However, Shaftesbury's position at the crossroads of several main coaching routes meant that it was abundantly supplied with inns and beer houses. This scarcity of water and preponderance of inns, together with the fact that the churchyard for the now vanished St John’s Church (on St John’s Hill) was set on a steep slope high above the church itself, prompted Thomas Hardy's famous description of the town in his novel 'Jude the Obscure' as a town 'remarkable for three consolations to man ... It was a place where the churchyard lay nearer heaven than the church steeple, where beer was more plentiful than water, and where there were more wanton women than honest wives and maids'.
