Ford In 1939

A Memory of Ford.

My parents and I lived at Ford for a few months in 1939, having moved there from north London when my father started work for a building contractor on the airfield at Colerne. We had lodgings with a Mr and Mrs Pearce (or Pierce) at Mount Scylla Farm. It's a long time since I passed that way, but I was delighted to be able to recognise the place recently, on the Google maps and street view. The general layout of the yard looks more or less as I remember it, but of course some of the buildings are different.
As far as I remember, Mr Pearce had a herd of about a dozen cows, and every morning the milk was left in large churns in a pool of water, which seemed to be fed by a natural spring, by the farmyard gate, and was picked up by a lorry, I suppose from the Milk Marketing Board.
There were two working horses on the farm, named Captain and Gypsy. They seemed enormous to me, as I was only eight at the time. One morning Mr Pearce lifted me up onto Captain's back and sent him off up the road to a field where he was working. "You'll be alright", he said; "he knows the way, and I'll be there to lift you off".
I remember being in the farmhouse kitchen, with my parents and Mr and Mrs Pearce, on September 3rd that year, and hearing Neville Chamberlain's broadcast announcing the outbreak of war. Shortly after then we moved to Colerne, where my memories are continued.

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