Buttercup Field

A Memory of Davenham.

This field was behind our house and is accessed from a path that runs along the churchyard wall. From the age of about 7, I spent many a happy hour with my dog Shep - just wandering around the field looking at the Buttercups, spying rabbit holes and trying to keep the dog out of dried cow pats.

The path continued onto the bypass - and it is this route that my errant dog Shep would take, in order to visit Leftwich Estate. Every so often he would escape from the garden and set off on his mission to visit his friends! Such was his urgency, he let nothing or no-one get in his way. How he managed to cross the bypass without mishap is beyond me - but during his lifetime, he made several visits! Usually my dad (Eric Jenkins) was in hot pursuit and I can hear him now woefully shouting, "Shep, Shep - confounded dog!". I knew there was no point in trying to catch Shep myself, so I would perch on the stile at the top of the path and watch as Shep's upright tail plotted his course through the long grass. My dad would run after him - holding in his hand - a dangling leather dog lead. Eventually the two of them would be seen plodding back through the field towards home - both of them panting!

Shep would then be content to stay in the garden or just visit the field for the next few months - and then suddenly, without warning, he would scrabble through the hedge of the garden - which was my signal to shout, "Dad - Dad - Sheps gone again!"

This field and the church hold some very happy memories for me and whenever the family were returning home from a trip in the car and we neared Davenham roundabout, Dad would always say, "Look - there's the church spire - we're nearly home."

I left Davenham in 1976 and during the last few years have written a few books. The village and its people had a profound effect on me as I was growing up, an effect which is still very much alive today and because of that, I chose a photograph of Davenham Church as the front cover to my first book.