Meonstoke And Its Surrounding Farmland

A Memory of Meonstoke.

There are many people better qualified than I to write about Meonstoke, but this photo evokes memories of the Cooke's, who ran the village shop with cheerful kindness and where we shopped for essentials - and particularly for sweets which we took back to school in a biscuit tin (I have written about it here http://lawfordherry.blogspot.com/2007/11/st-ronans.html/). Opposite were (and still are) the quintessential Meonstoke family, the Biggs's and their magnificent thatched barn, scene of Christmas carol parties for over forty years - and below the village shop were the Harders - Paul and Anna- who I think were Danish. Below them was a house lived in by the Lushingtons - Betsy, Jane and John. And below that, Miss Apps ran a small private school. The Manor House stoood opposite below the Biggs's barn, and was lived in for a time by my cousin Ruth and her husband John Howard.

Some of this is mentioned in my Archive where Stocks Farm (signed from the triangle at the top of Buck's Head hill) is the main feature http://lawfordherry.blogspot.com/2008/02/stocks-1950-1970.html