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Well known Kilmington resident and local teacher, Isobelle Ray will be celebrating her 90th birthday on 8th October 2009. She told Brian Lavender that she was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, of Scottish parents, Doctor Robert and Jean Ray.
Her father served in German West Africa during the first World War at a prison camp for Germans where he developed a great interest in Africa and its people. On return to Aberdeen he studied medicine and pharmacy at the University where he met Jean whom he married and they emigrated to Johannesburg where he became a district surgeon. Isobelle was one of three children, the eldest was Bruce and her sister Margaret the youngest. They were all educated in Johannesburg but she remembers that home was also her father’s surgery and it was always thronged with patients with her mother doing the bandaging.
At the age of 18, Isobelle and her brother returned to Scotland where Bruce completed medical training at Edinburgh University but tragically he was lost at sea in a sailing accident shortly afterwards. Her sister married and remained in South Africa and so Isobelle has nieces there who sometimes visit her. After teacher training, Isobelle took up a post at a school in Solihull meeting her lifelong friend Jane Halliday. Jane’s father was General Sir Lewis Halliday who was decorated with the Victoria Cross as a result of his actions as a Royal Marine at the Boxer Rising in China during 1900. Isobelle used to spend holidays with the family in Plymouth which led to her and Jane taking up teaching posts in Pippins School, Axminster, located in a house by the Guildhall. The school eventually moved up the Lyme Regis road near the site of the present Flamingo swimming pool. Isobelle describes the school as like a zoo at times with rabbits, hamsters, guinea pigs and a donkey! When she identified a mulberry tree in the grounds, she wrote to Lady Hart-Dyke who was dressmaker to the Queen to ask for silk worm eggs as silk worms thrive on mulberry leaves. The children then sent the cream coloured silk wound from the cocoons to the dressmaker which were used in the Queen’s Coronation robe. Isobelle taught children from many families including the Beckingsales, Parkinsons, Papes, and she even taught ex- Vet and Axminster Town Mayor Graham Godbeer.
After a few years Isobelle felt like a change and she joined the Shell Oil Company which had schools for its employees children all over the world. She spent a year in Trinidad and then went to teach at a school on the Orinoco River in Venezuela. She recalls being flown over the jungle in a Percival Prince by Douglas Bader, the legendary World War II fighter pilot who lost his legs while training, who became Head of the Shell Aviation Company. Returning to Axminster in the 1950’s she was lucky to find her dream house on the village green in Kilmington, built by Charlie Parsons for his mother who died before it was finished. Isobelle worked for the Somerset Education Committee undertaking remedial work in Chard until her retirement. Since then she has lived happily in the village enjoying membership of the Honiton Golf Club, acting and helping with the Kilmington Players and for several years driving patients to hospital. She still drives her own car and I am sure that everyone will wish to join me in congratulating her on a remarkable life and wishing her a happy 90th birthday.
Greta Stoddart, who lives at Oxenlears in Kilmington with her partner Stewart and their two sons Jesse and Frank, has won critical acclaim for her collections of poems: At Home in the Dark (Anvil) for which she was awarded the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 2002, and her second collection Salvation Jane (Anvil) which was short listed for the Costa Book Award 2008.
Greta was born in Henley-on-Thames but moved, at the age of three, to a small village near Brussels where her father was working for Crawford biscuits. This gave her a good grounding in the French language by the time she moved to Oxford at the age of six. At school she loved reading and writing and always kept a notebook by her bed to record ideas that came to her often in the middle of the night. Her education was interrupted when, at the age of nine, she broke her leg badly and had to spend a year out of school. She was advised by her consultant to take plenty of exercise to aid her recovery so she pursued ballet and joined the local youth acting club. She went on to gain a degree in Drama at Manchester University before moving to Paris where she lived for two years studying at the Jacques Lecoq International Theatre School. It was here she met two other women and formed BROUHAHA, a silent clown theatre company which toured Europe and the UK for five years with their award-winning performances.
Returning to live in London Greta realised she was becoming increasingly interested in poetry, so she went on various courses and attended the Poetry School. She began getting published in magazines and newspapers such as Poetry Review, Times Literary Supplement, Spectator, Financial Times and the Independent on Sunday. Winning two major competitions, the Exeter Poetry Prize and the Times Literary Supplement/Blackwells Competition, both in 1998, helped her on the way to getting her first collection published in 2001. Her poems have since been included in many anthologies most recently 20th Century Women Poets (Bloodaxe,2005), The Poetry of Medicine (Calouste Gulbenkian 2006) and New Writing 14 (British Council/Granta 2006).
Four years ago, Greta was appointed Writer-in-Residence at Exeter University leading a number of projects in Devon which strengthened her feeling that she wanted to leave London. She had spent many childhood holidays sailing along the South West coast in her father’s boat and had always felt peculiarly at home here. Then she found out her French ancestors had, in 1683, landed at Topsham to escape religious persecution by the Catholics – was that why it felt like a safe haven?! When Stewart and Greta spotted Oxenlears advertised on the internet, they rushed down to Kilmington and immediately decided they wanted to live in the lovely house with its spectacular views over the Axe Valley. While Jesse is well settled in Kilmington Primary School and Frank in the Pre-school, Greta teaches for the Poetry School in Exeter and Bridport and is also a part-time lecturer at Bath Spa University. She runs workshops and gives readings at many UK venues, most recently at the Bath Literature Festival and the Reform Club in London, and also on BBC Radio Devon and Cornwall. Greta starts her next 10-week Poetry School course at the Phoenix Arts Centre in Exeter starting in October on Monday evenings, and is holding monthly seminars in Exeter and Bridport. Greta also gives private tuition in small local groups or one-to-one sessions. Anyone interested might like to take up these opportunities by contacting Greta by e-mail on mail@gretastoddart.co.uk To see more of her achievements google her on the Internet and you will be amazed at what you find! You can also purchase signed copies of Salvation Jane at Waterstones in Exeter.
Greta was born in Henley-
Returning to live in London Greta realised she was becoming increasingly interested in poetry, so she went on various courses and attended the Poetry School. She began getting published in magazines and newspapers such as Poetry Review, Times Literary Supplement, Spectator, Financial Times and the Independent on Sunday. Winning two major competitions, the Exeter Poetry Prize and the Times Literary Supplement/Blackwells Competition, both in 1998, helped her on the way to getting her first collection published in 2001. Her poems have since been included in many anthologies most recently 20th Century Women Poets (Bloodaxe,2005), The Poetry of Medicine (Calouste Gulbenkian 2006) and New Writing 14 (British Council/Granta 2006).
Four years ago, Greta was appointed Writer-
Stewart Adlam and Greta Stoddart who now own Oxenlears, the large house down the lane from Hills Farm in Kilmington which was owned by the Trott family for many years, invited to tea the surviving members of the 13 strong Hall family that used to live there in the 1930’s. Greta kindly asked me to join them because I lived in the first of the two cottages down the lane during World War II and knew Oxenlears and the occupants at that time, Johnny and Martha Flowers.
As I wandered down the lane with Caroline and our two grandsons Jack and Charlie, I recounted how my family had been bombed out of our house in Croydon by the Luftwaffe on 27th August 1940, surviving in an Anderson shelter at the bottom of the garden. My father brought us down on the train to Axminster two days later to find somewhere to live. He knew Harry Hurford, owner of Hurfords Stores, who contacted George Trott with the result that he let us move into the top Hills Farm Cottage, with Fred and Ethel Chard as our neighbours. Fred was a labourer at Hills Farm and had been gassed in the trenches while serving with the Devonshire Regiment in the Great War. The move must have been a great shock to my mother with us four children because my father had to return two days later to resume making aircraft for the war effort as Service Manager of Field Aviation in Croydon. With no electricity, no proper sanitation and no running water, she had to pump two pails of water from the well at Oxenlears every morning and life was rather primitive with a bath once a week in a galvanised tub by the fire, shared by all! However, Fred and Aunt Chard as we called her were wonderful, and it was an idyllic spot to pass away the war years. As I was aged five, I went to Kilmington School, and to St Giles’ Church three times on a Sunday, with choir practices every Thursday night. Walking the mile from the house to the village and back never worried me even in the dark because there was little traffic in those days. I used to drive George Trott’s herd of nearly 100 Ayrshire cattle up and down the lane for the princely sum of 6 pence per week. It was terribly sad in 1942 when foot and mouth disease was identified in the herd and it had to be slaughtered and buried in lime pits in a field just below Oxenlears. It was even sadder one day in the summer of 1943 when George Trott came down to break the news that his eldest son Arthur had been shot down in a Halifax bomber which he was navigating during a daylight raid over Germany. Arthur need not have joined up because he was a farmer, but he was determined and tragically died of his injuries when a Flying Officer in the RAFVR.
As we came to the cottage where I used to live, I found the outside privy where we sat and shivered during the winter, being demolished by David Joyce. Actually, he is in the process of knocking the two cottages into one which will make a lovely home for his family. At Oxenlears we were greeted by Stuart and Greta with their two children Jesse and Frank to find that eight members of the Hall family had already arrived. We were given a tour of the lovely house which Arthur and Anna Trott had refurbished prior to selling the farm. Elsie Simmonds, whose mother was one of the Hall family, was present and she showed us the bedroom where she was born. Les and Doug Hall, brothers now in their 80’s, showed us their bedroom where four of the brothers shared one bed! All the Hall family present obviously thoroughly enjoyed their reunion with Oxenlears and its wonderful views of the Axe Valley and Seaton, telling stories of their early life there and at Kilmington School. It was a joy to be with them, thanks to the kind invitation from Stewart and Greta.
As we came to the cottage where I used to live, I found the outside privy where we sat and shivered during the winter, being demolished by David Joyce. Actually, he is in the process of knocking the two cottages into one which will make a lovely home for his family. At Oxenlears we were greeted by Stuart and Greta with their two children Jesse and Frank to find that eight members of the Hall family had already arrived. We were given a tour of the lovely house which Arthur and Anna Trott had refurbished prior to selling the farm. Elsie Simmonds, whose mother was one of the Hall family, was present and she showed us the bedroom where she was born. Les and Doug Hall, brothers now in their 80’s, showed us their bedroom where four of the brothers shared one bed! All the Hall family present obviously thoroughly enjoyed their reunion with Oxenlears and its wonderful views of the Axe Valley and Seaton, telling stories of their early life there and at Kilmington School. It was a joy to be with them, thanks to the kind invitation from Stewart and Greta.
Family and close neighbours arrived at Rosemary Hurford’s home in Kilmington on Christmas morning to celebrate her 80th birthday with champagne and cake. Her family had held a lunch party in the Village Hall on 14 December, attended by her many friends, at which Gerry Hurford paid tribute to his sister for her remarkable life. She received over 50 cards and thanks everyone who helped her to raise £270 for the West Country Charity, Shelter Box.
Rosemary was born on Christmas Day 1928 to Harry and May Hurford at Hurfords Stores, Kilmington. She was their fourth child of seven, and was obviously welcomed as the best Christmas present ever! One day when she was only nine months old, her Mother brought her in from the garden where she had been sleeping in her pram and to May’s great consternation found that the lower part of her body was all limp with no movement. The Axminster Doctors were very alarmed and suspected infantile paralysis, later known as poliomyelitis. Harry Hurford insisted that a top London specialist be called down who confirmed the suspicion, and another child in the Village, Maurice Wright, developed the same symptoms but was not affected so badly. The specialist said that little was known about the causes of the disease and that there was no recognised treatment.
Her mother nursed her carefully for the next four months, constantly massaging her legs in the hope of bringing them back to life, but it eventually became obvious that she was paralysed from the waist down. The decision was made to send her to the newly opened Princess Elizabeth Orthopaedic Hospital in Exeter where she spent the next 3 years.
For much of the time she just lay on a bed in a plaster cast with her legs in irons while specialists tried to work out how to make supports for her legs and lower body. It was obviously a frustrating time and she recalls that once when she could not go to the toilet at the prescribed time she wet herself later and received her first spanking! Her parents and family were discouraged from visiting on the grounds that it would upset her but Harry and May were insistent. Gradually Rosemary was taught to walk with the aid of a bamboo barrel shaped support. 
At the age of 4 years she was transferred to the Tipton St John Convalescent Home, privately owned by the well known Buller family of Sidmouth, where she spent the next 7 years. Here she received Primary School education and, while never unhappy, discipline was strict. The food was good except once when she was given tripe which she immediately spat out in disgust; luckily some of the other children did likewise! Her family used to visit regularly in a large car owned by Jimmy Hutchings, the Kilmington coal merchant and they used to take her out for picnics on Woodbury Common and to Budleigh Salterton etc. Shortly after the outbreak of the 2nd World War all the patients of the Convalescent home were turned out to make room for wounded soldiers. Harry and May had to bring her back to Hurfords Stores where she was given her own bedroom up a steep flight of stairs.
She was normally carried up and down by her Father or one of her brothers and she resumed her primary education at Kilmington School usually being pushed there in a wheel chair by her brother Charles. After the age of 14, she found the lessons very boring because the school only taught up to the Primary stage.
When the war was nearly over, at the age of 16, she was sent to St Loyes, a residential College near Exeter which specialised in training disabled people to
learn a trade and she chose to take up weaving. After her training she returned home with her looms and was soon making things for Heals of Tottenham Court Road. She became a member of the St Giles’ Church choir and sang many a solo because of her lovely soprano voice. When she was given an open wheelchair with a two-stroke engine this enabled her to get about on her own and become more independent. Although her Father was adamant that she should not have to go out to work, gentle persuasion from her Mother and good advice from Dr Geoffrey Parkinson her GP, resulted in Rosemary applying for a job at Shands in Axminster, the tool maker and type setter. She started on a one month trial but proved to be so efficient in the quality control inspectorate that she remained a valuable employee for the next 31 years. She sat on various committees and became a well respected spokesperson for the workforce. For several years she commuted to work every day in her open wheelchair whatever the weather, sometimes getting soaked and frozen, but she rarely missed a day.
Her mother nursed her carefully for the next four months, constantly massaging her legs in the hope of bringing them back to life, but it eventually became obvious that she was paralysed from the waist down. The decision was made to send her to the newly opened Princess Elizabeth Orthopaedic Hospital in Exeter where she spent the next 3 years.
For much of the time she just lay on a bed in a plaster cast with her legs in irons while specialists tried to work out how to make supports for her legs and lower body. It was obviously a frustrating time and she recalls that once when she could not go to the toilet at the prescribed time she wet herself later and received her first spanking! Her parents and family were discouraged from visiting on the grounds that it would upset her but Harry and May were insistent. Gradually Rosemary was taught to walk with the aid of a bamboo barrel shaped support. At the age of 4 years she was transferred to the Tipton St John Convalescent Home, privately owned by the well known Buller family of Sidmouth, where she spent the next 7 years. Here she received Primary School education and, while never unhappy, discipline was strict. The food was good except once when she was given tripe which she immediately spat out in disgust; luckily some of the other children did likewise! Her family used to visit regularly in a large car owned by Jimmy Hutchings, the Kilmington coal merchant and they used to take her out for picnics on Woodbury Common and to Budleigh Salterton etc. Shortly after the outbreak of the 2nd World War all the patients of the Convalescent home were turned out to make room for wounded soldiers. Harry and May had to bring her back to Hurfords Stores where she was given her own bedroom up a steep flight of stairs.
She was normally carried up and down by her Father or one of her brothers and she resumed her primary education at Kilmington School usually being pushed there in a wheel chair by her brother Charles. After the age of 14, she found the lessons very boring because the school only taught up to the Primary stage.When the war was nearly over, at the age of 16, she was sent to St Loyes, a residential College near Exeter which specialised in training disabled people to
learn a trade and she chose to take up weaving. After her training she returned home with her looms and was soon making things for Heals of Tottenham Court Road. She became a member of the St Giles’ Church choir and sang many a solo because of her lovely soprano voice. When she was given an open wheelchair with a two-
In 1950 when her eldest sister May married Jack Lavender, her parents moved the family from the shop into Westgate cottage to make way for the newly weds. Apart from work, Rosemary enjoyed a good social life going to dances, whist drives, plays and films. She took up shooting and was soon a member of the Axminster B Team. She corresponded with June Scholl, a Pen Friend living in the USA at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, who invited Rosemary to come and stay for a few weeks. Brother Jim, accompanied by Harry and May, drove her to Heathrow and, undaunted, she set off on a great adventure. June, with her husband and children, gave her a terrific welcome and toured her across many parts of that large east coast State; she still corresponds with them today.
When Rosemary came home she decided to take driving lessons from Frank Beryl in a specially converted Ford Escort with all the controls near the steering wheel, and she passed the test first time. This let her loose to tour the country and, in company with her good friend Vera Loder nee Broom, they went on many expeditions, the first to Windsor Castle when they encountered a ferocious thunderstorm on the return which she says was a bit frightening! Her car also enabled her to take her Mother out and to
commute to work more comfortably. Rosemary travelled to many other places in her life; to Kitzbuhel in Austria for a weeks touring when the Italian driver used to carry her around the dance floor most evenings having great fun; to Munich flying from Luton Airport; to Scotland by train with her workmate Bertha Leach. Nothing has ever held her back and she recalled walking into Axminster on her crutches one day with sister Margery which took her one and a half hours, although she did confess to hitching a lift back!Two years after her Father died aged 91in 1970, Rosemary moved with her Mother and eldest brother Jim to Eastleigh Close. Kilmington builder Alec Broom had built a specially designed house by Axminster architect Freddie Kett which enabled Rosemary to be very independent at home. They lived there very happily for 10 years until her Mother passed away aged 89 years and then Jim died unexpectedly not long after his retirement at the age of only 69 years. Rosemary has continued to live there ever since well supported by her brothers and sisters and their families. She has a host of friends and very good neighbours. While some things take her a long time like getting into her irons and dressing in the mornings, she is very independent which is why the Social Services have not had to help her very much. She is still driving today but needs help to get into and out of her car because she has lost some of her upper arm strength. She takes a great interest in everything including world affairs and has an excellent memory and a sharp intellect. She is undoubtedly a remarkable woman whose accomplishments and determination we should remember when we complain about our minor ailments.
Extract from the section in the Parish Book on some of Kilmington's colourful characters
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Written by Brian Lavender
Written by Brian Lavender
Written by Brian Lavender
Written by Brian Lavender