Ted Lethaby

Ted was born in 1925 at Top Cottage at Wilsham, the farm to the north of Rockford. In 1952 he married the lighthouse keeper’s daughter, Barbara Roberts and they moved into the old school house at Countisbury. His new home was a couple of miles from where he had been born and where he remained for the rest of his life.

All his life Ted has been closely associated with Countisbury church. His father was the sexton there, he was christened and married there, and all his family are buried there. He likes living right beside it. “I can keep an eye on it, and they won’t have far to carry me when the time comes!”

Ted’s chapter includes the following topics and many more:

• Coombefoot bakery and the walk-in oven
• taking in washing from Glenthorne
• stone cracking
• Countisbury school
• being beaten for bad spelling
• collecting laver (seaweed)
• Miss Daker the lady pilot and Desolate
• milking and the milk-round
• home guard stopping traffic
• the Foreland lighthouse
• on the busses
• Lynmouth flood
• reversing down Countisbury hill
• AA training
• Pitcombe Head AA box
• boiling over after coming up Porlock hill
• saluting members
• lorries blowing over
• terrible winter of 1963
• helicopter dropping supplies