Josie Floyd (nee Richards)

Josie was born in 1930 at Broomstreet, a farm overlooking the Bristol channel between Lynmouth and Porlock, and was second youngest in a family of six closely-knit brothers and sisters. She attended school at Porlock where she met Hazel Leeves (nee Westcott) who was to become a close lifelong friend. Husband-to-be, Bill Floyd returned from active service after the war, and Josie was nineteen when they married. They lived first in the Brendon area and in 1954 took on Parsonage farm at Hawkridge which they worked for the next eighteen years. Then as a complete change they became landlords of the Sportsman’s Inn at Sandyway, where they were for three years; “ – good thing it was no longer or we’d both be dead of the drink long ago!” After leaving the Sportsman they returned to the northern fringe of Exmoor and farmed Tippacott and then Metticombe. They had five children, Robin, Nigel, Lennox, Helen and Joe.

Josie Floyd’s chapter includes the following topics and many more:

• mother and the Ridds from Yenworthy
• Lorna Doone and the Ridd milking machine
• collecting metal for the war effort
• accused of being a spy
• tramps and evacuees
• shipping convoys in the Bristol channel
• collecting sphagnum moss and whorts
• American airmen and the home guard
• Pathe news-reels at the Minehead cinema
• galloping through Culbone woods in the dark
• very first bicycles
• going to the dances on horseback
• sister Sheila emigrating to New Zealand
• sister Molly’s book
• Bampton fair
• Parsonage farm at Hawkridge
• walking the hunt puppies
• taking on the Sportsman pub