David Westcott

David Westcott can trace his family back in the immediate area for over five hundred years. He was born above the fishmonger’s shop in Porlock in 1923; “ When I was due Mother came down from Eastcott farm to stay with my uncle at the fish shop, probably because medical attention was better in Porlock.” At about a week old he and his mother returned to the farm where he spent the rest of his working life just as his father had done at the same farm before him. David was president of both the Exmoor Horn Sheep Society and of the Porlock Cricket Club, and was profiled in the Exmoor Magazine which described him as “one of the most popular men on Exmoor.” On retirement he gave talks on Exmoor’s past and lived in a house less than a hundred yards from where he’d been born. He died in March 2010.

David Westcott’s chapter includes the following topics and many more:

• the miller at Wootton Courtenay
• exmoor pony round-ups
• driving the ponies to the Brendon and Bampton fairs
• guests at the Anchor hotel at Porlock Weir
• fishermen and fishing boats
• ladies riding side-saddle
• deer damage on the farms
• shooting parties
• local football teams
• gipsy caravans
• scout camps and cricket in a field
• pushing cars up Porlock hill
• pumping the organ as mother played
• a cider brewing curate and the Porlock Weir choir
• fishermen’s wives providing tea on the beach
• exmoor grass-growing tests
• heavy horses and hand ploughing
• two churns on a yoke for the milk round
• aeroplane dog fights over the farm fields
• winters of 1947 and 1963
• helicopter drops of essential food
• the traveling library
• the Beatles at Minehead filming a ‘Hard Days Night’