Joan Hooper (nee Davis)

Born in 1921 in a cottage at Ranscombe farm near Wootton Courtenay, Joan Davis was the seventh of twelve children. She shared a bedroom with her grandmother for the first ten years of her life and can remember very clearly hearing stories about granny growing up in the early 1840s. After attending Allerford school Joan went into service as an under lady’s-maid to the Pilcher family, working for them at both their London home and at their holiday home at Lynch House near Bossington. After the war she and husband Don Hooper took over Bromham farm at the top of Porlock hill, which they farmed for the rest of their working days.

Joan Hooper’s chapter includes the following topics and many more:

• one of twelve brothers and sisters
• father’s job as a carter
• pigs, ferrets, and chickens
• farm wages straight to mother
• three uncles and three brothers killed in the wars
• getting the cart horses ready before breakfast
• free skimmed milk for the farm workers
• sharing a bedroom with Granny Bailey
• hearing stories about granny’s childhood in the 1840s
• sorting rags for patchwork quilting
• collecting and laundering hotel washing
• peddler woman making and selling pegs
• a trip to see granny in the Williton workhouse
• carting sticks for firewood
• tree houses, hoops and choirs
• stealing apples from the orchard
• making individual pinafores for each of the girls
• picking whorts to pay for new school boots
• the Isolation hospital
• Bossington farm and two men with wooden legs
• Tivington farm and starting school at Allerford
• cookery, sewing and darning classes
• school trips to Lynch house
• entering service as an under lady’s maid
• life in the big house and in London
• Miss Judith presented at court
• life in the servants hall
• winding all the clocks in the house
• two different uniforms and church every other Sunday
• war breaking out and dismissal from Lynch
• a wedding and a hedging honeymoon
• land-girls and Italian prisoners of war
• a flock of sheep by ‘going halves’ in a borrowed field
• taking on Bromham farm
• clotted cream, paying guests and poultry
• christmas turkeys and the Porlock baker’s shop
• breaking up the common
• retiring to Porlock weir