Volume One

Roy Kellaway

Roy spent the first forty years of his life at River View, Brendon; he was born there in 1926, grew up there and spent the first part of his married life there. His father was the village baker, and his mother ran the grocery shop. From an early age he was involved with horses, first in his father’s stables, then at the Staghunter’s stables and then as Groom and Second-horse to the Master of Staghounds. In 1951 he married Dee – Doreen Wells – daughter of a dental surgeon from Bristol who had been evacuated with her family to Oare Manor. They have two sons, Norman and Gordon, who both farm, and four grandchildren.

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

  • teams of coffin bearers for Brendon funeral
  • making a hay rick
  • horse and carts up Porlock hill
  • Brendon bakery and grocery shop
  • visitors
  • bread deliveries with pony and cart
  • meeting charabancs on Church hill
  • Staghunter’s riding stable
  • communal well
  • private sanitation system
  • electricity from the mill stream
  • Brendon saw mill
  • cricket on the recreation ground
  • gardening as a lesson at school
  • smoking cow parsley
  • concerts at the Staghunters
  • digging the school air-raid shelter
  • road signs being removed
  • magic lantern shows
  • delivering telegrams
  • hauling timber with heavy horses
  • 1952 flood at Brendon
  • second horseman to the Master of the Staghounds
  • leaving the area

Page sample
from Roys’ Chapter

Photo samples from Roy’s Chapter