Victor Lock

Born in 1928 in the back-room at Cranscombe, a farm above Rockford, Victor was the fifth and youngest child in a family that had been at the farm for four generations. He spent the war years finishing his education at Brendon school, and then at the age of fourteen started an apprenticeship as a carpenter in Lynton. After the war he married Margaret Graham from Wilsham, the farm to the north of Cranscombe, and in 1952 they left the area and went to live in Bridgwater where their daughter Susan was born.

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

• growing up on Cranscombe and Shilstone farms
• fishing
• ice skating along the field gutters
• a donkey-riding accident
• American troops arriving
• land girls and the home guard
• artillery practice and tanks on the common
• German bombers
• cutting turf
• carpentry apprenticeship
• first set of tools
• wooden scaffolding
• making coffins and measuring-up
• trade union
• first motorbike
• leaving the area