Kempley Man and Boy

Bob Hutchins was born in 1925 at New Rock on the road, just outside the Kempley village boundary. His Grandfather kept the Beauchamp Arms where my father occasionally helped out, and bought Folly Farm when Lord Beauchamp auctioned his Kempley holdings in 1919, but later swapped it for Green Farm from which Green Villa gets its name. Bob still recalls his excitement as a very small boy watching one job on the farm when the threshing machine separated the harvested wheat into grain and straw.

Audio: My earliest memory is when my grandfather had the farm and we had a threshing and it was driven with a steam engine. These three governors swinging round fascinated me and to me it was a wonderful thing

When Bob was about three years old, his father took over the farm, taking half shares with his sister, and soon it was time for Bob, like all the other children in the village to go to school. This meant a journey to Dymock as Kempley’s village school had closed in 1918. His early fascination for steam powered machinery hadn’t waned …

Audio: When I was at Dymock School there was a firm called Llewellyns from Ross they had steam engines and they used to come through the village and we used to run down to the school railings to see these wonderful machines coming by

Kempley children were taken to school in a pony and trap until1930 when an enterprising villager called Albert Banks bought a bus – though the journey took longer as it used to pick up children from Stonehouse. Bob was a good pupil and won a scholarship to Grammar School in 1936.

Audio: When I went to the grammar school as there was no bus service or train service they supplied me with a bike. It was not an easy ride from here to Newent and when you got your satchel full of homework and whatnot you was glad of any lift. Of course the milk lorry used to be up here and if I was lucky one of the drivers would come and put my bike on top of the churns and give me a lift home

But for Bob an academic career was not to be.

Audio: Five days after my 14th birthday the war started, I was 14 on the 29th of August 1939. My father being a qualified registered slaughterman, because that was his trade originally, he had the chance of a job at the slaughterhouse in for the Ministry of Food so it meant he wanted somebody on the farm and he took me out of school then to work on the farm.

Farming was hard and heavy graft for a lad barely in his teens – and the only mechanical help for the heavy work came not with wheels, or the steam- power that he’d so loved as a child, but with four legs.

Audio: One of my first jobs was chainwiring with a pair of horses, hardly anyone had tractors in those days it was all horses we finished up with three horses we got, wonderful animals really, one we inherited from my grandfather and she was a proper darling you know and the other one was a lovely mare she was but when we were horse-hoeing her head was in the right row but her back end was in the other way so we didn’t tend to use her for that.

Later on the family got a second hand Fordson tractor with flanged wheels – it couldn’t be used on the road until Bob’s father made wooden sections to fit between the flanges. Tyres were a luxury but fate stepped in to lend a hand.

Audio: Father went to market at Gloucester and there was a draw for the rubber back wheels of a tractor and he was lucky enough to have his name drawn out for that

One job Bob enjoyed was to take fruit from the farm by horse and cart to Westons Cider, just over the border in Much Marcle. The West family, whose son Fred was later to become one of Britain’s most notorious serial killers, lived en route and Fred’s mother used to stop Bob and ask him for cooking apples.

With so many orchards, cider in Kempley was cheap and plentiful, thanks to Harry George who brewed his own, and for Bob it was a staple part of lunch when working in the fields, kept cool under the hay until it helped wash down hunks of bread from Forty’s bakery and a lump of strong cheese.

After the war Bob started doing some delivery work including a paper round on a push-bike. In 1947 he started a milk round based around Dymock and Kempley and gradually built it up to cover Marcle, Bromsberrow, Gorsley, Newent and parts of . By 1986 after 39 years he sold the business - and 25 years on Windcross Dairies was still thriving, with Bob, who had started it all, as one of its customers …

844 words including audio

Audio length 5 mins 12 secs