We recieved an email recently from Angela Holyoaks who was revisiting places she visited as a child, Dunfield House was one of those places when it was the home and business of an antiquarian bookseller. This would have been back in the 1950s. Her father, also a bookseller, used to buy books from the owner and she can remember some of the most cherished times of her childhood staying in the house and visiting the home farm behind which used to be [and still is] farmed by the Watkins family. She was especially friendly with the daughter, Joyce, and infact stayed on my own at the farm on a couple of occasions.
We were able to put Angela and Joyce in contact with each other and they have rekindled a childhood friendship. Angela very kindly accepted our request to write about her visits to Dunfield, her feelings and memories of Dunfield are the same as those we try to foster today for everyone that visits.
MEMORIES OF DUNFIELD IN THE 1950’S - Angela Holyoak July 2011
I was about seven or eight when I first visited Dunfield with my parents. My father was an Antiquarian Bookseller and so was Mr Smith, whose wife ran the house as a guest house.
I remember a rambling grey and white old house with lots of gables, like a building out of a fairy tale. I loved it at first sight and felt very much at home within its walls and gardens and eating all the delicious home-produced food post rationing. I used to tumble down the terrace in front and go off to explore, especially the spring with the pump which supplied the water to the house. I also remember tales of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle having lived in the house at some stage, and imagining a dog from ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ baying in the marshes beyond the house as the mists enveloped the mountains. Scary stuff for an eight year old!!
I lived in a town, so the country was an adventure ground to my young mind. As an only child, I was introduced to the children at the Home Farm behind the house; this belonged to the Watkins family. I made friends with Joyce, who was my age and the oldest, and her siblings, Dorothy and Dilys, also a younger brother called Philip. I was in heaven running around the farmyard, helping with the sheep and no doubt collecting eggs and climbing up the adjacent mountain to bring in the cattle and sheep.
I remember the thrill of being on horseback for the first time in my young life, on Pedro, the family’s pony, with Danny the terrier trying to tidy us up. The farmyard sported a hand-held pump with another one in the kitchen next to a huge white belfast sink. Bacon joints hung from hooks in the ceiling, which was yellow with age from years of frying hearty farmer’s breakfasts.
At some stage Mr and Mrs Watkins very kindly suggested I stay with them on the farm; I felt so grown up and don’t remember feeling home-sick at all. Joyce came to stay at our house in Bournemouth when and she remembers she found our town life rather strange. It had theatres, big shops, cinemas and the sea!!
For years all I ever wanted to do was to marry a farmer and have six children. That never happened, but it was the completeness I experienced at Dunfield that gave birth and nurtured the idea. On being reunited with Joyce recently, thanks to Sue and an excellent web-site, the farmer’s daughter assures me that she enjoyed an idyllic childhood. Thank you Dunfield for opening my eyes and heart to a rural way of life. I can honestly say that visits spent there were the happiest times of my childhood.
Regrettably the snow was not good for making snowmen! 
