The Lie of the Land Research • Meeting in Pamphill on 25th January 2006 A conversation with Carol Dumbleton, Norma Luther and Jean Smith
There was a thatcher by the name of Ruppy or Ruppley who lived near the Forge.
The Forge is still working today.
They remembered a Percy Ricketts.
Miss V Barrett and Miss E Barrett taught at the school (in the 1950s?)
“They were always elderly, although probably not as old as we thought they were. They wrote beautifully.”
They would play Hockey and Shinty.
Carol won the Roger Gillingham Prize at school. (She has a CD all about Roger Gillingham)
The parents would organise the school fetes and parties for the children. There was a carnival queen and princesses.
….’s sister Catherine was carnival queen one year. He remembers “bird-nesting” for jackdaws in the woods up in the park. “The old Squire didn’t mind.” He also said that he would have to take the cows out to graze on The Avenue or the water meadows but would get out of it if he could.
They remembered a gale when a great elm came down on to a cottage. The occupants were still in bed but they were not hurt.
Miss Rowdell lived by the school. She had a pony and lots of cats.
One day all the bales in the barn had to come out because she was convinced that a cat had her kittens in there.
Carol Dumbleton lived at Cottage 519 (up the gravel track, opposite the front of The Vine, on to Little Pamphill Green). She was there from the age of six months until she married.
Carol is sad that her cottage (519) is not cared for now as it should be.
As a girl she remembers packing primroses into shoeboxes and sending them to Great Ormond Street. They would go on long walks through the bluebells, just to find a white one.
There was a fete and party for the Queen’s Coronation in 1953. There was a fancy dress competition, they went as the people from the Quality Street tin.
In the summer they would make camps and houses in the fern or bracken by clearing a space and bending the tops and tying them together. They would play there all day, taking their meals out there.
They would skate on the ponds in winter.
On Bonfire Night there would be a bonfire on the corner by the school. It would be weeks in the making, they would collect bracken and gorse. There were no fireworks to speak of, not like today, only sparklers. They had a Guy, of course, and the men made them lanterns out of a tin with a rag dipped in oil stuffed in it and tied to the end of a stick. They would walk up to The Green all in a line.
The Sunday School outings were to Weymouth or Sandbanks.
Goats would graze on the Little Green, as would chickens. Carol was butted by a goat.
The boys would play football on the Little Green all day, staying out to all hours.
Carol said that her childhood at Pamphill was “pure magic”.
There was no running water, toilets or electricity. In 1950-55, the men all got together and dug the trench for the mains water. They all helped each other back then. That was the way it was.
Norma Luther lived at Pamphill until she was ten. Her mother is still alive and she is going to ask her for her memories.
Miss Baker was the Matron of Wimborne Hospital.
“My father would ride his bike up to Squire Bankes’ and ask for a donation for the raffle at the school. He (Squire Bankes) didn’t mind and would smoke a Woodbine with him and often he would come home with a pheasant or two. A gentleman, he was, a nice man, not like they say he was at all. You would have to raise your hat to him, though, us kids, that’s what you did.”
“I remember Mrs Bankes, in the back of a Daimler all wrapped up with blankets.”
Jean Smith still thinks of Pamphill as her real home.
“They used to say there was an underground passage from the Manor House to Badbury. There was talk of a ghost at The Manor but we never saw one.”
The old gamekeeper used to say that in his woods, all about the lanes and the estate, in all his time he had never seen anything as ugly or as frightening as himself!
Cricket – all sat around, the cars all around the edge of the pitch. There were no spikes in the ground to keep you off then. These Trust people have spoilt it all with those posts all along the edge. “…lovely sunny afternoons with the cricket.”
Joe Randle lived by the school, he was coming home from The Vine one night and fell in the pond and drowned.