Redhill

The cute little baby in the photo is my mum, Joan.
Why do I mention my mum?
Well this week my mum has her 80th birthday.
So I have chosen to post about my mum today .

Mum is what we Aussies call a pom (or pommy). In other words she is a native of that green little country at the other end of the world called England. The origin for the term pom is unknown, although there is a myth that the term pom comes from the acronym POHM (Prisoner of His/Her Majesty). Allegedly convicts sent out to Oz in the early days had those letters painted on the back of their shirts.

Mum has always been a story teller (one of the ways I take after her) some of my fondest memories are the tales she used to tell about growing up.
She was born in her grandparents’ home on the family farm in the little village of Weston-on-Avon in Warwickshire England (not far from Shakespeare’s Stratford). Glen, one of mum’s cousins, still lives in a cottage at Weston.

When she was still small mum moved, with her parents Fred and Hilda, to Redhill Farm on Alcester Road.This photo shows my grandparents at the back door of the farmhouse.
Both went to the same village school. They left school at thirteen my Grandma went into service. My Grandpa went to work for his dad on their farm. They did not see each other again until my Grandpa was in the army during WWI. Because of his skills as a horseman the army did not send him overseas. Instead he was put to work training horses for the army. Then one evening as he was walking back to his billet he ran into a familiar looking young woman who just happened to be going back to work after her afternoon off.

I think this photo was taken around the same time as the one above, the kids are mum, and her double cousins Joyce and Eric (double cousins because their mothers were sisters and their fathers brothers, if that makes sense). The older boy is Ted, another cousin.
Mum was an only child but she had a large family with many cousins on both sides. This photo shows mum’s paternal grandparents, at the time of their Golden Wedding Anniversary, with the cousins on that side of the family. Mum is the little girl whose arm is being held by my great-grandmother (Glen is the smallest boy, Joyce and Eric are to my mum’s left and Ted is the tallest boy at the back). My great-grandfather used to ride a bicycle everywhere. As he got older he lost his sense of balance, mum says his sons got together to buy him the tricycle to keep him mobile.

Mum has very many warm memories of Redhill farm. Many of them revolve around things like the farm horses. These two were Bob and Smart (I don’t know the name of the ploughman).
Both horses gave years of loyal service and were much loved. Then Bob died suddenly of heart failure, poor Smart was so grief stricken he stopped eating and pined away. No matter what Grandpa did he couldn’t get Smart to cheer up, the poor fellow died a week later.

Harvest was clearly a very important time, as many of the photos were taken then. This when mum was about 10.
And 16.

This is my Grandpa with Joe (I think) one of Smart and Bob’s successors.
I could ramble on for hours about Redhill Farm, mum tells so many stories. Examples include: tramps and beggars during the depression; policemen picking primroses in the woods; friendly Italian POWs. Maybe I should write a book!

I never went to Redhill until years after my Grandparents had retired and left. In the meantime my mum had come out to Oz as a “ten pound pom” (a government sponsored immigrant). Once here she met my dad, and the rest as they say is history.