Your Story
Our very talented, volunteer Mary Bevan has been busy interviewing some of the lovely guests who attend our Jolly Days. She has written up their stories and they make fascinating reading. We have thoroughly enjoyed them and hope you do too. Photographer Brent Jones captured these wonderful portraits of our storytellers.
If you would like to share your story with us, please do get in touch.
MARGARET HUMPHRIES
Margaret Florence Humphries was born on the 21st April, 1938, at Coldharbour, Wimborne St Giles – the only baby to be born into the house from that day to this. Although she shared her birthday with the Queen she wasn’t named after her.
Margaret is always smiling and you can hear her laughter echo around the room at our Wimborne St Giles Jolly Days.
BRIAN & CAROL THORNE
Brian met Carol when she was 20. She lived in Hemel Hempstead and it was Brian’s dad who brought them together. He lived at Monkton where Carol often visited her cousins and would see him in his garden and stop for a chat. On one visit, she met Brian for the first time, and after that, her walks with her cousin grew longer and longer to make sure they ‘happened upon’ Brian.
MARGARET SELBY
Margaret is 85 years of age and has lived around here all her life and has no intention of moving away anytime soon.
Born at Creech Hill, one of three children, she moved to Monkton-up-Wimborne when her father went to work on a farm there. He regularly drove sheep from Monkton over the downs to Cranborne for pasture and back again.
JOHN RADFORD
If you wander down the lane that leads to the Church of St Giles, particularly on a Sunday, you may be lucky enough to hear organ music. That’ll be John playing. As the Director of Music and organist for the churches of St Giles, Edmondsham, Cranborne, Woodlands and the Gussages, John is a well-known figure in Wimborne St Giles where he has lived since 1992.
MARGARET & RAY EDKINS
Margaret has lived in Verwood with husband Ray since August 2013. She was born in the Midlands, a couple of years after the end of World War 2, with a dislocated hip, though her parents did not realise that at the time. There was no NHS “free at the point of need” in those days, so when they found out her parents they began trying to raise a loan for the necessary surgery.
CHRIS NAPIER
Chris was born at the cottage hospital in the village of Martin in Dorset in 1941. She was the second youngest of eleven children, having six brothers and five sisters, but since they were spaced out over a number of years with the eldest leaving home before the youngest was born they all managed to live comfortably in their cottage with its good-sized garden.
JOHN BARTLETT
John grew up in the war years and his father was an air raid warden. He tells us that his family had a lucky escape when a bomb fell just at the end of their road. He went to the Herbert Carter School and was keen on sports, particularly football. He was also a member of Poole Amateur Rowing Club.
SILVI MARIE NEWHAM
Silvi was born in Malmo, Sweden, the youngest of five siblings. Like most families in 1950s Sweden, the family lived in a rented flat during the winter and owned a little chalet-style wooden house by the sea with a garden and a vegetable plot where they spent the summer months.