Robbie White
Robert William White was born on 8 November 1936, the second son of Sonny and Muriel White.
Sonny took over the Royal Oak and 52 acres from his uncle, James Saint Partridge, in 1929 and was engaged in a ceaseless endeavour to grow and modernise the farm.
As a young man, Robbie was very much part of that enterprise and worked long hours on the farm and in the pub, including helping his father build a new skittle alley and a fattening shed for 120 pigs.
In his early twenties, his life changed direction when he became romantically attached to Jenny Helyar. They married in 1961, and at about this time, they bought Prospect Farm, which had come on the market following the death of Arthur Charles Edwards in January 1960.
Jenny’s mother was a refined lady who drove a Morris Minor Traveller, whereas her father, Bert, was more rough and ready. A livestock haulier by trade, he habitually held up his working trousers with binder twine.
Robbie was strong, excitable, a loyal husband, and a good family man. He was a voracious consumer of local news and stories. A man of regular habits, he would attend Yeovil livestock market most weeks and was a keen fan of Yeovil football club. He also had a passionate interest in professional wrestling. He was in the audience with Bert Rendell (Hardington’s long-serving churchwarden) whenever the wrestling came to the Johnson Hall (renamed the Octagon Theatre in 1985).
In the early 1970s, a few local boys and I used to join him in his milking parlour on a Sunday evening to chat and listen to the “Top 20 Count Down” as it blared from the radio (it had to be loud to be heard over the noise of the machinery).
The last time I saw him was when he came to my Mum’s house at Hill End to buy her cooker. That would have been in about 2001 or early 2002. The last time I saw Jenny was at “Yesterday’s Farming” quite a few years later.
Robbie died in 2003 at the age of 66, and Jenny died in 2018 at the age of 76. They had three children, Christopher, Philip and Rachael, who all live locally.
The picture is from a 1959 magazine article, which featured Robbie and his father, Sonny..
