An autumn vigil

On the evening of Thursday, 21 October 1886, Thomas Pine Laver left a meeting of the Melplash Agricultural Society at Beaminster to ride the six miles home to his farm at Mappercombe. At 38 years old, he was a widower with three young children, having lost his wife, Betsy, just six months earlier. A witness […]

Joan Elizabeth Hann

Childhood Joan was born near Wincanton on 20 January 1936. Her father, Albert Edward Snaydon, worked on a local farm, and her mother, Dorothy, was the daughter of a farm worker. Joan had two older siblings, Dennis and Eileen, and a younger brother, Keith, who followed in 1940. When Joan was eighteen months old, she […]