Caroline Stride, Transcript 1, Part 1
An interview with Caroline Stride at her home, Blackwater Farm on February 2nd 2017
Images: Caroline Page, copyright reserved. For any rights requests, please contact the New Forest Heritage Centre in the first instance.
Caroline Stride Trans 1 CH1 Duration: 3:58
CB: This is Clare Bates interviewing Caroline Stride at her home Blackwater Farm on February 2nd 2017. So Caroline, tell me a little bit about your Commoning history, your Commoning life.
Caroline: Well, I was born in the south of the Forest into a Commoning family; my father is Bob House, or Robert Frank House, and my mother being Peggy House, but nee Brown. They were tenant farmers on Beaulieu Estate as children and then I was born at Ravensbeck Farm, Rose Lane, East End. And when I was seven we moved to Cuffnells Farm at Bank, Lyndhurst and my father was a Commoner right through until probably the mid 1960s, early seventies, turning a few heifers out on the Forest – and ponies. His prefix at the time was Cuffnells.
When I married my husband Richard Stride I became Caroline Stride, obviously, and we moved to Bolderwood and really that’s when as a couple we really got into the swing of things and in our own right have been Commoners; and from there we’ve built up a herd of beef cows, suckler cows which ran out from Bolderwood and we were fortunate enough to live in a Forestry Commission property at the time and what money we did save up by working long hours at different times, bringing up a family, we bought land at Minstead.
Hence, we’ve got now about thirty acres of pasture land at Minstead which we exercise our Forest rights from, and over the time when we married in 1975 we had just a few calves that would be coming on and they built – were the foundation of our beef herd and gradually, gradually we built up to what we have today: a small suckler cow herd that run out from Acres Down area and we’ve got our farm here at Blackwater which is Penny Family Farm and we’ve got some buildings here we keep our young stock in and look after them.
During the summer our cattle are running out on the Forest; we have a number of New Forest ponies which run out under the prefix of Rushmoor, which is my husband and his brother John’s prefix, their brand being RJ and they, I can honestly say, that Richard and John have dedicated their life to the New Forest pony in their breeding and they are very successful in the Breed Show during the summer months and local native and moorland pony shows and the Forest Fed that they take great pride in having a hardy, tough New Forest pony that will run out there all the year round and we have consistently won the Championship with a mare called Rushmoor Rose Marie and she is really, really a cracking little Forest pony that runs out all the year round and is just a nice type of pony to have in our ownership. Which we’ve done really well with, so we’re really chuffed.