Caroline Stride, Transcript1, Part 8
Caroline Stride Trans 1 CH8 Duration: 6:00
CB: That’s all right. Number thirty-three (CS033)
Caroline: This is grandad before he was married or – there on their caterpillar – or it might have been along the time they were married and I don’t think this picture was actually taken in the Forest. I think he was ordered by the Forestry Commission at the time to move around and I think he went down to Dorset. I think he was a caterpillar driver and he was hauling out timber as you can see. The gentleman to the side at the front of the caterpillar, I’m sorry, I don’t know his name; I think he was a Dorset forest worker of the time so I don’t know who that was. I suppose about the person on this caterpillar tractor was Grandad, I meant it’s Bert Stride, Albert Stride, of Denny Lodge, upholding Denny Lodge.
CB: Okay, so number thirty-four (CS034)
Caroline: This is a picture of Bert and Vera down at Denny Lodge, probably in the nineties, yeah, nineteen nineties, perhaps just after Grandad retired so it’s Vera and Bert Stride upholding Denny Lodge.
CB: Lovely. Thirty-five (CS035)
Caroline: Again this is Bert Stride upholding Denny Lodge. He’s always since a small child has had a love for pigs and I’ve got knowledge of him being you know a pig keeper with his grand parents at Brook Bushes at Brook and that’s followed him all through his life so he’s never happier than when he’s out looking after a sow and a litter of pigs or producing, or bringing on a young store pig for bacon. In his later life he’s been very active in his retirement and in the right month – when there’s a ‘r’ in the month, he will be smoking bacon (Laughter) So, he enjoys the whole process of producing right through to eating it off his plate.
CB: Okay, thirty-six (CS036)
Caroline: Now this is a picture of Bert Stride’s relations at Brook Bushes at Brook near Bramshaw and it is his gran and grandad who brought him up from quite an early age. Sadly, Bert Stride didn’t have the best of starts because his mother died soon after he was born, and his very early life he was in foster homes in care and he had a very sad time; but his gran and grandad came to the rescue and he has always got very kind words and good word about his gran and grandad Triggs, who were his mother’s mother and father. And they looked after him like their own child right through.
CB: So which of these ..(indistinct)
Caroline: The gentleman who is holding the horse’s head is grandad Triggs; and the lady to the far left of the picture is Grandma Triggs.
CB: Okay. That’s lovely.
Caroline: And she was a Judd.
(CS037)
Caroline: This is a picture of our family at Bolderwood when the boys were growing up, so to the left of the picture is Robert, our other son stood by me, Caroline; and on the pony is Philip and Richard, my husband and then to the right of the picture it is Andrew. The pony was Tiger Lily and she was a wonderful pony that stayed in and around the holding a lot of the time and the boys used to spend – have many happy days riding her or messing around with her out; sort of started their love of the New Forest pony…
CB: Was she a Rushmoor?
Caroline: No, she wasn’t. We bought her because somebody at Burley – There was a link with John Booth at the time, his wife [information redacted] and Mrs Kidd, her mother, were residents of Burley at the time and this pony was a young pony – Tiger Lily was a young pony who was a companion and the old pony had died and they then wanted to get rid of the companion pony, so we bought her as a two year old, she was just such a nice-natured pony – she was chestnut – just such a nice-natured pony that the children just messed about with her a lot. She’d been handled, always looking for human company it seemed so yeah, they pottered around and…yeah
CB: Lovely. And when do you think this was?
Caroline: It was probably about …. six there….so I think the early nineties.