Mary Gray, Transcript 2, Part 1
An interview with Mary Gray at her home, Lushes, in Brook on 27th February, 2017.
Images: Mary Gray, copyright reserved. For any rights requests, please contact the New Forest Heritage Centre in the first instance.
Mary Gray Trans 2 CH 1 Duration:4:48
CB: This is Clare Bates interviewing Mary Gray at her home Lushes in Brook on the 27th February 2017. So, Mary, we’re on to photograph number twenty-three: (MG023) What can you tell me about this one.
Mary: Well, this is my father, George Rockley – my late father, George Rockley, rather – and my late Uncle, Bill. They were brothers and this is how they used to do the hay making. They’ve both got a fork each, turning it over, and they’re on Oaklands at Brook.
CB: Okay. Which is which?
Mary: To the right is my father George and to the left, Bill – William.
CB: Yeah, lovely. So this is number twenty-four. (MG024) Okay, yeah.
Mary: This is at Stoney Cross. My mother, nee Sofe, she always liked to join in with the haymaking, she thoroughly enjoyed it; and they used to do it by pony and cart, everything by hand then, with her father, they used to get it back to the holding. It was all hard work. Looks as if they had lovely summers, then. And that’s at Stoney Cross.
CB: Okay, so that’s your mum and her father –
Mary: Yes.
CB: So that was?
Mary: Um, Charles Soffe.
CB: And that was Dandy –
Mary: Yes, Dandy, yes.
CB: That’s right, ‘cos I remember –
Mary: His name was Dandy.
CB: That’s right, that’s lovely. Oh, when do you think that was?
Mary: Um, twenties, nineteen twenty-seven, something like that, twenty-seven, twenty-eight.
CB: Okay, lovely. Number twenty-five (MG025)
Mary: This is my family, we moved up here in forty-seven, forty-eight from Oaklands. My mother, Annie; my father, George; me, Mary; and [information redacted] to the right. And that’s our bungalow. It was built new then, forty-seven, forty-eight.
CB: Lovely. Ah, this one – number twenty-six. (MG026)
Mary: This is back to my mother, Annie Rockley, nee Soffe, at Chestnut Cottage, at Stoney Cross, where she was born and bred. And she loved her cricket, they had a women’s team then at Malwood and she used to join in, she used to love it. Get out the front – if you can imagine it now on the A31, more or less it was all grass – and practise in the evenings with her brothers.
CB: Oh, that’s lovely. And number twenty-seven (MG027)
Mary: Ah, yes, this is my mother’s family, the Soffes, at Chestnut Cottage –
CB: Okay, if you start on the back line, sort of going from left to right –
Mary: Right. This is Bill on the left; Polly, the oldest sister on – to his left; then Harry, in the soldier’s uniform –
CB: I see
Mary: Jim was sat down, with a cheeky smile; his father Charles, Dandy; next to him, his wife, Elizabeth; and next to him is Bill, the younger one who was killed in the first world war. And in front of that is Annie, my mother.
CB: That’s a lovely portrait – photograph. (MG028) Right, who are these two?
Mary: That’s [information redacted] and myself; [information redacted] on the left, I’m on the right and this is when we were still living at Oaklands. I’ve obviously taken my dolly for a walk in the pram. (Both laugh)
CB: Whereabouts was Oaklands?
Mary: Just down below here, below the Forest golf course.
CB: Oh, okay.
Mary: Just on the right.
CB: On the right. So – (Laughing) CB: number twenty-nine (MG029)
Mary: This was at Oaklands again; I was always up to mischief and climbing the ladders; that’s [information redacted] above me and I’m on the lower one. It looks like the saw horse as we had then, to saw the wood up , at the bottom.
CB: Yes. That looks like a rick.
Mary: That is a rick and I believe it is a fern rick.
CB: Oh.
Mary: Because it used to be – I can remember where it used to be.
CB: Actually, you can see it’s –
Mary: Mmm.
CB: Yeah. That was for the animal bedding, wasn’t it.
Mary: Yes, yeah, yeah.
CB: Number thirty (MG030)
Mary: And this one is at Lushes again, because we were older now of course and that’s [information redacted], my sister, on the left; [information redacted] who lived at Roundhill then, her father was chauffeur to the family then, at Roundhill; and I’m on the right, sat on the gate at Lushes.
CB: Got lovely aprons on –
Mary: Had to wear little pinnies to keep clean I think, I was always getting dirty.