Pat Dunning, Part 1
An interview with Pat Dunning at Ashurst by Jo Ivey on 4th April 2016
Images: Pat Dunning, copyright reserved. For any rights requests, please contact the New Forest Heritage Centre in the first instance.
Pat Dunning CH 1 Duration: 4:15
JI: This is Jo Ivey and I’m talking to Pat Dunning at her home in Ashurst and it is the 4th April 2016. Tell me about your family, Pat?
Pat: (Laughs) I’m not very good at this (laughs)
JI: Tell me about yourself? When were you born?
Pat: In forty-one.
JI: And where were you born?
Pat: In Totton.
JI: So you actually come from a local family?
Pat: Yes, my mother came from Marchwood and my father came from Colbury.
JI: And were they commoners when you were a child?
Pat: When I was in my teens they managed to get started again. My mother’s family had always been commoners, but there was a divorce and a separation and it wasn’t until – I don’t know – about fifty-five that she was able to get started again.
JI: What was her maiden name?
Pat: Harvey.
JI: She was a Harvey?
Pat: Yes.
JI: Where do the Harveys come from?
Pat: Well, she married John Harvey who came from Furzey Lodge, William Harvey’s family, right down the bottom cottage, it used to be called Worts Cottage but Its not called that any more. And her mother’s family were the Smiths of the Bold Forester.
JI: That’s fascinating, ‘cause I’ve done work with both the Harveys and the Smiths.
Pat: Oh right
JI: So you were brought up as a commoner?
Pat: Not until we got to be teenagers, really. They were – mum and dad were both very poor, had absolutely nothing when they got married because Dad came from a big family and mother had abandoned her family and so it took them a little while to get on their feet; but as soon as they could they started with ponies and they had the field at Knellers Lane which was attached to grandmothers cottage, Queens Cottage, she lived, Granny Cook.
JI: Where was that?
Pat: In Knellers Lane at Colbury.
JI: So you were brought up at Colbury?
Pat: No, I was brought up in Totton because dad worked on the railway and he had a railway cottage in Totton, next to the railway gates.
JI: Ok that’s the sort thing that you might want to turn over, want to pause there. (PD001 & PD002) So looking at this first photograph can you tell me what’s in it, what’s it about?
Pat: Well, it’s my father, Ernest Cook and my daughter, Clare. Dad died in the spring of seventy-four, so this is a drift either at the end of seventy-three or end of seventy-two, and the drift was at Ashurst at the Ashurst Sawmill. This was before Ashurst campsite was envisaged, so he is just dealing with the branding irons.
JI: Would he – would that have been to brand your ponies?
Pat: No he’d just been in charge of the fire, and doing – I don’t know what ponies we had there at that time but he was just in charge of the fire, I think.
JI: Okay, and what’s this one? (PD003)
Pat: Oh that’s just another photograph on the same day and this one is, er – I don’t know who the other small child is. I can’t work that out; and that’s Clare as well.
JI: So that is your father?
Pat: Yes. And I don’t know who that small child is.