Pat Dunning Part 2
Images: Pat Dunning, copyright reserved. For any rights requests, please contact the New Forest Heritage Centre in the first instance.
Pat Dunning CH2 Duration: 6:37
JI: What’s that photograph then Pat? (PD004)
Pat: Well, this is the agisters waiting for the Queen to come on the nine hundredth anniversary of the Forest, April twelfth, nineteen seventy-nine. So the agisters on three (four) grey ponies provided by – I can’t remember his name (laughs)
JI: He was Official Verderer at the time… before Manners.
Pat: Yes, he had connection with the Queen Mother, he was one of the King’s Equerries. What was his name? (pause) Forward?
JI: Yes, Gerald Forward, would that be him?
Pat: It might have been. I don’t know.
JI: So they weren’t their horses?
Pat: No they weren’t their horses, they were provided with those to ride to escort the Queen from Bolderwood down to Whitefield Moor.
JI: Right. So who can we see in the photo?
Pat: That’s Raymond Bennett –
JI: On the left?
Pat: Yes, John Booth; Brian Ingram and Raymond Stickland.
JI: Did anything else happen… any other memories you have?
Pat: Well we – mum and I – parked in Highland Water and walked up to Richard and John Strides’ Bolderwood Cottage and we waited at their back entrance; just mum and I, Richard and John, I think; and we saw the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh come up in their maroon car and they gave us a nice wave; and then they went on up to Bolderwood Green and changed transport into the horse drawn carriages, then came back down the other road. Is it Mark – oh, I can’t remember what it’s called. Came back down the other road to get headed to Whitefield Moor.
JI: And is that what you can see in that photo? (PD005)
Pat: Some of the out riders. I think actually it’s the two mounted policemen and then the four agisters.
JI: The mounted policemen’s horses look rather large. They always do, don’t they.
And is that the carriage in the background?
Pat: Well, I’m not quite sure, I think the Queen may’ve just whizzed by then, I’m not sure, to tell you the truth. My photographic skills weren’t very good. (Laughs)
JI: Oh, that’s lovely. Thank you.
Pat: Camped up there the night before, you see, all the big lorries and everything. They camped up Canadian Cross.
JI: Oh, right. (PD006) So which horses are these, then?
Pat: That must be the Queen’s horses.
JI: So you actually saw them the night before?
Pat: No, we went up a bit early I suppose. `I’m not quite sure how we did all this, to tell you the truth.
JI: It was along time ago (laughs)
Pat: It is a little bit.
JI: So that was the carriage that the Queen was in?
Pat: Yes I presume it was. Yes.
JI: So what are these photographs? (PD007)
Pat: This is Raymond Bennett and Terry Jones and somebody else, manhandling the original heavy oak pound sections from one side of the underpass near Slufters, Bolderwood Slufters; they did one half of the drift, Withybeds Drift, on one side of the underpass and the road underpass, and one on the other side; and they moved the heavy pound across, man handled it.
JI: Did they do that every year?
Pat: No, we – they can never find a good place to drift the Puckpitts ponies; they were for ever trying new places, but I think they only did that once as far as I can remember.
JI: And was that a pound that was made especially for that purpose?
Pat: Well, the pounds we have now are specially made of aluminium or whatever they are made of, metal; but before that we had oak-made pounds and they lasted for donkeys’ years, but they were very heavy.
JI: So what are we seeing here then? (PD008)
Pat: They are actually, John Booth and Raymond Bennett and Terry Jones and somebody else, actually carrying it across the road and somebody has got one section up already in place, on the other side.
Pat: (PD009) This one is Terry Jones and John Booth loading something up into somebody’s trailer that’s being drawn by a tractor, but I’m not sure whose it is.
JI: So, they are loading ponies?
Pat: Yes loading ponies, from the pound, from the drift.
Pat: (PD010)
And this one is a group of ponies in the oak pound with Charlie Kingett on the outside.That’s doing the first – Oh my goodness, I’ve just realised there’s one of our ponies in there.
JI: What’s that, which pony?
Pat: I think that is, we called her Snowdrop, but she had a fir tree marking in her face, and she was born just before my dad died in nineteen seventy-four, so we called her Snowdrop because he died in April.
JI: Oh. Yes. And what is it you can see in the background in that picture?
Pat: Well, it’s the other side of the road.
JI: So what are we looking at?
It’s the Bolderwood Road that goes through to Slufters.
JI: And that’s the overpass we’re looking at.
Pat: Yes – the A31 is above us.
JI: Okay.