PETER AND LIZ JONES TALKING TO MURRAY ROSE ON 8TH OCTOBER, 2021 AT MELPLASH FARMHOUSE ABOUT THE CHANGES THAT HAVE OCCURRED IN MELPLASH DURING THE TIME THEY HAVE LIVED IN THE VILLAGE.
TRANSCRIBED BY SALLY WAKEFIELD, OCTOBER 2021
MR = Murray Rose
PJ = Peter Jones
LJ = Liz Jones
MR First of all could you say when you first came here and why you came here.
PJ We came here in 1971. We wanted to buy our own property, we were renting in London, and Liz’s mother and father were working in this area. Father-in law in Dorset, Mother-in-law later in Dorchester and they also were interested in living in this part of the world. So when we first came down here the house was in two parts and they lived in one part of it and we lived in the other part of it. But at that time we only weekended and had holiday breaks down here. We weren’t living here permanently.
MR From 1971 then you have some memories of the village?
PJ Well we have indeed. One of the memories is about the house we are actually living in at the moment which then was a pig rearing operation which is surprising because there was only 2 1/2 acres here and all the outbuildings were devoted to raising rare breed pigs. But it was a subsistence operation so, in effect, the people we bought it from weren’t really able to sustain it, particularly as the wife of the family had got Brucellosis.
MR So you bought a pig farm? (Laughter)
LJ Yes. Very run down.
MR And you had………………..your family was living here then?
PJ Our ………………. Liz’s mother and father lived here. We came down here to live permanently in 1976 when our first child was born. Well shortly after our first child was born. And then we had a second child down here and we lived here permanently for about 20 years and then moved off to America. I had to work in London and for a time we did, sort of again, commuting really. Sometimes from here, and sometimes from the States.
MR And the 20 years that you worked here first of all was that…………. what sort of work was that?
PJ Well we had our own business which was writing about horse racing. I had a publication called Trainers Record and that developed into a racing database business and we provided the database for the Racing Post when it was first set up back in the 80s.
We converted one of the outbuildings into an office and had about, at one time, about 20 people working from here, accommodation for journalists and typists, dispatchers and all these sorts of things. We were the biggest employer in Melplash for some little while and we used to do all the major production of the Racing Post from here. In the very early days of computer development we used to send copy up the line into Raines Park in London where the Racing Post was then based and they translated that into galleys and, finally, into the paper. But they found that they were a bit concerned about the stretch of communication which sometimes didn’t work perfectly because we are talking now of the very early days of computers. And so they wanted to buy me out and when they bought us out, in about ’88, ’89, then I started to do a weekly commute to London and sometimes a daily commute to London via Castle Carey. And so that’s when we went into a kind of part London, part Dorset, although Liz was based down here all the time. Whilst the children were growing up.
MR It sounds like it was the sort of work that could be done in the rural area. But, even so, you found that communications were a problem?
[00:05:23]
LJ Yes. Part of the business was publishing our own books and they were sold by mail order so we had quite a big mail order business going here as well so we were involving……… the Post office were hugely helpful to us here whereas in London we would have been small fish. Down here we were a very major user of the service.
MR That’s quite interesting because I’m living in the Old Vicarage, which used to be Wessex Publishing, I don’t know whether you know Wessex Publishing but it is a database for builders and it has to be updated every year so they employed, again, 20 people in my little vicarage and then every year telephoning around, getting prices, updating and this has now become……………….. this was bought out eventually. Similar sort of thing. Well they found the place wasn’t big enough, they moved into Poole so, actually, they did move out of West Dorset. As, in fact, your company did the same sort of thing in a way wasn’t it?
PJ Very similar. Well we were first here, before the Internet, so we had to rely on old fashioned communication and we had a Modem to send stuff over the wire to the Racing Post and we used to use Telex for input and a lot of manual intervention. But the very fact it was an electronic link to London meant that we could run the business from here also we were one of the first into Micro Computers so we had three sort of fairly small boxes what previously would have taken probably a barn.
MR This is what, 1985………….?
PJ 1985. Exactly yes.
MR Yes, I moved in ’86. Because I had a Micro Computer, the first one that I started using here. This is a digression! We’re back to your children and going to school. They went to Salway Ash School? So this is still……………
PJ Well, when we arrived here the school in Melplash had already closed, there was a school at Netherbury that also closed a little bit previously, so the arrangements were made that all country children should (village children) should go to a village school and Salway Ash was the nearest village school. So the bus used to come by every day and take them into Salway Ash though, when we came here, the Salway Ash school was down to about 55 pupils. So there was a big problem in terms of keeping it going and the authorities wanted to close it down. But we had public meetings, and the rest of it, and managed to keep it going and now, I believe, they’ve got 150 children there. So it’s become a very successful feeder school for Beaminster.
MR So it’s not changed then, the same system now?
PJ The same system now. I mean most of the village amenities have kind of disappeared in the time that we’ve been here. When we first came here there was a Post Office and a shop, that disappeared probably in about the late ’80s, something like that.
LJ And I used to be able to load the big pram up with books, and a baby, and walk up to the Post Office, which was up near the pub, with no trouble at all. Nowadays you can’t .
[00:09:25]
PJ That’s another major change, the road here. I mean communication in this village, it’s basically a strip of road, has just got more and more difficult as the traffic has increased. Because, at one time when we came here, still the road wasn’t particularly pedestrian friendly, but at least the traffic was fairly light. Whereas, now, it’s a major route for big lorries and the rest of it who often tear through the village.
MR My feeling about Beaminster is the same really in that same time period it’s the traffic that’s gone …………… and of course here, it’s more difficult, there’s no footpaths and……………..
LJ And two lorries can’t pass down there so they’ve got to screech to a halt (? unclear speech for some time) It’s much more difficult here.
PJ The village was a lot more based on farming then, we had two dairy herds based here, one behind us which is now, which is now taken over, Barbage Farm which is now just the residents and one across the road, the Court, had cattle and a milking herd. There were two garages in the village.
MR Two?
PJ Two, yes. One opposite us.
MR The Corner Garage?
PJ Yes (? unclear jumbled speech)
PJ And then the one up opposite the pub.
LJ And the one down here. On the road here.
PJ So there were many more people working locally then than there are now. Effectively I think the village has become a bit of a dormitory for Crewkerne and Beaminster and Bridport and the rest.
MR There’s no manufacturing, there’s no other thing except for some farming and some apple growing left now?
PJ Yes, that’s about it. The pub would be quite a considerable employer of people as well, but again people tend to travel to ………………….. but the pub is about the only amenity that’s kind of left now. And the church, of course.
MR The half church? (Laughter)
PJ The half church.
LJ Full church sometimes. They can still pull the screens back.
MR I hadn’t realised they could. Do you remember that changing because it’s a remarkable thing to do with a church. Was it before your time?
PJ About the time we came or just before we came.
LJ Yes, I think it was before we came but we weren’t involved in the church at that time. I mean we have been since but when we first came here we weren’t. It must have changed just after we came.
PJ The village hall though has always been a little bit of a White Elephant because it was never constructed particularly well and it’s been a recent decision to close it. For two main reasons really, one is it’s incredibly difficult to maintain and rebuilding it would have to be done from scratch, and there’s not a demand for a village hall which would probably cost upwards of quarter of a million pounds to build. And, of course, other village communities, other village operations have gradually closed down. There was a thriving W.I. here when we came, Young Farmers used to meet in the village hall.
LJ The Gardening Club still does..
MR It’s still going?
PJ That’s about the only thing that is still going.
MR It’s rather sad isn’t it. I find every time I drive through there’s always cars outside the village hall, possibly it’s the best parking spot in town, and a telephone box isn’t there and you feel this is the centre of Melplash.
LJ I think the telephone box has gone because it was blown up wasn’t it, fairly recently?
PJ I think the pub obviously has been a focal point but that has changed a bit since it’s become more of a restaurant than a pub. This is kind of Force Majeure?
LJ When we first came here there was a club every night, there was something going on. There was darts and table skittles and ………………
MR In the pub?
LJ In the pub, yes, and a quiz……………………… and………………………..
[00:14:11]
PJ A Saturday night sing-song.
LJ Yes, very early on they used to have a sing-song with the old piano on a Saturday night. But the first landlord was the Rose family and he died shortly after we got here and then it started changing hands on a very regular basis.
MR Yes it has done, I’ve noticed.
PJ But interestingly, pubs around the place in the early 70s were very much local places. We used to go out sometimes to Puncknowle where they used to have a Saturday night sing-song as well after they stopped doing it at the Half Moon and they used to sing and speak in dialect actually.
MR A Puncknowle dialect?
LJ Yes, Dorset dialect. A couple of pubs still……….. where the old boys used to speak in dialect.
PJ And of course there were no drinking and driving laws, or they were very relaxed in those days, so you could go out and have a few drinks and not be concerned about the blue lights. (Laughter)
MR No.
PJ The other centre for the village has been the Court. Because the occupants of the Court from time to time were basically the providers of largesse in a way. They were the biggest employers in the village and quite a lot of social events used to revolve around them. So that’s also changed over time because I think people who’ve occupied manor houses in villages have become far less the ‘great and the good’ and have often become the ‘nouveau riche’ who don’t necessarily have the same sort of tradition of benevolence, if you like.
MR It’s really the same in Beaminster. All the manor houses at one point – all were changing to people basically for an investment. And they just close it up and only come occasionally and that happened in the 80s, 90s.
PJ And that effectively, over a period of time, has just ripped another element out of the village. It’s also true to say that most villagers, these days, don’t have the attachment to Melplash they would have had historically because they all tend to work away. They, some of their children don’t necessarily go to the local schools, it’s just much less of a feeling of being a villager. And that goes hand in hand with the village activities gradually winding down and it’s become very difficult to find people to take these on so……… we used to have a Jubilee Committee in the village that was set up, originally, for the Silver Jubilee and that morphed on to be another centre of activity. We used to have a bonfire, we used to have a Christmas party, we used to have a children’s sports day. But the people who ran it gradually got older and in trying to look for people to take it on, it was very difficult to find people to carry on the tradition.
[00:17:35]
MR It’s a sad story isn’t it that. In Beaminster it’s a bigger place and these things struggle on actually, particularly with the Festival (? unclear) a day and then the Town Council recently enlivened themself that they have a good Christmas do and they put flags out in the summer so that element is still there in Beaminster.
LJ But there is a centre to Beaminster. There’s absolutely no centre in Melplash.
PJ So without someone to bind it together………….
MR It’s in two bits in a way? But you’ve got your apple farm haven’t you?
PJ Yes but that, again, is under some level of threat isn’t it because the Bests, who used to run that, they’ve, a couple of them have died and that future is not so secure. Mark, who does the cider and the honey, he’s an incomer, contributes a lot to the village. He’s one of the people I’d say is ……………………
MR The one here, not the one towards Beaminster?
PJ No.
MR That’s another incomer. His sons are doing a cider game…………..
PJ I think they are an old family used to live there………………….
LJ Wood.
PJ The Wood family.
MR So the cider farm here just soldiers on, actually makes cider?
PJ They did make cider. Mark certainly makes cider. I think the Bests now pass their apples on don’t they? Probably have done for a long time.
MR Yes I think they were under contract, I don’t know, to one of the big cider companies but I don’t know………………
PJ Because originally the plantations were done by Taunton Cider in the main but usually I think on something like a 25 year contract and those contracts have lapsed and I think the demand for the cider apples is a bit variable so there’s not the same ongoing demand for the apples.
MR Someone was telling me that the Isaac one, that they we were told by a contractor, Magnus Cider, just to bury the apples. Amazing. Strange business the cider business.
PJ It is indeed.
MR Right. Transport? Has that improved?
(Laughter)
LJ There was one bus a week I think when we first moved here. A Wednesday………………
PJ It’s never been particularly good. I must say I know very few people who rely on it these days. There would have been people, older people, who caught the bus on a Saturday into Bridport.
LJ Yes, I think there were two buses a week. Wednesday and Saturday. Some years ago.
PJ You could go in and do your shopping and then get the bus back out. Have a couple of hours in Bridport.
MR The buses are (? unclear) because there’s supposed to be quite a few a day. But you can never really rely on them and if you ever hear anybody, they always say the bus never came. And so I suppose once you’ve got a car you wouldn’t even consider it. I’ve got a bustop outside my house which goes to the middle of Bridport and it’s still hardly worth considering it. So I think presumably transport has improved but it’s still not reliable enough to …………
PJ Again, I suppose, looking at the railway network. Beeching. The Bridport Station would have been open I suspect when we came here? West Bay? That line. But that was closed and so it’s a question really of ….. it’s not bad really going to Crewkerne or Dorchester to get a train out.
LJ But during Peter’s heavy commuting days he used to drive to Castle Carey and catch the Intercity. Yes, to Paddington but in fact his office was on Paddington Station which was…………………….
PJ Made that very easy. But doing the Crewkerne…………… the train as you probably know, into Castle Carey is about an hour and a half, just over, whereas it’s two hours from Crewkerne. So a daily commute is possible from Castle Carey but not from Crewkerne or Dorchester.
[00:22:37]
MR And housing?
PJ Housing. It’s interesting. There are probably about 20 more houses in Melplash now than when we came, most of them as an extension to Twinways which was the Council House strip.
MR That’s near the Cider factory?
PJ Yes, in Bucklers Close. Not Bucklers Close………….. Anyway, a group of us got together, lead by Bob Buckler.
From across the road, he owns………………
MR Racehorses? Buckler?
PJ He owns the triangle of land which is on the left just before you get to the Half Moon. And there was an appeal from the church at the time to try and get local housing going. So a group of us, with Bob at the front because he obviously had the land, got together and he donated the land to a Housing Association which enabled the houses, extra houses to be built up there. Buckhorn Close. There have been odd houses built in the time we’ve been here as well but they wouldn’t amount to more than another half dozen. In fact, we tried to, well I suppose we successfully applied for Planning Permission for a couple of cottages on a bit of our land which, funnily enough, was when we came here we had the same Planning Permission, but that lapsed. When we applied for it again the planning authority told us that Melplash wasn’t suitable for any kind of new housing because it was ‘remote’.
MR Right. Well that’s the ticket you’ve got now. You’ve got a label. Right.
PJ But we successfully fought that because it couldn’t be described in any way as remote, so that was rescinded, so we do have planning permission for a couple of holiday cottages.
LJ Just on the drive here.
PJ That, I think has probably been, not particularly in Melplash but around the place just outside Melplash is the caravan park which is very successful and there are more instances of Air B & B and that sort of thing but at a fairly low level actually in the village. Housing? I suppose if the village hall is sold there might be potential for housing there but the notion of local housing for local people doesn’t really hold that good because if you look at – although there was a big attempt to keep the housing for the locals in the new development – it never really quite worked. Because well the Council Houses first of all on the base of being sold to sitting tenants and gradually even the houses that were sold to local people in Buckhorn Close were gradually taken over by people who don’t necessarily have any connection to the village at all. The reality is, what is a connection to the village? If your parents were brought up here, maybe, but lots of people have moved away for various reasons so the number of people with local connections are relatively small.
[00:25:54]
MR Yes, it’s quite a different story in Beaminster which has had a great deal of housing.
PJ I think you need that. Given that Melplash is nowhere near as bad as places like Netherbury or Loders where lots of people are, the majority of people in Melplash do actually live here. We ran a party for our 50 Years in Melplash a few weeks back………………
LJ And invited everybody from the village. 120 came.
MR It was open to the whole village? Well that’s the spirit that’s not happening……………..
(overlapping speech)
LJ Well it’s not happening at the Court. You know, we’ve got a big garden, we’ve got land and…………… and we’re very lucky to live here. And we’re very lucky to have a very good village even though we’re so isolated. Each one of us is so isolated and it’s difficult to get around but we do make the effort. We make sure that anybody who is a bit remote is drawn in. Yes.
MR I suppose that’s one outside view of being very small is that you can get together.
PJ When we had the village hall meeting a couple of weeks ago about closing about 50 people turned up. Seeing the village is probably 200 strong at most it was actually quite a good turn out. And the church is another case in point. Obviously Beaminster Church is strong and it is the centre of the whole Team area but it’s very hard to know what’s going to happen to Melplash Church because the congregation is small and aged. And I guess our average age is well above 70.
LJ We now only have two services a month, we can’t sustain any more than that. We can’t get the Priests and, no……………..
MR And you’ve got no churchwardens I guess have you?
LJ No, we……….. it’s just impossible. I mean we’ve all done our bit over time, and Peter is still the Treasurer, but because there are no other officers really ……………..
PJ Our funds are gradually winding down because our expenditure is fairly high compared with our income.
LJ We used to have fundraisers in the village – again the Court was very good and we could do the teas at their various functions and that made money for the church. Now we……………….
PJ Sadly it gets into a gradual downward spiral……………..
MR If you’ve only got a few old people in the congregation it’s difficult to arrange anything isn’t it? Yes, I’ve been to the church once or twice for funerals and things.
PJ So, the elements of the village that draw people together are gradually fading away. I guess we’ll end up just being a strip of road.
MR And you are the Kingpin really in a way because………… keep going………… (? unclear)
PJ Well, we like people and we’re lucky to have a place where we can accommodate people. We’ll almost certainly repeat this, I mean we, our involvement in the village was resurrected when Liz’s mother died in a sense because she had dementia and when she was living here…….. Well it was very difficult for you to come down wasn’t it because it was ………………………… (This paragraph is unclear)
LJ Yes, it was quite depressing. And no carers here and it was a very difficult time.
PJ That’s one good thing about Covid, it brought us down here because there was no point in being in London when Covid was rampant.
LJ Our children told us not to go back to London.
MR Children are very determined aren’t they?
LJ Oh, absolutely. They rang us that first weekend saying we’ll bring you stuff down – sort of throw it over the garden wall (Laughter). But we’ve been here ever since and really have reversed our life again. The draw of London isn’t so great now.
[00:31:25]
MR Could you go through the history of The Court and that?
PJ Yes, sure. When we came here it was owned by Peter Tiarks – that was in 1971. He died a few years after we got here and passed it on to his son, Caspar Tiarks who was a very…………… he was very village minded and he carried on his father’s tradition. But didn’t live in The Court himself. He lived in the farmhouse attached to The Court. Then the Smileys took over (a younger couple) they took over The Court but not the farm and they were very village minded so they continued the kind of traditions of The Court. Unfortunately Mrs. Smiley then had an accident on her way to London because they used to do quite a lot of commuting, and she found that she couldn’t face the commuting journey. So they sold up to a couple, an international couple, Lewis, who were partially based in Canada, partially in Thailand. He was a very keen huntsman so he liked the whole country pursuits and he, again, kept the tradition going and had the summer fetes and hunt meets and all those sorts of things.
Unfortunately they then died and The Court was then passed on to the couple who’ve got it now. I don’t think there was anyone else in between. And the couple who’ve got it now are…………. he is a financier and she …………. he might be retired but she is a……. one of the senior partners in one of the big law firms in London and they come down here………….. well he probably lives here most of the time but she comes down, I think, at weekends.
LJ But they are very reclusive and they don’t want ………………… they have isolated the farm and The Court because they’ve since bought the farm as well. They have now closed it off because they are an organic farm.
PJ But they’ve just got no………………… not much local attachment. It’s not just the village, they’ve turned down invitations from the ‘great and the good’. (? unclear) An informal manor house owners association. (Laughter)
MR How long have they had it?
PJ Close on 10 years now.
MR 10 Years. So before that it was a much more important part of the village. And they used to open it one day a week ……….. one day a year the gardens were open? Is that the same?
LJ Yes, well I think the Lewis’s had several events during the year but I think Dee Blake bought the farmhouse.
PJ Dee Blake being the partner of the farmer originally.
LJ She bought the farm originally, or they bought the farm between them, and then when the Lewis’s died they then bought The Court. So they now have the whole of that area.
PJ The farm has largely been arable since the last 30 years or more really. They used to have a lot of sheep, a milking herd previously and they all employed a herdsman, a shepherd and the rest of it so that more people were involved here.
LJ And they owned a number of cottages in the village as well.
[00:36:02]
PJ For their workers.
LJ But when Bob Buckler bought the farm, when the Lewis’s were here, he started off just farming but he was Point to Pointing as well and trained a couple of point to pointers and because we were here, and Peter’s association with horse racing, we managed to persuade him to take out a proper Licence and that’s when he started up the……
MR And so you were sort of involved…………..
PJ I was his major owner for a long time. In fact the first 4 or 5 winners were trained for me. The first 3 or 4 years about half his winners were mine. And he gradually got more owners from further afield. But then sadly he and his wife split up, his wife had the money, he had the expertise but ………………….
MR And so what happened then?
PJ He moved the training yard to Crewkerne and then up to the Quantocks and the wife sold the farm.
MR And have you still got horses there or………………
PJ No, I’ve retired her from horse raising for a bit. It has that effect. (Laughter). You have to earn lots of money to keep horses. (Lots of confused speech)
MR I thought you won lots of money on horses but that might not be the case (Laughter)
PJ No, that’s apocryphal.
MR Only as a bookmaker perhaps.
PJ Which I was at one time but………………. No, only 20% of the cost of racing actually returned in prize money. So you’re 80% is down the drain. And a similar thing is with capital value of horses. You do hear about horses that sell for tens f millions of pounds but not many.
MR So actually the horse scene in Melplash has gone…………….
PJ It came with Bob and it went with Bob basically.
MR And the other thing that Melplash is famous for is that fabulous garage in the middle. With the old cars, obviously the fellow who runs that is dedicated to old cars. He must be quite a character.
LJ Well his father was an even bigger character.
PJ He owned the garage when we first came here. Basil. His son has got some of his character traits hasn’t he but he’s a good laugh and they’re involved in most things in the village. He’s one of the local councillors on Netherbury Parish Council as is Mark, the cider guy we were talking about. Mark Rogers his name is. Yes, so that……………. of course they used to serve petrol until fairly recently so that, again, that’s another sort of local amenity that’s disappeared.
MR A bit expensive but they did sell it.
PJ Yes, quite, well………………
LJ In an emergency perhaps……………….
MR You’d pay a couple of pence extra.
PJ Well there was always the time when petrol prices were zooming up ……………………..
MR And he was low. (Laughter) You’d pay an historic price. You could see he’d still got some in the tank and he was not a business man. A real character he must have been.
PJ That’s absoluely right.
MR Well, I think we’ve covered most things I can think of. Can you think of anything we’ve not gone through?
PJ We had a little get together with a few people to discuss this but I think we’ve covered most of these things.
LJ Yes. We did have the grain drier in Melplash, over at Melplash Court Farm which was a big cooperative grain drier which my father was the architect on and he always said that he’d never thought he’d ever live opposite it. Because it was fairly noisy by the time we got here.
MR Noisy and would it have been dusty as well?
LJ Oh no. We didn’t notice that. Because he was buildings manager for South Western Farmers so that was ……. again that brought quite a lot of traffic into the village because the grain used to come in, I don’t know how many farms used to………………
PJ Quite a few rats, the rats used to love it.
MR When would that be then. What year?
PJ Well, it was here when we got here wasn’t it?
LJ It was and it had been here for a few years.
PJ I guess disappeared with these, when the farm…………………… It was still operating about 10 years ago I think. It disappeared with the current owners.
LJ Quite enormous that was.
PJ I think you know in a rambling way that’s covered a lot.
MR That’s the right way of doing it. The only question. You’ve worked away and lived here, and pointed out that before the Internet there were communication problems, what’s your impression of doing life in that way as opposed to being in the City?
PJ Well I mean it was fantastic for the children particularly because they really did benefit from the local school. They’ve been brought up as proper people and Beaminster was very good in that respect.
LJ And they’ve both gone on to bigger things. They’ve both got degrees. One’s an accountant, one’s a solicitor.
PJ Fundamentally, when we decided to have children it coincided with the time when I really retired from the big time and I thought at that stage I wasn’t going to be able to afford to send the children to private school, to privately educate them, which I wasn’t particularly keen on in any case politically. I was much more to the left of politics. So it suited us to send the children to a local school but I determined then that I would try and be on the Governors of the local school to try and help maintain the quality. As far as one can as a governor. But, as you know, its a………..
MR So you were a Parent Governor at the school?
PJ I think I was the Church Governor actually, I was Church Governor at Salway Ash and I’m not sure, I think I wasn’t a church governor at Beaminster. I think I might have got in via the back door then because (?unclear muddled speech) Well I think that and the three teachers at Salway Ash – Tom Williams was the Headmaster at the school and the two other teachers………………………. one was…………………
LJ The wife of the Colfox Head and one was the wife of the Beaminster Head. So it was quite a powerful school.
PJ I got good reports as an involved Governor from there and the church.
LJ And also the local M.P. was Jim Spicer was always quite a fan of Peter’s despite the fact that he was the ‘wrong’ colour.
PJ Yes, so that was how I got to…………….. and I think, well certainly one of my biggest errors was I was actually away at the time when Tom Williams’ replacement was being discussed and the interviews were taking place and they made a very poor choice.
MR That was Salway Ash?
PJ Yes. I don’t know what the situation was that ……………… I think I had really moved on by the time Beaminster replacement was considered for ……….. who was head at Beaminster? Pugsley. But I think that continued reasonably well because Head’s make schools don’e they really?
MR Yes, I’ve been on the choice of quite a few heads and it is a very significant thing and we’re very strict, strongly lead by the LEA. In a way we don’t feel competent as individual governors to do that but I remember there was a Mr. Best so (? unclear) actually had to get the job but he was good, he did the right things at the right time. Yes, you get different heads at different times, for what the school needs. Quite a complex process isn’t it.
PJ It is and of course you saw quite a lot of changes at Beaminster didn’t you with the closing down of the boarding, quite a major decision.
MR That was a nasty decision. A very nasty decision.
PJ But I think it had to be done.
MR I was sort of involved in that as well.
Right well………………………………….
Interview finishes.
[00:46:20]