Jennifer Higham

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Summary

Memories of a Free-Range Childhood at Tump Farm

Born in 1941 at Tump Farm in Fownhope, Jennifer Higham grew up immersed in a life of farming, friendship and freedom. The family farm was mixed – dairy, sheep, poultry and arable – with milk delivered around the village by pony and trap, using metal ladles and later bottles with foil tops. Jennifer’s mother handled much of the dairy work, while her aunt kept house, cycling daily from Hereford.

The farm welcomed village children, who were drawn by ponies, harvests and the open-hearted nature of Jennifer’s father. “It was a paradise,” she recalls. She loved ponies, rising early to ride before school, and helped with potato and apple harvests and washing milk bottles. Her memories also include the joy of electricity arriving via a generator, the novelty of a flush toilet, and water from a windmill-fed reservoir.

Jennifer went to Mordiford School and Redcap in Hereford for her primary education, then on to Hereford High. She trained as a teacher and married young – becoming the college’s youngest married day student. She credits much to Girl Guides and particularly to Mary Soulsby, whose nature walks, music, and generosity had a lifelong influence. “She taught us to stop and listen,” Jennifer says.

Jennifer remembers being one of the many girls in the church choir, cycling home in the dark after Guides, and being bathed by neighbours after an unfortunate tumble into a sewage-filled brook. Her stories are full of warmth and gratitude – for a village that looked out for its own, and for a childhood full of open skies, muddy ponies, and kind-hearted grownups.

“We were guided,” she says, summing up a life formed by both the land and the people who nurtured it.