May Meredith

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Summary

Based on an interview recorded on 4 November 2005. It reflects the interviewee’s life and memories at that time.

Born in 1922 at Orange Tree, Common Hill, May Meredith’s early life was steeped in the history of a building that had, over time, been a cider mill, a chapel and finally the family home. Her memories of it are vivid: the great old cider press still in place, the chapel loft used for hay, and her sons learning to make cider with the family’s white horse circling the mill.

Her parents were local – her father from Hampton Bishop, her mother from Garway – and the family lived simply but resourcefully. Milk was fetched daily from Rudge End, water drawn from the pump, wood gathered for the fire, and the garden at the Orange Tree produced vegetables and supported pigs. School was a walk in all weathers, under the watchful eye of the family spaniel, and lessons were shared between Mr and Mrs Proctor, Mrs Brown and Mrs Avery, who walked in each day from Brockhampton.

May married twice; her first husband left during the war, and she later married Mr Meredith of the long-established Drew family of Mordiford. Life took her from cottages on Common Hill back to Orange Tree, which the family eventually bought in 1947. Bringing in water and electricity was a major milestone – they had to pay for the supply to be brought up through two paddocks.

Her working life included time with the Barclays of Mordiford, whom she remembers with great affection. Community life meant Girls’ Friendly Society meetings, chapel and church, hop-picking at the Hyde, and the occasional dance in the old Fownhope hall.

Through all of it runs May’s unmistakable warmth: love of home, animals, neighbours, and a village where “you enjoyed life more so than a lot of the young ones do today.”