Halsway Manor Society

A short chapter in the long history of Halsway Manor.

When the Halsway Manor Society was formed in 1965, Marjorie and Donald Hunt stepped in as the first wardens.

In 1972 a dinner was given in their honour, as they planned to retire. Marjorie made a speech that evening, in which she vividly described the twists and turns that brought her to the Manor and the work they did.

Marjorie's tale

- told on Saturday November 18th 1972

Looking back at all the things which have happened to me in my life have prepared me for this last real job - real but amateur, meaning 'for the love of it'. Partly it is a matter of choosing and preferences, and partly of accepting opportunities - looking for them.

Learning at school I began to enjoy, just as it was time to leave. My first job I hated (under the pavements of Union Street, Bristol) but my parents and family had taught me - without realising it - to look with seeing eyes and listen. Also I read, I had revolutionary thoughts. We grumbled, Frances, and I. The favourite uncle said 'Come, come, Lady Ermyntrude, this is not bearing your cross with fortitude'. Another said 'look for opportunities - take them'. Always inside Frances and me there was an imp dancing - and when we discovered 'Country Dancing' we were captivated by it - the gaiety, the tunes and the friends. The songs seemed to express sorrows more than joy - unrequited love and that sort of thing with lovely sad tunes.

My father, Arthur Waight, found us the Folk House, College Green, Bristol. We joined and attended lectures, plays, weekend schools on social topics and there we saw Walter Wilkinson, Frances Gair's uncle, with his hand puppets. His charming and amusing show I can plainly remember and his voice saying 'O soldier, soldier, won't you marry me' - I can still hear it in my mind's ear.

After a few years of 'bearing our cross with fortitude' - those safe jobs with pensions at 60 - we couldn't see ourselves lasting out 'til 60 - we'd die of boredom before then. So the revolutionary spirit burst forth and Frances went to Dartington as a mature student (in modern parlance). She soon found a job going that I could do and off I went. True, I was still an office rat, but I was overjoyed to be in the country, walking and running through the fields and woods to my office by the River Dart. We could take part in all the amateur dance, art and music appreciation groups. And we could meet and know real artists, dancers, teachers, actors, live alongside them and begin to understand their struggles for excellence and know their difficulties in the years before 1939. At last we felt alive. Of course there was a Folk Dance group which we joined. Margaret Grant invited us from time to time - invited me to join the County Club - and then go with her to Stratford-on-Avon Festival - Summer School. We camped in a caravan by the river. The whole of Stratford seemed to be filled with dancers - the Theatre assembly rooms, grounds, schools, halls and gymnastics were all ours. The great ones of the EFDSS were all there - Vaughan Williams conducted singing after the coffee break. I danced North Skelton sword with Willy Ganiford teaching and George Tremain playing. The sun shone - we danced and danced - had picnics, and on the last evening the ball was in the floodlit theatre grounds, by the river. It was as thrilling to me as Sidmouth is to you.

Later Margaret asked me if I'd like to train, with a chance of becoming her assistant in Devon. She couldn't promise me the job - the wages would be small (in fact none at all in the school holidays) and I'd need a car. I left these problems until later and went off to London to join the three-months day-time course, with seven other girls. I boarded with an uncle, John Dickinson, in Regents Park Road. What joy and what trepidation during that glorious and exhausting training with Helen and Douglas Kennedy - Marjorie Sinclair, Marjorie Kahn, Elsie Averil, Everal de Jersey, Willy Ganiford, Maud Karpeles, Richard Callender and Imogen Holst. Even if those illustrious people did take us apart and show us our failings - muscles ached from practising capers. We attended classes, parties galore, demonstrations, and the Albert Hall.

I did get the job, but still had much to learn from Margaret Grant. After a spell living in Exeter and going out to the villages by bus, the war came and interrupted everything. But later Margaret reorganised work for us and then how happy I was travelling about Devon in my mother's car. When others were undergoing ordeals in London and Bristol I felt guilty to be so happy - but who wouldn't enjoy taking around our good dances and tunes which really did cheer people up. But just compare my ensemble - a hand-wound portable gramophone and some 10-inch 78 records - no amplification - with the present day! Anyway, the Youth clubs turned up - right away in isolated places (Harecombe for instance, somewhere near Kingsbridge). Young farm people, in their heavy boots - clothes were rationed - piled up the ironclad desks in the little dark village school, lit the oil lamps, and away we went. The floor reverberating - shaking the little gramophone needle off its groove, the little sound in any case hardly audible. But we had fun!

During those years there were Summer, Easter and Christmas Schools and many new friends. On the job in Devon I stayed with the kindest and most hospitable people including the Hunts of Bridford. There I went once a month to the evacuees' class at the Village School and the Youth club in the evening. In that way I met Kathleen, Donald, their father and Margaret - much in common there! So I came at the age of 36 in 1945 to a matchless spring of flowers and birds singing more loudly than ever - peace declared, and engaged to Donald.

Then followed 18 years of interesting, hazardous, struggling, and happy farming, first at Shebbear and mostly at Huish Champflower. I still had an eye to the poetry and idealism of it, a landscape plotted and pieced - fold, fallow and plough. And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim. Donald had all those trades and skills - hedging and ploughing, milking, scything, rick-thatching, shearing, lambing and water-divining and I loved trying to help with the ordinary jobs of the house, pigs, calves, hens, at lambing time, tractor driving and all the rest of it. Huish Champflower had every ingredient of a real farming community, all the scandals, from helpfulness, hindrances, disasters and a few successes. The village, three miles away, had a Music and Drama Club, Folk Dancing, madrigal singing, Women's Institute, N.F.U., and at last a painting class - tutor Frances Gair Wilkinson used to come to tea with us before the class. And she exercised our seeing eyes - a walk with her was a revelation.

In 1962 we took 10% of the village population - i.e. one bus-full - to the Annual General Meeting at Cecil Sharp House and got home in time for milking next morning. In 1963 we were snowed up for 10 weeks and although we survived this well enough we began to wonder whether we could keep it up. Then during the snow a letter came from Frances Gair telling us about her plans for an Art Centre at Halsway and saying she would need some help from two people. That night we sat reading and re-reading this - feet right in the hearth, fire blazing and a freezing draught coming in from behind, two of every garment still on and thinking 'shall we, shan't we'. At last we decided - no security in farming and perhaps we shan't be able to cope with another winter like this.

So, six months later again another adventure - with Frances Gair Wilkinson, artist, puppeteer and perfectionist in producing events, such as exhibitions and classes etc. She went off to paint in Greece and left us to buy hundreds of new plants for the garden, and to manage Guiseppina and Ginano, the Italian Cook and Houseman.

After taking a party of painters to Italy on a summer school with Dusty Miller as fellow tutor - they soon announced their engagement to be married.

Now we have arrived at the last phase - Frances gave us two holidays and the second of these was to go to Poland with Bill Rutter and quite a lot of this present company. The idea of a Folk Centre was even then emerging and when Frances offered Halsway - Bill saw it through and threw us in at the deep end as Wardens. Donald said 'it may be easier than milking and mucking out 40 cows' - but I doubted it.

Then all of you step into the picture. Some were at the first working party, scraping off old polish, taking down brocade curtains for the cleaners. Others were helping to plan and buy furnishing and equipment. I enjoyed arranging the rooms - contriving curtains and so on, but even spending a lot of money is quite energetic! Your daughters came as our first students on holiday jobs, your young men helped too. Then came the dancers, singers, players, painters, M.C.s, band musicians, betrothals - some here now, weddings, honeymoons and new babies; and walkers - the families, the children, conferences, discussion groups, seminars, clubs, friends from our old life turned up to help and they were needed, others coming on a course we'd found we knew ages ago. New friends were made all the time.

Geared by the Committees, the job of our life was now scene-shifting and setting the stage for each group of people who came to practice their chosen art. To the best of our ability we tried to see that they had food and comfort to go with the gifts of this gracious house. The reward was to catch gusts of music, minutes of dancing on the special wavelength of interest that every group created.

Backstage we had a growing and changing family life with all the dear people who have worked with us and shared meals around the Rumpus Room table. It hasn't been all 'beer and skittles' but we really have enjoyed it on the whole - to be involved in the changing and growing aspect of the EFDSS has been a great experience. We are glad that, thanks to your support, the courage of the founders of the Halsway Manor Society has so far been justified; and it is interesting that Frances Gair's original scheme for an Art Centre - i.e. mural art - has been carried on, as in some years we have had five painting weeks.

Donald has more to say, but may I finish by thanking you all for coming - the way you have always come, and by your presence giving us so much pleasure, for the cheque, our most grateful thanks, we know it represents many not here on this occasion.

My last quotation -

All things counter, original, spare, strange.
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how)
with swift, slow, sweet, sour, adazzle, dim.
He fathers forth whose beauty is past change - Praise Him.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, "Pied Beauty"

Transcribed by Alison Ellacott, December 1999

Thanks to Frances Brown, Marjorie's sister, for providing the photographs and speech.

Efforts to trace a record of Donald's speech have not yet been successful