Age Concern Dorchester - Dorset's Living Memories

Leigh through the years

Bernard Toms writes...

I was born in a little hamlet near Chetnole in 1929 where my father was a dairy farmer. We moved when I was 5 years old and went to Leigh where I have lived ever since. I left school at 14 to help my father on the farm and worked there for a long time.

In 1950 I went to Bristol on my motorbike to watch the Speedway and the Poole team were there, and I got talking to a man who offered me a job at Poole Speedway and so after that I went to Poole on my motorbike every week to work.

My job there was to stand on the track by a bend and when a rider crashed his bike, we would get hold of the bike and stop it ploughing into the crowd. Later when Skye Sports started televising it, we lost our jobs because they wanted technicians on the track. But I still go to Poole to watch the speedway. At the moment I can’t drive my car there but until recently I used to drive there every week.

Leigh has changed in the last few years, there used to be petrol pumps outside the shop and in the war, we used to go there and buy Wootten pies to eat because food was rationed and they were very filling. In the war there was Double Summertime to give everybody 2 extra hours of daylight, so we worked very long hours on the farm. It was a very busy village with lots of dances.

I met my wife when she came to work in the village to do domestic work, and later on she moved to look after 5 children in Broadstone. After we married we lived with my Mother and Father but it was very difficult and it was a strain. We wanted to move away but my parents wanted us to stay near, so eventually, my father built a bungalow for us to live in.

I left the farm after a while to work at the bakery in Leigh and as well as helping to make bread and rolls, I used to deliver the bread, going from house to house in a van.