DAVID WESTCOTT

CATALOGUE

RECORDING

SUMMARY

BORN: Porlock, Somerset 1923

LIVED: Porlock

RECORDING MADE: 2002

RECORDING LENGTH: 2 hours 24 minutes

David Westcott has an adventurous spirit. He collected stamps at school, liked geography, and could draw a map of the world from memory. He loves sport, football and cricket, and is life president of Porlock cricket team. He is also outgoing president of the Exmoor Horn Sheep Breeders Society. His family have been farmers on the Blathwayt estate for several generations; three of his daughters still farm there.

He has looked after a rain gauge for the river authority for years and says that during the 1947 winter he recorded 30 degrees of frost. Friendly and gregarious, when not helping out on the farm, or taking his grandson to sports day, he escorts people round the moor and gives talks to schools and village groups about his life as an Exmoor farmer. He went on holiday to the Canadian Rockies a few years ago and thinks New Zealand would be a wonderful country to visit.

David Westcott died in March 2010.

Photograph by Mark J. Rattenbury